Author has decent points, but then again falls into “europoor” trap. He keeps saying how things are bad in Europe because X, Y, Z, but China also does X, Y, Z and for some reason he doesn’t comment on that. And as usual, no comments on quality of life for an average citizen.

Some people really need to go out, sit at random bars, and talk to people. They would get a better pulse check on society than 24/7 Twitter shitposting.

You can also spend 8 hours furiously typing at Google to confirm your biases and vomit out a bunch of theories.

geohot is a deeply unserious person.

(See also: his attempt at self-driving, and his "internship" at x/twitter under Elon)

His "attempt" at self-driving is better than most of the industry, at a fraction of the cost.

The man does and tries things. Man in the arena.

>His "attempt" at self-driving is better than most of the industry, at a fraction of the cost.

Because it was an unserious hack, like him.

https://venturebeat.com/ai/comma-ai-cancels-self-driving-car...

Americans need to understand that everything their Founding Fathers wrote is just footnotes on the ideas that came out of the political tumult of seventeenth-century Britain. Free speech was first proposed by John Milton during Cromwell's disastrous attempt at creating a republic, and was swiftly rejected as a bad idea. The Founding Fathers were obsessed with 'Tyranny', because that's what Charles I was executed for when the Protectorate was established. Tyranny isn't the omnipresent problem that the puritan pamphleteers portrayed them as; it's just the cause of the specific debate in which they engaged.

There are no principles in British politics, there is only pragmatism. Every policy must solve a real-world problem. The current Labour government will remove the hereditary peers from the House of Lords, because they only show up to vote in their own personal interest, and that reform has widespread support and will pass. Harriet Harman has put forward a bill that will also remove the Lords Spiritual, and that will pass, because no one has a problem with what the bishops say and do in Parliament.

Parliament gained control over taxation and the treasury in the seventeenth century - this was the major cause of the Second English Civil War. Later in that century, freedom of the press was established, but there were still consequences for libel and defamation. With the accession of King George I, Parliament gained control over the king, by appointing one who couldn't speak English. Everything that is not illegal is permitted, and the only speech that is restricted is that that is widely considered objectionable. Getting along with one's neighbours is an integral part of living in a society, regardless of one's beliefs on 'personal autonomy' and 'self-reliance'.

No one has been gaoled for posting memes, but people have been gaoled for threatening and abusing behaviour, and for inciting violence during rioting across the country. It just so happens that this has been done by posting memes, but if it had been done by using a megaphone to whip up a protest into a riot, the consequences would have been the same.

America's obsession with free speech is a problem, because it's used to justify retrograde opinions. The two political parties in the US are still debating broadly the same economic and political philosophies that held sway in Britain at the time of the War of Independence. Both political parties treat it as a religion, holding to these dusty old ideas rather than solving real-world problems experienced by real-world people. But every time someone proposes this, someone else yells 'Tyranny!', and the ghost of King Charles I laughs.

With one foot planted firmly in the past, and the other striding determinedly forward, the United States of America is truly a nation going in circles.