Gurwinder
@G_S_Bhogal
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Saboteur of narratives https://t.co/twgdjNCZPI
Joined November 2014
Okay, here it is: the full story of my interactions with the alleged CEO shooter Luigi Mangione.
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Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish children escape the Nazis. His efforts went unrecognized for 50 years. Then in 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he’d rescued, now adults. I like to remember this every Jan 27th.
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My friends, a new MEGATHREAD has arrived!. In 40 tweets I’ll explain 40 useful concepts you should know. Reading time: ~7 minutes. Value: potentially a lifetime!. Thread:.
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MEGATHREAD TIME: In 40 tweets I will describe 40 powerful concepts for understanding the world. Some are complex so forgive me for oversimplifying, but the main purpose is to incite curiosity. Okay, here we go:.
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My friends, a new MEGATHREAD has arrived!. In 40 tweets I’ll explain 40 useful concepts you should know. Reading time: ~7 minutes. Value: a lifetime. Thread:.
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There are over a billion websites on the internet, yet most people never use more than a dozen. Here are 10 little-known websites that give you superpowers. Thread:.
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My peoples, the time has come for a MEGATHREAD. In 40 tweets I will explain another 40 concepts you should know. Strap in. Here we go:.
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Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish children escape the Nazis. His efforts went unrecognized for 50 years; then in 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he’d rescued, now adults. It often takes the dark to see the stars.
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I'd say it's more like this:
Craziest mindfuck after your comeup is realizing RICH PEOPLE are the actual kind, caring, virtuous, empathetic & courteous ones. & the poors are the problem.
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A study found that on Twitter, the left and right are generally isolated from each other, with retweets rarely leaving each group's bubble.
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Here's another email the shooting suspect Luigi Mangione sent me. It warned about NPCs in Japan. Dude had an eclectic range of concerns.
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I had a two hour video-call with Mangione, the suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter, in May. He genuinely seemed like one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. After the chat he spontaneously bought me subscriptions to services he thought would help me with writing.
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Nicholas Winton helped 669 Jewish children escape the Nazis. His efforts went unrecognized for 50 years. Then in 1988, while sitting as a member of a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he’d rescued, now adults. I like to remember this every Jan 27th.
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“Decolonization” is usually just recolonization by another colonial power, such as Islam.
British “decolonisation activist” boasts about changing her school curriculum to remove “controversial white books” like “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas” in favour of more “diverse stories.”
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In 2022 I learned hundreds of useful concepts that improved my understanding of the world. Here are the 10 best:.
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Everyone, a new MEGATHREAD is here!. In 40 tweets I'll explain 40 mind-altering concepts. Reading time: ~7 minutes. Value: A lifetime. THREAD:.
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Nicholas Winton saved 669 children from the Nazis. His efforts went unrecognized for 50 years. Then in 1988, while sitting among a TV audience, he suddenly found himself surrounded by the kids he’d saved, now adults. Only amid darkness do we see the stars. #HolocaustMemorialDay
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“Woke” is when you: .1. Reduce individuals to group identities.2. Reduce these group identities to “victims” and “oppressors”.3. Reduce any disagreement with these reductions to “oppression” or “bigotry”.
I challenge anyone who claims to be ‘#antiwoke’ to define- as specifically as possible- what they think ‘woke’ actually means. Go ahead. I’ll wait. If you can’t or won’t do it, I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re just a bigot. RT/tag people, please, I want actual answers!.
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13. Cunningham's Law:.The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer, because people online are more interested in criticizing people than helping them.
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4. Solomon's Paradox:.We're better at solving other people's problems than our own, because detachment yields objectivity. But Kross et al (2014) found viewing oneself in the 3rd person yields the same detachment, so when trying to help yourself, imagine you're helping a friend.
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And that’s it!. If you've read this far, you're my kind of human. Thank you for existing. And if you want to see more of these threads, let me know with likes/retweets/comments. Stay sane.
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Accepting the reality of biology makes you a literal Nazi, but brandishing swastikas on your phone and yelling “gas the Jews” makes you a social justice activist.
Video: A crowd at the steps of the Sydney Opera House chants "gas the Jews" and "f*ck the Jews" on October 9.
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The closest thing we have to time travel. Footage from 1901 of people in the north of England, sharpened using neural networks. The faces of the kids, for all their grinning, look haggard and aged – a likely symptom of the austere times they lived in.
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As corporations drape themselves in rainbow colors for Pride month, remember that they only engage in such activism in the West where it's fashionable, and not in the East where it's actually needed, because their activism is motivated not by principles but by PR.
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A NEW MENTAL MODEL MEGATHREAD HAS ARRIVED!. In 20 tweets I’ll summarize 20 key principles to understand the world. Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Value: potentially a lifetime.
