We need a 2nd Enlightenment Age

EDIT: So many people seem to be thinking that this is a politically charged post where I'm targetting the so-called "woke". The truth is I'm not. I'm targeting the widespread anti-intellectualism and idiocy present in our society, from people of all political beliefs. On one side you have the "woke". On the other you have QAnon believers. Both are equally ridiculous and equally devastating. I don't fucking care what political view you have. As long as you're an idiot, I'm gonna criticize you. So enough with all the "libs are hypocrites" and "conservatives are bigots" nonsense. Plenty of hypocrites and bigots on both sides. Plenty of genuine and smart people on both sides. I want to get rid of hypocrites and idiots on both sides so we're left with genuine and smart people.

After nearly a millennium of being a collection of quasi-religious states, Europe in the 17th and 18th century went through a remarkable transformation that laid the groundwork for the incipient Industrial Revolution that allowed Europe to dominate the world for centuries. 

People gathered in coffee shops to discuss philosophy and current events. Noblemen with all the time in their hands became scientists and thinkers. New ideas on the role of the government developed. We call this the Enlightenment Age, when the entire continent started focusing on facts, logic, and critical thinking instead of relying dogma of the past.

Over the last 10 years, we've seen a remarkable and terrifying decline in people'e intellectual capability. Nuances are lost in discussion. Propaganda and ridiculous beliefs that are easily invalidated are absorbed into people's minds such that people consider them to be dogma. Ideologues, sycophants, and snake-oil salesmen are everywhere. Yet again, anti-intellectualism seems to rule.

Even corporations, pillars of this great system we call capitalism, are accepting some ridiculous and invalid beliefs dogmatically. They are shooting themselves in the foot, succumbing to overwhelming and toxic social pressure that promotes idiocy. Capitalism only works because the world consists of smart and hardworking people, who'll do heir best out of self-interest. If we somehow prevent this from happening through some form of social pressure, then capitalism as we know will likely fail.

In these trying times, I believe we need yet another boost of intellectualism back in to our lives and back in to the world. We need a 2nd Enlightenment Age. It's about time we actually fact check things before claiming things. We need to learn to think twice on any claims. We need to scrutinize our own ideas and views. Moreover, we need to convince others to do the same. "Faith" and "belief" are for things you can never ever be able to explain - like the existence of after-life (you'll never know until you die). Everything else is subject to critical thinking and logic.

Why does this matter to a finance forum? We as bunch of lofty high-earning professionals have lots to lose if we don't stop the world from becoming dumb. To put it simply, if everyone in the world is stupid, then what business can thrive? Without businesses thriving, then there's no need for financial services. Without the need for financial services, you're probably gonna lose your job. Worse, your country might become a shithole as we devolve into the New Dark Age.





 
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“The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling” - Thomas Sowell  

Woke is the new enlightened. Sadly, it is not something that can build a nation or take it into a new age of prosperity. There is a counter culture, so that’s keeping me hopeful. Maybe in time, the pendulum will swing the other way and we can bring critical thinking and logic back. 

 

Great quote.

But the "woke" is not the new "enlightened", they are blinded by their own valye system they accept so dogmatacially. Modern "progressives" are actually regressive.

And all the right-wing BS that came out as a response to the idiotic "woke" are the same. They are the exact opposite of being enlightenend.

 

Also spot on about the response of right wing. Ashamedly, I was a fan of some the personalities the movement inspired, just because they "wrecked" feminists and  socialist college students. lmao kind of ashamed to admit that. 

 

This "woke" ideology is morally and logically bankrupt, distinctly illiberal, and cancerous to Western civilization insofar as it explicitly rejects the Enlightenment ideals that it was founded upon. Whatever you want to call it - wokeness, applied critical theory (critical race theory being a primary example), cultural Marxism, postmodernism - it is an existential threat to the country and in turn the Western world (I mean this with zero hyperbole).

