eigenrobot Profile picture
Jun 8, 2023 25 tweets 7 min read Read on X
hey academics out there ive got something on my mind and i wondered if you could help me out. question in next tweet
so what im wondering is if your so smart how did you end up seeing your control over your profession stripped from you by mere administrators and how did you end up in a position where speech and thought are more restricted on university campuses than anywhere else in society
thanks ill take my answer offline
follow up question can you say "im living the life of the mind" without wanting to hurl yourself from a precipice to escape the shame you carry and which briefly reemerges when you think abt your forebears before you shove it under the surface when you remember your mortgage
and do you ever think about the millennia of christians who would sooner die than falsify their beliefs and often did and how your profession is a continuation of the medieval clergy and how a high duty of fidelity to conscience might not be doffed quite as easily as a cassock
do you ever wonder about the blood price men paid over centuries to be able to speak and think freely and wonder further at your exemption from having to ever even theoretically make such sacrifices yourself in our enlightened age
no further questions Image
or perhaps all of this is in keeping with tradition
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overall im not sure weve made a good trade here if we judge convictions by the courage with which men hold them


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the only real scientists were socrates and archimedes
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"what are you talking about robot? why IM an academic and IVE never felt unable to express my opinions" Image
do i really need to do this
archive.is/6V1JO
this thread was actually spurred by recalling that time literally hundreds of economists in positions of national prominence turned on an eminent colleague and denounced him in droves for suggesting riots might be counterproductive
archive.is/zDsNS
Challenge to professors who definitely face no limits on their expression:

Go ahead. Post a piece of paper by your office that simply says "It's Okay to Be White"

surely theres nothing objectionable there. Right
perhaps you might publish a thoughtful ontological paper

youre Permitted. right.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_t…
these are a few prominent examples off the top of my head

because of their prominence they are especially well-documented

i am aware of many other cases some of which i cant discuss because i know the people involved

and there are many, many others none of us have heard of
the other thing is that you dont need to get everyone who things Wrong Things to strangle discussions. you can just make examples of some people and if these heroes break publicly?

well. generally lesser lights will follow

every apology was a failure. better men would've never. Image
anyway, As You Know

all of this has led to faculty jobs requiring applicants to submit groveling statements affirming their conformity to an ideological regime

archive.is/KCJSb
with this the succession is broken and our intellectual heritage dies with this generation

further reading on such matters linked

glad you managed to publish a few extra papers in third tier journals tho
amazon.com/Final-Generati…
@browserdotsys @shieldfoss i was thinking about the problem of how martyrdom and responsibilities to children interact

for students . . . idk. you dont want to screw their careers but if you dont stand firm what lesson are you teaching them, and what kind of profession are you even passing on to them?
@browserdotsys @shieldfoss i dont think i could bear the idea of leaving my toddler without a father irrespective of any cost to my integrity though, so im not sure you should take anything i say seriously
@trivialanalyst and no one at wal mart CLAIMS to be pursing Truth or Knowledge. they are literally trying to make a few bucks

the only reason universities have any authority is that theyre devoted to doing something greater

well. i regret having believed it
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More from @eigenrobot

Mar 27
grateful to cyan for writing this out

want to add that this also fails because it doesn't actually match the Ghibli style. in fact, the character design is repellent; this is separate from the subject matter

did they even know they were posting slop?
compare and contrast Image
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i can actually prove scientifically the white post is shit. watch this
Read 18 tweets
Mar 22
its actually fairly good as a commitment device binding on future administrations because this decreases the value of illegal immigrants for all subsequent administrations and it removes the "they pay taxes argument"

obviously it is also rather unsavory
on the other hand backdooring illegal immigration was also unsavory so who can say who sucks most here
Read 4 tweets
Mar 10
i think its reasonable to call this a revolution in the sense that trump doesnt adhere to elite norms nor even middle class norms. and its not clodius pretending to be a plebe, its a pleb not even pretending to be a patrician

throw the mandate of heaven in the trash etc
until the first trump term a surprising amount of the president's ability to influence the country was derived less from his potestas--that is, his formal powers--than from his auctoritas, which was closely tied to his dignitas

I'll pause and wait for you to read the screencaps Image
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im not sure we actually have anyone, anymore, with sufficient dignitas to actually possess or wield the historical presidential auctoritas. we are all lesser men now and all our high institutions have debased themselves
Read 7 tweets
Mar 6
how do "realists" explain Churchill
specifically it seems like yeah you could probably come up with a strategic _rationalization_ for his behavior after the battle of france but the guy was clearly not working on that plane and had just been that way for decades at least

and this was not uncommon in that era. eg Image
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my basic model of realism is that its retarded in the same way eg freudianism is retarded.

practically any policy can be rationalized as strategically "realist" under the right set of unfalsifiable assumptions about the game space and the beliefs of principals involved
Read 5 tweets
Mar 5
i think this is probably right and i think something large and bad will happen. everyone is just waiting for it, even.

because we can't keep going like this.

every election cycle is just another circle around the drain
i suppose everyone's just going to be pillaging the fisc as the end gets nearer at an increasingly rapid pace

what asset allocation solves this do you think
i mean, solves for you, the investor

obviously im not suggesting any solution exists for the united states' problems.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 24
turnabout is fair play and the old regime has richly earned it. but i wish we (america) hadn't become like this

what's the path to redemption where left and right aren't just basically competing to destroy one another rather than fulfill our manifest 1KYAE destiny?
i think this is probably the most obvious solution (one side needs an unambiguous and durable victory) but i haven't seen a coherent platform from the right about what that looks like in a positive sense
obviously there was nothing from the left on this front, the entire platform was "iterate on current insane nonsense forever until we're zimbabwe"

but i'd hope that the right could conjure a better vision for the country
Read 5 tweets

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