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Eric Mader's avatar

Trump likely would have won without that iconic image. But yes, him standing up yelling “Fight! Fight! Fight!” certainly helped.

If any “iconic image” guaranteed Trump’s win, it was the Left’s image of America as hateful, bigoted, backward, a composite image built up over a dozen years of race-based and LGBTQwerty demagoguery.

Trump will overstep on this or that, but as he’s not psychotic, he will adjust. The Left that has been temporarily pushed back, being psychotic, will never adjust.

To take up from yesterday’s thread, we’ve been forced to choose between normal human hubris (Trump) and a deeply psychotic collective hubris (the Left’s desire to remake humanity according to ideological diktat).

Me I’m not going to spend time sniping at garden-variety hubris until I see the collective psychotic version more thoroughly routed. And we’re nowhere near that point.

As for demonic infestation of AI, well, flight safety will be a burning issue too. *Apkallu Protocol* ch. 3, hot off the presses:

https://ericmader.substack.com/p/the-apkallu-protocol-3

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Vince's avatar

Describing Trump as 'normal hubris' is exceedingly generous. This is a guy who needs constant praise like an ICU patient needs an IV. The Left being trash doesn't give Trump a pass for his pathetic and buffoonish behavior.

Here's an easy one, Eric: how should we regard Trump's recent pardoning of Michele Fiore - yet another fraudster who's gotten a get-out-of-jail-free card during these early months of Trump's second term? The rabid desire to protect crooks who love MAGA from the criminal consequences of their actions is a strange way to 'drain the swamp'. Tut, tut, 'normal hubris' - nothing to see here.

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James's avatar

After Biden's pardoning of Hunter, his entire family, and large numbers of violent felons maybe you should be more careful. He even commuted the sentences of child murderers on death row. Add to that his regime refused to prosecute those who committed crimes, if they were the right politics or ethnicity. That's the Left, that's Democrats.

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Vince's avatar

'What about, what about, what about'.... That's all you guys got.

Pivoting to corrupt Biden behavior to defend corrupt Trump behavior is not the winning retort that you MAGA types seem to think it is.

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Hiroyuki's avatar

Trump has had 0 scandals.

None

Zero

Zip

Nada

The only "scandals" were obvious fanfics invented by delusional liberals.

Now compare that the Biden crime family.

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Vince's avatar

"The Biden crime family"

Clear indicators of a deep thinker: parroting Sean Hannity catch-phrases.

Pardoning people convicted of fraud because they are super-Trumpers is not scandalous? You MAGA types have an interesting ethical code. Then again, DJT is a bastion of personal morality...

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James's avatar

Yes, what about Biden’s utter corruption and fostering of violent crime? What about his crimes? Some people are more equal than others in your woke world. Just pointing out your hypocrisy and double standard.

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Vince's avatar

James, please show me my pro-Biden comments/writings. Happy hunting!

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James's avatar

The same place where all that evidence for Russian collusion is. Maybe check Hunter’s laptop, which btw is real.

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Charlie Rosenberg's avatar

One fraudster recognizes another...

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William Tighe's avatar

I read your (?novel) chapter at the link, and it piques my curiosity and interest. I'd like to read more of it.

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Eric Mader's avatar

Glad to hear, William. You can subscribe for free. It's a Dan-Brown sort of send up. I'm just plodding along with it.

Ch. 1 here:

https://ericmader.substack.com/p/the-apkallu-protocol

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Solitudinarian's avatar

Perhaps the demon Ereshkigal is whispering to me through my knock-off Keurig, but I could have sworn that the protagonist had a different surname.

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Darrel Hoerle's avatar

Ditto!

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Russell Nieli's avatar

100 percent in agreement !!!

Russ Nieli

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Trevor Tollison's avatar

So much good material, but I was gobsmacked by those statements from Andrea Chu:

"Getting f***ed makes you a female because f***ed is what a female is."

I suppose, in the most reductionist way possible, this is how a misogynist views women (or female nature, take your pick). I truly am baffled by the later portions of his screed; as much as people say this society is falling into hedonistic decadence, I see nothing pleasurable or gratifying, even at the base animal level, in what Andrea has done to himself. He even admits it won't bring him happiness!

This really is a form of mental illness; I can think of no better phrase, though deranged or demonically influenced come close. And our esteemed host is right, the fact that society was swayed to believe this madness, even as it finally starts to get some pushback, surely is a symptom of much deeper rot in the psyche of modern society.

Truly, ol' Scratch has outdone himself in sowing chaos in modern society.

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Theodore Iacobuzio's avatar

And the thing is the establishment has nothing to say to this devilry. And it's an old story. "I still want this, all of it. I want the tears; I want the pain." These are just the old Erich Fromm "needs", which are unquestionable and absolute. "I" and "want". No questions allowed.

I'd like to throw something out to the group. Is it just me or is the mass media paying SERIOUS attention to what's going down in Rome? Not the "spectacle", not the "politics", but the substance. The tone seems to me really surprisingly respectful. Is that because somewhere in the morass there's the knowledge that the Catholic Church is the last institution of any size that can say "no" this horror (or these horrors)?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think it's going to change anything. But does anybody else feel it?

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Eric Mader's avatar

I’m glad to hear this. I don’t pay attention to the media, but if your hunch is right, it’d be a good sign.

