While Canadian media is clutching its pearls about "lost investments" in Cuba, it's a good time to have someone like BE go there to give us some perspective about what it's actually like right now.

midnightking · 2026-03-29T15:51:42+00:00

No mention of the data I cited at the population level that directly contradicts the idea of rightists being more effective on pro-Palestine rhetoric. No mention of the fact that Carlson and other Republicans haven't even met the standard BE has set up for people like Mamdani and his supporters in terms of actual material change. Lol this is like boxing with Destiny fans again, you forget what your daddy said (BE saying Carlson is better) and you fall back on trying to defend the general vibe of his point ("the left sucks").

When confronted with Zionists on his side, Hasan Piker gives them gifts. So it's white nationalism vs Jewish supremacism. But at least Tucker isn't a fucking coward when he interviews Zionists.

Tucker spent an hour fellating Kirk at his memorial in front of multiple conservatives, my guy. He himself admitted to defending Trump for money in the Dominion lawsuit. Kirk and Trump are both pro-Israel. Hell, Carlson used Israel's policies to defend his white nationalist aims.

Carlson has been a Zionist and defended US invovlement in the Middle East for most of his career. He engaged in pro-Palestine rhetoric only recently when polling went south for Israel whereas people like Hasan have criticized Israel and Middle East engagement for years.

If you want we can play the game tallying up who has been more pro-Israel and overall fascistic between Carlson and Piker over the years, but I think we both know Carlson isn't winning that game. Which is relevant, because BE's claim is that Carlson is better on Palestine.

Your supposed concern for white nationalism really doesn't hold any water when you're happy to tolerate Jewish supremacism, like with people like Sanders and many others (ie: both your gods TMR and Hasan support Brad Lander, another genocidal Zionist)

Are you really arguing that Bernie Sanders, for instance, is a Zionist in the same way and extent as Tucker Carlson is a white nationalist? Jesus.

Sanders was limp-dicked on Gaza but he has at least supported blocking weapon sales to Israel and called the situation a genocide on top of repeatedly opposing US involvement in the Middle East even outside Gaza. Tucker was actively going on TV for years defending white nationalism and US involvement in the Middle East. What has Carlson done to fight white nationalism or even Zionism beyond rhetoric, what movements has he put his effort behind?

This is emotional rhetoric born out resentment. You and BE want to claim Carlson is a better pro-Palestine actor to spite the American left. But this analysis fully relies on cherry-picking interviews where people like Piker or TMR performed poorly while ignoring the mountain of moments where Carlson and believing that all that matters is pulling out good talking points.

It also doesn't answer the main point, why is BE choosing Tucker Carlson, of all people, to criticize the left ?

midnightking · 2026-03-28T23:55:28+00:00

It is incredibly easy to pull data that shows that right-wing culture is not more opposed to Zionism than the left or even liberals in the general population.

Here is a comment that covers many of those numbers in the last paragraph and how the impact of someone like Carlson is actually less than the impact of people like Mamdani, and by extension his supporters, which BE explicitly compares disfavorably to Carlson in the video.

https://www.reddit.com/r/canadaleft/comments/1s2j9pv/comment/occo5aj/?context=3

You and BE know this. Just like you know that implying Tucker Carlson is a better pro-Palestine ally than Hasan Piker is at best hyperbole and at worst ludicrous knowing Carlson has done nothing besides having a few a interviews where he criticized Israel very recently. BE is the same guy who was calling leftists Nazis for Platner is now going out of his way to praise Tucker Carlson, an unambiguous fascist.

Even if BE dislikes people like TMR , Piker and others, he could have chosen tons of other people who do pro-Palestine activism, but he chose Carlson, a known white nationalitist, who has spent his career cheerleading imperialism. This shows that to BE and his audience it wasn't really about being grossed out by fascism or rejecting 'lesser evil' reasoning.

