Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Nemra]

@Leo Gura, I thought rats were bad by how you would describe people. 😒

[Leo Gura]

23 minutes ago, Nemra said:

@Leo Gura, I thought rats were bad by how you would describe people. 😒

Well, think again

[Daniel Balan]

The truth is, that a rat life is as valuable as a human life! I have a barn full of wheat and corn and there are a lot of rats that destroy my corn. I put traps to catch them, and whenever I catch them and see their dead rat body it makes me wonder how meaningless my life is! The only way I could kill that rat is because my species can dominate the rat species! And that rat I just killed is as meaningless as my life is. It makes me realize that my life is not more valuable than that of a rat. And the only reason I was able to survive up until now is blind luck. I could have been killed long ago, just like the rat I killed with my trap. How lucky we are, yet we don't even realize that it takes enormous luck just to be alive. We take that for granted

Edited May 27 by Daniel Balan

[I_Am_Flow]

These rats metaphors are hitting so close to home because my second name is literally Rat (in my native non-English language). I'm not the proudest owner of this part of me, although movie Ratatouille helped me to see the bright side of ratkind.

[Alexop]

3 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

The truth is, that a rat life is as valuable as a human life! I have a barn full of wheat and corn and there are a lot of rats that destroy my corn. I put traps to catch them, and whenever I catch them and see their dead rat body it makes me wonder how meaningless my life is! The only way I could kill that rat is because my species can dominate the rat species! And that rat I just killed is as meaningless as my life is. It makes me realize that my life is not more valuable than that of a rat. And the only reason I was able to survive up until now is blind luck. I could have been killed long ago, just like the rat I killed with my trap. How lucky we are, yet we don't even realize that it takes enormous luck just to be alive. We take that for granted

humans are worse than rats. At least rats just shut up and do their pest destructive shit, but we also invent stories about how the destructive things we do are actually good

[Daniel Balan]

@Alexop That's right! 

[Nemra]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, think again

[Daniel Balan]

On 29/03/2025 at 5:17 PM, Leo Gura said:

On 28/03/2025 at 6:22 PM, Daniel Balan said:

Could a stage yellow/green centrist candidate win the presidential election in a stage blue/red country like Romania?

Almost certainly not. And even if he did, he would be hated, ineffective, and booted.

On 29/03/2025 at 5:45 PM, Leo Gura said:

@Daniel Balan But the corruption levels are quite different. Corruption is the key piece. A high corruption nation cannot sustain Green/Yellow.

 

Hi @Leo Gura I am very happy to share with you that my hero, Nicusor Dan, who I deem is at tier 2 stage Yellow, just won the Romanian presidential elections while defeating a Trump like pro Russian, euro skeptic, fascist far right candidate. Here you can read Garry Kasparov's article on how the democratic party from the US can learn from this outstanding victory over fascism. https://thenextmove.substack.com/p/the-perfect-pro-democracy-candidate . It looks like Romania is deeply red and blue in the countryside but actually quite orange in the big cities. Stage Orange people could resonate quite well with Dan's stage Yellow. Also I know that Dan is stage Yellow because of how much spiral wizardry he has done in his campaign, being able to convince many people from all stages of the spiral. Also his humbleness and the fact that I never got the sense that he wants power for his benefit but power to be able to change and to do reform for the development of our country. Also he is not populist and 0% demagogue. I never felt so convinced by a political candidate like I was now. I could be wrong and acknowledge later that he is not tier 2 and actually orange. I am very careful of how I rank people on the spiral but I can say with a lot of certainty that he is Yellow. Unfortunately he will be tremendously hated because Romania is extremely corrupt and a president like him will have a difficult task diminishing that corruption. Well, the first signs of him reducing corruption have already unfolded: The Tate brothers have announced following Dan's victory that they are leaving the country for good! Great News!

Edited Tuesday at 07:41 PM by Daniel Balan

[Leo Gura]

47 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

I am very happy to share with you that my hero, Nicusor Dan, who I deem is at tier 2 stage Yellow, just won the Romanian presidential elections

Yeah, I saw that news and thought of you.

Congrats!

