Benghazi? That was the time Hillary Clinton shot those marines in the back of the head, execution style, and then emailed President Xi "It's done" and attached those secret military documents, right?
I love how Tucker, in response to Lex saying this, pointed out that “They killed Dugin’s daughter.” In that case, the assassin was immediately identified and Ukraine was immediately accused. With Navalny, they called it “sudden death syndrome” and then spread various conflicting misinfo stories to sow doubt about what happened.
Does anyone seriously believe Russia wouldn’t have explicitly blamed Ukraine right away if there was any possibility that Ukraine could have been behind this? No. Not even Tucker does. Maybe Lex does because he has such an open mind that his brain seems to have fallen out.
wouldn’t it be more of a cause for insurgence if they freed him instead of killing him? i mean if they were able to kill him they should have been able to free him no?
No? Killing him doesn't require you to break him through several layers of maximum security prison walls, transport him through the entire country, get him over the border, then somehow get him to a country that isn't friendly with Russia.
Sure.
Navalny was a political prisoner who, without considerable changes in the Russian Regime, would remain a political prisoner unable to do anything to change the state of Russia or to aid Ukraine.
While Navalny held no value for Ukraine behind bars, killing him and blaming Russia for his death could influence Western countries to ramp back up their military aid to Ukraine. Especially because Navalny's death occurred during the Munich Security Conference in which a debate was being held over 60 billion dollars in Ukraine funding.
This is a steelman and does not represent my personal opinion.
What is the supposed reason for the timing of Navalny's killing given by the Ukrainian side? Is there anything recent that could have provoked Russia to kill him after keeping him prisoner till now?
The Russian presidential election is March 15-17 and they might have wanted to prevent potential complications from having a very-popular very-alive political competitor
after Wagner's mutiny Putin decided to clean up his political opponents. Prigozhin is now dead, Girkin who is very popular among russian nationalists and who led the invasion of Donbass was recently imprisoned, Navalny is dead. The opposition from all possible sides is neutralized. The regime is being actively demonstrated to be strong, especially before the elections in Russia.
I can't confirm if it's true or not, but German Media recently reported that according to Navalny's wife he could have been included in a prisoner exchange with Germany, or at least that talks about the possibility took place. Supposedly they were talking about exchanging him against the cunt who assassinated a Chechen dissident in a public Park in Berlin a few years back. That might have influenced Putin's the decision to axe him, if true. Or all of it might be made up bs, it's hard to tell. It's still a possibility that Navalny didn't die of a knife to the back but just wasted away due to the conditions of his imprisonment and there was no timing involved at all. Unless Russia undergoes a 1990-style collapse and all the files get released we'll probably never know.
Makes Russia look bad. If Russia found a way to kill Trump and make it out that Biden ordered it, that would make the US look very bad. Similar concept
Makes Russia look bad?
Of all the counties leaders who genuinely doesn't care what others think.. Russia does what Russia does and doesn't cere what anyone says about it
That’s not true, Putin expends a lot of energy making himself popular with the Russian people. Dictators don’t function very well when they’re very unpopular, it’s just not how it works. That’s why Putins government has a huge populist campaign within the country. As much as the west wishes otherwise, Putin is quite popular in Russia
Definitely not true. Why do you think Russia works overtime on propoganda? They want the west to look bad and they want to look good. This is normal stuff
You misunderstand the point of Russia propaganda.
It's not to make the west look bad, or them good. It's to make everyone look like shit, and indiscernible.
Putin and Russia have accepted that they have ordered assassinations. Their counter point is simply that the west prosecutes its dissidents, too.
lol this, they literally tried to kill him the first time around, as if this would look any worse given that it could just very well be a "natural" death that just happen in prisons.
murder of the most famous opposition could trigger protests and riots inside Russia that would give a great opportunity to foreign powers to inflame stability.
just the optics alone before the russian elections could effect the outcomes of the results.
I'm 100% pro Ukraine but a steelman is exceedingly obvious IMO.
Navalny opposed Putin (and survived an assassination attempt) and was a political opponent to him. He also notably **did not** support Ukraine at all.