I really would implore you all to take a deep dive into this ideology and how it evolved (from its roots in 1960’s post-war Europe) to become the “woke” belief system we see today. Unfortunately this pseudo-intellectual nonsense was allowed to take hold in academia, where over the past few decades it has spread like a virus to the point where the humanities and social sciences are completely infected. Now it has begun to assail not only the hard sciences (mathematics, engineering, etc) but also the private sector (Sandia Labs is a particularly egregious example).

About a year ago I began to take a closer look and start to really try and understand what drives “wokeness” . . . it was kind of like in the movie The Matrix . . . I felt that something was rotten but couldn’t really put my finger on what exactly it was or why. Suffice it to say that I now have a solid grasp on the underlying belief system and its activist aims and am beyond alarmed. I believe it is imperative that liberals (in the classic sense) and conservatives put aside their political differences for the time being and form an alliance to purge this destructive ideology from our institutions and society.  

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay are two academics that have really been at the forefront in raising hackles about the situation we have found ourselves in, and I would encourage you to check out their website (https://newdiscourses.com/). They also have a book which was extremely illuminating.

"Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence." - Thomas Sowell
 

This. Absolutely agree, this modern movement of wokeness, is poison to our culture and to our society. I do believe the majority of people are not "woke" or as far left as it seems, but the minority that is in that spectrum, is very loud and they destroy whatever it is that don't like...even their own from time to time. There does seem to be a movement forming against both the far left and the far right. This is completely anecdotal, but a lot of people I've spoken to have views across the social/political spectrum, other are liberal or conservative but they are reasonable in their views and willing to comprise. Over the last few years you have the "IDW" the intellectual dark web forming, which has people that have severe disagreements over a multitude of issues, coming together against the far left and far right.

It seems to me these psychos on the fringes that have seemingly taken over, judge a person's character and his moral framework by what political views he holds and by the the his immutable characteristics, skin color, race, ethnicity, etc. It's also  taken over academia, so now you have this new generation coming up that judges the facts and truths of life based on how it makes them feel. I think it was Jordan Peterson who said something like, side A can enslave side B and then there's war or side B enslaves side A and then there's war. The only way to avoid war is to compromise. Starting a conversation is incredibly important it's the only way ideas to can get properly discussed and perhaps better ones can be formed. Hopefully, we can off the fringes and the people who don't pay attention or don't care about these things can start talking as well.

 

This is great. Thanks for the link as well.

It's funny how the "woke" disguises themselves as "liberals" and "progressives" when they are complete opposite of the two words. 

I thought liberals were supposed to be more open-minded, yet the "woke" is extremely close-minded. Progressives are supposed to promote social progress and equality of opportunity, yet the "woke" promotes reverse discrimination and wants to handicap us all. I mean when did this happen?

I remember a time when being a progressive means that you believe in a world that is color-blind (as in your ethnicity and race) and anyone hardworking can become successful. What happened to that definition? Using that definition, I'm the real progressive and I'm the real liberal, not the woke.

 

Exactly how is corporate capitalism and enlightenment incompatible? Care to elaborate?

I'd even go far as to claim that all modern business practices and strategies are the ultimate result of "enlightenment". Businesses are supposed to focus on profit, revenue, and what not. Ways to maximize them is through carefully studied and sometimes scientific methodologies. How would that have been possible without the all the intellectual progress made during the Enlightenment Age?

 

Didn't say it wasn't compatible.  Said I fear it may be somewhat incompatible.  We are more a world of corporate behemoths and monopolies every year.

With profit the number one motivator and community less of an influence, intellectualism is not valued.  TV news used to be a service, now it's a profit center for television.  This leads it to being more like entertainment.

Coporate power and profit influence of community and politcal leaders does not favor enlightenment either.  I don't see what will lead to your coffee shop and philosophy scenario.  Cutural and market forces are leading away from that.  One day, hopefully, something will systematically change...just don't know what that would be.

 

How do you propose this? I think education is totally incorrect right now. Most people spend way too much to learn way too little, squander away their time with dumb things, then get a diploma and search for a job to fuel their lifestyle choices that only exist so they can post it on their Instagram. 