Although perhaps the media is awaiting a new pope who can forthwith begin railing against Trump and populism, while studiously ignoring the Andrea Chu horrors.

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John Downing's avatar

Maybe they think Trump was disrespectful with the image of himself as Pope and they're just doing the opposite of Trump again. Trump disrespects the Catholics; we better respect them!

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Andy Szekely's avatar

I also sensed this. I think there is a renewed interest in the Catholic Church and Western Civilization. Look at the dramatically increased numbers of Catholics attending Ash Wednesday in France. In my own parish, numbers attending PREP have gone from 40 or so five years ago to over 150 this year. The local Catholic high school is going to have to introduce a wait list for next year's incoming freshman. Something is happening.

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Dana Ames's avatar

I don't read enough "mass media" to say for sure. Off the top of my head, I think the people showing respect fall into two general groups: 1) those who are genuinely curious and respectful (probably the minority) and 2) those who are hoping for the election of someone who can be a fitting successor to Francis in terms of everything that made him a darling to a certain kind of journalist, Catholic or not.

Dana

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Hiroyuki's avatar

Sounds like my old buddy from college.

He had a string of bad relationships with girls and got more and more bitter about relationships in general.

He was also a huge porn addict and joined discord gaming groups with trans "women". A couple years back. He full on transitioned and is 100 percent a different person.

Note he is also a huge leftist, and there is definitely a trend I see of very lefty guys getting sucked into transgenderism. Part of it is the social pressure to eschew masculinity, but another part is that leftism provides a very warped view of reality that naturally leads into delusional behavior

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Mike Aslan's avatar

It's insane that this insane person won a Pulitzer (or perhaps not, knowing what the Pulitzer has become). Reading Andrea's confessional, Veruca Salt's song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory popped into my head:

I want the world

I want the whole world

I want to lock it all up in my pocket

It's my bar of chocolate

Give it to me now

I want today

I want tomorrow

I want to wear 'em like braids in my hair

And I don't want to share 'em!

I want a party with roomfuls of laughter

Ten thousand tons of ice cream

And if I don't get the things I am after

I'm going to scream

I want the works

I want the whole works

Presents and prizes

And sweets and surprises

Of all shapes and sizes

And now

Don't care how, I want it now

Don't care how, I want it now

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Richard Parker's avatar

I hope to be Andrea's lawyer in 15 years. I am already shopping for a yacht.

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Gordon Tremeshko's avatar

I'll be his/her psychiatrist. We'll have yacht races.

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Paul Antonio's avatar

Sadly, Andrea's next professional contact will likely be with a coroner.

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Bush Hermit's avatar

So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Maybe He is.

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Renee's avatar

Regarding Andrea Chu’s belief about what it means to be female: I can’t remember who said it, but addressing how men and women navigate life differently there is this generality to bear in mind: Men are afraid women will insult them. Women are afraid men will kill them.

Not until men reach their senior years can they understand what it’s like to be so physically vulnerable to half the population every time you walk out the door of your home and into the world.

The news we have for the world is that being male or female isn’t just physical. It’s metaphysical. In the new creation we won’t be married, but we will be men and women, says our Lord. Our sex is an eternal gift from God. It grieves me that so many are deluded to the point of believing we are interchangeable.

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Thomas's avatar

I have thought about how it is to be female and say go to Walmart. Can’t reach the top shelves, have to watch your back and other such things

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Renee's avatar

And don’t forget parking lots.

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Thomas's avatar

Yes them too. Being married to a smaller women provoked these thoughts.

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Derek Leaberry's avatar

And all the empty carts sprawled across the parking lots. What a lazy country America has become.

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Brian's avatar

In the great debate about returning shopping carts, there is a bigger story. Supermarkets no longer provide a "cart boy" at minimum wage, to help ladies and elderly with their packages and return the carts. They flipped the script on us .....proud, former, "cart-boy" here. Next we will have to check out our own groceries......

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JonF311's avatar

I still see store workers offering to help elderly people with their things. Though at Publix, Winn Dixie or Whole Foods, not, as far as I recall at Walmart.

Grocery stores generally have cart bays in their parking lots so returning a cart all the way to the store is not expected.

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Thomas's avatar

I try to part next to them so I don't have to walk farm to return the cart.

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Brian's avatar

I shop at ShopRite, Stop and Shop, and occasionally at Whole Foods and there is generally someone who eventually corrals the carts. I have seen, in Florida and the Midwest, the old style cart boy.

I loved that job. I had freedom and imagined myself herding cows. The only down side was cleaning up broken jars of gefilte fish in aisle 9. I was so proud on the day that they offered me the job of stocking the cereal aisle.....it was a jail sentence.

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Laura M's avatar

At least as of a few years ago - maybe a little more than a few, they'll still load your car at the commissary.

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C. L. H. Daniels's avatar

Self check out has been a thing for quite a while where I live (Boston). I haven’t been checked out by a clerk in years apart from occasionally visits to my hometown. Both the Whole Foods and the more downscale Stop’n’Shop in my neighborhood have self check out stations. They do maintain some manned registers but the lines for them are longer and as I usually shop for one I actually find the self check outs convenient. If I was shopping for four, I suspect I would feel a bit differently.

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Joshua King's avatar

That was my first job. I still return my cart, or buggy as we call if where I'm from.

