A contrarian isn’t one who always objects - that’s a confirmist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently, from the ground up, and resists pressure to conform.

  • Naval Ravikant
  • 10 Posts
  • 41 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: January 30th, 2025

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  • I’m not on any other social media, so I can’t comment on that. I’m sure it existed on Reddit as well, but the user base there was more ideologically diverse, so extremism would usually get pushback no matter where it came from. Lemmy, on the other hand, is much more of a left-wing echo chamber, so those kinds of comments mostly just get applause, and calling them out tends to lead to being shunned instead. I don’t follow political communities, but I still encounter these kinds of comments regularly - and they’re usually upvoted by several people.


  • Thanks.

    Well, I don’t think OpenAI knows how to build AGI, so that’s false. Otherwise, Sam’s statement there is technically correct, but kind of misleading - he talks about AGI and then, in the next sentence, switches back to AI.

    Sergey’s claim that they will achieve AGI before 2030 could turn out to be true, but again, he couldn’t possibly know that. I’m sure it’s their intention, but that’s different from reality.

    Elon’s statement doesn’t even make sense. I’ve never heard anyone define AGI like that. A thirteen-year-old with an IQ of 85 is generally intelligent. Being smarter than the smartest human definitely qualifies as AGI, but that’s just a weird bar. General intelligence isn’t about how smart something is - it’s about whether it can apply its intelligence across multiple unrelated fields.




  • My comment wasn’t meant to defend OP per se or claim he was treated unfairly. He knowingly broke a community rule and accepted the risk of being banned. I don’t see injustice there, and I even said that mods are just people and can do whatever they want - it’s part of how this place works, for better or worse.

    What I was commenting on was the broader dynamic I see across Lemmy: the general negativity, hostility, and tribalism that seem to dominate the tone of this place. OP’s situation just happened to illustrate that vibe quite nicely. I wasn’t defending the specific post - just pointing out how quickly things escalate into labels, assumptions, and hostility, and how that seems to be the norm here.

    I also take no issue with exclusive communities. One for just men would equally be fair game.


  • Oh, I don’t mind an argument.

    I agree that just making a post about not wanting to see that wouldn’t be productive - nobody cares what they want or don’t want, because this place isn’t made for them. But that’s also no less productive than the angry posts themselves. Simply complaining isn’t productive, and that applies to both examples.

    However, discussing these topics and what to do about them is productive - as is engaging in a conversation about whether simply expressing anger serves any useful purpose. He acknowledged he was breaking the rules and was willing to get banned for it, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be frustrated when that also results in being banned from other communities whose rules he hadn’t actually broken. Especially when that comes with the misogynist-label which almost definitiely isn’t true.




  • No, I haven’t seen that, but I’m sure you can provide an example.

    The point of agent provocateurs - at least as I understand it - is to make a peaceful protest no longer peaceful, giving the authorities an excuse to shut it down. But even if the people committing vandalism really are provocateurs, they still can’t accomplish their goal alone. They need real protesters to go along with it. Plenty of people are willing to riot, but they don’t want to be the first. However, once someone else takes that step, they’ll happily join in.

    If the general sentiment among the protesters was that this kind of behavior won’t be tolerated, these tactics wouldn’t work. A regular police officer can’t tell a protester from an agent provocateur - so if someone starts throwing bricks and immediately gets shunned and handed over to the cops, they’ll be taken away, and the protest stays peaceful.


  • Mods and admins here are just regular people. They can ban you simply because they don’t like your username, and there’s not really anything you can do about it. It’s clearly not ideal, but I guess that’s just the nature of the Fediverse. On the other hand, you can make a new account in about two minutes and be unbanned - so there’s that.

    I do sympathize with you. While I can’t read the deleted post, you said it was written in good faith, so I believe you. Like everyone else, you see issues in your environment - but unlike most people, you actually try to understand them and find solutions. And for that, you get nothing but pain. That’s something I find deeply relatable. It’s not unique to Lemmy, but it’s definitely a real problem on social media these days. Most people who comment just want to circlejerk, break things, and throw stones. They don’t want to hear criticism or engage in difficult conversations because their minds are already made up - there’s nothing to discuss. Everyone sees what happens to those who challenge the groupthink, so they don’t. They either knowingly self-censor or have deluded themselves to the point that they automatically agree with whatever narrative is popular. It’s like those experiments where you’re shown a paper with lines of different lengths, and one is clearly longer, but after hearing four other people say it isn’t, you end up agreeing with them despite what your own eyes are telling you.

    I could go on and on about this. Thank god I get to meet and talk with regular people through my job - otherwise, I’d definitely think the fringe views I see overrepresented on social media are far more popular than they actually are. This whole social media thing is a messed-up psychological experiment being carried out on all of humanity - and no one ever consented to it. Now we’re just reaping what we sowed.



  • Fascism won’t kill you. I hope you don’t actually believe that - and if you do, I’d genuinely recommend finding someone to talk to.

    As for your question: yes and no. Yes, in the sense that you’re most likely consuming way too much news, which has undoubtedly contributed to feeling that way. But the false assumption you seem to be making is that if you stop reading the news, you’ll be completely oblivious to what’s going on around you. If you truly don’t want to know what’s happening in the world, you’d have to go live alone in the forest and never talk to anyone again. Otherwise, you’re going to hear about most things anyway - and if, by some miracle, you manage to entirely avoid hearing about something, it almost certainly wasn’t important in the first place.

    No one is obligated to consume the news at the cost of their mental health. Reading the news doesn’t fix the world. “Staying informed” doesn’t fix the world. Talking about politics online doesn’t fix the world. If someone wants to do something about it, then do something about it.