DocWatts

No more of a mystery than why there's more people who've read Harry Potter than a dense literary text like Ulysses. While I commend Leo for trying to make the topics of his videos as accessible as he can, fact of the matter is that things like metaphysics and ontology are dense, challenging subjects of discussion whose relevance to most people's day to day lives isn't immediately obvious. Considering the depth of the subject matter, I'm honestly a bit more surprised that some of his videos have gotten as many views as they have.

So it looks like we're 100 days in, and I'd be interested to hear what everyone's overall impressions are so far. For myself, my overall impression is that Biden has (so far) exceeded my expectations. In fact, I'd go so far as to say he might be the best President I've seen during my life; which might sound like a backhanded compliment since the US hasn't exactly been gifted with extraordinary leadership over the last 3 to 4 decades. But there's something to be said about someone competent successfully pushing for incremental Reforms. Seems like he's taken to heart a number of lessons that held back the Obama administration. He hasn't wasted much time trying to negotiate with Bad Faith Republicans. He's been willing to be ambitious with Policy Proposals in the midst of a National Crisis. He's been willing to use Tools like Budget Reconciliation to bypass partisan gridlock and actually get Legislation passed. Obviously this overall positive assessment is highly tentative and subject to change; but so far I gotta say the Biden administration has been knocking it out of the park so far.

Biden Proposes $1.8 Trillion Family Care Package, which includes: Child care : $225 billion Universal Pre-Kindergarten : $200 billion Paid Family Leave (up to 12 weeks) : $225 billion Free Community College : $100 billion Extension of Child Tax Credits Doubles the Capital Gains Tax from %20 to %40 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/04/24/biden-families-plan-tax/%3foutputType=amp Overall this looks to be a great bill, though of course I'm waiting to hear rebuttals by Conservatives as to why it's a bad idea to invest in the American people, or to pass Legislation that improves people's lives. I guess providing support to struggling families must not be part of those cherished 'family values' right wingers like to drone on about.

@Scholar While I don't disagree with the idea that corporations do reflect the overall development of the society, I would counter that many of our consumption habits aren't a 'choice' (in the strong sense of the word), so much as a constrained set of options for meeting our Survival needs, which are inextricably tied to one's socio-economic and material circumstances. It's also worth pointing out that organizations such as Corporations are not democracies, and while they can be influenced to some degree by public opinion, they can and do use their degree of influence to shape public perceptions. And in places like the United States, they have a proven track record of successfully corrupting public institutions and propagandizing large portions of society. Not because corporations are Evil, but because on a basic Game-Theoretical level, that's what the existing socio-economic system incentivizes. If the society is set up in a way that a person has to be something approaching a saint to live an ethical life, then that's best addressed at a societal and systemic (rather than an individual) level.

This ^^^ While people should be encouraged to adopt more healthy and sustainable diets (which include much lower levels of meat consumption), placing the burden of climate change on individuals as a matter of 'consumer choice' distracts from the systemic nature of the problem. It also shifts the burden of responsibly away from the organizations that are contributing most to the problem. The US Military being an excellent case study of this, as it's one of the largest polluters on the planet. If the US military were a country, it would be the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. And that's leaving aside the enormous disinformation campaign enacted by the private fossil fuel industry that successfully misled the public and delayed action on climate change; something that will be looked back at as a crime against humanity.

@trenton I can empathize, as someone who's naturally very introverted, I tend to find socializing somewhat draining, and not at all something that I have a natural affinity for. Rather, it's something I've had to work on over the years. Whoever said that socialization is like a Muscle was %100 on point. I think Vaush gives some good advice in his follow up video on the subject.

The fact that increasing numbers of young men are having difficulty attracting romantic partners and forming meaningful social relationships. This is affecting something like 1 in 4 men under the age of 40, and has increased markedly since it began trending upward in 2008. Obviously this leads to social problems such as widespread feelings of sadness and alienation. It also provides fuel for toxic ideologies such as Incels, and other forms of destructive and unhealthy masculinity. Vaush did an excellent video on the subject a while back. Considering the large number of people that this ultimately effects, I do find it a bit surprising that it isn't discussed more often than it is.

Here are some loose recommendations, somewhat in the vein of Fear and Loathing: Ken Kesey fits somewhat alongside the works you mention: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion being his most notable works. William S. Burroughs might also fit that bill, with books such as Junkie or Naked Lunch. The real life Jim Jones is a fascinating character that is worth reading up on if you're interested in understanding how the counter culture ethos can become corrupted and lead to a Cult.

