dualmindblade

I don't think anything is purely innate, even anatomy is to some extent malleable. But I also don't think there are any purely environmental attributes either, even something like whether you chew gum is to some extent going to be affected by innate biological factors. It's a spectrum, with talent at music being somewhere in the middle of these two examples.

I think maybe we actually somewhat agree? Talking just music here I think most people who truly excel have at least 2 of these: some kind of innate ability, rich / extremely attentive parents, a desire so strong that it becomes an obsession starting at a young age. I'd say having a knack for music is quite common, followed by being rich, then long term personal obsession is a distant 3rd. Since you probably need 2 of these most who reach the highest levels will have 1 and 2 and will be rich

20 years and from age 6, no I'm actually uniquely bad like some people have dyslexia, I have that for sheet music. Really I think this is most obvious in the field of music, I also spent a lot of time in the classical world, piano and vocal, there were rich kids who had all the resources they could ever need and ended up really good, there were also those kids siblings who had the same teachers and were terrible. And there were a lot of poors who got really far with virtually no help until they were older. Way more good rich kids I admit, it's a huge factor but not the only huge factor

I'm sorry this is just implausible. I spent 20 years seriously studying the piano and became pretty damn good at technique but I still can't sight read for shit nor can I play by ear, frankly I'm not a very good overall musician, despite thousands of hours of effort devoted to these very skills and help from multiple teachers. One of my children, autistic, developed perfect pitch by touching the piano just a couple of times and me just telling him the notes he was hitting. I also spent countless hours as a child trying to draw and I'm absolutely terrible, like imagine that "delete this" drawing of Elon musk combined with how Biden would probably draw a clock. Another child never tried to draw anything but fonts and when we asked him to produce a dog at age 10 he drew one perfectly from memory, literally first try and much better than anything I've ever produced.

I'm not saying talent is entirely inate, or that pack of aptitude can't be overcome, but it's obviously easier for certain people to develop certain skills even in very similar environments. And this is exactly what you would expect given that everyone starts out as a different person!

It's from this I believe: https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.21.23.pdf

I'm not going to read it but I believe they compared amplification of hashtags on tiktok to Instagram or something and found that "anti us" and "pro China" tags got more traction. Idk if that's deliberate, if so then good! But how do they know it's not Instagram de amplifying the same links and/or the userbase just being more, uh, based.

desoxypipradrol

I know it doesn't seem like it but not all of them are the same, society isn't as polarized as it claims to be, it's an illusion! Okay cards on the table I've only convinced one lib to not vote Joe and they were family and they were already using the g word about gaza.. still I fancy myself a lib whisperer and am therefore hyper qualified to give advice so, what you need to do is become them a bit first, rotate your talent for disagreeableness into finely honed debate skills, squint your eyes and imagine the eggs benedict and mimosas they shove to you at the crack of 11am is harmless pizza and whiskey, now you're catching on good job

I don't care about confirming fantasies of insufferable and genocidal libs, they will believe these fantasies regardless. As to whether society can produce like a more effective version of Trump, idk I feel like it's not that hard. This hypothetical person doesn't have to match Trump's charisma, the bar is incredibly low, and they don't have to be that smart either, just smart enough to fill their cabinet with non-clowns.

I see this talking point that Trump and Biden are essentially equivalent, and I personally think it might be true but it's gonna be really hard to argue this to libs and if Trump ends up doing something awful you're stuck holding the bag of i told you sos. But you don't need to have Trump = Biden, because Trump is extremely and uniquely innocuous for a republican. Yeah this is also hard to swallow for libs but it's almost an indisputable fact and you need only remind them of the deeds of what the last 3 republican presidents did and ask them to produce examples that are worse.

So if there was every a time to hold a Democrat president to account, now would be it because the next Republican will not only be worse than Trump but probably worse than a Bush or Reagan, they'll be just as evil but will have learned from Trump (and Biden lol) that they don't even have to pretend that hard, in fact not pretending makes them more powerful. And aside from punishing the Dems for completely ignoring their base, we're very likely to get a republican in either 2024 or 2028, but not both years, like 4 years of either Trump or Biden and people are gonna want a change. So likely choices are 1) Biden 2024 / Satan but worse 2028, 2) Trump 2024 / Probably at least not Satan 2028. See, utilitarianism is good actually.

Biden MUST lose, hate to say it but if I lived in a swing state I would literally mark Trump on my ballot

It's like marvel logic or something, good is just a reflection of evil across some axis of low resistance, fight fire with.. idk blue fire, pit the misanthropic industrialist against the cool friendly one. Ethno nationalists a problem? No worries we've got a bunch of them with different ethnicity, wheeeee!

If I were homeless in San Francisco I'm sure I'd be doing drugs, also if I were employed and homed in San Francisco, also any combination of employment and housing statuses outside of San Francisco

The weird fingernail lines are like tree rings, it just means your were in the human equivalent of a forest fire or drought