H. Gates Ely

philosophy PhD student @VanderbiltU (he/him)

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

dude who invented Fantasy World Inc:

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

I find the 2 most insufferable group of people on the planet are lifetime educators and lifetime politicians. Both live in a fantasy world that lacks common sense and would not survive a day in the real world

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

hey libs my gas is $4

[Ted Cruz @tedcruz]

Just filled my tank. In Texas, gas is $3.99 a gallon.

Hey Gavin—the problem isn’t Chevron, it’s California’s stupid energy policies….

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

feel like i’m going insane

[José Moran @drmtgr]

How funny it is that people dunking on her are (a) people who have no idea of the quality of her work and (b) people with absolutely no experience of how academia and citations work

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

what is going on

[Lenka Zdeborova @zdeborova]

@eiszett Have you read all the sources you ever cited? During my PhD we, along with dozens of other papers, cited a paper that I later found did not contain the result for which it was commonly cited. I should be banned I guess.

[James Miller @JimDMiller]

I've gotten a lot of comments like this, so forgive me if this isn't very kind, but I'm at my limit. If you're a serious academic, you've spent a lot of time looking at citations, and you know they often contain errors. You know that it's very common for professors just to copy citations they found in other papers and put them into their own papers because they need a lot of citations to look credible. Given that this is going on, it's kind of silly to think that we should have a kind of death penalty for having an LLM, hallucination mistake What you're doing is virtue signaling and pretending that citations are somehow sacred to what academics do, when in fact they're mostly just poorly put up window dressing. You're being dishonest. Perhaps with yourself, perhaps with me.

[Palantir @PalantirTech]

Because we get asked a lot.

The Technological Republic, in brief.

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska

https://t.co/8igjazz1On

[alien @alienincrisis]

there should be a term for knowing exactly what to do and not doing it

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

opening day, she did it again

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

my wife asks me if Rougned Odor still plays for the Orioles every time she watches them - does this mean she knows ball or really does not know ball?

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

was actually gonna do my dissertation on all of this since no one has addressed this problem yet

[tomie @tomieinlove]

Have any philosophers thought that the world we experience may not be the actual world? Or the idea that language may be inherently limited in describing reality? Or maybe that our subjective experiences are outside the physical realm entirely? Did anyone talk about that?

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

it is ok to enjoy Queen and Interstellar I promise

[pellucid dreamer @CHRISF0GLE]

Thinking Queen is one of the best bands ever is such an entry-level music opinion. It’s kinda like thinking Christopher Nolan is a genius director

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

@MaxVelocityWX @BryceShelton01 @tornadopaigeyy disaster

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

cannot bring myself to find many of the Platonic dialogues very useful or interesting. it’s likely a me-problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

@PAHoyeck Jordan Peterson too low

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

i hear older generations say how my generation is on their phone too much, yet my dad is the guy sending reels all day

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

can’t read Willie is resting

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

conservatives are suddenly big fans of cancel culture

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

why don’t the child starter accounts at birth include fetuses?

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

my wife asks me if Rougned Odor still plays for the Orioles every time she watches them - does this mean she knows ball or really does not know ball?

[Baltimore Orioles @Orioles]

We have made the following roster moves:

[H. Gates Ely @GatesEly]

Tommy Tuberville at the bottom because he’s simply too incompetent to insider trade

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

🚨BREAKING🚨

I just released the full report on Congress trading in 2024.

Like every year since 2020, some US politicians beat the market.

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Here are the top political traders of 2024.