If you think that Israelis kill people on purpose, for no particular reason, then you are an antisemite. You might not know that you're an antisemite, because you think "it's just the truth". But, you are. You are a victim of a modern form of the Blood Libel
If you talk about the number of children Israel kills, or the number of civilians Israel kills, without considering the overall context, that Hamas puts them in danger and Israel does its best to avoid killing them, you are invoking the Blood Libel, and leveraging antisemitism
Jun 2, 2023 • 28 tweets • 6 min read
1. What is AI? How does it work? What are the implications of how it works?
The following thread is mostly based on this article by @stephen_wolfram who knows much more about the subject than me. So feel free to just read that, and skip this thread
writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-i…2. I read the article several weeks ago, and have not reread it, so this thread reflects how the information has been integrated into my biological neural network, not necessary what is written there. That makes a big difference, as we will see
Apr 4, 2023 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
What is Woke?
It is a worldview that teaches that all interactions are about power. There is only one conflict in the world, and it is the powerful against the powerless, where the powerful are trying to preserve their power (this is called "intersectionality")
Intersectionality applies equally to individual and group interactions. Employer-employee, husband-wife, sectarian conflicts, and international conflicts can all be understood through Wokeness
Mar 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"Moreover, critics of the reforms ought to ask themselves whether the current system would look as attractive if the current situation were reversed, with the Knesset dominated by progressives and the Court tilting right and invalidating progressive measures."
"As for nightmare scenarios about canceling elections or annulling minority rights, these seek to prevent challenges to the real and present tyranny of the Court by appeals to imaginary future tyrannies."
Jan 22, 2023 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
I was just in a Twitter Spaces with @ScottAdamsSays. The topic was: "Why are educated people getting the wrong answers on vax?" Frustratingly, when he asked me to speak, I couldn't figure out how to turn on my microphone, and he moved on to the next person
Did a 2nd microphone icon appear when I was made speaker, that I missed? It definitely wasn't there before or after I was made speaker. (I already had a microphone icon, but that was for requesting to speak)
Jan 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
They say that AI might be smart, but it will never be creative. I suspect it's the other way around. Creativity is about making random connections and rejecting what doesn't work. AI can help with that. Is this the AI that puts writers out of business?
Let me be clear. I think that we are a long way from AI producing a finished product, but I think it can help. A lot. I think that we will use it to generate ideas, most of which we will reject, but some of which we will keep
Oct 23, 2022 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
The essence of democracy is not "rule by the people" - ultimately, every government rules with the (perhaps unwilling) consent of the people. Rather, it is the ability to peacefully change rulers, while maintaining the continuity of society
Democratic systems should be judged on the ease with which they achieve the objective of facilitating change while maintaining the continuity of society
Aug 26, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
This is really the most important story of our times. It's the story about the stories. But, I don't agree with @EricRWeinstein's analysis of the underlying processes at work.
"What happens when the customer goes away, and a monopoly gets control... is that the service level almost always goes down..."
"When you buy a car, you have a lot of information available to you to make a choice, and you have a lot of choices"
Jul 26, 2022 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
How to fix US elections, a thread.
There are many problems with US elections but what, exactly, should be done to fix the them? Can anything be done at the federal level?
US elections are conducted at the state level (and DC) so there are actually 51 sets of election rules
Is it even constitutional to make rules at the federal level? Some people want to make elaborate rules at the federal level, which is probably not constitutional. But, there is something that can be done - in fact, *must* be done. The Constitution guarantees three things:
Jul 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I do not believe that we should be counting votes by computer. I know what can be hidden in a computer program. I am a computer programmer. But, of all the problems in the last election, that is one of the problems that worries me the least. I am more worried about:
1. Not checking signatures on absentee ballots
2. Moving ballots - they should be counted where they are cast
3. Curing ballots (copying "unclear" ballots to new ones!)
4. Casting and counting ballots without observers
5. Clear violations of the equal protection clause
Apr 26, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I am not one of these people, but I have a lot in common with them. My biggest criticism of them is the anti-democratic impulses that, according to this article, some of them have. I want to say to them: The beauty of democracy is that it makes non-violent revolution possible
The key concept is: zeitgeist. The zeitgeist will inevitably change, because it is getting too weird. It is driven by status competition, and too many people are being left out, because that is the nature of status competition: to create winners and losers
Jan 26, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Covid in Israel
Cases are going up fast, much faster than ever before.
However, it should be noted that testing has gone *way* up with this wave e.g. schoolchildren are being tested twice a week with rapid tests, so it is likely that many more cases are caught
Deaths are now beginning to rise rapidly, but, unlike cases, deaths are still far below that of previous waves
Jan 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
"People want to know why, for example... taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as “brainstorm” and “lame.”"
I thought, what could possibly be wrong with "brainstorm"? People without brains are offended?
@ScottAdamsSays thinks that he is a narcissist. I disagree, but I will let you (and him) make that judgement. My objective here is not to define a word, but to give you a concept (filter) that will help you to understand the world
2. When I understood what narcissism is, I finally understood the behavior of a class of people who had baffled me for a long time. I hope that this thread will help some of you
Dec 13, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If a large segment of the public believes that elections are fraudulent, the proper response is not to ridicule and ignore them, but to make it indisputably obvious that elections are *not* fraudulent
Here's *one* way:
But it's even worse. The people with fake jobs usually have *power* over the people with real jobs
Nov 3, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
One of the points that was made yesterday in RWRI is that many of the irrational tendencies that people have, for example mental accounting, turn out to be perfectly rational when ecological considerations are taken into account
#RWRI
But today we talked about being fooled by randomness. @nntaleb put up a histogram. He generated 20 pairs of random numbers from two normal distributions that had a correlation of 0.2. This is a high correlation, but many of the sets, by chance, had *negative* correlation!
Aug 26, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
When it comes to foreign policy, the real choice is not between intervention and non-intervention, but between frequent small interventions and infrequent large ones.
I know that I will get pushback on this from @nntaleb fans, but it comes right out of Incerto
It's not that small interventions are always good or right, so don't give me examples of when they have been wrong. It's that small interventions provide feedback on a small scale, and make course-corrections possible
Aug 16, 2021 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
"It didn't seem to me that anybody had described a mechanism in which variants can be increased by vaccination"
OK. I will do so now.
First of all, @ScottAdamsSays is absolutely correct that the more people have covid, the more variants there will be
That is, the more copies of the virus that are out there, reproducing, the more mutations there will be, and the more variants will be created. So reducing the number of people with covid is absolutely a good thing. But that is not exactly the question
Aug 5, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm catching up on my @ScottAdamsSays, and I want to take issue with this statement: "rapid tests would only slow it down".
Rapid tests could end the pandemic. All that is necessary to end the pandemic is to get R (the reproduction number) below 1
That is, if every infected person infects less than 1 other person, the pandemic will die out. With rapid (i.e. rapid, cheap, and easy) tests we could test everyone whenever there is a chance of infecting other people, at restaurants, schools, and other gatherings
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