I really think everyone should be significantly more freaked out about AI.

I definitely think truth-seeking is important. But it’s important to understand the limits of knowledge in the first instance in order to figure out the best way of going about the process of trying to find truth.

I want to say, I understand why people don't want the above to be true. People are afraid that only nihilism lies behind that door, and they desperately pearl clutch their beliefs they have libertarian free will, and that objective truth is out there, merely obscured and distorted by corrupt institutions. The problem with this is, it's complete bullshit -- we made our whole society up.

Yeah, I mean, I am idiot. And I'm pretty sure everyone else is too. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I meant to say there is NO objective truth to be found, outside of abstract mathematical entities.

"Reason is a slave to the passions" -- David Hume.

There is objective truth to be found, outside of say, abstract mathematical entities. Within the context of human affairs, culture and politics, it's just subjectivism all the way down. The belief that information can be "neutral" is actually nonsense.

This is sometimes referred to as the "false balance" fallacy. But it's just epistemically true. At some point when you're constructing a narrative of the world, to communicate what you think is true, you're going to bring some subjective starting axiom into it (probably unconsciously) in order to bootstrap the whole process of reasoning through a cognizable narrative.

For society to even function, we have to ultimately have some shared subjective assumptions, otherwise all social cooperation becomes impossible.

At some bedrock, foundational, bare metal level, communication between human beings that yields a productive transmission of information, is dependent on bias. You couldn't even begin to have a shared understanding.

The fact Elon thinks TruthGPT could even be a thing, demonstrates how narrow his knowledge of epistemology is, and how thinking about society and politics as an engineer leaves much to be desired. Humanity is not an engineering problem.

I don’t really have a method. I tend to intentionally seek out sources of information that challenge what I think, though. I probably spend more time reading the arguments *against* what I believe, and the arguments I make, than reading the arguments of people who agree with me.

How that approach turns into internet searches, I don’t really know. I haven’t tried to systematize my approach to information discovery in any way that would be terribly exciting to talk about. It would probably be best described as disorganized and scatterbrained, and some internal socratic dialogues from time to time, trying to convince myself I’m wrong about what I think, through imagining counterfactuals, and trying to identify what would have to be true for me to be wrong, or some haphazard positivist construction like that. That being said, I’m not a strict positivist.

*actualization of ones choices

I think this is an intellectual rabbit hole from which there is no tractable escape. When people pose this as a problem, they are usually starting from the in-built assumption that they have libertarian free will (in the philosophical sense, not political sense) and that ethically, ensuring that actuality of ones own choices over what to pay attention to, are not intruded on.

The problem is, is no matter what, the information coming to you is being curated. Even your senses are curating information to you, based on what your biology thinks is important for you to pay attention to, based on things that have been selective for survival. But that’s getting a little too abstract.

As it pertains to knowledge of by the outside world, and in the domain of human affairs, there is no such thing as objective facts. There just isn’t. You are 100% reliant on the testimony of others to obtain information about human affairs beyond your immediate cone of experience. Whether it’s a journalist working for a left-leaning rag, or some anonymous person her on Nostr recounting some information about what’s going on in some random corner of the world, the information coming to you is being curated. Said anonymous person is deciding to share specific information based on their preferences.

A lot of people in these parts have come to believe that anonymous person is as good, if not better, source of truth and un-curated information, than a news organization, given the letter’s interests and agenda. There is this bias, stemming from this demand to protect the idea of the libertarian free experience, that makes one come to the conclusion that a more anarchic process for obtaining information about the world is a better way to uncover truth. This is actually completely wrong, and I think, provably so.

Everyone is being manipulated by the people they consume information from. I’m manipulating you right now. That’s the nature of human communication and dialogue. A parent is manipulating their children, and trying to communicate values to them, based on their curation of what they think is important. A leader in an organization is doing the same thing to the people they lead. The people who post on social media are doing the same.

The belief that the truth of the world is easier to see once you completely reject professional journalism is really a false hope. You’ve just chosen different curators.

I don't really have any main sources of information. There are some news outlets that I generally respect more than others. But I've gotten a lot better, when I'm interested in a particular news event, at reading coverage on that event from 3-4 different news outlets, of different political slants, and from different parts of the world.

I no longer use social media as my primary source for information. Ever since I stopped using Twitter, I have been reading so much more, and putting more of an effort to seek out divergent perspectives on things, and I feel like my intellectual hygiene has dramatically improved. I spend a lot more time thinking and forming opinions, rather than reacting to headlines. Highly recommend.

Actually working on something related for my inaugural Medium post that I’m weeks behind on posting.

I’m happy to dissect his metaphysical claims, all the way down to the bedrock praxeology he inherits from Rothbard and others, if you’d like! This isn’t a drive by.

Hans Hermann-Hoppe is a loon. A complete and literal loon. His argumentation ethics are also an epistemic and metaphysical mess.

Actually think it's most people, at this point.

I feel like people are tiring of the circus and there's increasingly an opening for more moderate, non-insane people.

We have seen power get pushed back by popular movements and through moral progress. It can happen again. But the people who are just sitting back and waiting for the whole thing to fall down are being useful idiots to the totalitarians-in-waiting.

It's not about optimism or cynicism. It's just about remembering that progress is not guaranteed. It's a struggle. You have to work for it.

I think over the next few decades, Bitcoin will rise in importance. It will be a very important reserve currency, I think. But those people thinking this future is in our immediate future, are living in a bubble.