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  • Homo Stupidus 1: Brexit: an exploration of some of the stupidest ideas, events, and people in human history,

    Homo Stupidus 1: Brexit: an exploration of some of the stupidest ideas, events, and people in human history,

    When I was a kid in the 90s – AKA the good old days – when the most pressing question facing Society was does Posh Spice take it up the you-know-where, I was taught that history was an inevitable march toward progress, a straight line leading humanity inexorably forward. But now I’m older, I’ve learned the truth: history isn’t a straight line, it’s a fucking hamster wheel, And so I decided to do what any concern citizen would do upon seeing the world is intrinsically fucked:  make a podcast. This is my attempt to break the cycle of the hamster wheel  by making a History podcast that doesn’t Aim to give its audience self-satisfactory feel good Factor as celebrate the genius of our species, But rather this is designed to make you feel like shit and harangue for being a part of the Endless cycle of repeated stupidity the constitutes you in history. withmaybe we can actually stop and move forward and instead of fucking either new king ourselves or burning up the world to until it resembles something like cocoa Kellogg’s cocoa pop, 

    Welcome to Homo Stupidus, an exploration of some of the stupidest ideas, events, and people in human history, including the recent past and present. Because if you be looking for stupid ideas, events, and people, then let’s face it: today’s world is a bumper harvest, and today, we’re going to start off with some of its low-hanging fruit: Brexit.

    To start us off, a quick unscientific but telling survey. I want to know how many of you, in the past 8 years since Brexit, have ever heard anyone you know, at any place, at any time, formulate a sentence that sounded something like the following: ‘Wow, Brexit’s going really well.’ or ‘Thank God for Brexit.’ or ‘Everything’s got so much better since Brexit.’ I can guarantee that none of you have ever had that conversation or ever will, because while the whole thing was very controversial at the time and immediately afterwards, the passage of time has brought everyone in this country to know, in their heart of hearts, the blatant and obvious truth: Brexit was a bloody stupid idea. And we knew this because, in our heart of hearts, us Brits always knew the true purpose of the EU: it wasn’t a transnational body that existed to impose on us the three pillars of tyranny: regulations, taxes, and oppression. It was a transnational organization that existed to provide us with the three pillars of a bloody good life: booze, fags, and Stilton.

    The reason we all came to understand that Brexit was a stupid idea, whether we said it out loud or not, was because our emotional relationship with the European Union has much longer roots than the temporary derangement caused by Brexit farce. While all those old cunts who voted for brexit were getting riled up by the propaganda of the moment, one of their most powerful memories of the European Union was that phenomena of the 90s called the booze cruise. The booze cruise was a phenomena that went across all classes: factory workers would all chip in to hire a bus and go over to France. And I’m sure a lot of fun was hard, and good memories retained. so while all the remainer and remoaner stuff slowly died down and then became irrelevant those memories of the EU – Conscious or unconscious remained Until a state was reached in the National conscious or subconscious where we all said to ourselves, I can’t actually remember what was so bad about the eu, but I can definitely remember what was good. 

    And it was good, because it wasn’t just the booze. it was the three pillars of the eu. freedom of movement, freedom to work wherever the fuck you wanted From the Irish sea to the Black Sea, And for businesses, the freedom to import and export without taxes. Notice the role of the word freedom,and then compare it with those 3 words which make me ******* cringe to my bones when I think about them. Take Back Control. If I think about that slogan now, I just feel embarrassed because it just leads to the glaring, slap in the face question the question what exactly were we taking back control of, because the only control we got was passport control. 

    Being in the EU was like living in a block of houses with all sorts of cool different types of houses Spanish villa, Greek cave house all that s***, you can just go around your neighbor’s house without knocking on the door drink all his beer, sit by his pool f***his daughte,  selling him a kilo of homegrown come and getting back home with bad sunburn, good memories, the pocket for the cash . it’s a win-win. 

    But that’s the trouble with today’s stickstick of a world, All you need to do is connect a human to a mobile, connect the mobile to an information source and voila: you can turn a win-win into a lose-lose.In fact you can turn reality entirely on its head. The first example that springs to mind is that you can lose elections but make people believe you won them. And so this is what happened with brexit. The right amount of people got connected to the right amount of shit and suddenly our European partners became our overlords. Not only was this patently untrue, but if there were any mini Hitlers running around Europe it was us, constantly demanding our own rules With respect to immigration, budgetary controls and many other features. yet wanting to be part of the club, constantly negotiating exceptions, mounting protests And generally causing the EU problems all the time. they weren’t like our  overlords,

    they were our f****** mums and dad’s constantly dealing with our whining and bitching. And like good parents still loving us anyway.