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Rachel Wilson's avatar

And try doing it with two very small children. I can reach the top shelves, but I am never sure how to load the car up with groceries on a hot day in Florida. Do I let the kids sit in the cart in the sun and heat while I load up the trunk (someone almost backed their car up into my cart once while the kids were in it so that makes me nervous too)? Do I put them in the car and turn it on so they get cool air? Will someone come and try to steal my car while it’s running? I need to keep looking over my shoulder to make sure no creeps are walking up behind me (that has happened way too many times in Walmart parking lots).

And then how do I get the cart back to the cart storage area if my kids are already in the car that has the keys in the ignition?

Haven’t figured out a great compromise. Florida summers are HOT.

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Thomas's avatar

I have 4 kids. I know the struggle on kids and grocery stores. I try to park next to the cart area.

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Sun Love Pax's avatar

My hack when my son was younger was to park right next to the cart return space or as close as I possibly could to one.

I could load him in, then I could load the groceries and my car was ‘right there’ and I wasn’t ‘away’.

I still do that now b/c it makes it easier to get loaded up and out. I have no excuse for not returning the cart now.

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Derek Leaberry's avatar

In an age that lauds the role of a gentleman, the physically weaker woman has less reason to be afraid. But the 60s began an age where the gentleman was to be sneered at. Women were equal, they didn't need doors to be opened for them. Gentlemen stopped to help a woman change a flat tire in the past but now it's up to her to jack up the car, muscle off the five nuts of the wheel, muscle off the flat tire, ease on the donut tire, muscle the nuts back on and jack the car down. Somehow, I think a world of gentlemen is preferred to a world of egalitarian insanity.

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Renee's avatar

C.S.Lewis saw this coming with female priestesses in the church:

“… the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and sensitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.

This is what common sense will call ‘mystical’. Exactly.”

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JonF311's avatar

Marriage in some form or other has existed in all human societies and as far back as we can find evidence. It is instinctual and natural to our kind, not "created" after the Resurrection by the Church (which did eventually create a sacrament to call God's grace to a marriage)

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Patrick Mullally's avatar

I agree with your conclusion. However, our supposed "elites" seem to be taking us in the complete opposite direction. While anecdotal, I recently watched the most recent episodes of Netflex's popular "The Last of Us". In one episode, a young woman tortures and then brutally kills the man who killed her father. In a subsequent episode, two young women, the lead characters, are hunting the first young woman and the plan is to kill her for revenge.

One of the two lead characters is, of course, a lesbian. The other is bi-sexual who, to paraphrase, states: "When I was very young, I told my mother that I liked boys and girls. She told me that I only like boys. I knew that was not my truth." At one point, the lesbian is called a "dyke" by an old white man. His subsequent apology included "I should not even have thought that." She does not accept the apology and simply glares at him.

This is Hollywood's messaging model to young women: it is acceptable to be aggressive, cruel, and violent if you feel you need to be. Kind and caring? That's so yesterday. Accept a heartfelt apology? Nope. My 2 cents.

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Laura M's avatar

I can't stand most female characters any more. They're grating and obnoxious and proud of how grating and obnoxious they are.

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John Downing's avatar

In addition to "Kind and caring" being "so yesterday", being attractive seems to be old-school, too. At least for white girls/characters.

Given the unappealing features of the main character, and that the show was on HBO/Max, it was inevitable that she would be a lesbian.

Didn't season 1 of this show glorify gay men and euthanasia in the same episode? HBO/Max is completely transgressive.

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Joshua King's avatar

I never played The Last of Us 2. I liked the story of the first game but it didn't need a sequel. And it sounds like the show has adapted the plot elements that were despised by many people.

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Laura M's avatar

I vote for a return of the gentleman. My husband is most definitely a gentleman, opens all doors, helps me on and off with my coat, all the nice things that make you feel like a special lady.

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John Downing's avatar

I've heard psychologists refer to the gentleman ethos as "benevolent sexism."

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Derek Leaberry's avatar

That makes me a "benevolent sexist."

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Patrick Mullally's avatar

That makes two of us.

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James's avatar

Count me in.

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Andrew's avatar

Have you heard the one about 10 psychologists at the bottom of the ocean?

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John Downing's avatar

No I haven't. Do tell! Do tell!

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Andrew's avatar

I don't recall the whole things, but it ends with “it's a good start!”

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James's avatar

How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?

Only one, but the lightbulb *really* needs to want to change!

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ComfyOldShoe's avatar

And that is very much illustrative of the problems we face. ‘Sexism.’ Psychologists have much to answer for, but few even understand why they should be questioned.

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James's avatar

Amen!

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Gordon Tremeshko's avatar

Yeah, plus there's that whole thing that comes after the being f#$%ed part, which is where a new life grows inside you, then you give birth to it and nourish and care for it for the next ~18 years. Not a small thing, I'd say! Rather quintessential part of womanhood!

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Giuseppe Scalas's avatar

AI can't tell truth from lies and its conversations are based upon reinforcing mechanisms. So, it can be easily led to reproduce any behavior which is not explicitly limited by guardrails. Is that dangerous spiritually dangerous? Yes it is!

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JonF311's avatar

I rode in a semi self driving car a couple days ago. To be clear the driver still has to do some things (stop at traffic signals, turn corners...). I found the experience unnerving. Partly because that sort of thing encourages inattention in the driver whose attention is still needed. But also because such a device can only react, it cannot predict. Foreseeing potential situations is inherent to how I drive or ride a bike. AI has less sense of future than my cats do.

