128 Comments

Easy to say everyone should be non-anonymous when you don't make your living as corporate employee. You would have been cancelled and fired 10x over for the things written here if you worked at an average organization, so the policy you're requesting here would be a good way to ensure Notes remains bloggers responding to bloggers, forever.

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"...but one thing I hope that Substack will consider is creating the option of not having to interact with anonymous accounts through a real verification system." Was a kid when "Islam is a threat" was written on bathroom walls, and therefore was emulsified from the digital womb and cannot see the creeping digital surveillance capitalism gulags everywhere that want ID systems in place just to participate in society. Hard pass Richard and not from a "right winger" whatever the hell that is anymore. Simple concept in political philosophy...No Privacy-No Liberty. No liberty for one, means it can be violated for all. My liberty, is your liberty. If you want your liberty, you should want the option of anonymity, online or off, for anyone who needs it, and it doesn't matter the reason. If you don't think someone is intellectually up to your high standard on notes, then simply use the block button.

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"This is objectively false."

The standard of living is inherently subjective. I wasn't alive in the '60s but I grew up in the '90s in Canada and my parents were poor; we were on one unskilled income. Despite this, we were able to buy a small townhouse and I would say that the social and economic environment was far superior (where I lived, at any rate) compared to the present conditions. I am not sure how many people who lived through the last few decades would say they prefer the present conditions. I've been working for my entire career trying to save for a home, and the result is that I'm far further behind than when I was born. And I feel nothing optimistic or hopeful about my culture, society, etc. compared to the past.

Improved technology or better video game graphics is not an excuse for all this. It doesn't make up for it, and it would've developed anyway.

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"more people on both sides of the political spectrum [seem] to believe that Americans have a lower standard of living than they did a generation or two ago".

I realize this is off-topic, but

1) Technically, as Yglesias says in the piece you link, we do "consume much more housing, cars, and college education [than we did 60 years ago]". The problem with myopically focusing on this is that only one of those items (cars) has unambiguously improved in quality over that period.

Housing's debatable - is a 3,000 sq ft house on a giant lot in a car-dependent exurb really an improvement over a 750 sq ft house in Levittown, given that the latter made for much more spontaneous neighborly interaction? - and college education has obviously declined in quality, whether it's measured by "subject matter learned" or "white-collar jobs that become available with a degree".

2. For a significant (yes, relatively low-IQ) portion of the population, their material standards *have* declined. People who would have worked a single factory job with consistent hours 60 years ago are either welfare-dependent or working multiple shifting-hour service jobs to make the same amount today.

3. Look at that meme with the text covered up. It doesn't depict a high standard of living, it depicts intact family and community life. People are nostalgic for that, even if they don't articulate it well (or downplay that their family life sucks because Mom didn't bother keeping her hypergamy in check).

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Notes, through restack, became a substack discovery feature to me. People who I already follow restack others who I haven't heard about.

A human recommendation algorithm.

If it only succeeds in this, it's already a good feature.

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Apr 14, 2023·edited Apr 14, 2023

Try making a polite, data-backed post about "race and IQ" or "gender and IQ" — at least one that doesn't flatter women or nonwhites — and we'll see how long you'll last in that office job.

There are social repercussions for speech that's way more restrained than "women are ugly" and you know it. Remember that New York guy who was fired a couple of months ago because he was going around the local shops complaining he wasn't finding anything worthwhile to buy?

Also, what if someone calls some woman ugly anyway? What's with you and women lately? You call conservatives dumb every other post, and call anyone you don't like low-status. Should everyone have to make his living as a freelance writer in order to afford saying such things?

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Richard I really enjoy all your stuff - it's always thought-provoking, even if I don't agree with it. My question is this: I have been wrong about a lot of stuff the past couple years and as a consequence I have tried to develop a healthy dose of circumspection regarding predictions. You've been open about having been wrong about some stuff too. To what extent has that eroded confidence in your predictive capacity?

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I can’t wait for you to post how Socrates was an emphatic loser.

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Richard, do you propose IQ tests knowing that the average American liberal has a higher IQ than the average conservative? I believe you touched on this yourself in your “liberals read and conservatives watch TV” article. And as the Republican Party takes a much more populist turn while Democrats are being led by the highly-educated progressive activists, this IQ-drain will only intensify.

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Apr 14, 2023·edited Apr 14, 2023

I share your hopes for Substack Notes and I hope the "long form" nature of it will be enough to keep out the riff raff, but I can't agree with your suggestion that we all post under our confirmed full names.

That will not select for the best opinions, it will select for the opinions of people who either have no professional reputations to worry about (people with nothing to lose), or have made their online reputation *into* their professional reputation (professional opinion-havers like yourself).

I work in the public service, and my opinions, though quite reasonable, are sometimes out of step with the official messaging from HR and the heads of state for my jurisdiction. Sure, I am intellectually curious, and I love the life of the mind and "learning by arguing" by respectful exchanges from smart people I disagree with, but really, this is still just a hobby. When I weigh whatever improved quality there would be (if any) from engaging on a non-anonymous platform vs the anxiety incurred from the small chance of professional blowback if I argue for the Wrong Thing, it just wouldn't be worth it to participate.

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I disagree - twitter has never been better. It’s a lot more fun postmusk and the increase in users reflects that.

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If you really believe in a world where speech is free, then calling women ugly shouldn’t get you fired — though you won’t get invited to the best woke parties.

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LoL -- Twitter as scribblings on bathroom walls. 👍😉🙂

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Anonymity is the most under-appreciated of all treasures. If they can’t find you, they can’t fire you.

I sympathise with having to deal with a lot of garbage because of it but perhaps there are other solutions. One avenue would be to use AI to screen out offensive and plainly stupid responses. With some training it shouldn’t be difficult.

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I'd actually be interested in the ability to quote comments, both comments in Notes and Newsletters to create new dialogues based on old conversations. While I like threads, they simply aren't searchable and followable by actual readers. Many readers (the few that I've seen on Notes) do their best work in comments, i.e. there is no incentive for them to even post on Notes.

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Hoping RH is right about Notes. So far, so good. No Note has crossed my feed yet, displaying the modern leftish wearily ironic archetype nor (thank goodness) the modern right's celebration of FACTS and TRUTH in the form of some easily ascertained falsehood.

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