I'm not sure how exactly to fix it myself, but I think approaching schooling to educate instead of a x.xx/4.00 scale, or simply a piece of paper that says you've done this thing for 4+ years, is a good way to make people think harder and more critically. I think people forgot how to have to discussions. Even in WSO, where most people are pretty like minded, how many times do people resort to name calling and not actually thinking about someone's response? This stems out into the broader society at large, since "I saw this on CNN!" and "Fox news said this!" is treated as a law of physics.

Even some aspects of physics aren't exact law... 

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 

I think we should start with "low hanging fruits".

1) We should make debate and basic logic as minimum requirements in K-12. Some countries like France has (or at least they did) this great debate culture that gets people to scrutinize thoughts of their own and others'. Ancient Athenians, who had more direct democratic system, debated on just about everything. Minds of people who grew up in such an environment and were very sharp. SAT prep and writing about some random historic fact you don't care about just doesn't cut it. We gotta start young. We gotta make kids comfortable with different views constructive debate while their minds are still malleable.

2) For us adults fortunate enough to be well grounded in constructive debate, we should try our best to let others know that fact checking and scrutinizing arguments is not only the right way to do things, but actually to their own benefit. We shouldn't go around forcing "reason" down people's throats or chastising people for making big logical flaws. Instead we should ease people into it. Somehow induce them to think from the other side, through good old fashioned human empathy. Most people possess the potential to be decent critical thinkers. It becomes much easier to observe thay potential, when you have formed some kind of connection with them. Admittedy, few are just stubborn and will call you "stupid or autistic" just because you disagree with them. But for the most part, great majority of people just haven't been able to unlock their intellectual capability.

 

Point 1 reminds me of

for trying to show a student that 2 + 2 = 4. It's satire, but the premise isn't that far off from a lot of reality these days. I agree though, I think people should accept they're wrong sometimes. I try to be very conscious of admitting I may be wrong, but that's part of the process. I'm not perfect at it etiher, it's a skill to be practiced and honed in. I think history is taught all wrong too, the only reason history is important is to understand the context behind it. 

Point 2 is a solid take. It's hard to convey ideas to people who just have no basis with it. There's a lot of people who aren't actually dumb, they're just uneducated in a topic (like critical thinking). Hell, I'm uneducated completely on a lot of things- you could school me on stats and Python I bet, most people on this forum have way better experience with capital markets than me, there's too much to master everything. I think more people need to recognize they aren't experts, and watching a ton of news doesn't make someone an expert on viruses, police tactics, etc (on both sides). 

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 
Controversial

You guys all talk about the negatives of the “woke” culture as if those on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum don’t blatantly disregard scientific fact and mindlessly worship an absolute clown of a president.

Agree that there are issues with the “woke” culture but let’s be real about who exactly the anti-intellectuals are today.

 

Well, I think claiming that a certain side is anti-intellectual is part of the problem. You see this a lot with environmentalism today.  If you don't believe in my policy prescriptions, then you're anti-science.

What about you have your ideas and I have mine and let the best idea win? Woke culture doesn't even want an intellectual discussion. If you are against their ideas, then you are racist, against science, hate poor people, and are anti-intellectual. 

If you are not willing to discuss ideas with others and only want to shut them down or cancel them, it's pretty hard to claim the intellectual high ground.

 

Cancel culture and PC idiots are destroying America. It's already ridiculous that the blacks are rioting in the streets and killing Americans over nonsense, and Joe Biden will abolish the Bible if he's elected, but mainstream media isn't even covering it. The economy is the best it's ever been under Trump, but Gen Z is too busy complaining about their student loans and too stupid to notice that this quality of life is higher than ever.

 

Joe Biden will abolish the Bible if he's elected

I'm sorry what? WTF are you talking about?

You're most likely a Gen Z kid and you sound just as dumb as the other Gen Z kids you're criticizing. As far as I'm concerned, you're another one of these anti-intellectuals.

 

Cancel culture and PC idiots are destroying America. It's already ridiculous that the blacks are rioting in the streets and killing Americans over nonsense, and Joe Biden will abolish the Bible if he's elected, but mainstream media isn't even covering it. The economy is the best it's ever been under Trump, but Gen Z is too busy complaining about their student loans and too stupid to notice that this quality of life is higher than ever.