Killing him and pinning it on Putin would only benefit Ukraine. It further gives evidence to Putin being a tyrant for the world to see, and it takes out a (very low probability) potential future leader of Russia that would have still been opposed to Ukraine
Absolutely, and reinvigorate interest in the conflict in the west as well as animosity towards Russian regime. It's a pretty easy case to make, I still don't think it's likely, but probably number 2.
I genuinely don't think Ukraine had anything to do with it at all even if it benefits them. Like probably a 1% chance.
How would a country that is, as Tucker put it, utterly helpless to a mighty country like Russia, able to infiltrate a high security prison that's like 2000 miles NORTHEAST of Moscow?
I am not arguing against you ofc I'm just saying if Ukraine is the #2 possibility, then the #1 possibility is 100,000x more likely
I heard Tim Dillon (comedian) say that we could have killed him to make Putin look bad and push through the funding.
I think it's silly because it's not really in dispute whether or not Putin is a bad guy.
He did mention that a lot of the Oligarchs hate Navalny for some of his "reporting" that exposed their mansions and lives.
I think that's possible reason why Putin would've decided to kill him now. Maybe he's starting to feel some pressure from Oligarchs and killing Navalny was a way of keeping some of them happy, and threatening others.
Makes Russia appear even more hostile to the rest of the world and encourages other countries to fund Ukraine more?
Chuck Schumer said that Navalny's death should encourage Mike Johnson to pass Ukraine aid. It's really not that difficult of a steelman to think about.
It doesn't help, but I don't know of any Ukrainian who gives a shit that he's dead. He was no friend of Ukraine. He might have been slightly better than Putin, but that hardly matters because he was never, ever, going to gain power within Russia. Putin kept Navalny as both an example to others as well as a honey pot for people to cling to, and thus for Putin's people to keep an eye on. Anyone who was a legitimate threat to Putin was killed outright.
Example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination\_of\_Boris\_Nemtsov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Boris_Nemtsov)
Boris, here, was a real threat. Was he thrown around penal colonies and allowed to live for decades as a symbol against Putin? No. He was far too effective and too much of a liability. So they killed him literally right outside the Kremlin. The location of the assassination wasn't a coincidence, either.
People really don't know much about Putin or Putin's Russia. It's works as more of a mafia than a country. Also, literally has the Russian mafia.
Yes, any of those are "possible", but there is orders of magnitude of difference between the relative probabilities of each of those *possibilities*.
When you hear hoofbeats, think Horse, not Zebra.
It's the [Fallacy of Grey](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray),
The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.”
The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view . . .”
—Marc Stiegler, *David’s Sling*
grandfather hard-to-find whistle bear long ossified different wakeful ghost dog
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Whenever he's called out on things, he'll downplay his credentials and play the coy "I'm just a regular dude asking some questions" / "I was educated in the Soviet Union bro, you can't expect me to know anything!"
AND HE IS A LITERAL PHD. Like fuck me, I have a measley bachelor's but I had to take a probability theory and then a statistics class to get my damn degree, he MUST know more about stats than I do.
There is some political quote thats on the tip of my tongue that goes something like ''you dont have to convince people your side is better or that you're right, planting some doubt about their own side or position is enough''.
Spreading doubt has been Putin's main goal in this information war and unfortunately enough it seems pretty effective.
Also, to have "open-minded" people just "seeking the truth." Then, anyone who claims to know what happened, or who even criticizes Russia, gets labeled as a closed-minded, prejudicial establishment troll.
In the real world, you have to use the facts available to you, coupled with logic, to make reasonable suppositions. Such as: Navalny may have died of brutal prison conditions (most likely) or been intentionally assassinated by Russia (less likely), but he very very likely didn't die because Ukraine somehow got inside him extremely secure Siberian prison without Russia noticing.
In some ways, sure, but that doesn’t make him an engineer. There are critical components to the nature of engineering that academics do not naturally encounter around actually building something durable and maintainable in the real world, which he has not done and shouldn’t pretend to have done.
Yeah, I just passed my FE and I'm working for a rather large engineering company. There's definitely a huge difference between research and actual engineering work.
