Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 18m

the closest proxy for "do these people like each other" is, if you have a good simulation of the person, just checking

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 18m

imho it was literally one of the most horrifying ones specifically because it does look like it's a good way to solve this problem optimally

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Kara N. Slade @karanslade.bsky.social · 28m

First Things, man.

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 48m

this was quite literally an episode of Black Mirror

Alexander Williams @floatinginwaves.bsky.social · 51m

The ceo of I think it was Bumble was suggesting that two AIs would meet up first and if they worked things out they would introduce their humans to each other.

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John Ganz @lioneltrolling.bsky.social · 2h

I'm loving this Pope.

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1h

let's do it
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Chinese EV tariffs created '2-front trade war' hurting Prairie canola, pork producers: Kinew | CBC News

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew is asking the prime minister to scrap Canada's 100 per cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in return for China lifting its tariffs on Canadian canola and pork.

www.cbc.ca

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brasidas @brasidas.bsky.social · 1h

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley would be better with more humanities education has to grapple with the fact that Peter Thiel was a philosophy major.

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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 1h

I am cool with the glasses as long as anyone wearing them looks like the guys from daft punk

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 1h

it's very funny to me that his delusional misreadings can include both Watchmen, one of the great 20th century novels, and One Piece, a fun comic serial for children. But it's not good that this man is genuinely mad and a major political and financial force in the United States of America.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 5h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Adanedhel🌹 @danielwaweru.bsky.social · 3h

The Thiel stuff is a real advertisement for the virtues of analytic philosophy.

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☀️ Starshine @starshine.bsky.social · 1h

the article is v funny tho like it took you a week to realize the one on the left is better than the one on the right? Really?

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1h

the Lucas critique for dating apps

Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1h

A lot of this is just the natural end result of the "optimal" app strategies for men and women combining into an extremely maladaptive process where no one gets what they want.

Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 8h

this is sociopathic behaviour and I think we need to treat it as such! just because something has become easy to do doesn't mean it has become less creepy, or more acceptable!

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Sasho Todorov @sashotodorov.bsky.social · 1h

A lot of this is just the natural end result of the "optimal" app strategies for men and women combining into an extremely maladaptive process where no one gets what they want.

Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 8h

this is sociopathic behaviour and I think we need to treat it as such! just because something has become easy to do doesn't mean it has become less creepy, or more acceptable!

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Materialist Gnostic @walmsley.bsky.social · 1h

my take on primaries remains that there should be enough of them that I don't have to hear about the ones in states I'm not from

Lakshya Jain @lakshya.splitticket.org · 1h

Graham Platner is a very high-ceiling candidate in Maine with a lot of potential. He's also extremely untested and while he looks promising for Democrats, it's pretty important to have a primary here to see if there are any red flags that bubble up.

Just let it go and log off.

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Lakshya Jain @lakshya.splitticket.org · 1h

Graham Platner is a very high-ceiling candidate in Maine with a lot of potential. He's also extremely untested and while he looks promising for Democrats, it's pretty important to have a primary here to see if there are any red flags that bubble up.

Just let it go and log off.

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Flying Mezerkis @bananapantz.bsky.social · 1h

Do we normally see Justices appear on programs to sell books?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1h

Amy Coney Barrett defends heavy use of the shadow docket: "If we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue, and in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue."

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1h

Schmitt! He's relying on Schmitt's account of the katcheon!

Samus is Here @samusishere.bsky.social · 1h

Is there a reason Thiel keeps referring to "the Antichrist" instead of "Satan?"

The "Antichrist" is extremely poorly defined in the Bible and the Church, whereas Satanic demons are shown to have genuine power in Christian mythology (eg, a pagan God defeating the Israelites)

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 1h

the crazy thing is: i LIKE veidt. veidt is possibly my favorite character in Watchmen! i love that tragically flawed shit. this is like watching someone read Macbeth, which I also love, as pessimistic because Macbeth doesn't successfully rule as king

bsky.app/profile/ambi...

Cris (without an H) @ambignostic.bsky.social · 1h

Bouncing off something Thiel hints at, I think it’s interesting that Ozymandias doesn’t seek power; he enacts his vision but he has no intention of reigning as a king. In this way, he is as much a Watchmaker god as Manhattan is

SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 1h

"peter thiel releases a bad Watchmen essay" feels like a cruel joke on every nerdy person who does serious analysis and knows who he is

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Jesse @requiemarm.bsky.social · 2h

instead of traditional political debates, the only prompt candidates should have to respond to is “please explain the themes of Watchmen and also the movie Parasite” and we can see what happens

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 1h

he then stands like this with his back to where Manhattan was, being dwarfed by his own shadow, and he is frowning

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 1h

adrian veidt is asking if he did the right thing and being told "no"

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 2h

doctor manhattan is literally an omniscient god and he is not hinting about Rorschach's manuscript. he is informing Veidt of the vast scale of the universe and that, from a god's-eye view, the things he has done are forever frozen in the moment when they happened and cannot be undone

Zach Rabiroff @zachrabiroff.com · 2h

I finally read that Peter Thiel essay about Alan Moore's WATCHMEN, and it's incredible that his actual argument is: "Moore argues that Ozymandias will fail because history defeats all world conquerers, and no victory is permanent. But maybe I, Peter Thiel, am built different?"

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Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 5h

I just don't understand the desire to use the antichrist as a metaphor in this way when you're going to detach it from any biblical analysis at all and talk about comics and manga.

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Regime Accountant, CPA ☠️🎢 @regimecpa.bsky.social · 2h

Hard to believe the people who told me “have fun being poor” would make such bad risk management decisions.

warrior cop @wyattprivilege.bsky.social · 2h

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Michael DeMoor @michaeldemoor.bsky.social · 2h

I welcome our tech bros into the fraternity of intellectuals, but only on the condition that they pay the price for membership: that they disavow worldly influence and wealth. The contemplative life is indeed the best life, but it is one of renunciation and self-abnegation.

Trust me.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 5h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

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