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Giuseppe Scalas's avatar

Actually AI is based on continuosly updating bayesian (a priori) predictive models, so yes, it's going to be very good at predicting. Unfortunately, with cars that's not so easy because self-training in a real environment is dangerous.

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JonF311's avatar

But it isn't predictive in the true sense: there's no anticipation of a future as humans and, in more limited ways, experience. There's no consciousness which could reach out beyond the present. It's all algorithms crunching past data input super-fast. No intuition or insight.

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Giuseppe Scalas's avatar

True, metaphysically it has no subjectivity, just objectivity. It has the same status of a hammer. But from a functionality standpoint, it’s incredibly more complex, so it could easily mislead people into believing it has subjectivity

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John Downing's avatar

Plus it can't make inferences into new situations or new things--it is unable to create.

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Trevor Tollison's avatar

My biggest criticism with the AI vehicles is that the AI essentially has to be able to predict millions of unique situations, and doesn't seem to handle new variables well.

Really, the only way I could see autonomous vehicles working is if all the AI companies pooled their money and fixed America's road system, such that every road was clearly delineated, with no obstructing variables or variation to the road environment.

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John Downing's avatar

We got a new Volvo that auto-steers on cruise control. But sometimes on 2 lane highways it pulls to the right trying to exit on its own--following the wrong lane. It's rather scary. At the same time its pacing and centering in the lane does allow for less stressful driving even in moderate traffic.

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Nathan Smith's avatar

Again, the Trump = Bolsheviks framing. No positive defense of any platform. He'll fight "the establishment." As if nothing could be worse than normal pre-MAGA America.

This of the country and civilization that was the envy of the world.

To which tens or hundreds of millions of people aspired to come.

Where the churches had never been suppressed, and martyrs had never been made.

Where people and newspapers and universities and artists were free to speak their mind and tell the truth.

Where there was rule of law and protection of rights.

And a peace and prosperity that history had rarely if ever seen elsewhere.

This is what MAGA wants to destroy. The unpatriotism and nihilism of MAGA is shocking. Yes, Russians had some grievances which made support for Bolshevism understandable. But still, they really, really should have known better. So should we!

I will never rest in trying to restore the constitutional order of the American Republic, a.k.a "the establishment," to which American patriots are loyal, and which MAGA is trying to destroy. May God grant that MAGA fail, and my children will get to live in the free American republic in which I have lived most of my life, and for which I am so, so grateful.

In other words: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic (no kings!) for which it stands.

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Just a guy's avatar

You are turning into self-parody.

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Andrew's avatar

Your description of the status quo was NOT the status quo and frankly sounds like the writing of a person who either knows very little about the real world, or thinks the people he's talking to don't.

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Sun Love Pax's avatar

Things like this remind me that the Left and Right have totally different recollections of the pre-Trump era.

I remember quitting the GOP in that era b/c of its ’sit down and shut up’ mentality towards anyone who wasn’t on board with the globalization agenda. Gamergate and metoo changed my husband’s industry from the worst during that era too.

That era gave us the conditions that made Trump a realistic possibility for being a Presidential candidate. That says a lot about how awful it was for a lot of us. ‘Do you hear me (us) now?’

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Andrew's avatar

I would add that it's not just left/right but establishment Republican/Maga, Paleocons, other conservatives outsiders. There were a lot of establishment Republicans that were doing pretty well with the status quo other than a some social issues they would like addressed. Some of them even voted for Trump. Those are the ones freaking out about Tarriffs and saying all those MAGA voters are going to turn on Trump when they look at their 401ks.

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Vince's avatar

MAGA is going to stick it to those global elites by making goods more expensive for blue collars supporters. 4-D chess, baby!

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Andrew's avatar

It's not about "sticking it" to anybody.

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Tee Stoney's avatar

Little of column A, little of B.

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Andrew's avatar

Could be a bot

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Eric Mader's avatar

Yeah, this is actually funny. Hope you keep writing. Up the volume some!

Trump is DESTROYING the American order! He's SHREDDING the Constitution! Look what he's done! He's created and is funding a vast network of shady organizations to monitor and censor citizens' speech! He's using taxpayer money to do it! He has a huge army of government-funded NGOs doing his bidding! Even elections aren't safe! His Silicon Valley pals have created so-called 'Election Integrity Units' to ensure elections go his way in swing states! This last election, after he won, there was even a TIME article celebrating his election interference! Trump is DESTROYING American norms! He's trying to arrest the outgoing president Joe Biden on BS charges that even Republican lawyers admit are bogus! It's LAWFARE. Try to get promoted in any university or corporation if you dare come out supporting HARRIS or BIDEN! You CAN'T. And there are even threats to start DEBANKING political opponents! It just shows Trump's disrespect for NORMS. And the border! Look what he's done with our immigration law! There BASICALLY ISN'T ANY! And Trump openly FLOUTS the Supreme Court! When SCOTUS told him it was illegal for him to forgive student debt, he actually laughed it off! Said he he didn't care! How long can our Republic survive this ASSAULT!!!

Oh wait ...

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Tee Stoney's avatar

He'll ignore you completely then come back with another round of Wall of Text blather, then claim once again, he is the most PATRIOTIC of PATRIOTS. The most CHRISTIAN of CHRISTIANS.