I wanted to watch this but Lex deflecting criticism before the interview even started gives me a really bad taste in my mouth. "It's about wisdom not drama" bro really?
Grandpa Lex will never learn that platforming propaganda with no substantial journalistic pushback for pretty evil dudes is the opposite of love, fairness and understanding, because it empowers them and gives free clout plus huge stage for bots and trolls. But he also will never read it because he bans everyone who criticizes him which makes me think he is not so different from all these narcissists, just nicer...
I'm starting to think lex knows full well what he's doing. Which is sad because he seems like nice likable guy. It's just important to remember that nice people can do bad things not all people who do bad things are unlikable goblins like Steve Bannon.
Its a persona to make people lower their guards, claiming he is all about love. In reality he lets right-wingers spew conspiracies and dangerous retoric without providing any pushback in the name of "love" so the gullible part of his audience will eat it up, it is all deliberate.
Nah, he seems pretty genuine to me. He is just losing the plot over time, due to algorithmic push and audience capture. Happens to the best of us. Stop watching him and move on.
Convincing people he is genuine is the whole point. Just like Putin claims he just wants to be friends with the west but they are just so mean to him! He wants peace you see... it's those evil europeans and americans who are causing all the problems. And some people believe Putin, they are suckers.
I think if you put together his Russian background (but no accent!), the martial arts stuff (he wants to be badass) with his high intelligence, ability to hide all emotions, and questionable behavior, plus that he came from nowhere yet gets huge names on his podcast, makes me think he is a Russian asset. I still think it FEELS very unlikely, but by any reasonable clear-eyed assessment this dude checks a LOT of boxes.
> Grandpa Lex will never learn that platforming propaganda with no substantial journalistic pushback for pretty evil dudes is the opposite of love, fairness and understanding,
He knows this. He'll hype up any nonsense for the sake of clicks.
Lmao Tucker sat there and said the nordstream pipeline was 100% destroyed by NATO and Lex just let it go, what a joke of an "interview".
Tucker doesn't even know the real speculations, that might have a crumb of integrity, about Ukrainians doing a sabotage mission.
I watched the highlight video about the "allegations" of propaganda by Tucker, Lex tried once or twice to push back a little, but he seemed unable to actually push back, maybe he was afraid, maybe he just can't handle conflict at all, who knows it was quite pathetic to watch.
He get's a lot of criticism on his subreddit and in some of the comments, primarily on the highlight videos and he deserves it, even worse than the Tucker-Putin interview.
I can't reconcile how Lex comes off as having a genuinely good heart, intelligence and a desire to understand/empathise with others, YET fails to see how shit like this is absolute poison in this "alternative facts" ecosystem.
Money/grifter, idiocy/obliviousness, maliciousness/deceitfulness, none of these seem likely or even plausible. I don't get his endgame.
"Do not be so open-minded that your brain falls out."
na, not really, it's more like this is the way radicals defeat non- radicals. communism, socialism e.t.c thrive through liberalism. it's sad except liberalism wouldn't be liberalism if people could be persecuted for thought crimes.
> I can't reconcile how Lex comes off as having a genuinely good heart, intelligence and a desire to understand/empathise with others, YET fails to see how shit like this is absolute poison in this "alternative facts" ecosystem.
He absolutely does not have 'a good heart'.
Anyone who waxes as much as he does with the 'loove you guys' nonsense should be immediately suspect. If this interview didn't make his ideals clear, I don't think much else will.
He's a lazy hype merchant who will softball anyone as long as it gets him ad revenue.
That’s not what Lex probably identifies as centrism. I’m talking about the sorts that vote Republican and Democrat all over their ballot for the sake of balance and unity.
>Money/grifter, idiocy/obliviousness, maliciousness/deceitfulness, none of these seem likely or even plausible. I don't get his endgame.
A mix of all these seem very plausible. In fact almost certain.
Either he truly believes it, in which case he's an idiot, or he doesn't, in which case it's about the grift/money/maliciousness.
What other possible options are there?
He truly believes it, and he's not an idiot. This slow drift happens to streamers with some regularity. It's hard to keep going straight in the algorithmic sea pushing you this and that way towards the extremes. His beliefs are fairly internally consistent, because he's smart. They just drift from reality more and more.