Congratulations, you may have just written the stupidest thing this forum has ever seen (which is definitely not an easy feat) 

 

Without businesses thriving, then there's no need for financial services. 

False. Financial services are the backbone and brains. Even when the body weakens, they stay intact. Lawyers usually get paid as well.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

I'll throw some other perspectives in here to balance out the groupthink a little bit, I hope. For one, I detect a bit of "free market" ultra liberalism thinking, where the belief is probably held that markets designed the entire world that we live in today, and science and reason back that all of development is due to low taxes and low government intervention. But in reality, all of modern society, from the industrial revolution onwards, began due to statism. Statism wasn't socialism by any stretch, as it favored capital, but the point is still important.

In 2003, president Bush decided to aggressively pursue the overthrow of the Hussein government that led to a protracted war in the Middle East we probably should've avoided altogether on the false basis of WMDs. When Americans came to, when the dust had settled and America's delirium had worn off, they realized what happened and got pissed at the administration; Bush became the bad guy not long after. Right in the midst of that, 2008 occurred, which brought about the financial crisis that led to The Great Recession and peak unemployment rates of 10%. On the back of that, many on Main Street suffered while the banks that caused the crisis got bailouts and their operators got big pay packages.

Going back to the industrial revolution, what's interesting to me is that it was only with laws that restricted land use that we began to develop our modern world--facets such as the right to private property, which also came about with the right to new personal freedoms such as the right to free speech--but it was also a very big state intervention in favor of capitalism. It was not too unlike the deregulation and bailouts around the financial crisis, at a time when the public was still generally angry with what our nation's leaders had done in the Bush administration.

Here's the thing, during the beginning of the industrial revolution, that government push led to workers facing even greater disparity, which pushed them to work in highly unfavorable conditions in industrial factories until they were able to organize and push the new and increasingly powerful government to help solve them with their problems by establishing protections for worker's rights. Capital pulled a new centralized entity together that we now know as government, and workers pushed back to defend their own rights as workers.

Today, workers are essentially doing the same thing; they are pushing back at the pull of capital's demands for government intervention. The reality is, this is a healthy part of the democratic process. I think the biggest shortfall that we do have is a leader that isn't aware role of his office. Maybe all most recent presidents would struggle with these issues. Nonetheless, I don't think it's extremely important that things like cancel culture be paid that much attention to. There are always going to be fringe waves on the margins, and it will hopefully go away. What is important is that those who have the greatest power show more empathy, as well as the ability to be open minded enough to engage better with each other.

I was a supporter of BLM and the protests. What shocked me was that supposedly intelligent people on Twitter were engaging in encouraging looting, which I thought was extremely unfortunate. Looting/rioting is unhealthy in society, but it definitely isn't something that should be pre-planned by people sitting at home, encouraging other probably poorer/less fortunate people to put their lives at risk or their personal freedom, strictly to further their own selfish socialist agendas.

I guess I agree that there is a lack of nuance in society. I think that those with the loudest voices are probably not always the most informed voices. Everyone has a right to freely express themselves, but there used to be a time where forums for publicly speaking out needed to be arranged and listeners needed to be organized. Now, neither one of those is true, and I think that allows more people to have a platform, which can be both good and bad. It seems like one thing we need for sure is to just get past this new excitement around anyone getting to have a platform to say anything. That would help stop people from inciting fear and anger with no proposed solutions.

 

Great read. 

I wasn't trying to, but I guess I might have imbued some classical liberal views here and there.

As for the social media, I think it's a crisis. A very big one. The core problem with social media is that it allows people to express their views without proper moderation, moderation by people who know enough about what they are talking about or by people who are willing to question things.

Banning social media won't do any good, nor does quitting it. I think the solution is to have more of these qualified moderators be present at every corner of the social media. But no single entity can achieve that, it has to be a coalition of variety of people who are willing to take the lead

 
Milton Friedchickenman

Great read. 

The core problem with social media is that it allows people to express their views without proper moderation, moderation by people who know enough about what they are talking about or by people who are willing to question things.

