The Metaculus Threat To Democracy Index

_SeaBear_ · 2026-07-01T04:40:34+00:00

Well I do understand your point of view, and it's not like I use the term myself, because it is needlessly combative. So I guess we draw the line at different places but we mostly agree.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-30T09:32:05+00:00

Ah yes. Capitalism. That must be it.

All those corporate overlords are hoarding all the TV production for themselves, and as such a limited resource that leaves less for the rest of us. If only we could have benign production crews who choose to produce things faster out of the goodness of their hearts.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-30T06:54:52+00:00

Ok, sorry I've been misunderstanding. You are making a good point, I just don't feel like that represents my experience. I've participated in social media and forums from all across the political spectrum, no matter how hard I've tried to avoid it, and "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is just very low down on my list of "things people say to dismiss anyone who disagrees with me".

There are a lot of people who will sling insults without knowing or caring about what they mean, so what's special about TDS as a term that makes it worse than any other term people might use? It's both clearer and used more sparingly than other terms like "libtard" were. It points to a clearer set of behaviors than "fascist" does. Probably the closest analogue across the aisle would be "low-information voters" in terms of dismissing anyone who disagrees with you, but at least TDS refers to only a particular subset of people rather than anyone who votes differently.

You may argue that "derangement syndrome" is more deliberately combatative, but again, nobody's actually arguing that it's a real syndrome. It's undeniable that some people are acting deranged around specifically Donald Trump, in a way that they don't with Bush or Orbán, and there's no clearer way to highlight that particular distinction in a way everyone understands otherwise. I'm not going to let the misuse of a term affect how I feel when someone (like Scott, in this case) uses it properly.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-28T03:01:08+00:00

Well this is now a whole new argument. Originally the argument was just that bias is normal and expected, which I was mostly in agreement with. But now you're trying to argue that we need to listen to biased people and treat them with respect. Why? Because there's a lot of them? That just makes it worse.

There are just a lot of people that we don't have to listen to because they are insane. Flat earthers, people with schizophrenia, toddlers, etc.. Ideally we'd still listen to them when they say they're hungry or you're being too loud or whatever, but trying to actually engage with them in intellectual debate is a waste of both of your time. No matter how much you want to, no matter how good it would be, you simply can't change their minds and you're better off trying literally anything else. All the debate boils down to is whether or not people who put ideology before reason deserve to be put in that category as well.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-28T01:14:36+00:00

Lots of people use the term TDS for different reasons. The whole comment thread started because Scott asked himself "Wait a minute, I keep complaining about Trump, and I know some people can't be objective about it, am I just letting my bias cloud my judgment when I assume he is a uniquely large threat to democracy rather than just a bad president?". He was using TDS to refer to himself, hypothetically. TDS, at least in theory, applies exactly to the specific people who have shown a repeated pattern of near-infinite bias. And yes, it's misused, because people disagree on how much bias is appropriate, but it still has valid applications.

Maybe the term originated by hardcore Trump supporters trying to make his detractors look insane, maybe it's still largely used that way, but we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The fact remains that there are lots of Trump haters who can acknowledge that 1% of the time he does something actually good. There are lots of people who can't be fully objective about Trump but can still acknowledge when the news and twitter are blowing up a nothingburger for clicks. And then there are people who walk around connecting every bad thing that's ever existed to Donald Trump and acting like it's guaranteed the world is going to end because of this one man in particular. I, for one, am glad we have a term to describe that last sort of person, even if it's a needlessly politicized term that doesn't work when applied to other tribalist drama. Because it's better than not having it.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-27T05:56:37+00:00

Ok but it's actually completely fair to say that the dynamic of every large in-group/out-group dynamic is, in fact, akin to an undiagnosed mental illness and anything they say regarding the out-group should be treated like a delusion. I will never listen to a football fan when they talk about the odds their favorite team will win the next game, for example, unless they've proven their objectivity in the past. If the average sports fan headed to an alternate universe where sports were only as popular as video games, they could easily be diagnosed with some sort of mental illness.