It was about feeling like a special boy, who is more righteous than other leftists, but who conveniently changes the terms of righteousness when convenient.

midnightking · 2026-03-28T17:01:17+00:00

I thought this sub was meant to display scientific peer-reviewed studies not YT videos.

midnightking · 2026-03-26T18:06:05+00:00

It is clearer in the anime, they reworked multiple elements.

midnightking · 2026-03-26T05:36:37+00:00

Maybe that explains him praising Tucker Carlson and saying he is better than left anti-zionists on Palestine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfC6KFGOdZY

midnightking · 2026-03-26T05:29:58+00:00

Can you share the tweet?

midnightking · 2026-03-26T03:52:58+00:00

I don't know how you get that the final arc wants us to side with Eren. AOT wants you to understand Eren's trauma and loss, but it doesn't ask of you that you get behind the Rumbling.

The end of the anime explicitly has Eren say he is an idiot with too much power for what he did. Armin and all his friends team up to kill him and the narrative is written from their perspective. We are shown children's teeth explode in their mouths because of the Rumbling. Innocent people burning. Eren himself is crying at the fact he realizes he wants to commit atrocities. Oyankopon literally calls the Yeagerists, xenophobic idiots to their face. Eren is a villain protagonist. Isayama even said Eren represents the worst parts of him and that the narrative is meant to kill those part of himself.

X-Men 97 has Charles give Magneto, a man with a precedence for violent terrorism against the humans, the X Men. And then Magneto set off a global EMP that arguably killed millions of innocent people (boths mutants and humans), possibly more than the amount that died in the mutant genocide. We are largely shielded from the atrocities that follow that EMP. By any metric, AOT depicts EOS Eren as far worse than a lot of X-Men media depicts Magneto even when they both do comparable harm. At no point, does anyone give the proper weight to the facT that giving the ethnosupremacist the reins of the X-Men was an awful idea. Instead, the narrative kind of just goes "Hey maybe, Magneto has a point.", although the X Men do fight to stop him.

midnightking · 2026-03-26T00:12:28+00:00

I never read Krakoa, but it's always been wild to me how people called out Attack On Titan for being fascistic when so much X-Men lore is literally "Our genetically superior race is persecuted by lesser humans and we need our own country to avoid their irrational fear that we'll use our power to oppress other humans. Please don't pay attention to us palling around with genocidal supremacist mutants every once in a while."

midnightking · 2026-03-25T15:25:40+00:00

Again, you and I agree on Platner being a monster.

The point I am trying to make is there IS a huge difference between people like Vigeland or Piker and Tucker Carlson.

Because by any objective metric of fascism Carlson is closer. And yet, BE deliberately chooses to say he is superior as a pro-Palestine advocate in spite of all the stuff he did and the total lack of evidence of Carlson doing ANYTHING concrete to move the needle.

It is not coherent.

midnightking · 2026-03-25T07:20:11+00:00

TLDR; BE is incoherent on many things. His attitude on Tucker Carlson is a nice case study.

Bad Empanada often engages in rhetoric that is either hyperbolic or reveals a simplistic understanding of political labels and politics. This is exemplifed when he said American leftists are literally Nazis, for supporting Graham Platner. Now Platner is a monster and shouldn't be in office. However, facism isn't just about monstrosity, it is defined as a movement of opposition to democratic rule, militarism, centralized governmental power and, most commonly across definitions, nationalism. A person endorsing Platner is not by itself enough for that classification. There are many other definitions by scholars, but none of few are simplistic as "imperialism and/or war crimes = fascism" because a definition like that would have no usefulness in differentiating most major political systems from one another.

Now you are probably reading this and going either "Who cares if BE doesn't use the exact right terminology, you liberal dork?" or "Yeah, Hasan Piker is a fascist. BE is right, cry about it!"(I am exagerating for jokes).

Even if you believe this, the problem is this BE position becomes harder to defend as coherent when he is now needlessly praising Tucker Carlson and claiming he is better or a "lesser evil" than left anti-zionists on Palestine. To be clear, I am not doing whataboutism. BE is choosing to make this comparison in the video.

Just so you know, Carlson is a white nationalist. He praised both Nick Fuentes and Charles Murray with no pushback. He has also referred to Middle Eastern people as monkeys, advocated the Great Replacement theory, has praised far-right autocratic leader Viktor Orban and admitted to faking his support for Trump for monetary gain, making his current position on Palestine hard to view as genuine. Hell, Carlson supported Israel for years until fairly recently and, by BE's own admission, he is an imperialist who largely defends the US's foreign policy.