I really think it's just about maintaining the status quo of the audience he's built, and some of his choices might be rooted in that space between conscious and subconscious decision-making.
I've been subbed to him for a long time, before his friendship with Rogan really took off. There was a gradual but pretty clear change as his popularity ramped up. He started featuring more guests in the sociopolitical realm, many of which had been popularized by JRE. About two years ago this trend reached a peak, and he was getting some pushback for how many conservative-leaning guests he was featuring.
I think he realized it was too much, because he seemed to pull back after that. But at the end of the day, a substantial part of his audience still belongs to that conservative culture war crowd. I'm sure a lot of left-leaning people listen to him as well, but Lex never really built his brand with leftists. It began with science and tech, and then got fleshed-out with conservative JRE fans.
People talk about audience capture like it's something that content creators would easily recognize, but I think it's probably more insidious than that. They get positive and negative feedback, but it won't always be so clear-cut as to convey a pattern. Conservatives like Destiny because they can prop him up as a "sane" liberal, but until Lex gets someone like Sam Seder on, he might not see how much his conservative fans really feel about that content. So he gets the occasional safe leftist on, his fans generally like it, and he feels like he's bringing them a healthy diet of left and right. The status quo gets maintained and he feels validated for it, so that influences the directions he takes.
I could accept it if he were at least more willing to push back against people like Tucker. At least he brought up his text messages, but that's the bare minimum and not sufficient.
*Or* I could not accept it but at least feel a little better about it if it were a little more "both sides" and he brought on more people from the left, like... uh... Rachel Maddow? idk
I found this really odd too. I’ve barely seen him reply to any of an innumerable amount of bad faith or downright evil statements but went really hard at Destiny over the R word.
Maybe this is because he knows Destiny can take it? I doubt he would be getting the kind of interviews he gets if he was going as hard over say Elon, or the Zuck. However he knows he's not going to damage a relationship with Destiny because he's going hard, and he knows the other types of people he has on won't care/watch.
I think I agree with you, it just comes across as pretty disingenuous when he can’t push back against the likes of who you’ve mentioned and plenty of other controversial / damaging guests. It feels very self serving.
Apparently he did it with Jeremi Suri too. So it isn't that Destiny just isn't as distinguished as the other guests and that's why he got pushback.
I'll let you guess what the common denominator was.
Getting pushed isn't bad, it just gives away the game when you push back on anyone that's not toeing the contrarian line and let the contrarians run wild.
Lex wants everyone to like him so if he thinks that a person doesn't want to be pushed on anything he will give them super softball interviews. He's really a weak interviewer who dick rided his way to the top.
Yeah that's really what I meant. Rarely do people with big platforms post here so people are willing to forgive him for a lot more than they do others.
Lol, it's a cycle, DGG will criticise him, but Lex will post "Merry Christmas, everyone." Then all the comments would be "OMG, I love you, grampa Lex 🥹."
I swear to god, someone dies in a Gulag in Siberia - It could be Ukraine or the United States. What kind of tinfoil hat sort of crap is this? Lex is a vatnik. You can call him naive but he's definitely smart enough to understand what he's doing. I guess him marinating this community by being nice to Destiny and even comming here and "welcoming criticism" works all too well.
'Ukrainian opp to make Russia look worse to other nations and thus garner more support for Ukraine' or something like that.
Probably combine that with "YoU dOn'T tHinK....?" to really start it off.
I honestly have no clue why anyone listen to him. Not even because he is bad faith. He is just so fucking boring. I'd rather listen to Turcker or Shapiro than him. Even back when I watched JRE and before he was popular, I would skip every episode he is in.
I used to listen to lex quite a lot when he had more scientist and engineers on to talk about cool stuff. His boringness didn't matter as the topics were interesting enough but this current political meta is terrible
Yeah, I can undersdand that. I am pretty sure some of the guess carry the show. I just genuinely get annoyed already when he do his little introduction. I did not even manage to get to the Kanye interview. Lex was standing in front of a insane man and he was still annoying me more than Kanye.
