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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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      Reading @bruces annual thing made me realize why I had an instinctive aversion to letter dot wiki. The mannered faux-genteel 18th-century republic-of-letters vibe is too jarring for me. The Well is 35 years old but feels fresher (both form/content) than this “Dear Joe” larping.

      2 replies 1 retweet 24 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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      It also drives home the point that the most interesting long-running conversations do NOT have “debate”, let alone “civil debate” as the thing being solved for. Makes me suspect modern conservatives are cargo cutting an Enlightenment discourse model that never was. Booorring.

      3 replies 2 retweets 28 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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      It’s partly being good at conversations as a medium of course. Sterling has been doing this for a long time and has a talent for keeping it “live”. Still, deliberately mimicking old media is asking for an acting dead vibe. I don’t know why products go that route.

      2 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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      I feel bad about randomly criticizing a product, but I guess it fits within my broader anti-waldenponding polemic (if it can be called that). While I’m all for living in escapist fantasy realities, something about this particular contemporary subgenre irks me.

      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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      If you’re highly conscious of the need to be civil, the presumption is that you have potential reason to be uncivil, but are being noble and stoic in service of a Higher Truth. I think this is bs. Good conversations are civil as a side effect of genuine mutual interest.

      9:29 PM - 14 Jan 2020
      • 2 Retweets
      • 8 Likes
      • sam_lhabitant Yef Christopher S. Rice, Ph.D. Jeffrey Coleman Paul Baumgart Sagar Dubey Lawrence of Dystopia |pneumatik|
      1 reply 2 retweets 8 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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          Worthwhile conversations are a barbell. Either the two parties share enough common ground and mutual curiosity that no explicit commitment to civility is necessary OR are openly hostile enough you need something like a courtroom due process for adversarial debate. Middle is dumb.

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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          One sign: when I’m actually in conversations where I have no worries about being uncivil, I feel free enough to troll, jeer, joke, bluntly and roughly disagree, use mild insults, get a bit mad, etc. It’s not ceremonial pageantry with polite forms masking shallow engagement.

          3 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          I suspect people who gravitate to these things of being based ancient statues in denial https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1216800623321997314?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1216800623321997314 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Not a good sign that I can actually parse this tweet https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1216390014176677888 …
          Show this thread
          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 14
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          The Well is like a historic building. Letter wiki is more like Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, but trying to pretend it’s actually Caesar’s Palace in Ancient Rome.

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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        6. End of conversation

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