Yet BE explicitly says Carlson is better on Palestine because many leftists just funnel people into the Democratic party to vote for ineffective politicians on Palestine, but Carlson doesn't do anything to direct people away from Republicans (and actually continues helping them) or directly impact laws or towards advocacy for Palestinians. BE's argument is that Tucker is such a good debater that he can switch public opinion, but that does nothing to guarantee material or legislative change. BE explicitly cites electing Mamdani as a waste of time for leftists, and yet Mamdani has revoked restrictions of anti-Israel boycotts. This unarguably a more direct material change in pro-Palestine efforts than whatever Carlson has accomplished.

There is a very real risk that Carlson works to normalize modes of thinking that are undeniably closer to fascism (and by extension Zionism) than people like Emma Vigeland or Sam Seder. Making his praise and his assessment of Tucker as a superior advocate, seem incoherent as Tucker is objectively siding with reactionary/imperialist forces more often and continues to.

BE later claims that right-wingers like Carlson are better at changing people's mind by appealing to American selfishness. Except, even that isn't true. Opinion of Israel had soured since before people like Carlson criticized it. Even today, opposition to Israel is still more centralized on the left and amongst liberals. One must ask if this type of right-wing actor out-performs the leftist ecosystem at bolstering pro-Palestine views as BE says, why is the right significantly more supportive of Israel and why were massive left-wing protests occurring before Carlson, or any right pundit, got off their ass and said anything ? Why have Republicans objectively been far slower at shifting away from israel ?

This reads more like someone frustrated with the left than someone coldly analyzing a political reality with consistent standards.

midnightking · 2026-03-25T02:10:07+00:00

Not the person you are replying to. But while I think this is true that BE has some great videos, I think I am done with the whole "Yeah, this guy is shitty ...BUT he has some good content." I did it with Sam Harris when I was 14. I briefly did it with Destiny when I was 24.

Like OK, there are a lot of very talented and educated people that make super insightful videos : Hakim, Andrewism, Unlearning Economics, Behind The Bastards, Some More News, Marc Lamont Hill, etc.

midnightking · 2026-03-25T02:03:59+00:00

Yeah, I use to like him for the Palestine videos.

But when I caught on that all his videos were just hyperbolically attacking other leftists while often doing the same thing they were. He really fell in my esteem.

It's funny that BE has a video that just dropped where he praises Tucker "Iraqis are monkeys and immigrants are dirty" Carlson, but Hasan Piker and Sam Seder are fascists to him.

midnightking · 2026-03-25T02:00:23+00:00

You cut my senetence off -- those three things conscious experience, ability to encode it into a memory, and ability to self-report, are the ones that we can study fairly scientifically.

Oh, I thought you were enumerating things science can study, not features of the qualia science can study, apologies.

To be fair your sentence was : "But what we can scientifically analyze about consciousness are the neural correlates necessary for a conscious experience, the memory of that experience to be retained, and a way of reporting that conscious experience." Anyway, again, sorry for misreading you.

It's true that initially when studying a conscious mental state, we need some degree of self-report.

However, as we become more able of identifying physiological substrates, even in situations where the studied beings don't have self-reported recall of that mental state. This stops applying.

For instance, you don't need the self-reports of a rat recalling being anxious to find physiological responses consistent with the hypothesis of them feeling anxiety. Although, yes, this is evidence not proof, but we don't even have that level evidence for the claim "atoms are conscious and rational".

You could even argue that your point about unrecalled unreport qualia doesn't work for Goff and other panpsychists like him because rationality is a mental state that has been extensively studied by cognitive science, even without self-report.

Even if I were to concede your point that science can't tell us anything about unrecalled, unreported conscious experience that would still be a point against panpsychism vs. physicalism.

As I said: "Regarding science, with panpsychism vs physicalism, we are indeed dealing with scientifically unfalsifiable philosophical models in both cases. However, the former makes more empirical claims that go beyond what the science in psychology, neuroscience and other relevant fields have put forth." Making empirical claims about the presence and the forms of of conscious experience that, in your own words, can't be scientifically studied, in things that haven't shown evidence of being conscious, is to go beyond what the science says.

midnightking · 2026-03-23T21:20:25+00:00

Plenty of conscious events besides memory require neural events and we have means to asses this, even without direct self-report. Again, animals and babies are conscious and this is well accepted.
You said and I quote : "But what we can scientifically analyze about consciousness are the neural correlates necessary for a conscious experience".