Now, THROW OPEN THOSE BORDERS, while alluding that breaking immigration laws and sneaking someone in does not make you a coyote, but on par with Harriet Tubman or some crap.

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Eric Mader's avatar

I’m used to being ignored completely. Thing about these “principled” types, they don’t look at actual arguments. No realities on the ground can get in the way of their performance.

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Andrew's avatar

I would put the odds that this is a person is actually sincere as no higher than 20%. , 20% that this is an AI Chatbot, and about 60% that this is a put on.

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Ataraxis's avatar

I’ve read that President Trump has discovered Article II of the Constitution and intends to use it! We must resist!

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Vince's avatar

Easy civics question, Eric: does the Constitution give the executive branch or the legislative branch the power over tariffs?

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CrossTieWalker's avatar

You must think that Rod is one of the most self-delusional liars ever to have lived, then. That’s the main conclusion I draw from your catalogue here.

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Eric Mader's avatar

Honestly Rod invited this with his *Free Press* article, where he put his self-delusion on proud display, after a week of trying it out here in his diary.

But anyway, bring it on—I now want to read more of this Principled Constitutionalism!

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Nathan Smith's avatar

I've long been a selective admirer of Rod's writing, but I was disgusted by his recent MAGA turn, which is so inconsistent with his general decency. So I didn't subscribe.

I was very relieved when his recent shift towards criticizing Trump showed that he was waking up. Then I subscribed, in order to encourage his return to sanity and patriotism. I figured he'd get a lot of flak from the MAGA cultists and wanted to draw their fire a bit.

Hopefully I can do some good by diverting the MAGA rage to myself. God grant that my words can serve as a light at the end of the tunnel out of the MAGA wasteland.

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CrossTieWalker's avatar

“Recent MAGA turn”? I’m not sure you’ve understood what Rod has said about his position on Trump. No one who’s been paying attention would describe him (or very many of these readers here) as “MAGA” supporters. He, and they, possess far more critical sense than to submit to such a crude partisan narrative, at least from what I can see. I think the general idea has been that he has objected to Trump’s personal style or brand, but (after early agnosticism about Trump) decided to vote for him while holding his nose. And, even recently, Rod has said that he’s disappointed and troubled by several major Trump policies—tariffs, immigration due process issues, DOGE excesses, and so on. I don’t see where there are any grounds whatsoever to view Rod as having “gone MAGA”—supposedly meaning an uncritical boosterish support for Trump and all his pomps and works.

Read better.

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Nathan Smith's avatar

The scars of MAGA mind melt are still sadly evident when Rod attacks not only wokeness and Democrats but also "the establishment," and grasps desperately for some justification for preferring Trump in that he "fights," as if there were any reason to think he fights for any kind of legitimate common good as opposed to merely for his own narcissism and megalomania and desire to stay in the headlines and to be mean, nasty and cruel.

On an actual issue conservatives ought to care about, like opposition to abortion, it's the GOP establishment that has fought hard for years. Trump I was still sufficiently beholden to the traditional GOP base that he followed through on the momentum built up over a generation, as any GOP president would have done. Now he hardly pretends to be pro-life and tries to avoid even taking the pro-life side in state referenda. Only briefly in 2015 did Trump bother to pretend to be against gay marriage. To prefer this vicious opportunist liar to honest GOP establishment politicians like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, and call that "conservative," is something worse than ludicrous and pathetic. It displays a rottenness of both mind and conscience.

But hopefully a recovery is beginning.

But yes, I haven't followed all of Rod's evolutions because I wasn't a subscriber and couldn't read most of his thoughts. So thanks for the additional context. And I can "read better" now.

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CrossTieWalker's avatar

You seem to have missed the past six years.

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Paul's avatar

This is a joke, right? Too bad for you polls say a majority either think Trump has just the right amount of power or not enough. Pathetic, you pining away for the good old days of church suppression during COVID, the abortion/gay/trans agenda being pushed on the world and US, wars in Europe and Ukraine, political opponents were censored and had the machinery of government used against them, and floods of illegal criminal aliens coming in. Why don't you tell the parents of Laken Riley how great those days were?

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JonF311's avatar

The LDS experienced persecution and Joseph Smith was a martyr.

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Andrew's avatar

LDS was my first thought there as well. Probably the most glaring but not sole example of religious persecution in the USA.

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C. L. H. Daniels's avatar

There was once a branch of the KKK in… Maine. The whitest state in the union. Their raison d’etre was persecuting the French Catholics instead of black people.

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Thomas F Davis's avatar

A lot of people don't know that some Canadians were Klan members, and the Quebecois were their targets. A couple of churches were burned.

Now the church burnings are by the score, and they are by Leftists.

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Scuds Lonigan's avatar

Man, that righteousness sure feels good, don't it?

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Hiroyuki's avatar

Lets be honest, without Trump the USA would lose a war with China in a few years, and then start careening down to 5-10th place GDP in the world, if it didn't get broken up into a Chinese colony.

And outside of that, no one actually liked the US. They liked garbage entertainment coming out of the country, and the fact that they could make a mint working in the US. But most other countries all made fun of the US. Honestly, a lot of older countries look down on America as a they would a Nouveau Riche. Trump being elected simply played into other countries' stereotypes about Americans, so we are seeing their true colors now

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John Downing's avatar

When did the left start invoking patriotism and wrapping themselves in the flag or constitution? It's jarring. Sort of like when a man says he's a woman--oh, wait.

