Something like DOGE *could* have been genuinely valuable if they’d spent a few months talking to real domain experts about where to streamline and find savings, and then a couple years on thoughtful implementation. But why bother when countless lackeys are telling you you’re a world-historic genius?

So you get people like Musk who, even beyond the crude motivation to promote their own interests, develop an utterly delusional sense of how insightful their untutored ideas about public policy are.

Because that is not how any remotely serious scholar or scholarly institution operates. That is how PR hacks operate.

Because look, let’s just for giggles pretend to buy the absurd claim that the head of a right-wing DC think tank had no clue who Nick Fuentes is and just recited a script in defense of an ally. *THAT IS ALSO UTTERLY DAMNING* for the head of a supposed think tank, albeit for different reasons.

I had not, but that's not too far off from how I already tend to think of this stuff, presumably because I've read some of the social psych lit I assume he's drawing from.

I mean, ultimately the solution IS more speech, it's just a very different sort of speech. It's not fact checks.

They will, in other words, tell you they changed denominations because they agreed with the doctrines. But typically they didn't KNOW the doctrines when they switched. They learn later what beliefs one must espouse to remain a member in good standing.

Social psych researchers find, for instance, that most people who change religious denominations initially don't actually know much about the distinctive tenets of their new denomination; they join for the community. If you ask them later on, once they've learned, they will retcon their reasoning...

Also, the obvious point: Delivery of restaurant food is an easily substituted luxury, and one of the first things you'd expect people to shift spending away from in a shitty economy, ergo not a particularly useful proxy for inflation tout court.