Banning social media won't do any good, nor does quitting it. I think the solution is to have more of these qualified moderators be present at every corner of the social media. But no single entity can achieve that, it has to be a coalition of variety of people who are willing to take the lead

You hit the nail on the head. So many more people have a platform to add in their views, which are often based on emotion, and somewhat understandably so. But the problem is that reason is important in setting prevailing, mainstream discourse, because that is where action forms. The fringes leaking over into the mainstream is what's problematic. Interesting, Twitter and FB have started to move towards moderating their platforms, and it's led to a ton of backlash on the right.

 

I was a supporter of BLM and the protests. What shocked me was that supposedly intelligent people on Twitter were engaging in encouraging looting, which I thought was extremely unfortunate.

I think your first mistake was being on twitter in the first place.  Expecting a nuanced take on anything from that cesspit is embarrassingly naive.

Today, workers are essentially doing the same thing; they are pushing back at the pull of capital's demands for government intervention. 

Thank you.  100% agree.  And for what it's worth, even this doesn't cover it - what they're doing is pushing for the same benevolent government intervention that capital gets.  Favorable tax treatment.  Bailouts at the first sign of trouble.  An ability to disclaim personal responsibility for any problem that might possibly be considered bigger than themselves.  The arguments were the same in the Gilded Age.  If high tariffs are going to be in place to protect business, then why the hell shouldn't workers be guaranteed a minimum wage or maximum work week as well?

This is a point I try to hammer home often, but at the end of the day there are a lot more workers than managers.  Constantly squeezing every last cent of productivity out of the working class, for the sole benefit of capital, inevitably leads to backlash.  And history shows us that backlash is usually proportional.  So give up an inch now to save a foot later.  Most conservatives I meet, especially on this site, are completely incapable of recognizing this.

 

Both tariffs and minimum wage are bad. 

Minimum wage caps employment + incurs more cost of businesses. Especially if your economy depends on bunch of small businesses, minimum wage can be devastating.

It'd be more sensible to replace minimum wage with minimum income (aka basic income, negative income tax), where the money comes from tax revenue. This is a more direct redistribution of wealth and would make sure everyone has money. Of course, to encourage employment, we should provide higher a "minimum" income to those who are employed but are making below a certain level.

 

In the industrial revolution, workers were treated like shit.

But, what could possibly lead them to work in coal mines and factories for those evil exploitative industrialists?

Answer: because those awful jobs were actually better than any of their other options. And better than whatever they did prior to that era

(Those people, out of their own free will, decided to change their occupations. The 19th century industrial jobs may seem horrific in retrospect, but don’t make the mistake of thinking things got worse than they were before.)

Favorite quote commonly cited among economists: “bigger problem with Asian sweatshops is there’s not enough of them”

 

Our 2nd Enlightenment age will be singularity. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

"Four polls of AI researchers, conducted in 2012 and 2013 by Nick Bostrom and Vincent C. Müller, suggested a median probability estimate of 50% that artificial general intelligence (AGI) would be developed by 2040–2050."

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

As someone who actually works with AI technology and researches it, I think this singularity concept is bogus. For one, most "experts" talking about AI and singularity are not even AI experts. Often, they are just bunch of philosophers who don't really understand how statistics work. Some are luminaries from other fields, but again, they usually don't know a single thing about machine learning.

The biggest challenges with developing AGI follows - 1) teaching an agent how to pick what task it should learn, 2) teaching an agent to understand what kind of approach to take when learning to perform a certain task, and 3) teaching an agent to extract useful information in a creative way to learn a certain task.

As of now, humans do all 3 for AI systems. For example, 1) a person decides he wants to build an AI that recognizes cats from dogs, 2) a person decides which algorithms to use, and 3) a person decides what data features to use. 

There are tons of problems just with 1) - how do you mathematically define what a task is?; how do you prioritize one task over another?; how do you even identify different tasks?; etc... Same thing for 2) - how does an AGI agent know what algorithms exist?; can an AGI agent learn to develop new algorithms?; how does it even know if a task requires a regression, classification, reinforcement learning, or clustering algorithm?; how does it know what experiments to run?; etc... - and 3) - where does the agent extract data from?; how does it know to format is correctly?; how does it understand the nuances of the raw data to extract useful features out of it; etc... These are all questions that data scientists must answer. In order to develop AGI, you have to automate every single aspect of this. It's going to take a while. 

