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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2023

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  • This is kind of where I’m coming from. I’m not a regular listener of his so my views may be outdated. I just think a lot of malice is dumped on him that I don’t think is necessarily fair. That being said, he is a public figure so being dumb only gets you so far as an excuse.

    I also like long form stuff, and I like to talk to people who know things, so at least in an ideal sense I’m positive on his format. B

    😂 for the timeshare conference




  • Thanks for your response. Are you suggesting that indecisive movement on the part of the media is what causes antivax sentiments to rise? I mean one of the biggest slurs they throw is that you’re antivax. I can’t remember a time when antivaxing was talked about on the media as a reasonable standpoint. Yet the prevalence of antivax sentiments is increasing. Couldn’t it also be attributable to institutional decline?

    Did the CDC behave in a consistent and transparent way during covid? Or did they issue contradictory recommendations, and disinformation regarding lab leak. My point only is, if our institutions weren’t failing us on the reg, maybe we’d find it easier to take their word for things.


  • I’d have to look at those claims to know if that’s actually true. It may be, but media/internet hyperbole is so overplayed I’d wager it isn’t actually true. Like I said though. I don’t know about that specific instance.

    The thing is, if the FBI hadn’t framed so many Muslims in the US, during the war on terror or fascilitated the Whitmer kidnapping, maybe claims like that wouldn’t gain traction as easily.


  • True, there are limits to freedom of speech. But aren’t you disturbed by the control that people in society are exerting on the narratives that we are allowed to question? With or without government involvement. I’m talking about big techmedia here, and the power they have to set the narrative entirely with or without the government involved. I mean the tools that they put into play to stop right wing misinformation (not saying most of it isn’t misinformation) can be just flipped over on the left when the left starts threatening institutions down the road.


  • Fair enough. I don’t feel like I’m hiding behind freedom of speech as much as I’m saying that it’s fundamentally important to the functioning of a healthy society. With that comes knowledge that some people out there are going to be dishonest shits. If what I’m saying about it’s importance is true, then that should be the starting point for any discussion like this.

    The question is then, who get to decide what is appropriate to talk about? What percentage of the people he talks to have to be agreeable before he comes off as a good actor? I would never have become a leftist if it weren’t for information out there that didn’t fit the national narratives that we get from existing im the US.

    This whole covid fiasco has been an excellent example of people who were off narrative (lab leak, anti shutdowns etc) being at least partially vindicated by the actual outcomes later in the game. It’s not always the case, but it happens and we should be aware of that.


  • Seems to me a lot of people here pretty hostile to Joe. I can only say he has been more than open and interacted with good faith with guests that I listen to than anyone in “media”. His talk with Bernie Sanders and his agreement with certain aspects of Sanders agenda should dismiss the claim that he’s a libertarian shill. I try to approach him as a topic in good faith as well.

    He’s being called a neandertal because he seems to agree with a lot of fringe opinions. I try to think of how I would react if talking to a person who I have no idea about their area of expertise and how I would deal with claims that they make. Sure he gives a voice to cranks, but he also gives voice to people across the spectrum, some that I actually want other people to hear from. That’s kind of what free speech is about right there.



  • Ignoring some slight complications, the speed of light is consistent everywhere. If light always travels at the same speed, we can begin telling distance in terms of how long the light has had to propagate.

    An analogy may be the following: Let’s say you get in your car. For simplicities sake, we’ll say that the car can ONLY DRIVE 60 km per hour (Analagous to the single speed of light). Because we know what speed you are traveling, in km/hr, we can talk about how far you are going in terms of only time. For example, you get into your car and drive for 2 minutes (60km/60 minutes * 2 minutes). In this case the minutes cancel our (minutes/minutes =1) and we are left with 2km. We can either say “You have driven for 2 km” or we can say " you have driven for 2 car minutes".

    In this example, it makes no sense why we would want to say that you traveled 2 car minutes rather than simply saying you traveled 2km. We have a very good concept of what 2km looks like in our brains.

    The speed of light is around 3,000,000km/second. The scale of that is beyond what easily fits into our heads as humans (try to imagine a group ten people standing in front of you. Now try imagining how many of those groups would be required to have 1 million people standing in front of you. It’s possible, but not easy). Instead of fucking around with numbers that we can’t easily conceptualize like 24,000,000 km between the earth and the sun, it’s much easier to reduce that to a more managable chunk of information. It takes light from the sun 8 minutes to reach the earth. Is 24,000,000 easier to conceptualize, or is it easier to say that it crosses a distance of 8 times the distance light can traverse in a second (8 light seconds )

    I’m not really satisfied with this explanation, it’s not really ELI5 material. If it helps, good. If it doesn’t keep poking at me.