[Alexop]

50 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

 

Hi @Leo Gura I am very happy to share with you that my hero, Nicusor Dan, who I deem is at tier 2 stage Yellow, just won the Romanian presidential elections while defeating a Trump like pro Russian, euro skeptic, fascist far right candidate. Here you can read Garry Kasparov's article on how the democratic party from the US can learn from this outstanding victory over fascism. https://thenextmove.substack.com/p/the-perfect-pro-democracy-candidate . It looks like Romania is deeply red and blue in the countryside but actually quite orange in the big cities. Stage Orange people could resonate quite well with Dan's stage Yellow. Also I know that Dan is stage Yellow because of how much spiral wizardry he has done in his campaign, being able to convince many people from all stages of the spiral. Also his humbleness and the fact that I never got the sense that he wants power for his benefit but power to be able to change and to do reform for the development of our country. Also he is not populist and 0% demagogue. I never felt so convinced by a political candidate like I was now. I could be wrong and acknowledge later that he is not tier 2 and actually orange. I am very careful of how I rank people on the spiral but I can say with a lot of certainty that he is Yellow. Unfortunately he will be tremendously hated because Romania is extremely corrupt and a president like him will have a difficult task diminishing that corruption. Well, the first signs of him reducing corruption have already unfolded: The Tate brothers have announced following Dan's victory that they are leaving the country for good! Great News!

Bad luck I am romanian and just saw your comment. Nicusor is not even far from  Yellow my friend, he is a neoliberal Blue/Orange kind of ok person. Yellow people are far too conscious to waste their life in such disgusting places like Romanian politics. I recommend Tudor Dunks to better understand Europe's and romanian politics. 

USR party, the pinnacle of progress in romanian politics are Orange neoliberals who named the libertarian Claudiu Nasui as finance minister. Nicusor is a great fit for Romania right now as it goes from Blue to Orange. Though neoliberal politics is not what we need right now, but spiral dynamics teaches us a lesson, you cannot jump stages. I am skeptical that the neoliberals will increase the tax to GDP ratio which is crucial right now.

 

Edited Tuesday at 08:31 PM by Alexop

[Daniel Balan]

@Alexop I get what you say, but to me personally Nicusor seems stage Yellow. The fact that he is extremely humble, lives in a rented house, has no luxury items, is very decent and honest, is never lying and when I say never I mean never, and above all I hear him all the time bringing in his speech the importance of tackling issues like corruption and economics in a systemic and well thought manner. Not to mention that he is a world renowned mathematician. Consecutive double gold medal winner at the international mathematics olympiad in 1987 and 1988. USR is a reformist party and in deed Neo Liberal. But not Nicusor, Nicusor is a centrist liberal, slightly conservative. He is socially centrist but a bit towards the centre left of the spectrum, while economically he is center right,  but not neo liberal. Many of the people around him are neo liberals, but I watched him for over a year now and I never heard a neo liberal policy from his mouth. He is by my standards the definition of classic liberalism. A Bill Clinton of Romania.

Edited Tuesday at 08:51 PM by Daniel Balan

[Daniel Balan]

20 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, I saw that news and thought of you.

Congrats!

Thank you!

[Alexop]

50 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

@Alexop I get what you say, but to me personally Nicusor seems stage Yellow. The fact that he is extremely humble, lives in a rented house, has no luxury items, is very decent and honest, is never lying and when I say never I mean never, and above all I hear him all the time bringing in his speech the importance of tackling issues like corruption and economics in a systemic and well thought manner. .

Healthy Blue. He also goes to church and is religious. Not any religion, orthodox Christianity, the most conservative, patriarchal and outdated form.

 

50 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

@Alexop I get what you say, but to me personally Nicusor seems stage Yellow. The fact that he is extremely humble, lives in a rented house, has no luxury items, is very decent and honest, is never lying and when I say never I mean never, and above all I hear him all the time bringing in his speech the importance of tackling issues like corruption and economics in a systemic and well thought manner. USR is a reformist party and in deed Neo Liberal. But not Nicusor, Nicusor is a centrist liberal, slightly conservative. He is socially centrist but a bit towards the centre left of the spectrum, while economically he is center right,  but not neo liberal. Many of the people around him are neo liberals, but I watched him for over a year now and I never heard a neo liberal policy from his mouth. He is by my standards the definition of classic liberalism. A Bill Clinton of Romania.