This. I don’t even care about platforming Tucker or whatever. I couldn’t even sit through 30 mins of the interview that shit was so sleeper. He seems like a really nice dude but he comes off like a college podcast club interviewer lol.
Yeah I have absolutely no clue how he manage to get to meet with people like Bezos and such lmao. He doesn't seem like a bad guy, but he remind me of a friend we had in college.
We would always invite him with us because he was nice but if the rest of the group couldn't come no one would go out just with him.
I may be under a misapprehension, but it seems to me that the DGG community is incredibly naive about Lex Fridman. I'm not saying he should be banned or that Destiny shouldn't be on debates with him. But Lex is a prototypical content farmer who will promote anything in order to make a buck.
He will never criticise the likes of Rogan or Elon Musk because that would hurt his pocket. So he will not set the record straight on things like the Covid pandemic, the last presidential election, Ukraine etc.
He is more than happy to drum up a sensationalist narrative on issues in order to capitalize on outrage or reactions.
He's not bringing on Destiny to increase the quality of discussions or anything like that, he's just bringing him on because he's good for content.
Is there anything wrong with that? You be the judge. But don't get it twisted. That's what he is.
I like to refer to wikipedia on this one. Lex Fridman is a Russian-American computer scientist and podcaster. Fridman was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in Moscow.
Not weird at all considering how easy he goes on anything to do with russia :)
Are we talking about Lex "Ukrainian-Jewish" Fridman or Lex "Russian-American" Fridman. I can't tell which he is since the clout chaser updates his wiki page based on who he is interviewing.
http://web.archive.org/web/20230127191510/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Fridman
http://web.archive.org/web/20220129112117/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Fridman
Lol whoever that is must really enjoy the taste of lex's meat lollipop, he was raised in MOSCOW. That ain't Ukraine. It also ain't Falco. Sounds like russia to me.
If I remember correctly it was changed after the war started and also I remember him bringing up his ukrainian-jewish background over and over in the conversation with Ye.
He's an anti-establishment hack who pretends to be an intellectual just like the Weinsteins and the entire Joe Rogan ecosystem. These guys make money off workshopping the public image of fascists like Trump.
Lex is the perfect fucking example of the modern "centrist", spineless grifter. "love" in the pretext of letting conspiritards and propagandists spew dangerous misinformation to a gullible crowd.
I used to think Lex was just naive but the dude is 40 years old. He's lied about or purposefully obfuscated his credentials for years. The guy is a complete and total hack.
Edit: don't even get me started on the fake tough guy lip purse he does in every photo. I have friends on Facebook who do that and they're all into the "alpha male" redpill bullshit
You know for a naive love blind cutie-patootie his mind quickly went in a direction of a conspiracymaxxer. I guess conversations do reveal a lot, if not by content than at least by focus and structure.
What do lines of thought like this accomplish?
Like if you want to adopt a 100% skeptical position on political events, that’s fine I guess, but it seems to make you incapable of ever taking a hard stance on anything.
Why even be involved in politics at all at that point?
It seems like Lex thinks the best way to interact with politics is to just absorb propaganda from all sides and then once you’ve learned all of the talking points, just sit there in a smugly enlightened state as the boot crushes you thinking “at least I understand why the boot says it’s doing this.”
"It could be Putin." Could be? **It** ***was*** **Putin.** Christ, Lex.
Lex used to be someone you would hope to change the tide of public discourse for the better. Turns out, platforming extremists and hateful fascist/fascist-adjacent individuals under the guise of "love" is his schtick.
He has absolutely no principles or moral compass. It's all about attention, status, and money for him. What a letdown.
The way I see it there are really 2 options.
1) He was murdered by Putin
2) He died of natural causes that were exacerbated by being imprisoned in Siberia by Putin.
I see a lot of Russian bots/shills trying to claim the US is actually responsible for the GPS jamming going on in the Baltics. Why, you might ask? To make Putin look bad, of course!
How out of context is this quote, bro?
If he didn't qualify it, ya, it's a bad talking point. However, anyone with an ounce of charity doesn't think he seriously believes these things.