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3. Spotlight Effect:.We often get the anxious feeling that our every move is being scrutinized by others. The truth is, no one is paying as much attention to you as you are. People are too concerned with how they appear to others to care much about how you appear to them.
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@aziz0nomics Sadly, neo-toddlerism — the belief that utopia can be achieved by acting like a 3 year-old — is an increasingly influential ideology.
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8. Noise Bottlenecks:.Consuming online content makes us feel like we're learning, but 90% of the content is useless junk: small talk, clickbait, marketing. We're filling our heads with noise, which is drowning out signal. As such, we feel we're getting smarter as we get stupider.
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Dunning-Kruger Effect: Awareness of the limitations of cognition (thinking) requires a proficiency in metacognition (thinking about thinking). In other words, being stupid makes you too stupid to realize how stupid you are.
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1. Social Proof:.When unsure how to act, people copy others, outsourcing their decisions. When Sylvan Goldman invented shopping trolleys, people didn’t want to use them because they seemed silly. So Goldman paid actors to use trolleys in his stores, and everyone quickly followed.
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4. Relative Privation:.An all-too-common fallacy where people dismiss a concern because something else is worse. “How can you talk about X when Y is happening?” . By this logic, how can anyone ever talk about anything other than literally the single worst thing in the universe?.
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Brandolini's Law (aka the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle): It takes a lot more energy to refute bullshit than to produce it. Hence, the world is full of unrefuted bullshit.
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7. Gibson's Law:. “For every PhD, there is an equal and opposite PhD.”. In matters of law & policy, anyone can find a subject-matter expert who supports their view, because having a PhD doesn’t necessarily make someone right, it often just makes them more skilled at being wrong.
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6. Shirky Principle:.Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. It’s the best way to ensure their survival and growth. Examples include planned obsolescence and the various “industrial complexes” (military, prison, pharmaceutical, etc).
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Friends, a new MEGATHREAD is here!. In 40 tweets I will explain 40 useful concepts you should know. Thread:.
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A NEW MENTAL MODEL MEGATHREAD HAS ARRIVED!. In 20 tweets I’ll summarize 20 of the most useful principles I know. Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Value: A lifetime. Thread:.
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12. Fredkin's Paradox:.The more similar two choices seem, the less the decision should matter, yet the harder it is to choose between them. As a result, we often spend the most time on the decisions that matter least.
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Cultural Parasitism: An ideology parasitizes the mind, changing the host’s behavior so they spread it to other people. Therefore, a successful ideology (the only kind we hear about) is not configured to be true; it is configured only to be easily transmitted and easily believed.
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Gender ideology has set our educational institutions back so far that researchers are now making “discoveries” that 99% of us learned in pre-school.
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2. Twyman's Law:.The more notable the data, the more likely it's wrong. This is because errors and data manipulation are far more common than genuine notable (i.e. surprising) results. Conversely, the more boring the data, the more trustworthy.
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1. Bypass paywalls. If I regularly read a website, I'll pay for it. But when I occasionally need to check an article from a website I don't regularly read, I use RemovePaywall to lift the paywall.
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21. Generation Effect:.The best way to understand a topic is not to read about it, but write about it. The act of explaining something helps one to connect the dots and commit them to memory far better than the passive act of reading. (One reason I make these megathreads!).
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19. Problem Selling:.Problem-solvers take an issue and break it down into small solvable chunks. Problem-sellers (e.g. politicians, the press) do the opposite: bundling many small issues into one big problem that looks insurmountable and terrifying. h/t: @BoyanSlat.
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Focusing Illusion: Nothing is ever as important as what you’re thinking about while you’re thinking about it. E.g. worrying about a thing makes the thing being worried about seem worse than it is. As Marcus Aurelius observed, “We suffer more often in imagination that in reality.”.
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Status Quo Bias: Those who were unfazed by Covid because it had a ~1% fatality rate were suddenly concerned about vaccines when they yielded a 1 in a ~million fatality rate. People see the risks of doing something but not the risks of doing nothing.
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17. Mismatch Theory:.Moths evolved to navigate by the moon, a good strategy until the invention of electric lamps, which now lead them astray. Equally, humans evolved to be tribal, a good strategy until the Digital Age, where it now leads us to act like polarized goons online.
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When intelligent people succumb to ideology, their intellect ceases to guard against wishful thinking and instead begins to fortify it, causing them to inadvertently mastermind their own delusion, and to very cleverly become stupid. My new essay.
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The Curse of Knowledge: The more familiar you become with an idea the worse you become at explaining it to others, because you forget what it's like to not know it, and therefore what needs to be explained to understand it. Makes it hard to write threads like this!.