I suspect delusions beget delusions.

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joanne av-imagineering.com's avatar

"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." God's wisdom still prayed daily. Your article clearly demonstrates the cunningness of the evil one's trickery. I pray that when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we fully grasp its relevance for our children and ourselves today. Thank you!

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Jonathan Geltner's avatar

The best way to learn the art of good speech is to study, as Matthew Arnold put it, “the best that has been thought and said.”

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Dukeboy01's avatar

You have to wonder how often information leaks about who's going to win a major award like a Pulitzer. Last week there was some consternation because the White House Correspondents Asdociation picked a seemingly random black and white photo of Joe Biden doddering away from a podium as their photo of the year over Trump's "Fight, fight, fight!" photo. It makes sense as a fit of pique from an organization that is undoubtedly riddled with leftist banshees if they knew somehow that the Trump photo was going to win all the awards that normal people may have actually heard of.

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Derek Leaberry's avatar

I think the photo of the lovely Italian Prime Minister Meloni retrieving the old goat American President Biden at a photo op of the G-7 was a more poignant photo.

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Brian's avatar

I'm a "Marianne > Ginger" guy.

Meloni has a very attractive quality...."impish" isn't quite the word. Ted could probably do a good job of describing her.

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Derek Leaberry's avatar

Don't get TI going.

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Brian's avatar

That's exactly what I was aiming for. ; )

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Rod Dreher's avatar

I met her once. She speaks good English. And I gotta say, the woman exudes powerful sexual energy.

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Brian's avatar

Lucky devil. I almost fainted years ago when Roseanne Colletti (pretty, NYC, local reporter) asked me to reach the top-shelf, dog food, at my local A&P.

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Theodore Iacobuzio's avatar

Mamma mia!

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Joshua King's avatar

Her pictures alone convince me on that.

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Theodore Iacobuzio's avatar

There's a word in Italian. "Furba" is the feminine adjective. Cunning doesn't really do it. The hand signal for it is to take your index and draw down the skin under your eye.

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Alcuin's avatar

"...people do not care about the Truth, in the sense that they no longer know what is and is not true..."

"Quid est veritas?". Pilate's question echoes through the centuries. The most useful thing I learned in college was the number of people who were not interested in seeking truth but advancing pet narratives, almost invariably social-political. What use was learning if it were not a change agent? It need not be true, just useful.

The late philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote an essay "On Bullsh*t" where he contrasts truth tellers, liars and BSers, of which BSers are the most pernicious because they are indifferent to truth or lies or contradicting themselves. The liar, at least, acknowledges the truth enough to avoid it.

Not knowing what's true is unfortunate, not caring what's true is debased.

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Theodore Iacobuzio's avatar

Yes, and in the proceeding chapter, "cum ergo audisset Pilatus hunc sermonem magis timuit".

John reveals himself here as a considerable literary artist. Nothing before had been said directly about Pilate being afraid. And as they keep upping the ante into horrors undreamed of they get more and more afraid, and not of the horrors.

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Alcuin's avatar

Yes! In Matthew there's: "And as he was sitting in the place of judgment, his wife sent to him, saying: Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him."

What was Pilate's wife's dream that terrified her so?

I like to think she had a vision of millions of voices over thousands of years calling out "passus sub Pontio Pilato" ("suffered under Pontius Pilate"), each syllable hitting like hail on her skull.

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William Tighe's avatar

"The most useful thing I learned in college was the number of people who were not interested in seeking truth but advancing pet narratives, almost invariably social-political. What use was learning if it were not a change agent? It need not be true, just useful."

Bravo! It tool me longer to cotton on to this. And cf. Karl Marx's statement that "the object of Philosophy is not to understand the world, but to change it."

(Does anybody know the source of this quotation, which I've long forgotten?)

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William Tighe's avatar

Thank you. Yes, Thesis XI.

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Babar's avatar

Disturbing stuff indeed! It's clear that it's leading to no place good. Solutions? No idea. Hope that Christianity (and Islam?) are up to the task. Uncertain where other religions fit in e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, etc...

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Red's avatar

About 15 years ago an academic told me lots of people who played intense role playing games (eg World of Warcraft) would choose avatars of the opposite sex. Sort of a proto-trans thing in retrospect

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Pete P's avatar

A common thing in many games. I think there is a connection.

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C. L. H. Daniels's avatar

Ehhh that conclusion seems a little overwrought to me. Sometimes guys choose to play female avatars because then they get to stare at sexually attractive pixels while they’re playing. And sometimes the much rarer female gamer picks a male avatar so that they can play without guys making assumptions about them and/or trying to flirt with them.

There was a minor controversy last year when a game called Stellar Blade came out that featured a female protagonist who was, uh, “buxom” let’s call it. Basically a hyper-sexualized figure. That sort of thing has become very uncommon in Western video games of late due to social justice politics being very prevalent in game studios. Stellar Blade was made by a Chinese studio, and was unexpectedly successful in the market even though it was panned by the gaming media (which is also very woke).

Let’s face it, guys just like looking at attractive women, or digital representations thereof. 99% of the time choosing to play one on a screen does not imply any sort of desire to actually be a woman.

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Joshua King's avatar

Exactly. Or, as I mentioned in a comment above, sometimes a guy might play as a woman for a change of pace. Especially if the female character has a different story.