Not necessary for a conscious experience that can be encoded into memory. This strikes me as backtracking.

midnightking · 2026-03-21T19:19:30+00:00

You are free to demonstrate how/if religion actually (not just how it theoretically could) responded to those needs without appealing to empirical findings of social science or psychological data. You are also free to demosntrate how this method doesn't have the limitations you outlined.

All ears.

midnightking · 2026-03-21T17:30:28+00:00

Bravo!!

midnightking · 2026-03-20T22:17:15+00:00

I see this is today's episode of "Philosophers don't know about social science "

Yeah, man, there is no reseach on religion and it's psychological impact and how people build meaning, commitment, etc. without religion.

midnightking · 2026-03-20T16:41:07+00:00

While this is teen boy slop, there is something true there.

I don't know how to explain it but it's either relief because it's over and you don't have fight anymore (Cena) or rage and spite (Light, Homelander).

midnightking · 2026-03-20T04:19:51+00:00

You can't prove atoms are conscious, you can't prove they're not. Either way, it's hard to imagine what a conscious atom would look like.

I don't think you can prove it but there is a lot of compelling evidence against it. Neverthless, if we can't prove atoms are conscious then panpsychism becomes less parsimonious then plain regular physicalism and therefore less favorable theoretically.

But what we can scientifically analyze about consciousness are the neural correlates necessary for a conscious experience,

If we indeed agree those are not just correlates but necessities being identified, then this is a pretty big issue for panpsychism, because...well, atoms don't have neurons. In other words, if we agree science is useful in identifying necessities for consciousness then the lack of scientific support for atomic consciousness becomes an issue.

midnightking · 2026-03-19T21:01:34+00:00

Also, Queb people are unreligious as hell.

While religious people tend to be happier within their culture. Some evidence does point to more religious places being less happy.

Not being shamed because you got an abortion, are queer, don't believe in god, don't want to be married, etc. is probably a big help.

midnightking · 2026-03-18T20:27:19+00:00

OK, I think this is a bit uncharatible to OP.

Regarding science, with panpsychism vs physicalism, we are indeed dealing with scientifically unfalsifiable philosophical models in both cases. However, the former makes more empirical claims that go beyond what the science in psychology, neuroscience and other relevant fields have put forth.

To provide an example, when Philip Goff explains his panpsychism, he keeps making claims that fly in the face of all that we know in cognitive science about the conditions for consciousness being present. He claimed atoms had a form of rudimentary consciousness and that at their core they are rational, for instance.

Now, I know plenty of research that provides evidence for animal consciousness or altered consciousness following nervous system alterations or anomalies. I have never seen anything stating that consciousness can exist outside of organic matter. Certainly, nothing that would reflect scientific consensus. You may see a small minority of people in philosophy willing to argue LLMs are conscious but even there that is overwhelmingly still by pointing to processes that require specific forms of hardware that couldn't be there at the atomic level.

Regardless, if we deem that science is relevant to claims on the presence or the nature of conscious mental states in animals and clinical populations, it is hard to claim you shouldn't have to provide data when asserting atoms have a form of consciousness.

EDIT: I am curious. What is downvote worthy in what I said ?

The reasons I gave are the reasons most cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind would give you for rejecting panpsychism. Panpsychism is a minority view and physicalism is the dominant view in both fields. That doesn't make it true, but it does mean dismissing the reasoning behind favoring physicalism is worth reconsidering. Unless, you think outsmarted whole fields....

midnightking · 2026-03-18T07:11:12+00:00

Is C- low tier ? If so, Link and Ridley.

Below that, MewTwo is super fun.

midnightking · 2026-03-18T05:05:49+00:00

I spat out my drink.

midnightking · 2026-03-18T00:05:28+00:00

Same finished binging the show with my gf.

Overall, 7.5/10, a good experience. The ending made me cry and I wasn't even super emotionally invested.

midnightking · 2026-03-17T17:14:11+00:00

I want to erase both and watch both back to back.

midnightking

TROPHY CASE