    Being in the EU was not perfect, but it was a fuck of a lot better than being out of the eu. and we all know it. A lot of foreigners think that we are Pig shit ignorant in england, and they may be right, but one thing we do know is ourselves. we are hardcore fucking Delphi Temple know yourself, and US Brits know something. we are miserable bastards. We invented the Smiths for Fox sake  Being a part of Spain and Italy and Greece made us feel better. we were better for it and we all know that. And I would argue that that even includes the people who caused this problem in the first place: Euro skeptics.

    What’s my evidence for this? It’s obvious. Their name. They founded a whole movement that was supposed to be anti European, but because they know what all Brits know deep down that the EU is a bloody good idea, they couldn’t even call it the anti EU group or euro loathers or europhobic or nothing just euro skeptic.That means not even they hated europe, they were just a bit skeptical. 

    Brexit remains, therefore, a profoundly stupid idea, And not so much for the economic and social and political reasons, And the fact that all the money promised to the nhs, all the reduced migration, all the trade deals that were promised, never really materialized,but because the  majority of people didn’t want it .If people truly wanted to leave the European Union then you would actually be able to Find a friend or colleague or family member who will say at the dinner table how glad they are we are outside of the eu. you can’t find that, because it’s not anything you could be glad about. leaving the EU was a fucking stupid idea. Period.

  • What to do when a leader tries to erode term limits….

    What to do when a leader tries to erode term limits….

    One of the most important commands in the history of humanity was inscribed on the Temple of Delphi: Know thyself. One of the biggest mistakes of humanity was not following it.

    If humans truly knew themselves, they would have true social science—i.e., laws of human behavior which were indisputable rather than theories and debates which are interminable.

    If humans had social science, they would not allow themselves to be tricked into tyranny. The moment a leader tried to abolish term limits, for example, it would be an undisputed fact that this person was laying the groundwork for tyranny. Unfortunately, though, the reality of human social science is that any idea, event, or personality can be interpreted in any way the speaker wants.

    The critical difference between social science and physical science is that while the behavior of molecules can be predicted, the behavior of humans cannot. At some point, there will be a leader who moves to abolish term limits, and it’s not because he wants to instigate tyranny; it’s because of something else. Therefore, this disproves any scientific truth in the statement that a leader who is abolishing term limits is always laying the groundwork for tyranny.

    But this is where the naivety and vulnerability of humans come to the fore. The fact that this exception to the rule can exist does not mean the rule isn’t a rule. And I know your mind is rebelling right now and screaming that, of course, the exception means it isn’t a rule, but I’m going to need you to escape the human way of thinking for a moment.

    Instead of being a stickler for proof that the leader is definitely initiating tyranny, be a stickler for the effect of demanding proof. Because you refuse to believe in the rule ( because it’s theoretically possible he’s not abolishing term limits for nefarious reasons) you open the gateway for the rest of history for humans to be tricked into tyranny. However, if everyone simply believes in the rule, then every delegate and every citizen would presume that the tyrant was planting the seeds of tyranny and would have an opportunity to act accordingly and head off the tyranny.

    “That’s all very well,” your stickler mind replies, “but the simple fact is that it isn’t a rule that’s 100% scientifically watertight, so none of the delegates or the citizens can believe it.” But the consequences of your stickling are that the tyrant can use the gray area of uncertainty and ambiguity to hoodwink them. So quite frankly, who gives a shit? In other words, there are certain political events which you cannot afford to demand 100% proof of what’s happening before you react because the stakes might be your entire political system and, by extension, if you don’t follow the laws of intelligent species survivaal… your world. So why the fuck are you going to start stickling about whether something is 100% predictable or not? Act as if it is, and always give a 100% predictable response.

    To formulate it in clear and blunt terms: if there is a high probability of a dark outcome to a political event, then you cannot let the small probability of no dark outcome prevent you from acting.

    Basically, I concede that if you want to be a stickler, then you’re probably not going to get a watertight set of scientific, predictable rules for human social science. But I hope that after reading this you will create a 100% predictable scientific rule for how you will act when anyone starts fucking with your democracy.