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We evolved to desire sugar because it was a good source of energy, and relatively scarce. But when we learned to mass-produce it, our love for it suddenly went from asset to liability. The same is now true of information. Our curiosity, which once focused us, now distracts us.
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A fundamental delusion of Marxism and wokeism is that life is zero-sum; that for one group to achieve great success, another must be oppressed. This is why many on the left oppose merit; they mistake excellence for exploitation, and mediocrity for morality.
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2. Make the best possible meal with whatever you have. If you can't decide what to eat, just let MyFridgeFood know what's in your fridge and it will tell you what meals you can make and how you can make them. A great way to discover new recipes.
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Wokeism is dying as quickly as it proliferated because for most people it was never a sincerely held belief, only a fashion accessory.
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Crazy thought: What if the people you disagree with are not stupid, evil, or insane, but have simply had thoughts and experiences that you haven't which have led them to different conclusions?.
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The main impression I got of Luigi when I spoke with him was that he was a deeply curious individual. You can see a hint of that here.
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The Law of Very Large Numbers: Given a wide enough dataset, any pattern can be observed. A million to one odds happen 8 times a day in NYC (population 8 million). The world hasn't become crazier, we're just seeing more of everything.
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Much of wokeness is simply literary criticism applied to reality.
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Causal Reductionism: Things rarely happen for just 1 reason. Usually, outcomes result from many causes conspiring together. But our minds cannot process such a complex arrangement, so we tend to ascribe outcomes to single causes, reducing the web of causality to a mere thread.
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5. Expectation Effect:.What you see is influenced by what you expect to see. In one example, researchers Peter & Susanne Brugger showed people this picture. In October, most people saw a duck. During Easter, most people saw a bunny. h/t: @d_a_robson
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20. Hyperbolic Discounting:.Just as objects far away seem smaller, so do things far into our future. As a result, we are inclined to choose immediate rewards over future ones, even when these immediate rewards are much smaller. To overcome this bias, use @naval’s Compass:
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Humanitarians often talk of tackling the “root causes of poverty”, but poverty doesn’t have a root cause; it is the natural state of existence. The real question is, what causes prosperity?
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Concept Creep: As a social issue such as racism or sexual harassment becomes rarer, people react by expanding their definition of it, creating the illusion that the issue is actually getting worse. I explain the process in detail here:
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9. Belief Perseverance:.Our opinions are like bricks in masonry; each supports & is supported by others. Changing a belief means tearing down all beliefs atop it. Such demolition is hard to bear (easier to live with a skewed building) so people will rarely let that 1 brick budge.
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1. Solomon's Paradox:.We're better at solving other people's problems than our own, because detachment yields objectivity. But Kross et al (2014) found viewing oneself in the 3rd person yields the same detachment, so when trying to help yourself, imagine you're helping a friend.
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2. Procrastivity.We often avoid work by doing something else that feels productive so we don't feel guilty. For example, endlessly researching productivity hacks instead of actually being productive. Beware that your brain can justify procrastination by disguising it as progress.
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9. Deferred Happiness Syndrome.The common feeling that your life has not begun, that your present reality is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that'll fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you rushed through was in fact the one to your death.
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I don't like to dunk, but this astounds me. Instead of enjoying a movie, she spent the duration counting the characters of each sex/ethnicity and the number of minutes before they spoke. Wokeism is not "being alert to injustice", it's "seeing nothing but injustice".
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Simpson’s Paradox: A trend can appear in groups of data but disappear when these groups are combined. This effect can easily be exploited by limiting a dataset so that it shows exactly what one wants it to show. Thus: beware of even the strongest correlations.
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11. Babble Hypothesis:. According to multiple studies, what best predicts whether someone becomes a leader? Their experience? Their IQ?. No!. The amount of time they spend talking. It doesn't even matter what they say, just how much they say it. We suck at picking leaders.
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38. Idiocy Saturation:.Online, people who don't think before they post are able to post more often than people who do. As a result, the average social media post is stupider than the average social media user. Worth remembering whenever Twitter dumbassery drives you to despair.
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I was a leftist for 10 years, but as the mainstream left became consumed by identity politics, my beliefs increasingly required me to lie to myself and to others, until I realized that I had to choose truth or ideology; I couldn't have both. My new essay.
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The Toxoplasma of Rage: The ideas that spread most are not those everyone agrees with, but those that divide people most, because people see them as causes to attack or defend in order to signal their commitment to a tribe. h/t: @slatestarcodex.
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When intelligent people affiliate themselves to ideology, their intellect ceases to guard against wishful thinking, and instead begins to fortify it, causing them to inadvertently mastermind their own delusion, and to very cleverly become stupid.