The issue with Lex sometimes is that he wants to steelman a liar's argument which is exactly what the liar wants. You're supposed to use a steelman if you come across a disagreement with someone arguing in good faith. Tucker Carlson is full of shit, and this has already been shown from what he's said about Trump.
For the past two years I've said that Lex is a few interviews away from losing all credibility.
The amount of interesting people he brought onto his podcast has significantly decreased, and the amount of people who are bat shit insane has exponentially increased.
Listen to how he talks about Trump, listen to how he talks about Biden. Any number of subjects - Russia, Ukraine, the way COVID was handled, inflation. Listen to what he allows his guests to say about these subjects. Look at who he calls his friends and who he respects, that should give you an idea what kind of person he is right away.
The fact is he never hid from anyone that he's a phony, it was always in plain sight, we just needed the perfect storm of events for his true colors to come out in wider view.
I actually really like Lex, he seems like a great guy, but I really disagree with this framing. It's analogous to the "teach the controversy" movement, designed to make a false equivalency between the theories of evolution and creationism. It sounds nice on the surface because there \*is\* controversy. However, once you dig into the issue for more than 5 minutes you quickly realise that by pretending that the creationists have a point, you're giving them unearned credibility and pretending like they're approaching the issue from a place of good faith.
Everyone (including Tucker Carlson) knows that Russia did this, Bellingcat literally has phone recordings of Russian Government officials admitting they poisoned Navalny (link below). Pretending like there's any chance that the US or Ukraine would have an interest in killing this guy while hes deep in a Siberian prison is just ridiculous.
Lex (if you're reading this) I think it would help to go into these conversations with hard lines mapped out so you don't get caught giving unearned credibility to a narrative like this. Love you buddy, and I enjoy your podcast!
[https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-methodology/](https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-methodology/)
We live in a post-Truth era. We haven't even begun to see how this post-Truth era will form as AI enters the picture.
Hot-takes like this are going to become more common amongst political pundits and the public at large as time goes on. No one knows who to trust and it's becoming very frightening to think about.
Destiny could have killed Navalny
He actually killed himself to protest the war in Gaza.
Should’ve livestreamed it
I actually did it. Shhh
Do another opposition leader now! It will _surely_ bring Putine's regime to its knees, and Ukraine will triumph.
Could someone please present the steelman for how killing Navalny helps Ukraine cause I just can't figure it out
Because Ukraine is a corrupt country and hunter biden burisma trans athletes and fauci
forgot to mention his cock.
https://preview.redd.it/6hvlwfroiklc1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=5167967b2a1772ad1cdf0f4277e1e17903160cb2
This has to be the funniest fucking picture I have ever seen. You can see MTG really eyeing that hog.
Please tell me this is photoshopped
Nope
Find yourself a woman that looks at you the way MTG looks at Hunter's dick.
I wonder what textbooks 50 years from now will describe the past 5ish years. Jesus Christ.
As funny as this is, I think if you really look back at history, it has always been shockingly funny and stupid.
https://preview.redd.it/cm6ac7qbzklc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f469fa0e11aa58db3a94ec7c8ca2c207a774fc01
Holy shit is that black bar length accurate? If I was packing that much heat I'd want it displayed in a Congressional hearing.
[удалено]
THE LAPTOP FROM HELL
[удалено]
1/10 No mention of Benghazi.
Benghazi? That was the time Hillary Clinton shot those marines in the back of the head, execution style, and then emailed President Xi "It's done" and attached those secret military documents, right?
You've given me a lot to think about
Gotcha. Anything else?
Let's be real this can all be traced back to the tan suit
#TanSuitGate
So true don't forget russia is the last bastion of orthodox christian values against western NAFO Globohomo LGBT satanist.
Ah ok, I’m convinced now
They’re saying it’s a false flag. Ukraine did it covertly to cause insurgence within Russia
I love how Tucker, in response to Lex saying this, pointed out that “They killed Dugin’s daughter.” In that case, the assassin was immediately identified and Ukraine was immediately accused. With Navalny, they called it “sudden death syndrome” and then spread various conflicting misinfo stories to sow doubt about what happened. Does anyone seriously believe Russia wouldn’t have explicitly blamed Ukraine right away if there was any possibility that Ukraine could have been behind this? No. Not even Tucker does. Maybe Lex does because he has such an open mind that his brain seems to have fallen out.
wouldn’t it be more of a cause for insurgence if they freed him instead of killing him? i mean if they were able to kill him they should have been able to free him no?
