Politics and immigration

`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.

`4:49:16`

Well, the problem is the reward function is engagement. And as soon as the reward function is engagement-... engagement's gonna follow base instincts, and here we go. But I also don't wanna be so negative. To me, and I get we all have our own personalized algorithms, and sometimes it gets a little much. But I would say, on average, over the last 10 years, this is the best X has ever been. And I say that as someone who cares about a lot of technology talk, a lot of Linux talk, and a lot of that. That that's able to happen now in a way where it doesn't constantly get gatecrashed by people who wanna drag it into some political discussion-... I find to be really awesome. I find actually X to be a great place to find that. Now, it's also a place to find other things, and we all have our own algorithms, so you can't make any declarative announcements about what X is or what it isn't. Your feed is probably totally different from my feed, and it's totally different from someone else's feed, right?

`4:50:28`

Is it, is it good for your feed or is it bad for your feed that you have to have it right?

`4:50:45`

I mean, I occasionally have a little bit of that where you just go like, "Wait, what? What are we talking about? What are you... Why would you show up in this way?" This is one of the reasons why I actually really enjoy podcasts, because I have found that even in long-form writing, when I make long-form arguments, people hear it in whatever voice they have in their head for me. And that often gets pre-programmed in advance of the arguments, just like, well, this guy is a, whatever, fascist. And then they hear the words and they read the words in those names. When they see or hear the actual tone of how I'm presenting the arguments, they may not agree with those arguments. I mean, many of them, of course, obviously don't. But it's much harder to just dismiss or hate someone like that. At least that's what I've found, and that's the response that I've gotten, that people are like, "Well, I had a certain opinion and then I heard you on Lex. That actually sounded much more reasonable."