  • How to tell if someone’s been brainwashed

    How to tell if someone’s been brainwashed

    The most common sign somebody’s been brainwashed is the unshakable belief that everybody ‘else’ has been brainwashed. And this isn’t as crazy as it seems. It’s logical. You see, when you brainwash someone, you basically indoctrinate them into believing something ridiculous, like you are the reincarnation of Jesus or whatever. The person brainwashing you knows that everyone is going to tell you that’s crazy, and that you will face a barrage of scientific, common-sensical, and rational evidence against that. When you brainwash someone, you basically indoctrinate them into believing something ridiculous, like you are the reincarnation of Jesus or whatever. The person brainwashing you knows that everyone is going to tell you that’s crazy, and that you will face a barrage of scientific, common-sensical, and rational evidence against that. Therefore, the brainwasher has to account for this, and the most common way to do it is to When someone brainwashes you, they basically indoctrinate you into believing something ridiculous like you are the reincarnation of Jesus or whatever, and this person knows that you will face a barrage of scientific, common-sensical, and rational evidence against that from every person you meet. What’s the solution? They convince you that the reason nobody else can see this great truth that you are the reincarnation of Jesus, is because they’ve all been brainwashed.

    You may believe that nobody could be stupid enough to fall for this trick, but millions of Americans have fallen for a variant of it. Imagine you are a politician who persistently tells your voters absolute nonsense, lies, and fantasy, then you need to explain to them why everyone on the news is saying that it’s all nonsense, lies and fantasy. What’s the solution? You tell them It’s all fake news. Another variant is used by the moonies, who tell their followers that everyone else in society is being controlled by Satan so, everything they say, every counter-argument they give against the Mooney philosophy, is basically Satan.. So, to repeat my answer to this week’s question: the most surefire way of telling if someone has been brainwashed is that they believe everyone ‘else’ has been brainwashed. This is how the victims of brainwashing defy their own better instincts the advice of friends, the knowledge of experts and the clarity of common sense, to believe a complete pile of nonsense. It’s not ‘me’ that’s being brainwashed, it’s everybody else.

  • Fake news does NOT exist:

    Fake news does NOT exist:

    What is fake news?

    Fake news does not exist. Sure, there’s news stories that are about as trustworthy as a hooker’s evaluation of your dick size, but fake news wasn’t invented to help people identify such stories. Fake news was invented to help people cheat in political arguments and debates, and it does so by making slanderous and insulting accusations which can’t be answered in the time allotted. If you work in the media, you are being accused of being a liar, a phony, a manipulator and an all round scumbag. If you’re a regular dude, then they’re basically saying you’re as dumb as a bag of dildos, because you’re just sitting there consuming propaganda all day and don’t even realize it. Either way, please get this into your head right now; fake news is not a quirky postmodern term, it’s not a word to describe false news stories, it is a slur which doubles up as a very devious but powerful debating strategy. Today, I’m going to deconstruct the strategy and show you the sheer evil genius of it and afterwards you will see why Donald Trump is far far cleverer than you think. However, like everything Trump creates, it’s a house of cards, the fake news debating strategy is a con and today I’m going to blow the shit out of that con.

    How does the fake news slur work?

    Fake news is a devious debating strategy that allows you to accuse the other of peddling false information sources and therefore false opinions. And here is where the fake news strategy executes its crouching tiger, killer blow. After making that serious accusation of peddling fake news, the person doesn’t have a chance to defend themselves against it because the nature of debates is such that you can’t stop every 3 minutes when someone accuses you of fake news and start checking sources. So do you see what the con is: you are making accusations that you know they can’t defend themselves against and thus you achieve the ultimate objective of fake news; your opponent suffers the negative consequences of the stickler effect, which I will explain presently.

    To see these consequences, lets imagine a politician and interviewer. After being accused multiple times of pedalling fake news the interviewer is suffering from multiple disadvantages. The fake news slur…

    1. Disrupts the interviewers flow.
    2. It turns the tables. Whereas traditionally the interviewer is supposed to be making the audience think about the credibility and sincerity of the politician, the accusation of fake news makes some in the audience think about the credibility and sincerity of the interviewer.
    3. It muddies the scoreboard. Some in the audience will think that because there was no comeback or proof to counter the accusation, that he’s somehow been bested.
    4. It makes the politician seem alpha. The interviewer has basically been accused of living in a fantasy world of fake news and the reporter just takes it like a complete gimp.
    5. It builds upon and reinforces an important lynchpin of the extremist political agenda: destroying people’s faith in the media.

    Are there analogs or precedents to the fake news accusation?

