The Silent Hack YouTubers Use To Hook You - YouTube I really liked this breakdown of how these two guys changed their presentation style which resulted in their channels becoming huge. It makes me feel a bit pessimistic that the world is such that presentation matter a whole lot more than content. I also think about if presentation is a skill that everyone should learn.
The effectiveness of these presentation techniques depends on who (what type of people) you want in your audience. Millions of people are responsive to these presentation techniques but not everyone. It’s hard to know what percentage of the total population likes this stuff.
And these presentation techniques can entertain people and get people to watch topics they were already interested in, but they won’t suddenly get someone to think seriously about philosophy. They don’t just automatically work no matter what words you say, especially if you’re asking the viewer to do intellectual work to facilitate his own learning. Doing a math lecture in an entertaining style wouldn’t suddenly get tons more people to become good at math. I’m sure it’s possible to make philosophy-themed entertainment and get viewers, but that wouldn’t educate people to actually improve much.
I think the main problem is the lack of alternatives. There should be some truth-seeking systems and processes available instead of only popularity contests. There should be rational debates and Paths Forward, like I’ve written about, so ideas don’t just get ignored with no refutation and no way to get a hearing or debate for the idea. Truth-seeking systems should be a thing that exist for those who want to participate. The audience retention hacks stuff isn’t preventing that; both could exist at the same time; the main problem is the intellectuals being too irrational, not the general public’s taste in entertainment.
@lmf not sure if you saw this message. I don’t have access to DM anymore. my discord username is doubtingthomas. if you wanna chat 
I saw both of your messages. I am not interested, mainly because I don’t value your posts at all.
Ouch. That hurt. 
Jokes aside I can’t dispute much your point about my posts not having value. I was attempting to solve a problem that you mentioned in your quitting post about wanting to find like-minded friends who share similar interest. Though I’m not that great at CF to post valuable stuff I still understand it better than the average joe so having someone to chat with, sharing a thought bubble with no clearly defined objective to start with but only to get clarity could be helpful. It can also help with the feeling isolated problem.
I don’t know how to categorise this part but you complained about the depressing world view. I too try to fight against those ideas like here for example. For these reasons I was looking to start a chat. All that aside, hope things are going great for you 
@curi what are your thoughts about the 2020 election? IIRC you believed that it was stolen. Do you still believe that or have you changed your mind about it? If you believe it, can you link to some creator who best explains how it was stolen?
New rule: @doubtingthomas (DT) is only allowed to post things related to philosophy in this thread, and only allowed to write posts that he thinks contribute positively to the forum. Other topics, like politics, are not allowed and will result in being banned. Also, DT is not allowed to tag anyone using @name. The main point of leaving DT unbanned was just in case he ever had something important to say, and leaving open Paths Forward, but he hasn’t tried to post important or philosophical things since then, and instead has written bad posts on other topics, often with design features to bait attention. For example:
Recklessly attributing ideas to people with no source or quote is not OK. That breaks the forum rules. It’s especially bad to do it to me with a polarizing political idea that many people want to be outraged about. I’ve banned DT for a week for this. It’s also lazy: DT could have searched for things I’ve said on the topic and easily found some. It was also toxic because it was posted shortly after I posted, again, about not wanting to put my energy into politics.
It’s also toxic to try to reduce CF forum activity. DT implied there’s something bad about the forum (without giving any critical arguments or useful feedback) and encouraged talking elsewhere.
Sorry for not linking to source. Election fraud was discussed on discord when counting started. Here’s the link to one of the earlier messages. Given how much the topic was discussed I got a sense that you believed the election was stolen. Sorry for making that assumption. I also assumed it is something you would remember hence I did not feel the need to link it. I will be more careful next time.
I did read your post about not wanting to put energy into politics. I don’t think I had any toxic intentions when I asked you about a politics related topic. One of the reasons being I’m not that interested in US politics. I’m not a US citizen and the politics there barely makes any material difference in my life. The reason I asked you about that is I wanted to challenge/better understand your world view. I get two conflicting signals from your writings. One signal being elites are bad and the other one being elites are good. I understand there’s no contradiction here. People belonging to the same class can be different. What confuses me is the elites you support are the ones who seem to have obvious problems like Trump and people controlling oil. I’m open to having my mind changed about both of these hence I was asking which creator makes the best case for Trump right now specifically with regards to 2020 elections. The information coming from people who worked for Trump in these legal proceedings seems to indicate that everyone around him knew that he had lost the election. I also think Trump is not a moral or ethical person which makes your support for him even more surprising to me.
On the oil front - in the environmentalism podcast you argued that the environmentalism movement is anti-human. I agree. I agree with the progress is the only way forward idea. We should look to solve problems instead to trying to reduce our impact to make things better. The conflicting thing here is you are ascribing problem-solving capabilities and human ingenuity to people working in the oil industry but elites in other industries are bad/dumb/not innovating/not developing new technologies/not driven by the idea of make things better. Why is it only the oil industry where all the good/smart elites ended up coagulating? Contrast that with your view of physicist.