To be Yellow he has to be aware of the spiral. He charms you because he is a humble kind guy. He will put Ilie Bolojan as  prime minister who is a neoliberal. We have to wait and see his actions. He seems dull, which is not a good sign keeping in mind the macho environment of romanian politics. CTP gave him and equation to resolve and he asked him to send it to his email, but he posted it on TikTok instead which was very disrespectful

I could come with a more informed opinion but did not have patience to go through the debates and listen to him. Too busy with Orange/Green/Yellow politics of Sweden. Romanian politics make me sick. Just be careful who you call Yellow, Yellow is a very rare thing that people jump to attach to their favorite heroes. 

 

JP used to come with some convincing complex arguments years ago, which might convince you he has Yellow in him. Look at him now, a bunch of Gen Z kids make him look like an idiot.

Edited Tuesday at 09:36 PM by Alexop

[Daniel Balan]

@Alexop I found that video ecuation response to CTP's problem very cool, that problem was hard AF and to be honest it was a great video for the election campaign! Mathematics is his ace and it would be unwise to not use his ace up his sleeve! Regarding the spiral, I watched tons of hours of debates and interviews with him and I am 100% sure that he is aware of the entire spiral, despite the fact that he doesn't know spiral dynamics which makes it even more impressive! He is aware of the developmental levels of different portions of society, especially he often emphasised that rural Romania has been suffering of great inequality compared to its urban counterpart! And regarding religion, he is a true Christian and he embodies genuinely the Christian values, not like the average Orthodox Christians that would literally kill you if you don't agree with them. In this case him being a Christian Orthodox has nothing to do with him being tier 2 or not! For example I am stage red and I totally hate every kind of religion, especially Orthodox Christianity which I totally abhor! Being non religious doesn't translate into more development. Regarding Ilie Bolojan, yes he is a neoliberal, but given the fact that the previous government went on a massive deficit spending, the new government will need to cut some costs to reduce the deficit regardless of political ideology. Romania is riddled with corruption and public money is being stolen by the corrupt mayors and other local county leaders across the entire country. We need less corrupt and more law abiding leaders like Bolojan that could stop the broad daylight stealing of public funds from the national budget, regardless of their political ideology. But I still hold my opinion that Nicușor is tier 2. I never gave tier 2 status to any politician up until him, I could be wrong, but after watching him talk for hundreds of hours in the last year and judging by his spotless career up until now I give him tier 2 status. If he were to be orange he would have had a much different personal net worth and much of an easier life compared to the hatred he accumulated during his political career. If he were to be orange he wouldn't care about protecting old arhitectural buildings or green parks in the city or going above and beyond to stop the real estate tycoons from building illegaly and overcrowding Bucharest with apartment buildings during his mayor tenure. He would have made himself extremely rich while allowing the real estate tycoons to exploit every piece of land for constructing 20 story buildings. He brought order in the way real estate tycoons are allowed to build, no longer allowing them to build buildings without the road infrastructure and other basic infrastructure necessary for the day to day dealings of residents so that the existing roads don't accumulate enormous traffic. Here I saw that he is a systemic thinker. If Bucharest was lead like that from the very beginning today there wouldn't have been the overwhelming car traffic that it has today. 

Edited Tuesday at 10:39 PM by Daniel Balan

[Extreme Z7]

4 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

The Tate brothers have announced following Dan's victory that they are leaving the country for good! Great News!

Oh yeah Boi!

Out of curiosity, did they mention where they're heading to?

[Leo Gura]

36 minutes ago, Extreme Z7 said:

Oh yeah Boi!

Out of curiosity, did they mention where they're heading to?

Trumpistan, where else?

Edited Wednesday at 12:40 AM by Leo Gura

[Extreme Z7]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Trumpistan, where else?

Ahh nice one. But they did leave Trumpistan for Romania specifically to avoid law investigations. So that'd almost be back to square one.

They may head for Dubai or Russia, I'm thinkin'. Probably not the former because I heard they're being extradited to the UK.

 

Edited Wednesday at 12:55 AM by Extreme Z7

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Extreme Z7 said:

But they did leave Trumpistan for Romania

They were in the UK.

[Extreme Z7]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

They were in the UK.

Yeah, maybe at one point, I guess.

They went to Florida, didn't they? After getting let out of house arrest by Trump. And then Florida started investigating them.

[Leo Gura]

They were raping in the UK. Then they decided to relocate to Romania because the rape laws are loose there.

I think they would enjoy Afghanistan.

Edited Wednesday at 01:57 AM by Leo Gura