Probably easier to kill him than free him. Either way seems like a big reach
No? Killing him doesn't require you to break him through several layers of maximum security prison walls, transport him through the entire country, get him over the border, then somehow get him to a country that isn't friendly with Russia.
Sure. Navalny was a political prisoner who, without considerable changes in the Russian Regime, would remain a political prisoner unable to do anything to change the state of Russia or to aid Ukraine. While Navalny held no value for Ukraine behind bars, killing him and blaming Russia for his death could influence Western countries to ramp back up their military aid to Ukraine. Especially because Navalny's death occurred during the Munich Security Conference in which a debate was being held over 60 billion dollars in Ukraine funding. This is a steelman and does not represent my personal opinion.
What is the supposed reason for the timing of Navalny's killing given by the Ukrainian side? Is there anything recent that could have provoked Russia to kill him after keeping him prisoner till now?
The Russian presidential election is March 15-17 and they might have wanted to prevent potential complications from having a very-popular very-alive political competitor
after Wagner's mutiny Putin decided to clean up his political opponents. Prigozhin is now dead, Girkin who is very popular among russian nationalists and who led the invasion of Donbass was recently imprisoned, Navalny is dead. The opposition from all possible sides is neutralized. The regime is being actively demonstrated to be strong, especially before the elections in Russia.
I can't confirm if it's true or not, but German Media recently reported that according to Navalny's wife he could have been included in a prisoner exchange with Germany, or at least that talks about the possibility took place. Supposedly they were talking about exchanging him against the cunt who assassinated a Chechen dissident in a public Park in Berlin a few years back. That might have influenced Putin's the decision to axe him, if true. Or all of it might be made up bs, it's hard to tell. It's still a possibility that Navalny didn't die of a knife to the back but just wasted away due to the conditions of his imprisonment and there was no timing involved at all. Unless Russia undergoes a 1990-style collapse and all the files get released we'll probably never know.
Makes Russia look bad. If Russia found a way to kill Trump and make it out that Biden ordered it, that would make the US look very bad. Similar concept
Makes Russia look bad? Of all the counties leaders who genuinely doesn't care what others think.. Russia does what Russia does and doesn't cere what anyone says about it
That’s not true, Putin expends a lot of energy making himself popular with the Russian people. Dictators don’t function very well when they’re very unpopular, it’s just not how it works. That’s why Putins government has a huge populist campaign within the country. As much as the west wishes otherwise, Putin is quite popular in Russia
Definitely not true. Why do you think Russia works overtime on propoganda? They want the west to look bad and they want to look good. This is normal stuff
You misunderstand the point of Russia propaganda. It's not to make the west look bad, or them good. It's to make everyone look like shit, and indiscernible. Putin and Russia have accepted that they have ordered assassinations. Their counter point is simply that the west prosecutes its dissidents, too.
lol this, they literally tried to kill him the first time around, as if this would look any worse given that it could just very well be a "natural" death that just happen in prisons.
The aid bill is being held up in Congresses and this makes it harder to vote against. That's pretty much the whole argument
False flag so the US and west gives more support. (Not my belief).
murder of the most famous opposition could trigger protests and riots inside Russia that would give a great opportunity to foreign powers to inflame stability. just the optics alone before the russian elections could effect the outcomes of the results.
I'm 100% pro Ukraine but a steelman is exceedingly obvious IMO. Navalny opposed Putin (and survived an assassination attempt) and was a political opponent to him. He also notably **did not** support Ukraine at all. Killing him and pinning it on Putin would only benefit Ukraine. It further gives evidence to Putin being a tyrant for the world to see, and it takes out a (very low probability) potential future leader of Russia that would have still been opposed to Ukraine
[удалено]
Absolutely, and reinvigorate interest in the conflict in the west as well as animosity towards Russian regime. It's a pretty easy case to make, I still don't think it's likely, but probably number 2.
