Lockdown shouldn't be another reason for division and my 3-stage Truth Logic Morality test

2:00  Thomas Baden-Riess

4:00  Not obvious

5:00  Herd immunity

6:00  Indian variant

7:00  Order of vaccinations

8:00  Video of Thomas Baden-Riess

9:00  Telegram Group

My Telegram Group at https://t.me/minimum_morality

Millennial Woes:

"In a video today, Thomas Baden-Riess says some things which could lead people to think that I intimidated him into silence about his disagreements with Greg Johnson. Perhaps this was accidental on his part. Either way, I want to clarify that I did not do this.

I have never said to anyone that they can't or shouldn't criticise friends of mine, including Greg. Criticise, disagree with, deconstruct their arguments, etc. - absolutely fine. But character assassination, personal attacks, slurs about their lifestyle... how can you expect me to keep promoting you if you do this kind of thing to my friends, who will then see me promoting you and inevitably feel betrayed by me?

This is why in-fighting is so toxic for a community: it forces people to take sides, making cooperation impossible between otherwise neutral parties. There's a reason why it is exactly what our movement's enemies try to artificially engineer, all the time. This is why I discourage it - not because I think friends of mine shouldn't be disagreed with, but because in-fighting is lethal to community cohesion and productivity.

It also isolates individuals. Thomas isolates himself with the way he attacks people. People won't want to work with you if you have made videos personally attacking them. People will think you are unhinged if you habitually make such videos against particular targets, and will avoid you like the plague. I told him this, repeatedly, but he refused to listen (much as he says Greg refuses to listen, ironically). In addition, people will cut ties with you if you have attacked their friends on a personal level, because, if you are prepared to endanger their friendships like this, why should they remain friends with you? Your behaviour shows disrespect, not only to your audience, and not only to your target, but also to mutual friends you share with him. Your behaviour demonstrates that your ego is more important to you than either the community at large or the wellbeing of your friends. If you feel compelled to engage in such behaviour, FFS, examine why.

As it happens, I agree with Thomas that Greg is wrong about COVID. But that doesn't mean I'm going to make a fool of myself by calling him a midwit, when he clearly isn't one, or by claiming that he can't think about things, when he clearly can, or by asserting that he isn't very intelligent, when he is probably the most intelligent person I know.

Somebody can be wrong - really wrong, even infuriatingly wrong - without being unintelligent. Thomas doesn't seem to realise this. He sees intelligence as the source of both intellectual integrity (he has frequently asserted that people he disagrees with - Keith Woods, Ed Dutton, Greg Johnson - lack intelligence, as if that is the only reason their thinking would differ from his) and moral integrity (he recently said that people only do evil because they lack intelligence). He over-values intelligence. Why? Because his own means so very much to him. Thus, in a way, he has to believe intelligence to be infallible. But it is not - as, in my opinion, both he and Greg demonstrate, with their respective errors of judgement."

12:00  Kissing and making up

15:00  Three-stage test of Truth, Logic and Morality

16:00  Greg Johnson

20:00  Unprincipled intelligent people

22:00  Principles of morality

23:00  To get to Ethno-nationalism, you have to go past Civic Nationalism.

24:00  Rules and hierarchy

26:00  Broad-based support for marriage and family values

28:00  Political capital

29:00  Political certainties

32:00  Conspiracy theorist

34:00  Deductive reasoning