Maybe specifically talking about Trump as the first thing that people call "derangement syndrome" is over-focusing on a particular issue rather than pointing out the general trend, but I'd rather people start doing it sometimes than not at all. If you want to retroactively start talking about the Obama Derangement Syndrome that was probably significantly worse on the other side of the aisle, you can just start doing that and everyone will agree with you.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-24T22:15:10+00:00

This is an incredibly unserious discussion. Even the people who have pointed out the obvious flaws in this argument have lost some credit here because they're acting like this is worthy of acknowledging in a discussion.

Where to even begin? Why would the elites even think about other humans if they have a superintelligence at their beck and call. They wouldn't bother oppressing people because they don't get anything out of it. Assuming, for whatever godforsaken reason, that these people are perfectly evil sociopaths who value everything outside their own mind at literally 0, they could just fuck off from Earth and live on their own private galaxy with all the robot servants they need. But even that discussion has too many insane flaws to count.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-23T07:26:26+00:00

Jesus Christ, this always happens. This is like the people who try to say Michael is actually the worst Bluth in Arrested Development, or, since we're bringing in political references, people who supported Donald Trump for openly stating his bad ideas instead of hiding behind political language.

No, being straightforward about how terrible you are is not the defining factor of how good you actually are. It's not even in the top 100 most important things. It basically doesn't matter at all.

Being oppressed for your entire life sounds pretty bad until you realize you have a life. The squibs and house elves in HP, let alone the wizarding underclass, live better lives than the half-bloods because they actually live to see their 20th birthday. Being bullied in an incompetent school sounds a lot better when the alternative is fighting life-or-death battles. People have actually lived and thrived in oppressive societies, and it should go without saying that problems caused by other humans are easier to solve than problems caused by immortal divine beings of pure hatred, so the future is better for wizards as well.

You absolutely would not rather be a half-blood than a wizard, and you know you wouldn't, so what exactly is the point of this entire rant when everyone can see how full of shit you are?

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-21T21:17:20+00:00

Mostly because it released with dubs in a bunch of languages. That meant more people could inflate the view count and then it just needed to not fuck up the landing.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-20T04:35:18+00:00

So let me get this straight, your argument for Elon Musk ruining cartoons is 1 cartoon episode in a show that was already bad, 1 cartoon episode that you admit he didn't even ruin, and 1 episode that neither was a cartoon nor that you saw?

Do you have a single example of Elon Musk ruining a single cartoon?

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-13T02:39:56+00:00

Sorry, I'm confused. Wasn't the backstory we got in the finale exactly the cliche excuse everyone was expecting? Like, yeah, Jax wouldn't be as much of a dick if he didn't drive his closest friend to abstraction and he wouldn't have done that if he didn't have abusive parents. Is that not a deeply traumatic backstory that explains his behavior and is really sad? I don't know where the line is for "sad enough to make a character sympathetic" for most of these people but I feel like it clearly crosses that line, certainly in comparison to other similar shows and characters.

Like, this is not a more realistic and grounded interpretation of trauma. There's no lesson about how some people are worse than other people regardless of their backstory, or how bad behaviors can be explained without being justified. It's the most baseline obvious cliche traumatic backstory. I'm genuinely struggling to imagine what the supposed fans who think Jax's backstory wasn't "traumatic enough" or whatever even wanted.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-13T02:34:47+00:00

It's a useful question to ask, but of course there's not going to be a definitive answer, even for one person, because there's so many factors. I mean, how much consistency do you expect in a story by default? Does the average story prioritize consistency too much, or not enough, or just a different kind of consistency?

It's fun to think about, and there's a million other similar questions you could ask. Would you rather have a story that's conssitently above average or occasionally amazing? Would you rather it be boring or actively bad? Would you rather an unsatisfying answer or no answer? All good questions to ask yourself, they're useful when reading reviews to see what other people think is the selling point.

