[ExI] Hallelula!

[William Flynn Wallace]

Well, did not want to take your day off, so I hope that you are doing
something for yourself and not just for me.  Obviously you have done a lot
of soul-searching the past couple of years.  No hurry!

bill w

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 4:58 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> I started to reply to this, but it turns out the reply was a lot longer
> than I expected — it’ll be a hot minute but I’ll get back to you.
>
> I’ve literally been working on it for 4 hours. But I think it’s important
> to make it as clear as possible.
>
> There goes my day off!
>
> SR Ballard
>
> On Mar 11, 2020, at 11:01 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> I’m willing to answer any kinds of questions.
>
> SR Ballard
> I am highly interested in your changes.  As I posted earlier, attitude
> change is difficult at best, and changing to something nearly opposite is
> quite rare.  So - what motivated your changes?  Were your earlier feelings
> mostly emotional?  Mostly factual and rational?  How much of it was due to
> your religious attitudes changing?  Are you comfortable now with your
> attitudes in the sense of arriving at a permanent thing?
>
> Well, that's enough.  As objectively as possible, please, and thank you in
> advance.
>
> bill w
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 10:54 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> >
>> > Quoting SR Ballard:
>> >>
>> >> If we’re talking about overall perception of the world, I actually
>> used to hold an alt-right position to the lines of “the personal and
>> professional freedom of modern women, and general modern egalitarianism
>> will cause/is causing the downfall of western civilization”.
>> >
>> > At the time did you rationalize this position or simply feel it?
>> >
>> > Stuart LaForge
>>
>>
>> This was ABSOLUTELY rationalized by myself. There’s a whole sea of videos
>> and facts to bolster my opinion.
>>
>> It’s a difficult position to be in, when one considers oneself an
>> accursed destroyer of modern civilization.
>>
>> I was also more religious at the time (and in a different way than I
>> currently am) as well as more economically insecure.
>>
>> I think for a lot of stupid opinions (such as the one I had above) I
>> think there is probably a high correlation with an insecure lifestyle and
>> general religiosity in that period of life.
>>
>> Most of these opinions people have (flat earther, antivaxx, space isn’t
>> real, young earth, no evolution) are actually victims of cults in plain
>> sight. It doesn’t really seem that way, initially, because they are
>> generally only tangentially religious, and have ill defined leadership.
>>
>> However, I think it’s impossible to look at the followings of come icons
>> and not see it. Personalities such as Sargon of Akkad. I used to be an avid
>> watcher and had spent hours and hours of my life transcribing out his
>> videos and seeking evidence for them, so I could add citations.
>>
>> There are other personalities as well, such as Jordan Peterson, who
>> initially seems somewhat harmless. But it’s “hero worship” out of control,
>> a cult of personality, if you will.
>>
>> Now the primary audience of these channels is 15-30 year old men. I would
>> say that the majority of the content I watch has that same primary
>> audience. But it also poses some issues: namely a lot of opinions about
>> women get shared, but there aren’t a lot of women to say, “hey, wait a
>> minute!” In things like gaming or discussing sports anime it’s usually
>> fine, but in the political realm, with a sub-base that’s a good portion
>> self-proclaimed “incel”, the idea that women are destroying western
>> civilization by not being baby factories, or that women should be assigned
>> to men by some sort of sex-slavery-lotto, or should be partially stripped
>> of their rights so that they are unable to leave their husbands (mainly
>> financially, but also socially)... these ideas can be swallowed easily when
>> there aren’t that many women around.
>>
>> In the “Dark Web”, much like the alt-right, there is a facade of logic,
>> objective knowledge, and science. However, it’s degenerated into an
>> anti-SJW cesspool, on a general level.
>>
>> It’s fine and well to think that this kind of thing is an isolated thing,
>> but it’s actually partially driven by AI attempts — YouTube’s algorithm was
>> changed specifically because people were getting sucked into this niche
>> without actually having ever seemed it out. After watching one mild videos,
>> they’d be presented with two which were a bit more intense, then 4 which
>> were medium, and so on until they were hardcore decrying the women’s rights
>> movement. They were literally groomed for extremism by YouTube’s AI.
>>
>> I’m not sure if members of this list can really relate to the process I’m
>> talking about, or the mindsets involved. But honestly, I think the
>> “Intellectual Dark Web” is actually a source of a really big push against
>> Transhumanist interests, in the future, just as hyper-religiosity has been
>> in the past.
>>
>> I’m willing to answer any kinds of questions.
>>
>> SR Ballard
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