Politics and immigration

`4:40:38`

One of the great illustrations of that for me was when I watched a clip from William F. Buckley's show. I think it was called Firing Line or-

`4:40:46`

... something like that. And he had a member of the Black Panthers-... on his panel. It was quite obvious that those two gentlemen did not share a lot of politics. They were able to carry a conversation for, I think I watched it, 25 minutes. And Buckley's just asking, like, "So what do you think about this? What do you think about this?" And like, the Black Panther would reply as you would expect the Black Panther to reply in the '70s. Like, there was not a lot of sort of conciliatory tones. And I just thought, like, wow, that is so rare. If you had seen that show today, it would've been a shouting match. It would've been just accusations being hurled back and forth. The fact that Buckley was able to just have these conversations with people he vehemently disagreed with and still explore all the intellectual facets of their standpoints and letting them speak to those facets, talks of a lost era that I'd very much like to get back to. I mean, I always actually loved talking politics with friends that I trusted could talk about these topics in a way where it didn't have to be existential.

`4:44:33`

Yes. And I've tried to be more conscious of that, too. And then when I do choose to speak about it, it's usually because I have deliberated, and I think-... "You know what? This is worth it." Now, I say that, and then I also catch myself thinking the opposite all the time, that I follow some person or another for whatever their technical work, and then I-... learned or political standpoint. And I often do think, "I wish I didn't know that." So, it's hypocritical-... then to think that of other people and then go like, "Well, occasionally I will-... chime in on a debate that's controversial," and then you have to accept that there is a price to that. And I do think you should, and more people should, be somewhat conscious about that. And again, we're both contradicting ourselves here, but saying like, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could talk about politics in a more free and open forum and just intellectually turn ideas around?" Yes, it would. Is that currently possible in the climate of social media and so forth? It's quite difficult. Now, some of it could simply also be a moment, and we could get past that moment.

`4:45:49`

Maybe there is a way to get back to Buckley's conversation with the Black Panthers, even on social media, in a way where those discussions don't lead to the sort of just vicious mob cancellation nonsense drives that we've had, right? I actually think we're closer there now than we were five years ago. Like, the tribalism and the sanctions those tribes were able to exact on heretics in 2020 was way greater than it was in 2025. Certainly within tech. Now, I know if you're in academia, I mean, try going into the sociology department at I don't know, Harvard and mention some right-wing ideas. I don't think it's gonna go over very well, and I don't think you're gonna recover from it quickly. But in tech and in many other business domains at least, it is now possible to have an opinion that does not square with what the consensus was in 2020. That's for sure.

`4:46:56`

In the sense that every single round of drama shrinks. So it's like we've, we had this peak infection of mega drama around the same time every other community had a peak infection of drama around 2020. And then you just see, like, every time there's a new flare up, it's less. And the kind of people who are ideologically wedded to sort of that struggle just shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. And at this point, one of the best things that happened for X, in my opinion, was that Bluesky and Mastodon came around. Because it kind of was like this honeypot for just the most vicious individuals on X and Twitter at the time, right? Who just congregated here in an ever- shrinking echo chamber that just went through purity cycle after purity cycle and shrank every single time to the point that there were just not a lot left. And the people who are left now there, they're just out of sight, out of mind. And that's not to say that X is some sort of perfect place, or there aren't firing squads occasionally there, or there aren't... But there's less of it. Like, every single time I've been pulled into a Mastodon, or not been pulled in, just spectated from afar, thread, a Bluesky or whatever, it was like, "Oh, shit yeah, this is what Twitter used to be like. Jesus." And now you can actually be on X, as I am, and, like, 90% of my engagement is about cool Linux stuff, cool technology stuff. "Look, I discovered a new computer.

Can you see how fast it is?" And I can have those conversations with other people who are just also excited about computers. And then there's, like, 10% of it left that's like, all right, I'll chime in on something that's a little controversial, and we can have a little discussion there. And then we can just go back to being excited about computers. The algorithm is actually very good at finding stuff that you will find interesting, or s- I shouldn't say that, engaging. Sometimes it's enraging, but it is engaging, and therefore, revealed preference is that most people want a For You page. They don't want just a following feed.