Why is it that only the fourth-rate people ended up coagulating in the field of physics? Are the people working in oil industry also fourth rate? (A somewhat relevant tweet)
I can get behind a lot of your messages. For example, one message could be: it’s possible to people to improve a lot and get much better at doing things thus the pace of progress can increase a lot. That’s a great message. I find it optimistic. It makes me want to improve and be one of the people who contributes to that progress. But most times I’m left with a pessimistic sense after reading you. I don’t know why that is. lmf had a similar experience:
from Quitting CF (for now) [lmf]
I think you are an important thinker. Your sense making helps put things in perspective for me. But these two conflicting signals not only confuses my but also makes me feel pessimistic.
Elliot mentions oil companies having huge flaws here. Whats more this is in the context of criticising Alex Epstein for being inadequately critical of big oil companies.
At 07:39:
…I am quite confident without even doing the research that big oil companies have huge flaws just like all other big companies in our society.
This puts inaccurate words in my mouth instead of using quotes. I don’t think the “people controlling oil” (or e.g. fossil fuel company executives) are good.
It also broke the new rule for @doubtingthomas about only posting about philosophy.
I’ve banned @doubtingthomas for 2 months.
Sam Harris motivates the idea of meditation and a different perspective on how to approach life
I think this is incorrect because my post was about optimism and pessimism which is relevant to philosophy.
I’m going to assume this is in good faith although I’m not really sure. I’ll try to be charitable and answer it.
Some of your post was about politics, not philosophy. E.g.:
That’s the wrong topic. It also makes false claims about my political beliefs and it’s accusatory about me (says I support something unethical).
Stop posting about Trump, elections, etc., and also do a better job of writing posts where engaging is optional for me.
Most of the times, when I post here, it’s to seek clarification on things you’ve said that I find confusing or odd. I don’t know how to do that without asking a question directed at you. Do you want me to avoid asking those questions and only discuss general topics instead?
After you pointed it out, I realized that I tend to engage in attention-seeking behaviour. I will be more mindful in my upcoming posts to reduce such behaviour. I know that in this post, I am again addressing you directly, so replying isn’t optional. However, I am still posting it because I think it is fair to question the rules.
Also, a related thing: I have different expectations when I post here compared to when I post on a subreddit like Sam Harris where there are hundreds of posts every day. There are ~5 active people here so I expect a more direct interaction when I post here.
The problem isn’t questions. I don’t have to answer your questions. One of the problems is putting inaccurate words in my mouth. A solution is don’t paraphrase me. If you want to talk about what I said, use a quote. Also don’t insult forum members or break forum rules.
No one here owes you attention or responses. You shouldn’t expect them. That’s an entitled attitude. You should think that there aren’t very many people here who might respond, so it’s harder to get a response than at a forum with tons of people.
Just as you can test how good a cook is by tasting their food or how good an engineer is by testing the rigidity of the bridge they built, you can test how good a person’s thinking system is by examining their conclusions. This is the analogy I was working with.
I found your worldview pessimistic which I didn’t like so I drew the conclusion that you have some biases and your thinking systems has flaws. The reason I was asking for your conclusions about Trump was that to me Trump seemed the clearest example of some conclusions that I thought you might be getting wrong. What would be the clearest way to figure out if you’re biased or not? For me, it would be to prove to myself that you are wrong about Trump. I was also open to the possibility that I am seeing things wrong way. I also think that the biases that makes your world view pessimistic and the biases which makes you get Trump wrong are related.
All of this wasn’t absolutely clear in my mind when I wrote the original post but my intentions arose from there only. According to the above context my post is more related to philosophy than politics.
To judge people, you need many things including accurate knowledge about them.
You don’t know what my worldview is and don’t know what I believe about Trump. And you didn’t use quotes.
I am not pessimistic. Your pessimism is your problem which is about you but which you’re trying to connect with me. You, not me, are unable to believe certain things are true while also avoiding pessimism.
You made things up about me and spread political misinformation. I’m trying to say this very clearly because I don’t think you understand it.
It looks like you did something very common: One way you see the world is in terms of some groups (tribes) and their conflicts. I said something that sounded similar to something one of the groups says, which is not your favorite group. Then you started claiming I have other bad traits of that group which I never said or did.
It’s basically like asking me “How could you be pro-life? That seems bad so I don’t see how to agree with you or respect you.” just because I said something positive about Ludwig von Mises, who is in the “capitalist” group, and “capitalists” are seen as part of the “Republican” group currently. The answer is that I’m not pro-life. I also don’t agree with a bunch of things advocated as “capitalism”.
It doesn’t matter. You aren’t allowed to post about political topics like Trump or elections on this forum. Only philosophy means no politics.
I’m not asking you to change this rule for me. I don’t want you to change this rule for me. I’m not interested in politics. I don’t want to discuss politics, especially US politics, as illustrated by what I said here:
There are many threads here and I would be happy to get into all of them. The one I am most interested in is how to believe certain things are true while also avoiding pessimism. However, I currently have been giving, and want to give, attention to only one of them, which is whether bringing up an example of an elite who happened to be a politician broke the rule for me about only posting about philosophy.
I’ll bring up a simpler example because I don’t think you understand.
Let’s say a philosopher believed that objective truth exists because each question has only one answer. Then I bring up a counterexample: ‘Name some tall people?’ This question has answers like Michael Jordan and Abraham Lincoln. The philosopher would then counter further and explain that the question was ambiguous and that questions can be made more precise so that they have only one answer.
The above shows that it is possible to bring up something related to politics while the objective isn’t to discuss politics, and it also doesn’t break the rule that a person is only allowed to post things related to philosophy. Do you agree?