All good, brother -- we're a small community, just watching each other's backs.

To be fair a lot of people who are smart and willing to be blunt are called assholes. A lot of smart people become assholes because a lot of people are dumb to them and make no effort to learn or research topics so they get frustrated from having to constantly argue with people who just regurgitate what they heard on tik too or their social circle or the TV. A lot of people don't even deeply think about things. Not research, just second or third order thinking, common sense, and logic. If you think differently than others, especially on topics that have a strong taboo and institutional consensus, you're inherently considered to be arrogant by many. Also, elitists are often very shitty because they're hyper conscious of social status so they'll often use people. Not many can handle power well even if it's just social status. They did a study (Robert Frank positional goods) and found that the wealthier someone is the more they care about social standing (which is one of the reasons why rich people like socialism). That being said I have heard he is an actual asshole who gets into screaming matches with people over options trading strategies at weddings. Like I said before, he was also terrible on covid. Lots of people fail litmus tests when it's actually time to fight for freedom.

Yeah, Taleb was a covid ultra-complier and stands by that decision as a Black Swan event. I don't think a worldwide epidemic would even naturally occur in the manner he's afraid of. Viruses tend to get less severe in their infection, but more contagious as they mutate. Not to mention even absent government intervention a lot of people will voluntarily take action to minimize risk. Taleb is also big on Christianity whereas I see the older versions of Christianity to simply be a strategic synthesis meant to convert a largely illiterate vitalist population to their foreign univeralist, but philosemitic religion. I think the reason societies moved away from skin in the game systems was because of the judaification/abrahamification of society to include over indexing on legalism versus previous systems which relied more on shared cultures, practices, and blood to unify context. The move also led them to persecute their fellow people who worshiped their old gods and give up the control of money/banking to jews who didn't have the prohibitions against usury. Giving control of your banking system to a hostile foreign ethnicity (a huge part of Judaism is converting the rest of the pagan population to noahide compliant religions like Christianity and Islam) is generally not a good idea regardless of what your views on them might be broadly. In old Norse societies they actually generally had legal processes of handling your own business without getting permission from the ruling authority and then being willing to defend your actions if questioned later. Taleb also makes the typical academic mistake of having too much veneration for aristocracy and institutions IMO.

This comment made me smile: quality-level gossip :)) I’m not on your level, lol. I had no idea Malice even has a podcast, I don’t know most of the people you named, and I had to LLM “neocon” to be sure I knew what you were talking about. I should probably explain who you’re talking to)))
When I say I’m an alien, it’s not a joke or an overstatement - I am. I already live in an “outerstates” paradigm. I’m not interested in anything even loosely related to politics. I think it’s a disruption of the mind and a waste of time. This is my first meme I ever created:
https://stasher.news/uploads/454
I run 10k every day, and that’s the only time I have to listen to “books without formulas by dead people”.

https://stasher.news/uploads/455

You mentioned “Jesus did not exist” probably to see the reaction. My (very) short&simplified version: religions (both mono- and polytheistic) were created and succeeded because they feed on the most unsoothed sore in the human soul: fear - fear of the unknown, and of death (which is a subset of the unknown set). Humans are the only animals conscious of their future mortality, and religion is a way to deal with that. I’m more than fine with people voluntarily comforting themselves by any means necessary: religious books and people, LSD, therapists etc. :)
I’m a “sameshitter” as I call it - same shit whether any god(s) exist(ed): I choose to live consciously regardless. Many people call my “just living consciously” moral relativism: which is apparently worse than believing in the wrong god(s), or believing in no gods (which is also a belief), something society supposedly cannot afford at all lol.

I like a joke one of my old math professors told, a former USSR refugee, from the time when kids had atheism classes in soviet schools:
During an atheism lesson the teacher takes the class outside and says, “There is no God. Show the middle finger at the sky to prove you neither believe nor fear him.”
All the children do it except one.
“Why didn’t you?”
“If there is no god, I’m just an idiot showing a finger at empty sky. If there is a god why make an enemy?”