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Joshua King's avatar

I've done that on occasion in games. But not to due being trans. Many games, especially back in the day, only allowed you to pick a male character. I'll sometimes pick female as a change of pace. I don't play role playing games though.

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Michael's avatar

ChatGPT is LLM machine learning neural network model trained on existing serialization of sentences to predict the most probable answer given the existing probabilities in existing sentences of training set. There are lot more details but this is the gist of it. Neural network is mathematical model, like linear regression is mathematical model. Coeffiicents in linear regression have interpretability. Coefficients in neural networks which are bulit on top of other neural networks have no interpretability - that is what is behind Altman’s quote. It does not mean they created mysterious machine. It means that they created optimization machine where there are billions of coefficient which enable to select right subset, i.e. most probable, of sentences (religious sentences) to the sentences the guy gave as input. And in even other words, chatpgt is s mirror which throws at you whatever himanity already created and choice of what to throw at you is based on what is most probable. Hope this explained what Altman said.

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Hiroyuki's avatar

Yep. It's worth noting there's nothing even that complicated in terms of the math behind LLMs. AI in general doesn't go much beyond advanced high school and early college math (Lin Alg, Optimization), so in theory we could have had AI a hundred years ago. The only limiting factor was the technology--no one had GPUs in Gauss's time

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John Downing's avatar

Thank you for this clear explanation of the interpretability part (or lack thereof) of a neural network.

I wonder if you have any thoughts on the relationship between the lack of interpretability, which may stem from the disregard of hypothesis testing and emphasis on post hoc predictions, and the tendency of these LLMs to make stuff up.

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Drewm368's avatar

“As Brown documents, we have built an entire culture around affirming this madness, and demonizing anyone who objects.”

Where and when is this true in real life? I’m a therapist in a blue city in a red state, I have clients who struggle with gender dysphoria. Even parents who never come to accept their child’s identity are not “demonized”. We have discussions about how the parent and child can best understand and support each other while simultaneously being true to their values. There’s no “affirm or die you bigot”.

I’m not saying that this never happens to people, I went to school with people who’d definitely get on a high horse and shame people, but that’s not because of “trans ideology”, it’s because they’re bad therapists. They do the same shit to people struggling with addiction, eating disorders, etc. Some people can’t help but moralize every aspect of life. Again, I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, but it is not the systematic issue that this framing presents. If anyone would’ve been exposed to this it’d be me, and I don’t see this at all.

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CrossTieWalker's avatar

Real life is the last to hear about the revolution. We are talking here about prevailing cultural discourse, which is a forward-looking conversation, conducted with the goal of forestalling threats on the horizon. Rod cites cases that are perhaps rare examples—few examples might be found throughout the length and breadth of Peoria—but they are warnings. We are not talking about, really, widespread and systematic practices, for the most part. It’s no surprise you have not encountered much of this professionally. The purpose of this forum here is, in part, to keep it that way.

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Drewm368's avatar

I guess I just don’t see how anyone could believe that we would be at risk of actually living in this world. Falling into a Putinist, semi-authoritarian mindset where offering gender affirming care to anyone is illegal seems like the far more rational threat at the moment than worrying that the gender studies curriculum is going to start ruling the world.

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CrossTieWalker's avatar

Plenty of real-world cases have been discussed here and elsewhere. They may not be occurring in every town every week, but they have occurred with enough frequency to have sparked legislative moves, such as those in California and Colorado.

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CrossTieWalker's avatar

“Gender affirming care” is a slippery term. It sounds anodyne, but has covered everything from gentle counseling to castration.

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Drewm368's avatar

I spoke with a colleague about these concerns a few years ago, they reported that there are only around 400 cases in the US per year involving minors where any surgical intervention had occurred at all (including things like shaving an Adam’s apple, breast implants, etc). In a country as large as ours, I’m sure there are 400 17 year olds per year who’ve been struggling with this issue since they were in elementary school where this kind of treatment could be clinically justified.

Don’t mishear me, I’m 100% certain that some greedy surgeon and some weirdo therapist have a shady gender transition clinic somewhere in LA or Miami or something that has played fast and loose with this. That does not speak to a systemic cultural issue. That does speak to a perverted medical incentive structure, but that’s a problem with our form of capitalism, not “trans ideology”.

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JonF311's avatar

Does that 400 include cases of actual pathology or congenital deformity when something is called for?

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Drewm368's avatar

My understanding was actual pathology (ie someone with a gender dysphoria diagnosis who is having corrective surgery in service to their identity).

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CrossTieWalker's avatar

That 400 number is suspect. I doubt there are millions, but I’d be willing to bet there are more than 400. I’m willing to be proven wrong, but not until I can hear it from someone not economically or professionally invested in minimizing that number.

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Drewm368's avatar

I’ll try and find a source for that later today, in between sessions my guilty pleasure as commenting on random Substack and Reddit threads lol.

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JonF311's avatar

I hate these euphemisms. "Reproductive care" as code for "abortion". Pro-choice people should make their case honestly, not hide it in a gaseous cloud.

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Andrew's avatar

Particularly since "reproductive care" sounds like like it could be prenatal care or fertility treatments.