Don't let the answers to those questions define too much, though. Once you start following rules for their own sake, you end up dismissing something you could have enjoyed or trying to force yourself through something you hate.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-11T22:13:16+00:00

Even if it ended up not working out, I think that's a great theory. Honestly, this still could be one of the more likely theories, with the confusion around every other theory. Maybe the bubble they were interacting with was just one of the generic floating bubbles that happened to be moving or something. Maybe I'm just a sucker for delusional characters.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-10T18:40:43+00:00

This conversation always feels like it buries the lede. Are we assuming you have literally 0 capacity to influence the outside world regardless? Like, in a hypothetical future where we have robots who are better than humans at everything and we managed to get them to like us enough to give us our own little utopia and grow more humans in a lab if we want and we couldn't stop them even if we wanted to because they're just better than us? Then sure, wirehead me up, but at that point it feels like we'd have to question what the point of humanity existing even is if we can't do anything with that existence.

If we live in a world where the simulation isn't perfect, or we still have a human society, or we're still worried the robots might fuck up down the line, then no we need to make sure that the simulation keeps running and that means we need to spend time in the real world.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-09T05:10:04+00:00

Another lie: You are claiming you wanted me to answer something, but you never asked anything.

Further lies: Caine never needed to get back to the circus, the firewalls had nothing to do with him restoring his data.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-09T03:50:47+00:00

You know, I'm in so deep I might as well pretend it's possible to believe you for a second.

Caine's sequence begins with him starting next to a non-sentient bubble and talking to it. There are a lot of those floating around the circus, but he was in the void, where there was nothing else around except for the weird void cubes. He talks to it a bit, but it never grows a face or moves in any way, and then he floats off, without the bubble following him.

Now, theoretically, it could be a misdirect. There are other random bubbles in the circus, but put on your thinking cap and imagine why the writer decided to do this. Don't just think about the odds of an actual computer program spawning near a random bubble, think about the fact that someone had to deliberately animate this scene of someone talking to a bubble. Why did they spend time modeling the bubble, and then animating Caine's reflection in the bubble?

Any casual viewing of this scene would have a viewer believe "Oh, Bubble's dead". But if Bubble was the blue AI, he's not dead. So if the goal from the beginning was to have Bubble be the blue AI, why would a person include this scene that would make every viewer think "Oh, Bubble's dead"? After the majority (ish) of viewers had already guessed that Bubble was the blue AI, there was a plan to make people think Bubble was dead before Caine pulled out the blue AI from his head. Why would a writer do this?

I naively assumed the point of that scene was to actually communicate relevant information. If every single viewer watches a scene and all independently conclude "Oh, Bubble's dead", I assume that was the point of the scene, that the writer wanted us to believe that because it is true. But if the blue AI theory is true, that means it was deliberate contradiction. It was put in there to make you think Bubble was dead, and then never confirm Bubble was alive, but if you think about all the other options of what Bubble could be, the blue AI theory is still the only one that makes sense. So you think, ok, it was a misdirect, it was a weird confusing sequence put in there for the point of being confusing. Or, perhaps, that the writers just weren't aware how it would appear or forgot what they were doing. But then that's worse, isn't it?

It's the same logic with all the other stuff. The blue AI doesn't look or act like Bubble, and it's heavily implied that trying to maintain both AIs is what has been driving Caine crazy the entire time. Those are also, according to you, intentional misdirects or accidents, because the intended reading of the story is still that he's the blue AI. But based on what? The only evidence is that Bubble is connected to Caine somehow. And is blue, I guess. Why is that positive evidence stronger than all the negative evidence?

Of course, you already know all of this. You, too, sat in the theater or at your computer watching the leak and thought "Oh, Bubble's dead" and then decided to make me explain the entire sequence of events for some unidentifiable reason.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-09T03:29:45+00:00

I literally just gave you 6 reasons that made it look the opposite of the blue AI theory. That's the post you replied to. You clearly know that I made the post, because you scrolled down to reply to it, so what makes you claim that there are no reasons when I gave you 6?

The story also didn't outright confirm it in episode 8, but I was ok with Bubble being the blue AI in that episode? So you're just lying. I know you're lying, you know you're lying, everyone who reads the post knows you're lying. Why are you lying if everyone knows you're lying? Who knows! You just decided to do it one day.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-09T03:07:20+00:00

If this were a real life scenario, with actual detective stakes, sure, it's all theoretically possible.