 

In the past 15 years or so, I've seen a very frigthening evolution of political discourse online. This is what politics used to be like online:

Person A: Green is my favorite color.

Person B: I don't like green but I'm ok with Lime. My favorite color is red.

Person A: Well, I disagree on red, but we at least have some common ground on a Lime color. It's sort of like green, but I still think red is dumb.

Today....

Person A: Green is my favorite color.

Person B: I don't like green but I'm ok with Lime. My favorite color is red.

Person A: You are a nazi and a racist.

 

I think the culture of social media can be partially to blame. Social media is good in that it provides an avenue of communication, expression and connection with people you'd otherwise have difficulty getting in touch with through other means. It can also be good in providing education, like YouTube allows you to be able to pretty much watch videos on any topic, whether it be on some complicated math concept that could help "tutor" you in that area while there are other videos that are just plain stupid but racks up millions of views. However, other aspects of social media promote lifestyles or personalities that are not realistic, yet it can get a strong cult-like following of people because of what it allows its audience to envision for themselves. It can be a source of leisure entertainment or serve purpose towards hobbies, but it can dumb-down people when inaccuracies or polarizing opinions are promoted by popular social media icons who really have no grounds to do so or enough knowledge to validate themselves.

The younger generations are dealing with it more and more everyday with all sorts of apps that let you be connected to all sorts of things. I start to wonder does this distract them a lot from what they could accomplish, or are they able to remove themselves from it when needed, not only to build a capacity to learn, but for better mental health?

I still use some forms of social media, but i separate and limit myself from it. When I do, i feel I'm in a better mental head space, more capable of further developing critical thinking skills and understanding different ideas and views.

 

Nope, we don't need a new Enlightenment. We need a new Great Awakening. 

The Enlightenment ideals stand the test of time. We will never achieve them fully until there is a religious awakening where people quit making politics their religion, where people understand why racism is evil (racism is an affront to the dignity of man, which is made in the image of God (hat tip: Michael Knowles)), where people can learn to forgive and stop constantly judging others for their thoughts or even behaviors. As we've become more secular, our new religion has become demonstrably evil and it's tearing our society apart (racism, anger, un-forgiveness, judgmental attitudes, materialism, etc. have always been a yoke around the neck of man, but now these attitudes are praised as righteous and moral attitudes in a new wave of secular religion, which is evil). 

Array
 

Yeah, I agree with a lot of this.  These days people seem to believe that their political beliefs determine whether they are a good person or not rather than their actions.

If you believe in universal healthcare, then you're a good person.  If not, you're evil and bad.  It doesn't matter whether you personally have ever paid for someone's medical bills. 

In the new morality, belief in a certain political side is evidence enough of your righteousness.  As an individual, it doesn't matter if you don't do anything for anyone.

 

I don't mean this in an aggressive way but aren't you the guy that thinks gay people are going to hell and that it's righteous for that to happen? Seems pretty unforgiving and judgemental to me? Sorry if I mixed you up with someone else. 

I've never said that and it's not Biblical that behavior is linked to your salvation. It's diametrically opposed to what the Bible says about salvation. (FWIW, my "2nd" best friend is gay). 

Array
 

I don't think that you're talking about me, but I've seen this same logic lead a lot of people down a strange rabbit hole. The logic seems to be this: 1% of the Bible seems wrong; so the whole thing must wrong. You're right...the very few sections on homosexuality seem pretty unforgiving and judgemental....but does that completely invalidate the entire New Testament which is all about being forgiving and non-judgemental and loving others?

If you take the Bible and weigh the good life lessons against the things that don't make sense to us anymore (like verses on homosexuality), in my opinion, the scale is weighted very heavily on the good. It's hard to read the New Testament and come away thinking that this is some cruel and mean religion.

 

Side note. Giving my example above, you also have to understand where anti-gay Christians are coming from.

