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We need to stop imagining the Jan 6 fascists are purely "brainwashed," misguided, etc. Neither are they guided by white supremacy *only*.

They are largely a vanguard of principled petty bourgeois reactionaries who oppose democracy whether in its mass/working-class or liberal bourgeois form. They have allies in the most conservative and reactionary corners of the "big" bourgeoisie.

They see through a funhouse mirror the hypocrisy of liberal bourgeois democracy (no, the electoral college is not "sacred" 🙄). They also vehemently abhor the capacity of true democracy—socialism—to liberate oppressed, exploited workers upon whom their precarious fortunes depend.

To the extent liberal bourgeois democracy engages mass politics and gives even a highly attenuated and mostly suppressed voice to the working masses, that section of the petty bourgeoisie which turns to fascism regards liberal democracy as a betrayal. Only capital should speak.

The woman who died attacking the Capitol Building was a small business owner from San Diego. Yes, her head was full of conspiracist nonsense but she didn't just invent that lockdowns and worker protections might save lives but hurt her bottom line.

#SuvenLife – Niche R&D play..very high risk and very high reward…key is right allocation…

Jazz Pharma was quoting around $0.5 in 2009, today its $150 and Mcap of $8.5 Bn on Nasdaq..almost 300x in 11 years. 80% of its total sales ($2.1 Bn) come from single drug Xyrem.

Axovant Lifescience, bought Alzheimer molecule from GSK, repackaged it and done phase-3 trials. Before starting the trials, the valuation was $2 Bn, just before announcing the data, it rose to $3 Bn. One of the leading broker put the target of $12 Bn if the trials succeeded..

but it failed in phase-3 trials. Current Mcap is $120 Mn…

This is R&D for New Chemical Entity (NCE)…very high risk and very high reward…

Brain-related illnesses, also known as CNS diseases, afflict more than 2 billion people worldwide. Diseases of the brain and mind range

from Alzheimer’s, dementia, epilepsy, migraine, multiple sclerosis, neuro infections, Parkinson’s, psychosis, schizophrenia and stroke to brain injuries and various mental disorders. The global market or CNS therapeutics is projected to reach $137.7 billion by 2025.

#SuvenLife has 1 lead molecule SUVN-G3031 in phase-2 trials which is similar to Xyrem but superior features, 3 molecules completed phase-1 trials and starting phase-2 trials and 11 molecules in pre-clinical trials. All are related to CNS which is growing and uncluttered market

It's a slow, snowy afternoon. How about a 🧵 on "rationalists" & "rationalism"? I want to talk about what real rationalism might look like & what people devoted to rationalism might actually behave like--and how that differs from what you often see from self-styled rationalists.

Caveat up front: this is not about Slate Star Codex, which I haven't read regularly enough to have an opinion on, or about the recent controversy between SSC & the NYT. I'm more interested in the *idea* of rationalism (vs. the practice).

The core premise of rationalism, as I understand it, is simply that humans' cognitive machinery was not designed by evolution to find truth, but rather to advance the interests & welfare of the collective -- a Venn overlap, but not the same thing. Therefore ...

... reasoning well, both individually & as groups, requires special effort. It requires consciously trying to set aside the parochialism, biases, & other distortions that typically characterize our thinking -- resisting, to some extent, the dynamics of group membership/welfare.

That's all fine. I agree entirely that we should make special effort to reason well & to guard against the typical failures of reasoning to which we humans are prone. I believe it's the best (maybe only) way forward as a species. So far so good.