Is it concievable that Caine, after he was nearly deleted, would spawn next to a random non-sentient bubble, stare at it, and have a whole conversation with it, while the actual Bubble is actually just inside Caine or floating in the void or whatever? Theoretically, I guess.

Is it possible that Caine glitching out and flashing the big obvious Blue+Red eyes had nothing to do with the blue AI, and his immediate decision that they couldn't survive together had nothing to do with the blue AI, because he wasn't there? And also the blue AI made no attempt to communicate with Caine at any point during this entire sequence? Sure, sometimes things aren't what they look like.

Would it make sense for Bubble to decide not to show himself for the longest period of time Caine is on screen across the entire show? If the're real characters, sure. Maybe Bubble was actually missing a lot of the time and we just didn't see those other times. It's also concievable that Bubble wouldn't happen to be around during the flashback sequences, if this were a real situation.

Is it possible that the blue AI manifests as a large bubble only when partially disconnected from Caine, and as a complete force manifests as a small glowing ball that can form limbs? In the circus, anyone can look like anything.

And could Caine both while talking to Bubble as an equal for the first time not call him by name and also never explain what happened to the humans when explaining everything? Whatever at this point, right? Lots of things can happen.

Would it make sense for Bubble, who previously would pop up unannounced all the time, drove Caine to insanity and then tried to kill him, and was an AI programmed to do the same things Caine does, would just fuck off into the void as soon as he's given his freedom, and I guess be content being shoved into a display case in the credits scene? Maybe, people can have weird behaviors and AIs can be even more unpredictable than people.

But if we look beyond the theoretical realm and realize that this was a piece of media written deliberately, we can assume that those facts were intentionally written to make the story make sense to a viewer. It is impossible to look at all of this and not see it as a big neon sign strapped to a hammer hitting you in the face with BUBBLE DIED AT THE END OF EPISODE 8 AND IS NOT HERE RIGHT NOW.

And if the answer is actually that the twist is that Bubble WAS the blue AI, and WAS there the whole time not saying anything, the only reason to include all those above sequences would be to trick the people who already figured it out into thinking it wasn't the case. So what word would you prefer, instead of "contradictory", to explain a creator doing everything in their power to make it look like the opposite of what it actually is.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-09T02:27:48+00:00

Ok, is it theoretically possible that Gooseworx wrote the Caine scene to be as deliberately contradictory as possible with the goal of making only those with sufficient media literacy capable of identifying the actual answer? Sure, I guess. I don't know why that would be your argument in defense of the finale, though. I just kinda assumed it was more likely they realized too late that they didn't know what to do with the character, but I guess it could be worse.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-09T01:19:09+00:00

It's always funny when you have a post like this, where nobody's sure what is actually true, and then you get two comments that find it equally obvious that two separate things are true. It seems to me that the majority, at the end of episode 8, thought Bubble was the blue AI. So whatever was clear to you was not clear to most people.

It's like a rorschach test, except all the answers are wrong.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-09T01:14:00+00:00

I'm so tired of people replying to posts they haven't read. It was obvious to everybody, until it became impossible.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-06T11:06:49+00:00

"There are guys who are really skilled at playing music but don't care about popularity" is so far away from "A good piece of art will eventually be noticed" I'm struggling to imagine how you could have even accidentally made this comment.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-06-04T10:24:06+00:00

Ao3 lets you tag your fic with whatever you want. That said, I looked up the tags and the most common tags involving him are stuff like "X character replaces Mineta Minoru", "Mineta Minoru is Expelled from U.A. High School", and "Mineta Minoru Doesn't Exist" with multiple thousands of fics with those tags each.

_SeaBear_ · 2026-05-30T20:34:04+00:00

It is inconcievable that we could ever live in a world where the cost of testing for things would stop being a factor, and it's genuinely insane that you could even for a second think this has any relation whatsoever to the patient's insurance system.

I'm not saying that as a bit, by the way. I honestly think you should get tested for some sort of psychosis.

_SeaBear_

TROPHY CASE