<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"></div><div dir="ltr">On Jan 19, 2022, at 1:58 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div style="border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal"><b>…</b>> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Darin Sunley via extropy-chat<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] Tesla autopilot<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">>…At this point you'd have a hard time finding an "independant, reliable" third party that 50% of the country would trust to certify that the sky was blue… Darin<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">It isn’t always blue! Whaddya trying to push some commie agenda on us? <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">But you are right Darin. If covid has any other positive outcomes, it certainly helped build distrust in government.</p></div></div></div></div></blockquote><br><style><!--
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--></style><div><div dir="ltr">What I see, though, is this distrust simply is partisan. Republican-leaning people distrust government — except when Republicans are in power. (And there’s also the fact that though they might say they always distrust government, they never distrust the spear tip of government power: the police and the military.) Democratic leaning people likewise distrust government — except when Democrats are in power. Much of American anti-government attitudes tend to be shallow in this respect.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">In a similar vein, I have a libertarian friend who’s big into conspiracy theories. One of his arguments is that even if I believe most conspiracy theories are wrong they’re beneficial because they make people distrust the government and the establishment. But, it seems to me and much data-based analysis back this, this is not what happens. Instead, it has little impact and people’s respective ideologies. It doesn’t churn out anarchists but usually just reinforces preconceived views about government and who should be calling the shots. So, it’s a happy fantasy that buying into QAnon or whatever crap Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson are pushing will convert people into libertarians.</div></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Regards,</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Dan</div></body></html>