Seriously, What's Your Number?

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Talk to People

The murder of Charlie Kirk has had me in a painful sorrow the last couple of days. Yes, terrible things are happening every day that shouldn't be normal. Parts of society are becoming more nihilistic and deadly every day, and we don't agree on what's causing it or how to stop it. But Charlie's assassination should have been met with universal and unequivocal mourning and condemnation. The fact that it wasn't is, to me, indicative of a new and heartbreaking low. How are we to find an off-ramp or come to an understanding of society's ills when the very thing that would solve it (civil public debate) has been flatly rejected?  Charlie was out there doing exactly what many of us wish we had the guts to do - civily engaging face-to-face. Debating. Standing for things he believed in, with an outstretched hand.  And THAT was intolerable. He was a "platform for hate and ignorance." He "got what he advocated for." He was an "extremist."  I a...
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Remember that whole “little brother” analogy?

Remember back in 2020 when I talked about little brothers coming out swinging when they feel like big brother gets away with changing the rules at will? When they feel like there’s no adult who will set things straight? I don’t like this. I’m not cheering for it. But it’s coming. And this is the best representation I know of from the perspective of the little brother. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/making-the-argument-with-nick-freitas/id1506127536?i=1000657445015
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Gell-Mann Amnesia

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 Michael Crichton (yes, that one) made an observation almost twenty years ago. He described something he coined as the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: " Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect [...]  Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate ab...
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