Spaced repetition promotes learning.

I just wanted an excuse to post this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25083315#25104589

Probably most.

A few years ago when people were being sentenced to prison for memes, the government pressured social media to censor and ban people, members of the US government requested people be deplatformed, banks and credit card processors “banned” individuals for their political views, and people were fired, we heard a lot about the paradox of tolerance, the Free Speech xkcd comic “showing you the door”, the idea that “freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence”, “you don’t have a right to a platform”, the important of the government shutting down disinformation, etc. People felt they had to express support for the cause du jour or face consequences, to be silent was to agree with terrible people.

Now very many of the same people have rediscovered the value of free speech culturally and legally, because the shoe is on the other foot and the other “side” is using these same powers and arguments.

Game theory says once one side defects in this situation you’re irrational to continue not defecting. Neither side has any reason to believe the other about these principles because they have both engaged in these authoritarian tactics. I don’t know what the way out is. “Imagine the roles were reversed” doesn’t work when people see it as retribution for what you did to them. I don’t see it getting better.

As a German outside observer I can tell you there is only one side going down the facist path.

The "other side" isn't great either. Would be great to have a sane alternative, I guess.

This post from 2003 has made the rounds several times in recent years...

"The 14 Characteristics of Fascism" https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

...and I recall people reading it and saying they don't see how Donald Trump ticks the boxes.

It's all very tedious to complain about when half the electorate supports it. It makes one feel like a nag and a broken record.

Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attempting to do their part to usher in the chaos. "They" are the ones who have the most resources who will rebuild and control after everything goes to shit, like how Europe and the US thrived after WW2 because they were the winners/rebuilders. Currently the right wants to skip the messy war part required to take control of a government and skip to the implementing changes part. Whether or not that actually happens, well right now they're trying to push the left into drawing the line.

I have no idea where our current "line" is but it's not the same as it was last time and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this.

edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc

The other day I watched this interview with Dan Carlin from 4 years ago and near the beginning the interviewer says something like "I don't think any of us want to draw any comprarisons to current nations and Nazi Germany"

that caught me, because why not? Of course no one wants to actually create parallels, but do we see any? maybe we didn't see as many then, and it was more of a worry in 2021 about even thinking about the possibility of tipping MAGA into that territory. but then again after January 6th we should have seen that they basically don't have a line and are just pushing it gradually. They don't really know what to do when they get the new power either, but the people who could stop it may not even realize it because they haven't had to deal with this kind of thing before. like invading Greenland? taking it from Denmark? how do you even create a response to a suggestion like that? so nothing happens and they see what else they can do.

Seems unlikely Germany owned 66% of the world books in 1935.

I'm not counter claiming the rest, but that fact seems off.

You don’t know and you can’t know what it was like. The least you could do is try to listen to the people who were there and perhaps do at least a little bit of introspection and consider what you could’ve done differently, knowing what the consequences for troublemakers were. But that seems to be beyond you?

Did you even read the article? They explicitly point out that it was the learned class that was so busy with their other important things that they missed all of it. The whole thing is about how that played out.

It is western propaganda. Germans were simply supportive of Hitler and, for the most part, Hitler did well by the Germans. Most people do not question actions when these actions do not affect them, let alone oppose them. And most people will not get involved in politics if the upside is negative.

I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color.

For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be heavy desensitization from 1933-1955 when the book was written.

Aside from the tailor that had started the fire at the synagogue, the other 9 interviewees had not directly witnessed atrocities being committed, and instead focused on their personal hardships during the war.

Even though they may have been literate, the people in Mayer’s book were ignorant of the specific realities. Perhaps willfully ignorant, yes, but the nazi regime really did not give any opportunities otherwise.

—

not an expert, just reporting my notes from the book.

i highly recommend all americans read it, its not a long book. it feels eerily familiar, even though many circumstances are drastically different.

The same sentiment is shared by those who dared to question some of the desired narratives in academia, e.g. gender ideology. Those who went against the stream during the recent SARS2 unpleasantness. Those who opposed the oppressor/oppressed narrative. Those who refused the order for white teachers to stay away from their school on the 'day of absence'.

First they came for those who stood up again gender ideology but I did not speak out for I did not dare to question the narrative,

Then they came for those who questioned the narrative around the SARS-COV2 virus and it potential treatments but I did not speak up because I did not dare to question the narrative,

Then they came for those who refuted the oppressor/oppressed narrative but I did not speak up because I do not want to be labelled 'racist',

Then they came for those who refused to leave the area because people of their skin colour were not welcome in the area but I did not speak up because I did not want to be noticed by the violent mobs,

Then they came for me and nobody spoke up because they all just went with the narrative.

Universities have not been 'free' for quite a while, what is happening now is a reaction against the lack of freedom and the strong ideological bias seen on many campuses. It is action and reaction, not action out of nothing.

The solution to this is to get ideology out of academia but I would not know where to start other than by starting new academic institutions - brick and mortar, online or some sort of hybrid. Those new institutions also run the risk of ideological capture, especially since they will be started by those who oppose the current lopsided academic climate with its heavily 'progressive' political bias.

Let the first professor who has no political bias speak up.