On the one hand, you have people who say the Bible is wrong about 1% of things; so it must be wrong about the other 99% of things.

On the other hand, you have people who say the Bible seems good on ~99% of things in life, so I'm ok believing in the other 1% which I don't really agree with it, but I'm going on faith given than the rest of the book is really wise and insightful.  

Maybe, my percentages are a little skewed but you get what I'm saying.

 

You are going to get woke domination, with pockets of resistance somewhere and a society permanently hyperventilating and in a state of decay. Every single day scores a victory for the woke. Yesterday California voted to decriminalize ''sex with willing same-sex minors''. When decades ago, Christians warned that the LGBT movement would eventually boil down to that, I laughed. 

We are also past the point of discussion about this. Arguing against gets you defamed by the media, socially and economically erased. I personally laugh at the idea that if somehow we removed Trump and voted Biden, the woke would go back to their cave. When did appeasing extremists ever work? One interesting dynamic of the past 4 years is that ''moderate'' conservatives have successfully marginalized the ''alt right'' with the aid of the woke, while indeed the woke have completely taken over the left. People might point out that the IDW are moderate liberals. Sure, they never score a single success. They couldn't censor Joe Rogan? They bought him and then censored his content. The irony here is that the only ones who were able to beat the woke were on the extreme right, because they fought back with the same intensity that moderates lack. Moderates compromise and by compromising with the extreme, you are just slowly moving towards their position. They never move. 

A good symbolic example is how recently they removed a statue of Columbus to replace it with that of a transgender woman. A dude that permanently connected two continents, unlike anyone before, replaced by a dude that ... put a wig on his head. Congratulations. 

Then again, for a society that celebrates Miley Cyrus masturbating on stage, that's a pretty reasonable trajectory. The woke will succeed in creating Orwell's 1984 society. Everything will be tighty controlled, history constantly rewritten, your rights erased. Those who step out of the line will end up in reeducation camps. 

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

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Monkey see. Monkey Doo [Doo].
 

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Beatae fugit iure at rem aut. Cupiditate doloribus mollitia veniam quae. Quidem aut suscipit omnis qui pariatur animi qui. Earum et officiis dolorem tempore sit reprehenderit voluptas. Laudantium pariatur repellat cum ad ipsam doloribus et voluptatibus. Placeat necessitatibus consequatur impedit minima. Fugit dolores beatae provident excepturi.

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

Explicabo ut nihil aut. Doloremque ea libero est et. Qui hic nisi a nam fuga sequi. Reiciendis quaerat ut ut inventore reprehenderit eum totam. Placeat nobis voluptatem architecto illum. Ad similique et illo qui.

Autem odio voluptate ut recusandae officiis. Explicabo accusamus delectus quibusdam dolor accusantium aut aliquam. Magni totam sit alias aut consequatur. Id eligendi eaque totam est aspernatur. Maiores pariatur tenetur quo et velit.

Ut sint qui eaque praesentium fuga repellat ut dolor. Repudiandae natus et qui voluptatibus placeat blanditiis id. Sequi expedita omnis sint quis. Et aut est et officia sed quaerat. Tempore iure consectetur minima qui.

Monkey see. Monkey Doo [Doo].

Career Advancement Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Jefferies & Company 02 99.4%
  • Goldman Sachs 19 98.8%
  • Harris Williams & Co. (++) 98.3%
  • Lazard Freres 02 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 03 97.1%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Harris Williams & Co. 18 99.4%
  • JPMorgan Chase 10 98.8%
  • Lazard Freres 05 98.3%
  • Morgan Stanley 07 97.7%
  • William Blair 03 97.1%

Professional Growth Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

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  • Jefferies & Company 02 98.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 17 98.3%
  • Moelis & Company 07 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 05 97.1%

Total Avg Compensation

March 2024 Investment Banking

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  • Vice President (19) $385
  • Associates (86) $261
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (13) $181
  • Intern/Summer Associate (33) $170
  • 2nd Year Analyst (66) $168
  • 1st Year Analyst (202) $159
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (144) $101
notes
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