I guess part of my point is that performative skepticism is often mistaken for profundity, and the performative skeptic is able to find purchase in the illusion of sophistication, with attendant psychological benefits. I’m thinking mainly of people like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson or any “sophisticated” Trumpist. The Russians aren’t trying to convince you Trump is good–that’s for rubes–they want to to know that Clinton or Biden are just puppets/in it for themselves and think they are better than you.
The real discussion is among those who have some actual knowledge of a domain, whether politics and economics or 18th century chemistry, and work hard to come up with a theory that accounts for facts. There’s a lot of language slippiage here, because many would say, e.g., Descartes or Hume are skeptics, when what they was doing was dismissing/arguing against received views not on the basis of arguments from ignorance or conspiracies but in the context of presenting fairly detailed positive arguments for an alternative conception of reality.
I’ve seen like one or two things from Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson each, but I can’t imagine anyone seeing even one thing from each of them putting them together. Joe Rogan’s whole thing is being the dumb guy who is mostly goes along with whoever he is talking to, though one of the times I’ve seen him was with him not just going along with Jordan Peterson and his apple cider theory. Jordan Peterson is an academic know-it-all who is nonetheless full of shit.
Yea I’ve won a few bets from it. I just started typing wrong at a very early age and spent a lot of time on the computer so I picked up this weird style of typing. My computer teacher in highschool tried to fix it but gave up because I scored the highest in his class with my method.
It’s also not as hard on my wrists because i’m moving my arm to strike the keys instead of rotating my wrists. I think because I type this way is why I can text so fast, because I only use my right thumb and left index finger for texting, so the pecking feels normal. I don’t need to look at the virtual keyboard at all (or a normal keyboard either).
Here is a video of it, because I was curious how it looks:
Got 107 wpm on that one. I found I do better when typing in sentences, rather than random words. If they are random words my WPM dips to about 90.
Doesn’t look that unconventional, tbh. It’s also hard to tell how many fingers you are actually using.
120 wpm is 10 keystrokes per second. I can’t even press the same key 10 times in one second (admittedly that’s probably a bit harder typing a word with different letters).
Yea the speed of my camera is too slow to catch the movement but for the left side of the keyboard, I use my left index for e, r, t, g,f, and d, and my left middle finger for all the other keys that are left of g and for q and w. I use my left pinky for shift and my right thumb for space bar, and the right index finger covers the entire right side of the keyboard somehow. I wish I could incorporate my right middle finger into it somehow or I could probably add some speed but it is waaay too late to change now. Like some words that use most of the right side of the keyboard are really slow for me to type - for instance, “joking” is almost all one finger.
To a casual observer it probably looks pretty normal except my right hand flying all over the place. The left hand is pretty normal I think other than I am not using the ring finger.
Damn that’s a hard line by Ice T. It sucks because I’ll bet if I go through his Twitter history I can find something that now requires me to cancel him by his own rule. In fact, I have a problem with this tweet.
Shapiro is wrong about a lot so it’s hard for him to put together good arguments for it. But, he’s not stupid. He talks fast and uses good English and I can see how lots and lots of people aren’t able to see through that. He’s a graduate with like latin cum laudes or whatever from UCLA and Harvard law. It’s not that surprising that he can talk people into stuff.
The clip is Rogan being emotional - it’s who he is. When he can’t come up with arguments against Shapiro and goes along and is friendly with people who are friendly to him? I mean, hardly irredeemable, right?
Yeah, I’ve seen enough that I don’t think he’s any kind of genius. He’s smart enough and talks fast enough and is extremely sure of himself. It’s persuasive to a lot of people.
But, he’s really obviously an asshole, right? That’s what is directing him. That doesn’t mean that everyone can see through him though.
I don’t hate Ice T, but I have criticisms about some of his acting choices. For starters, why did he have 3 different accents in New Jack City? Also, I’ve never heard a satisfactory explanation for this:
Shapiro may have been a better example than Rogan. Tucker would work as well. The point isn’t the individuals, it’s more the shallowness of performative skepticism.
As Brain Stelter has mentioned, Fox (and the GOP Congress) was a lot happier arguing against Obama than actually having to support things. When you just argue against things there’s a whole rhetorical arsenal that can be deployed. You find the worst exemplar of some group and then attribute their actions or statements to the broader group and do a good 15 minutes just off that. Or you find a more common exemplar and twist their meaning or take something out of context, got another easy 15 minutes off that.
Hell, one can’t even argue for or against the GOP platform and Trump plan for the 2nd term, because there is no GOP platform or Trump plan for the 2nd term. It’s triggering the libs all the way down. That’s the epistemic foundation.