Don't necessarily think of populism as a pejorative, but the last five to ten years has made it abundantly clear how ugly things can get when populism runs off the rails. Perhaps it's just my pragmatism speaking, but my sense is populism on its own is neutral, and whatever value judgements we attach to it are going to ultimately depend on who's wielding it and for what purposes it's being used. Is the person using it for the purposes of pushing for Universal Healthcare and a $15 minimum wage? Or are they using it to put children into cages? You don't have to dive into conspiracy land to see that many needed reforms in America are blocked by moneyed interests who use thier influence and power to work against the public good (take your pick: the Health Care Industry, the Private Prison Industry, etc). I'll agree that both right wing and left wing populism have thier shortcomings, but at least in the US there are a limited number of avenues that can realistically be used to reform aspects of our system that are badly in need of fixing.

Guilty on all counts it seems. Color me surprised, guess I'd just gotten used to police being able to get away with gross misconduct up to and including murder. Of course the decision will almost certainly appealed, but fantastic news nonetheless. Moral of the story is that recording devices (ie body cam footage) are an indispensable tool in making sure that police are held accountable for thier actions. Let's use this momentum to continue to push for efforts to increase transparency and public accountability for these institutions.

Excellent point by point rebuttal of the incoherent reasons Crenshaw gives against the Stimulus Checks, or more broadly why government supposedly doesn't have any obligation to make the lives of its citizens any better. Yes, silly us for thinking that one of the government's basic duties is to prevent its citizens from undergoing needless suffering. Much better to have the Social Darwinist system that Conservatives like Crenshaw pine for where the strong feed on the weak, and where we pay our representatives six figure salaries to do literally nothing that would make a difference in the lives of %95 of the country. While I'm beyond being surprised that people with this philosophy keep getting elected in America, I am somewhat baffled as to why Crenshaw in particular is popular in some circles. Granted the guy isn't a 70 year old mummy and can at least speak in coherent sentences, but I'm not hearing anything that would sound out of place if it came from the mouths of dinosaurs like Mitch McConnell or Ted Cruz. Or maybe it's the fact in addition to sounding like a James Bond villain when he promotes his austerity ideology, he looks the part as well because of the eye patch?

Interesting to note that lab grown synthetic meat uses less resources to develop than some forms of plant based food. What we should be shooting for is to make maintaining an ethical diet to be as easy as possible, similar to how we would also want Voting in elections to be as easy as possible. In a Late Stage Capitalist society it's unfortunately been the opposite for much of our history, but it's encouraging to see that this trend has been changing over the past few decades.

@Leo Gura @Roy These are some thoughts on the matter from some a scientist with actual experience using these types of surveillance equipment during his time serving in the military. His Youtube chanel actual deals quite extensively with topics that pertain to the possibility of extraterrestrial life. I'd highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.

@Leo Gura There are also plenty of eyewitness accounts from people that would swear on thier life that the twin towers were destroyed by controlled demolition. Human perception is highly fallable. Any idea of how many people have been wrongly sent to prison because of bad or mistaken eyewitnesses testimony? It's not hard at all to believe that hundreds of thousands of people could have mistakenly identified whatever it was they were seeing as an alien craft. There are billions of people living on this planet after all, who see and hear things all day every day. When someone else brings up some very valid points on the subject and your response is that they're just close minded, hard not to see that as hand wavey. While the importance of physics or biology may be vastly overstated in explanations of why were here and what this life is about, when considering the narrow subject of interstellar travel by other life forms, it becomes highly relevant. Kind of get the sense that you want to believe ET is up in the skies zipping about, and that your metaphysics may be biasing you (not claiming I'm immune from this second point ) *As a fun aside, for anyone who wasn't shown this in intro psych, I'd recommend giving it a quick watch.

Trying to understand the motivations and intent behind Hitler's actions (including placing those actions into a broader historical context) is quite a different thing from condoning Hitler's actions, or having sympathy for fascist ideology. For even moderately thoughtful people this should not be a difficult distinction to make.

It's also worth pointing out that how dangerous it is to be a cop in America (compared to other professions) tends to be overstated. Police officers aren't even in the top ten of workplace fatalities in America, sitting right between being a mechanic and a construction worker. And yeah I get that being a police officer is a psychologically demanding and stressful job, but so is being a teacher in a low income neighborhood. Or a Social Worker. Or an Emergency Dispatcher...

Because at their most benign they serve as a distraction, and inhibit productive discourse around important socio-political topics. Most Conspiracy Theorists tend to be willfully (and sometimes aggressively) ignorant about their own internal biases, and tend to be lacking in ego awareness. Hard to have a productive and mature conversation with someone whose view of reality is a patchwork of emotionally charged, paranoia fueled fantasies. But more often than not they serve as a smokescreen for harmful ideologies, which can lead to deadly real world consequences. The Jan. 6th storming of the Capitol, and thousands of preventable Covid deaths from people refusing to adopt basic safety measures during a pandemic, are some of the more obvious outcomes that come to mind.