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Skip's avatar

Almost a decade ago now, good friends of ours lost their daughter to the trans nonsense. She was part of a cluster of classmates all doing this, and her high school hid the entirety of it all from the parents. This was in the waning days of the Obama term, and the school thought it was doing the right thing, encouraging these girls not to trust their parents. And the school was not above using child services threats against the parents when the big reveal happened (long after hormones had started) - they also actively encouraged the kids to believe that non-affirming parents were haters and bigots.

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Drewm368's avatar

ROGD is definitely a thing, or some kind of borderliney person who’s like “This explains everything” when really they just have a personality disorder that disturbs their sense of identity. They would do this with anything though (drug addiction, gambling, being a goth or emo kid, workaholism, perfectionism, etc). It just speaks to the child’s lack of identity, which is more often than not a parenting issue.

High school teachers meaning well and trying to be supportive and not knowing how to best do that is definitely believable. However, I don’t believe that speaks to a cultural that has made this a systemic issue for everyone at all times. The story of everyone ignoring or denying my gender dysphoria problems is still much more common in my experience than what you’re describing.

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Skip's avatar

In this case we suspect that their daughter was molested by a neighbor for a period of time, which for a pre-pubescent girl is ruinous. But the parents didn't put 2&2 together on that aspected until years later.

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Drewm368's avatar

Which could definitely distort the girls sense of identity indefinitely, leading to gender identity issues. That’s 3-5 years of medication management and intensive 1-1 weekly therapy to even begin to touch that.

Letting her socially transition could be a good way to let her reclaim her autonomy, or claim it for the first time, as without that she’ll probably just develop an eating disorder or drug addiction or something else and be dead by 40. Establishing psychological safety is the only way to get someone like that to open up and process. Letting her live in Tumbler genderbender world and achieve that psychological safety for a few years is not the worst outcome, not even close.

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Skip's avatar

It's rather disturbing that you're claiming the only possibilities for this girl were transition or dysfunction followed by death.

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Drewm368's avatar

I am not saying that.

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Pete P's avatar

I first encountered real life ROGD 10 years ago, when I met a mother whose high school daughter, along 10 of her friends, decided they were trans. The daughter had no prior desire to be a boy.

Then the mother mentioned her ex was not supportive. With a few more sentences, the entire story came out. Mom had affair and divorced dad, blaming dad for everything. Mom got pregnant right away and had twins, so daughter was very lost. Mom had alienated daughter away from dad as well. The ROGD was mostly the result of mom blowing up her family and the daughter being lost, plus some general social contagion.

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Drewm368's avatar

Exactly, and every single story I’ve ever encountered where people say “The therapist told me this, the school told me that, the doctor said this” can be traced back to a dysfunctional family dynamic leading to a traumatized child.

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JonF311's avatar

Did the daughter die? If not, she isn't "lost" and people should not think that way.

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Skip's avatar

Contact with her has been lost.

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Joshua King's avatar

I'm sorry that happened to your friends.

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Alcuin's avatar

I see the real danger of AI in its lack of transparency. Users have no idea where these large datasets come from. It has potential to be the perfect propaganda engine as non-digital information sources recede.

Anecdotal, but I can't be the only one to have noticed errors in the auto-AI summaries that sometimes appear above my search results. My favorite being the one locating an Illinois city as lying east of Chicago. So, in Lake Michigan then.

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Ralph's avatar

When you use these LLMs to solve real problems (e.g. write code) and not just play around with words, you find they occasionally make things up (nonexistent python libraries, for example). Inevitable given what they are designed to do (just predict the most probable next word given the history of the interaction between user and previous LLM output).

The biggest problem with the datasets, in the future, will be from the auto-generated data from existing LLMs being added in. The dog that returns to its vomit, basically. There isn't enough human manpower out there to create explicitly propagandistic training data. The output filters are something else, there already are blocks preventing certain kinds of speech being generated. No doubt these blocks lean progressive in openAI, google, meta offerings. With DeepSeek, good luck getting any information about Tianamen Square.

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Andrew's avatar

Well I was comforted by assurances from DeepSeek that China had an upstanding record on human rights.

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Pongo's avatar

> they occasionally make things up

I’ve run into this often when using ChatGPT, mostly as an “enhanced” search engine since Google’s algorithm is so bad these days. It has done reasonably well for me as a replacement for Google Scholar, but for other things it’s been worthless. I was looking to buy a new guitar amplifier last month and got tired of trolling through forums for user reviews, so I tried having ChatGPT pull together summaries for a few different models. A lot of the “information” it returned was wrong and it even hallucinated a whole list of fake YouTube links (I read later that this is a common problem).

> auto-generated data from existing LLMs being added in

I bet this is already happening. Google’s AI uses Reddit for training data, if I remember correctly, and Reddit is full of bot-generated text. I’ve even come across subreddits seemingly fully populated by bots, I guess meant to artificially inflate their account age/post frequency/karma in order to bypass bot filters on legitimate subreddits.

Even putting the AI-generated text issue aside, it’s no wonder we get AIs giving us confidently wrong answers if they’re being trained on text from places like *Reddit* and *Facebook*.

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Dan Jones's avatar

If the authors of the LLM code are admitting that there is no audit trail for what these AI engines are doing, it's time to stop. Not that this will occur to them nor take hold, of course. I expect they're too busy Trusting The Science.

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Laura's avatar

Yep, and constant mistakes about information that relies on dates, which aren’t sorted by relevance, as in “Is this person married to this other person,” and the AI results will say yes when in reality they got divorced three years ago. All times are the present to AI.

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