    The fake news debating strategy belongs to a family of arguments I call ‘stickling,’ it has a much longer name traditionally, imposing and excessive burden of proof, but if we’re trying to fix this f****** country we can’t be adopting terms like that we have to have things in one word. So I call it stickling.

    What is stickling?

    Stickling is where you demand that your opponent in an argument meet an excessively high standard of evidence – or demand proof of something that’s intrinsically or logistically impossible to prove. The stickling part comes when you fall into the trap and start to produce the evidence… because the the stickler will never be satisfied, which if you’ve ever tried to respond to the fake news accusation you will know. There’s basically no proof that the accuser will accept in order to verify your news story and they will fall back on increasingly absurd responses: for example, that the video you produce as evidence is a deep fake. That’s why fake news is such a dirty debating strategy.… they neither know nor care if your source is fake… they just want to inflict the stickler effect: which is the 5 negative consequences I outlined previously.

    Stickling often occurs in moments of mob rule. For example: imagine you’re in the locker room at work and a mob of colleagues approach you, looking angry and ready to beat the shit out of you. You ask them what’s wrong and their leader, Big Donnie, huge fucker, union rep, arms like hams, says “There’s a rumor going round that you’re a fucking paedo.” And you shit yourself; even though you’re not a paedo, the situation makes you nervous, and you start sweating. Which of course leads to: “Look at him, he’s sweating. Nervous, are you? Fucking paedo.”
    “I ain’t no fucking paedo.” you say… and Donnie says…
    “Oh yeah… prove it.”
    “Well I’m married, in I?”
    “Fred West was married…and he was a fucking paedo.” “And a murderer,” someone adds from the back.
    You hand over your mobile… “Well, look at my internet history… you won’t see any paedo stuff.”
    Everyone laughs and you’re completely humiliated. “Pull the other one… it’s got bells on… you think I don’t know what incognitois? ”
    “I don’t use it, donnie.. I swear… I ain’t no fucking paedo.”

    At that moment, security arrives and breaks up the mob, and everyone walks off with the 5 negative consequences of the stickler effect. The most important of which is the vague that you’re guilty because you couldn’t disprove the accusation. Particularly seared in the memory of everyone present was how desperate and pathetic you seemed, handing over the mobile. “He was really clutching at straws there… fucking paedo.” And this shows the power of stickling, because you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you just dismiss the charge and refuse to answer the accusation… you look evasive, and if you try to answer the accusation then you’ll look even worse because you have fallen into the trap of trying to prove the unprovable. There is no way of proving you’re not a paedophile so everything you try to offer in your defence is doomed to fail and you look increasingly more desperate and guilty, and therefore, like a fucking paedo.

    Fake news is a classic example of stickling and the stickler effect. Most people either ignore it – in which case they look bad, or try proving the veracity of the news source which as I said previously will never work and only lead to further humiliation: for example, when you produce government statistics or whatever, they’ll just mock you again: “ if you believe in that garbage then you’re even more of a muppet than I thought”. And the audience will laugh and he’s just scored another point.

    Here’s the philosophical hard truth, and just before I tell you, remember that epistemology is the study of knowledge and what we can know etc. The hard truth is this: there is no epistemologically sound means of proving a story is definitively true, because of every level of proof you go to, there’s a counterproof available to the fake news accuser, which ultimately comes down to the fact that we can’t really say anything is true. How do I know that Trump and Biden in the entire political drama playing out, is not just a virtual reality movie that I’m watching in the future. Most of us, because we’re not engaging in the lowdown trickery to win an argument, agree on a criteria for what a true news story is, but it’s fundamentally an agreement and not a definitive guarantee of truth. What the fake news accuser has done is to opt out of that agreement and play the epistemological trump card, which is in a sense we can’t say anything is real or true.

    The fact that they’ve opted out of what society normally considers as true and false, is also part of the con. They sit down for the debate without having told you this vital information, and it is vital, because it means that the argument is poisoned ab initio. it suffers from an inherent and intrinsic defect has already opted out of our conventions of logic reason and proof, and therefore no matter what you say you will never be able to convince them or win the argument. For you, it is a complete waste of time… fir them it is an opportunity to humiliate you, score points, parrot propaganda and basically have a jolly good time because they

    That’s why the only way to deal with stickling is to address the behaviour of stickling., because if like a naive fool you enter into any of the debate trying to actually have a debate, you will end up suffering the stickler effect. The moment the fake news accusation is made you must stop the debate and ask them if they are willing to stop stickling, and if they’re not, you must terminate the debate, because stickling is an inherently anti-debating debating strategy.