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Many of those who dismissed Covid as a threat because it had a “1% fatality rate” are now freaking out about the vaccine because it has a 1 in a million fatality rate. Seems people overestimate the risks of doing something and underestimate the risks of doing nothing.
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This is vandalism. Part of the value of classic literature is that its choice of words tells us about the time it was written. Every story is a historical record. And by sanitizing them, we erase the past and forget who we were.
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10. Proteus Effect:.In virtual spaces, people become like their avatars. For instance, using a "sexy" avatar tends to make a person more flirtatious. This suggests people's personalities are largely a performance choreographed to social expectations.
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16. Ben Franklin Effect:.Getting someone who dislikes you to do you a favor can get them to like you, as people's identities are a story they tell themselves, and if they're kind to you they need to square their actions with their identity, so they tell themselves they like you.
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3. The Grey Rock Method:.Reacting emotionally to trolls and other toxic people only gives them what they want—your time & energy—which encourages further trolling & abuse. As such, the best way to get them to stop is to become unresponsive to their provocations.
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Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time allotted for it. No matter the size of the task, it will often take precisely the amount of time you set aside to do it, because more time means more deliberation & procrastination.
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If you find yourself losing patience with someone, remember that they are an ape adrift in an alien world, born into a struggle they did not choose, bullied by impulses they cannot control, searching for answers they will not find, and condemned to a fate they do not deserve.
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10 WAYS TO AVOID BEING FOOLED. In 10 tweets I’ll explain 10 heuristics that will make you smarter. Thread:.
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5. Zeigarnik Effect:.Our brains are goal-focused, so we have better recall of unfinished tasks than finished ones. Exploit this by taking your breaks halfway through tasks. If you write, end the day mid-sentence so that when you return you'll find it easier to get rolling again.
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7. Howard Hughes Syndrome:.Everyone always lies to the powerful, to curry favor or avoid punishment. Hearing nothing but flattery causes the most powerful people to develop the most distorted views of reality, and their vast influence means we all pay the price. h/t: @KPaxs.
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11. Narrative-Market Fit:.News & commentary are products, so they follow market pressures. The more a story fits a fashion or meets a strong consumer demand, the more likely it has been crafted purely for audience engagement, and the less you should trust it. h/t: @david_perell.
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People aren’t getting crazier. Crazy people are getting louder.
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Peter Principle: People in a hierarchy such as a business or government will be promoted until they suck at their jobs, at which point they will remain where they are. As a result, the world is filled with people who suck at their jobs.
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Even though I no longer identify with the left, and have never identified with the right, I don’t like being called centrist, as it validates the outdated left-right continuum that I want to escape. In the spirit of today, I’d rather be known as “political spectrum non-binary.”.
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10. Permission Structure:.People don't want to change their mind for fear of looking stupid, so give them a way to change without looking stupid. E.g. instead of simply telling someone they're wrong, tell them you thought like them but had your mind changed by new information.
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Mental illness among young liberals is surging. The cause? Society is incentivizing young people to view personal struggles as medical issues. It is convincing them to identify as sick, and this is making them genuinely sick. My @UnHerd debut.
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Peoples! A new MEGATHREAD has arrived!. In 40 tweets I’ll explain 40 mind-expanding concepts you should know. Thread:.
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Arab leaders meet to condemn Israel’s bombing of Gaza, and the guest of honor is a man who slaughtered more Muslims than Israel has in its entire existence. Like those marching in London today, the only deaths they seem to care about are those that can be blamed on Jews.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad arrives in Saudi Arabia to attend an emergency Arab summit on the Gaza war.
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When I feel my faith in humanity slipping, I think of this email Steve Jobs sent to himself as he was dying.
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18. Agent Detection:.For aeons, it was safer to presume an unusual arrangement was designed by an intelligence than that it was natural. This helped us avoid traps. The result is that we've evolved to presume anything unusual is designed. Hence creationism & conspiracy theories.
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8. False Consensus Effect:.We assume everyone is like us, so our beliefs about others are derived from our knowledge of ourselves. Predictions of others' behavior often tell us more about the predictor, and accusations often tell us more about the accuser.
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Wokeism needs racism to exist, so it's always looking to pathologize new things as racist, including, now, attempts to start conversation by asking where you're from. If wokeism teaches minorities to be traumatized even by friendly gestures, it cannot claim to bridge divides.
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Cumulative Error: Mistakes grow. Beliefs are built on beliefs, so one wrong thought can snowball into a delusional worldview. Likewise, as an inaccuracy is reposted on the web, more is added to it, creating fake news. In our networked age, cumulative errors are the norm.
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Woozle Effect: An article makes a claim without evidence, is then cited by another, which is cited by another, and so on, until the range of citations creates the impression that the claim has evidence, when really all articles are citing the same uncorroborated source.
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