Vormithrax is basically the Lobos of Cataclysm. He plays the game with challenges that'd make it impossible for other people to survive even for a few minutes.

"Only true patriots are willing to commit treason and attempt to secede. You're the one's committing treason and seceding, not us."

This is now turning into a mainstream GOP platform.

"you're the one committing sedition. We are upholding the constitution by violating it."

Given how every *single* GOP position is doublethink, I propose that all their positions be given in the form of both competing beliefs.

Reporting on a republican saying X? You have to report on him also vehemently rejecting X.

No separating these contradictions into separate articles.

"He said X. He also denied X."

"He said his opponent was doing Y. He also stated his willingness to do Y."

Make that contradictory clusterfuck of an ideology as plain as possible, every chance you get.

Do not help them give the illusion of having a coherent ideology or position.

Consider that Late Registration came out in 2005.

A 15 year old would only know Kanye as a maga hat embarrassment.

The Selfish Gene came out in 1976. Anyone under 44 only knows dawkins in his bigot form.

The milkshake duck time horizon

Dawkins, for instance, has now been a bigot for much longer than he was a respected scientist.

Kanye has been an embarrassment for much longer than he was a talented rapper.

It's like how a 120-year old has spent half their life as an elderly person.

At some point, the milkshake duck has been one so long that no one remembers the milkshake anymore.

It's just the racist duck, or the terf duck, or the virulently islamophobic duck. Or all three, and for brevity simply called the asshole duck

You know all those mysterious disappearances youtubers?

If I were a serial killer, it would be an irresistible temptation to get in on that action.

It'd be simple.

Capture a hiker. Immediately freeze their body.

Wait 5 years, 10 years.

Place their body 15km away in an inaccessible location.

Wait 5 years to make a video about it.

"search and rescue parties scoured the area for weeks, with no result. 5 years later, a troop of boy scouts discovered his body over 30 miles away, in a tree. Forensics indicate he'd only been dead less than a week."

Imagine publicly describing, with millions of views, the circumstances of one of your victims and *no one* having a clue.

5.6 million views where you describe exactly where and when that hiker disappeared, and how mysteriously they were found.

"Park rangers say the only way to get there is to climb down a 2,000 foot cliff using climbing equipment. It's not a straight fall. How did he get there?"

Here's an interesting ncbi article on rage:

One of the claims argued, is that frustration triggers rage.

Either frustration from behaviour not producing expected outcomes, or frustration from someone not doing what one asks.

And, you can experimentally trigger rage by frustrating people sufficiently.

Get someone to do something in order to get a reward. Suddenly stop rewarding them for that. Bam, frustration and then rage.

Alternatively, pair your test subjects, ask them to cooperate to accomplish a task, and have your inside guy not listen.

Bam, frustration and then rage.

The thwarting of expectations is the common theme. Thwart someone's expectations, violate their model of how things work, and you frustrate them.

Keep at it, and you enrage them.

Nonlawyer Explainer Thread: On Keeping One's Mouth Shut

It occurs to me that certain private-jet-flying seditionists who continue to yammer on Twitter about their DC excursions provide us with the opportunity to do a little hypo to explore the benefits of silence.

So let's explore what a hypothetical law enforcement interview *might* look like in this situation. I'm not - I want to make clear - drawing from experience as a lawyer here.

I AM NOT A CRIMINAL LAW ATTORNEY.

Instead, I'm mostly drawing from discussions with my father-in-law.

My father in law is a now-retired homicide cop, and we've had a lot of discussions (especially since I started law school) about criminals and interviews over the years.

So with that in mind, let's look at this hypo.

ALSO - Simplifying for Twitter character counts.

*Knock*
*Door opens*
Agent: Ms [Name]? I'm Agent Smith, and this is Agent Jones. We're with Agency. We'd like to talk to you if you've got a minute.

Ms X: Oh? Is this about that thing at the Capitol?

[Yes, it seems insane but if you're worried about something specific and the cops show up, blurting out something like that is totally a thing that can happen.]

Survivorship Bias 101

History is written by the victors. But if we exclusively focus on these successes, we allow survivorship bias to distort our understanding of the world.

But what is "survivorship bias" and how does it work?

Here's Survivorship Bias 101!

👇👇👇

1/ First, a few definitions.

Survivorship bias is the logical error of concentrating on survivors (successes) and ignoring casualties (failures).

When we do so, we miss the true "base rates" of survival (the actual probability of success) and arrive at flawed conclusions.

2/ When we completely ignore failures, we lose our ability to correctly identify the differences between successes and failures.

Put simply, exclusively focusing on successes may actually inhibit our ability to identify (and replicate) the actions that led to such success.

3/ Cicero wrote on the topic over 2,000 years ago.

An atheist named Diagoras is shown portraits of people who prayed and were saved from death at sea as proof of God's existence.

Diagoras replies, "I see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were shipwrecked?"

4/ Cicero cuts right to the point - we cannot conclude that prayer led to being saved from the sea if we ignore those who prayed and then drowned.

Survivorship bias can lead to a deeply-flawed understanding of cause-and-effect relationships.

Let's look at some examples.

I was asked to do a tweet on how to be a good Minceir Ally. So here are my thoughts ... Other Minceiri are welcome to add.
Allies can do the actions you can.

Learn about Traveller Culture, history and issues affecting us from us not others. You can do this by checking Traveller org websites, chat with us, invite us to give inputs in your place of work.

Educate others and challenge Anti Traveller racism when you see it.

Get to know Travellers locally and local issues. Support the work of local and national Traveller orgs.

Get to know Travellers locally becoming friends. Invite Traveller children to your parties/playdates. Let your children go to Traveller children parties,playdates in their home.

LEEDS LEADS CLIMATE BREAKDOWN

8 hours and 1000 flawed arguments and biased procedures later, Leeds City Plans Panel voted 9-5 for airport expansion and the false promises of economic growth.
For “what Leeds needs is a premier-league football club and a premier-league airport”
🧵

1/ There was a lot of "I do care about climate change, BUT" – followed by a lot of blah blah. Blah blah economic growth. Blah blah connectivity. Blah blah competitiveness. Blah blah Manchester. Blah blah Westminster. Blah blah offsetting. Blah blah electric planes. Blah blah blah

2/ Also a lot of "I do have sympathy for residents suffering from planes flying over their roofs at night, BUT” - followed by more blah blah.
One councillor kindly offered his advice: “the way to less noise is more planes”. Right, Sherlock. Want to try that in your backyard?🤦‍♂️

3/ The true sympathies were revealed at the end. The Panel's priority was not the well-being of those living under the flight path, nor the lives and livelihoods of threatened by climate breakdown. Their priority was a bigger, noisier airport, with a terminal in bronze-champagne.

4/ First declaring your sympathy for people’s suffering and then supporting a development that directly aggravates their suffering, is a proper kick in the face for those suffering the consequences. Like first declaring a climate emergency and then aggravating climate breakdown.

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.