    But how is it possible that this one term – fake news – seemingly related to media, can allow someone to scupper all political arguments?

    Basically – all political arguments ultimately come down to events or opinions you got from some form of media, which means that at any point in the debate I can ask you what information you’re basing your opinion on and then invalidate your opinion by claiming its source information is fake. Washington post – fake news, government statistics – fake news, world’s leading expert on a particular field – fake news. Fake news is a rhetorical tool that keeps on giving because all political argument is based on information.

     

    Dominion voting system was fake news

    But if it’s essentially a bad faith debating tactic, how does it have such power to poison debates and to confound even the most intelligent debaters and interviewers?

    The problem is that false stories do exist: Fox news propagated the dominion voting system narrative, for example, AI can generate bogus content, and we all know that the mainstay of an authoritarian regime is its manipulation of the news. Therefore, the right to question sources is completely valid because fake news – in its original use – before it became a dirty debating strategy – exists.

    But of course, although the accusation of fake news is a valid accusation, it unfortunately suffers from the problem we raised earlier:it’s both impossible to deal with in the time allotted for the debate and, in broader terms, if a person wants to be a stickler you can’t actually definitively refute the accusation.

    This is the conceptual loophole which users of the fake news strategy are exploiting. Fake news is a valid accusation – especially in a country that values free speech – but it can be abused iby a bad faith debater.

    How can I tell if someone is using the fake news accusation as a genuine questioning of sources or as an exploitation of the fake news loophole to shut me down?

    What distinguishes a good faith use of the fake news accusation is that the source dispute can be cleared up quickly. If I’m talking about the recent GDP figures I read about in the financial times, you can claim that’s false, and then we check Wikipedia or the Economist or whatsoever and then we come to an agreement about the correct GDP figures. That is an example of a valid and good faith debating event where a source is disputed.

    This is in stark contrast to a cynical exploitation of the fake news loophole where, Ii swear, even if you spent a decade confirming the source, they still wouldn’t agree it was true. So, that’s what distinguishes the good and bad faith use of fake news: the willingness to agree on rapid resolution methods for source disputes.

    However, I’d say the main method you can employ to detect whether someone’s exploiting the loophole or not, is if they use the term fake news. Guys, if I can’t stress one thing enough it’s that you must not use this term, because you validate it. This is a typical liberal Muppet disaster, where feckless liberals start using the very terms which are undermining their own liberal democracy. Fake news must become bad etiquette and an immediate red flag that you’re debating with someone who isn’t actually interested in debating. Therefore I urge you to think of fake news as a fake concept. It’s a Janus word, Janus being the Roman two faced god: it looks like it’s a term of media, but it’s not: it’s a devious debating strategy that uses a despicable slur to cheat in political arguments. Therefore, the bad faith use of fake news is almost always announced by the linguistic use of ‘fake news’ in an accusatory voice.

    But what about those millions of Americans who really do believe in the concept of the fake news media? Surely, there’s is a good faith use of the strategy because they genuinely believe in fake news.

    Of course, whereas Donald Trump generally knows the truth when he’s pedaling his fake news strategy, millions of Americans actually really believe in the conspiracy of lies; so while I would agree that this is a good faith use of the fake news accusation, all that does is exonerate them in moral terms. But that’s no good to us as good faith debaters, because whether they’re using it genuinely or not, it still has the same ultimate effect on the debate. It blows everything up, shuts me down, and leads to the breakdown of dialogue. Therefore, while I agree that millions of citizens and family members may be using the fake news strategy in good faith, the overall destructive and polarising and paralysing effects of the strategy are the same.

    And now I’d like to finish with a basic question that should summarise our conversation today?

    Summary…

    What is fake news? Fake news does not exist: it’s just a way of cheating in arguments by accusing the other of peddling false information, and therefore false opinions. Because it is logistically impossible to counter the accusation at that time, the accused now suffers the 5 negative consequences of the stickler effect.

    Okay, thank you very much… please subscribe to my chanel, support me on Patreon etc. but most importantly… support your neighbour – even if he’s a fucking twat. And if you are going to try to tackle the fake news accusation, please remember to do so using the principles of hella. Humility empathy love laughter action. This country will only be fixed through love and understanding and rigorous organizing. Goodbye.

    The only way we’re going to solve this is by being hella good