I Have No Idea What I'm Doing 48: S00:E05 -

Recurring Characters

(S01:E01) The Soundboards
(S01:E08) Butt Stevens
(S01:E08) Huell Howser
(S01:E09) Big Dogs
(S01:E11) CICPS
- Council at the Institute of the Center for Politics and Society
  - Aaron is CEO, Andrew is president
  - Both have large salaries and no responsibilities
  - Slogan: “We disambiguate complexifiers for the good of humanity.”
  - Also announcing our new PAC, BackPAC. A return to normalcy for all!
(S03:E13) Ben Shapiro

Thought Technologies & Args

(S01:E05) Thought Technology: “…for who?”
- A thought technology to avoid the trap of tactical framing: append any assertions that are made like, “this will be too drastic”, or “this is too expensive”with the question: “for who?” Or, “to who?”
(S01:E07) Thought Technology: posting as unpaid labor
(S01:E11) Thought Technology: Maybe They’re just Poor
- The idea is to stop when you see a meme which is based on mocking a person (maybe for their style or weird behavior) and ask yourself: is this really about them being a bad person, or could this simply be the result of them being in a very bad spot?
(S01:E14) Thought Technology: De-contemptify
- Any time I bristle at somebody “having it easy” or being “spoiled” I stop and ask myself, “is this actually just a decent and good thing for them that I’m only upset about because I’ve internalized a rationalization of late capitalisms awfulness by telling myself it was, basically, vitamins for character that was good for me?”
(S02:E02) Thought Technology: efficiency vs. efficacy
- When you double efficiency your halve efficacy.
  - Efficiency masks other failings because it gets adopted as the supreme metric. Once you pull back the curtain, you can see that making efficiency your god usually distracts you from more mundane but crucial areas of focus.
  - EX:// Infrastructure
    - Algorithmic systems which predict the most efficient areas for road improvements cause people to stop paying attention to the maintenance of less efficient areas, which become degraded and require_more_ work than if they had simply been maintained.
(S03:E03) Thought Technology: You’ve seen it, or you’ve been shown it?
- Remember that the media, whether consciously or unconsciously, is providing you a biased narrative.
- They show you things that drive engagement and attention. Usually, this involves the most extreme examples (see nutpicking, S03:E02)
- “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.“ - George Orwell, 1984
(S03:E08) Arg: Small Business Owners
- New Arg for “what about small business owners?”
  - “What about small business workers?”
(S03:E09) Thought Technology: Disney-brain
- Disney completely short-circuits otherwise normal brains somehow
(S03:E09) Thought Technology: Just Unfollow
(S03:E10) Arg: Revolutionary Disruption
- There is much opposition to radical or revolutionary societal/national changes for fear of the likely disruptions to everyday life.
- If everyday life is already being disrupted, why not make radical changes?
- This is particularly true when the possibly painful changes we’re avoiding would likely solve the underlying thing disrupting our lives.
- With this in mind, we have even more opportunity to do big and radical changes during disruptive and chaotic times.
(S03:E11) Thought Technology: Better ≠ Good
- Just because something is “not as bad” as something else doesn’t make it acceptable.
It’s Not That Hard
Whatever They Accuse You Of Doing Is What They’re Doing

Terms

(S01:E02) Workism
- https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/
(S01:E09) Strivers
- A Striver is someone who fully buys into the Capitalist American Dream
- They’re always going somewhere, never happy with where they are, always comparing themselves to everyone else
- They have a tendency to make you feel bad, sometimes passively, because they need to know they’re better than someone
(S01:E13) Nequal
- Neither, nor, etc.
(S03:E02) Dummy Chum
- events, propaganda, memes, or messages that activate the stupidest ranks within any given group/movement/fanbase
(S03:E02) Nut-picking
- using a whacky outlier position as if it represents a whole group. (basically weak-man fallacy)
- Ex:// sharing a post of a fringe BLM activist who states that it’s racist to speak to white people and holding it up as representative of the views of the entire movement.

Concepts

(S01:E01/09) Huster’s Second Law - Always double the garlic/use all the garlic
(S01:E04) SWEAT Pledge
(S01:E11) Consumerist Mindset: A Capitalism Brain Worm
- We ought to get way more cynical about any movement based mostly on individual actions
- Ex:// green lifestyle changes, boycots, etc.
  - These all take the spotlight off the powerful interests whose systems are what, ultimately, need defeating.
  - It puts the onus on average people who are already stressed from daily concerns
  - If Capital can blame and make examples out of individuals (“why do environmentalists take planes then? Hypocrites much?!”) then they can get people tied up in fruitless debates.
  - BUT: Don’t use this as an excuse to make bad choices.
(S01:E12) Put Noodles In Your Salad
(S02:E04) Neoliberal Policy Worship
- Posit: policies are great, but without power they’re meaningless.
- All political movements which prioritize policy at the expense of, or without commensurate focus on obtaining the power necessary to enact an agenda will always fail.
- Matt Bruenig’s case for single-payer health care - The Ezra Klein Show
- One of the argument Ezra makes against pure, unadulterated M4A appears to be as follows:
  - We cannot afford to risk failed attempts at bold policy because it results in disillusioned voters
    - As if failing to try is not equally or more discouraging and disillusioning
    - Voters want representatives that fight for them
    - The incentive is a fear of losing power when it should be a fear of wasting power.
    - The policy is secondary to the movement behind it.
    - There’s just always this underlying but unspoken assumption that the status-quo is tolerable while we wait. And it’s curiously always coming from people for whom the status quo is, like, not killing them and their family.
(S02:E06) “Hard work” or “hard worker”
(S02:E09) Why Democrats Lose
- Democrats will always aim to defeat opponents on a technicality
  - They want an outside arbiter to enforce a rule that dismisses Trump instead of leveraging power to displace him.
  - This is because democrats understand that their only efficacious power is derived from populism.
  - But in order to embrace and use Populist energy they must also confront the divide between working and upper classes
  - Party leadership understand they have more in common with Brett Kavanaugh than AOC. They understand that populist power will likely displace their own, and so they are unwilling to use the only real tool in their arsenal.
(S02:E14) You’re not crazy and it’s not your fault
- It can be so empowering to say those two things, but it’s the two things those in power consistently withold
- Ep. 30: It’s Not Your Fault (w/ Michael Moore & Meagan Day)
  - Video version
- Companies and politicians have serious incentives to convince you that you’re to blame for your own situation, so that they have a free hand to plunder
(S03:E02) Just Build Train
(S03:E11) Glitchified
- It’s like a natural immune response to worldwide insanity—-it is good.
- Relation to
  - Sicko Mode
    - Combo streak for violence
  - jokerfication
    - terminal glitchification
  - Grillpilled
(S03:E11) Brain-smoothening
(S03:E13) Goodwin’s Third Law
- non confidunt in eo qui utitur quam qui in sententia ne unam quidem sententiam Latine
- never trust a person who uses more than one latin phrase in a single sentence
(S00:E01) Huellpilled