To follow a line of argumentation from our wisest stateman, Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw, McDonalds is awesome because the suffering it creates is socially useful, and because poverty wages build character and force people to find innovate ways to meet their survival needs. It's also good for the American consumer because one can get a whole day's worth of calories in a single meal, which in turn drives innovation within pharmaceutical companies to come up with new and highly lucrative treatments for obesity related illnesses.

My understanding is that while getting a single dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine might be comparable to the natural immunity you mention, the long term inoculation comes from the second dose administered a month later. (I'll admit upfront that I'm less knowledgeable about how the single dose J & J vaccine works, other than the fact that it's less effective at stopping someone from catching Covid than the two dose vaccines). So you're probably right that in the short term it's unlikely that a person who caught Covid will do so a second time over the next few weeks or months. But the disease hasn't been around long enough to know if just how long that natural immunity lasts. To my knowledge virtually no one who has gotten both doses of the vaccine has ended up dying from Covid (even in the very rare cases where a vaccinated person ended up catching it, thier symptoms were much, much less serious than an unvaccinated person). Trusting your own immune response to provide a comparable level of protection seems a risky proposition, given that we know that the vaccines are both effective and safe. No reason not to defer to epidemiologists on this one, especially given the intense level of scrutiny that these vaccines have been under. And while I'm not insensitive to wanting to know what's in the vaccine, do you apply that same level of scrutiny to the literally hundreds of compounds you put in to your body on a weekly basis? I know for a fact that most people don't, because there's literally not enough time to do extensive research on every bite of food you eat, or every over the counter medication you take. Which is why we have organizations like the CDC and the FDA, who have the time and resources to advise us and make sure things that make it to the public meet certain safety requirements.

@vladorion The CDC is recommending that people that have caught Covid and recovered should still get the Vaccine (after waiting around 90 days or so). While recovering from Covid does offer some short term resistance to the virus, the vaccines were developed to train your immune system to mount a long term defense. Covid isn't like the chickenpox where it's a one and done deal, it's entirely possible to catch Covid a second time.

Just got my first vaccine today. No noticeable side effects so far. Actually the most notable aspect of the whole experience was how incredibly well organized and hassle free getting the vaccine was. I think I may have been in and out of there in less time than it's taken me to get a prescription filled at a pharmacy. Almost as if it's easy to demonstrate that medical care can be delivered safely and efficiently through publicly funded mechanisms...

Good list. And an additional point worth considering : The Anti-Semitic Conspiracy beliefs that formed the basis of Nazi ideology wasn't something that was new ot novel at time, but rather the logical endpoint of attitudes that were already prevalent in the United States and Europe. The anti-Semitism of Henry Ford in particular was something of an ideological inspiration for Hitler.

@Hardkill The problem isn't that The Republicans are a Conservative political party; it's that the entire Party is composed of Bad Faith plutocrats with no interest in Governing, and no solutions to offer for any of the numerous issues that the country is facing. I may not like Conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin, but at the same I don't think he's in it just to enrich himself at the expense of the country. It's not hard to imagine a hypothetical healthy Conservative Party within the framework of a pluralistic Democracy, but it's sure as shit not the modern Republican party. There was an interesting article I came across from the Atlantic a while back that made a pretty convincing case the Republican Party is undergoing the same kind of rot that the Soviet Communist Party underwent in the 1970s and 1980s before the USSR's collapse. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/618132/

@Roy Just because Dan Crenshaw served in the military doesn't make him a saint (or even a good person); fact is that he was happy to support Trump while he lied about the election being stolen, and to my knowledge didn't publicly criticize or break ties with Trump for facilitating the Jan. 6th Insurrection attempt. People who adopt a toxic life purpose probably do think that they're doing the right thing; but that doesn't mean they should be owed an elevated level of respect. If he was actually the Patriot he claims to be he wouldn't be enthusiastically supporting Republican efforts to undermine Democracy at every available opportunity. The district he comes from is one of the gerrymandered in the entire country (look up a map sometime, it's pretty staggering). The fact that he was wounded while serving in the military doesn't give him a free pass for a political career built around actively making the country a worse place to live, nor for his support of Republican Voter Suppression efforts. Not shitting on the military, as no doubt a great many Service Members join for idealistic and selfless reasons, but at the same time you can be wounded from military service while also being a toxic asshole.

I like Vaush, but dumpster fire debates with Right Wingers for an audience that completely agrees with him is by far the least interesting content on his channel. I think Vaush is at his most engaging when he's pushing back against the online Left when they're being unreasonable, or offering a more nuanced take on a handful of socio-political topics (particularly when other online Leftists have been somewhat dismissive of said topics: his recent discussion about young men having difficulty forming social bonds and attracting sexual partners comes to mind).