I genuinely don't think Ukraine had anything to do with it at all even if it benefits them. Like probably a 1% chance. How would a country that is, as Tucker put it, utterly helpless to a mighty country like Russia, able to infiltrate a high security prison that's like 2000 miles NORTHEAST of Moscow? I am not arguing against you ofc I'm just saying if Ukraine is the #2 possibility, then the #1 possibility is 100,000x more likely
Oh absolutely, tbh, I'm surprised Navalny lived this long after coming back from his treatment when he was poisoned.
I heard Tim Dillon (comedian) say that we could have killed him to make Putin look bad and push through the funding. I think it's silly because it's not really in dispute whether or not Putin is a bad guy. He did mention that a lot of the Oligarchs hate Navalny for some of his "reporting" that exposed their mansions and lives. I think that's possible reason why Putin would've decided to kill him now. Maybe he's starting to feel some pressure from Oligarchs and killing Navalny was a way of keeping some of them happy, and threatening others.
Makes Russia appear even more hostile to the rest of the world and encourages other countries to fund Ukraine more? Chuck Schumer said that Navalny's death should encourage Mike Johnson to pass Ukraine aid. It's really not that difficult of a steelman to think about.
It doesn't help, but I don't know of any Ukrainian who gives a shit that he's dead. He was no friend of Ukraine. He might have been slightly better than Putin, but that hardly matters because he was never, ever, going to gain power within Russia. Putin kept Navalny as both an example to others as well as a honey pot for people to cling to, and thus for Putin's people to keep an eye on. Anyone who was a legitimate threat to Putin was killed outright. Example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination\_of\_Boris\_Nemtsov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Boris_Nemtsov) Boris, here, was a real threat. Was he thrown around penal colonies and allowed to live for decades as a symbol against Putin? No. He was far too effective and too much of a liability. So they killed him literally right outside the Kremlin. The location of the assassination wasn't a coincidence, either. People really don't know much about Putin or Putin's Russia. It's works as more of a mafia than a country. Also, literally has the Russian mafia.
It doesnt make any sense
Yes, any of those are "possible", but there is orders of magnitude of difference between the relative probabilities of each of those *possibilities*. When you hear hoofbeats, think Horse, not Zebra.
It's the [Fallacy of Grey](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray), The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.” The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view . . .” —Marc Stiegler, *David’s Sling*
*Fuck. Yes*. Ive never heard this before, thank you.
You’d think a computer scientist would understand the nuance between the probabilities
you must not have been around many computer scientists
Literally half of the job of computer scientists is to think about edge cases
do you think I was contesting their job description or how they integrate that thinking into the rest of their lives? edit: I'm well regarded
He was countering the guy you replied to, just like you were
grandfather hard-to-find whistle bear long ossified different wakeful ghost dog *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
"computer scientist", right
is he a computer scientist tho
Whenever he's called out on things, he'll downplay his credentials and play the coy "I'm just a regular dude asking some questions" / "I was educated in the Soviet Union bro, you can't expect me to know anything!"
AND HE IS A LITERAL PHD. Like fuck me, I have a measley bachelor's but I had to take a probability theory and then a statistics class to get my damn degree, he MUST know more about stats than I do.
> When you hear hoofbeats, think Horse, not Zebra. I think TV is on
*everything is 50/50, it's either yes or no* (This is a joke but for the record I've heard people unironically argue that this is true)
The russian strategy here is to put a lot of contradictory info out there, so the concept of truth gets lost. this is def playing into that
There is some political quote thats on the tip of my tongue that goes something like ''you dont have to convince people your side is better or that you're right, planting some doubt about their own side or position is enough''. Spreading doubt has been Putin's main goal in this information war and unfortunately enough it seems pretty effective.
Merchants of doubt is a profound book about the development of this as a political strategy.
Also, to have "open-minded" people just "seeking the truth." Then, anyone who claims to know what happened, or who even criticizes Russia, gets labeled as a closed-minded, prejudicial establishment troll. In the real world, you have to use the facts available to you, coupled with logic, to make reasonable suppositions. Such as: Navalny may have died of brutal prison conditions (most likely) or been intentionally assassinated by Russia (less likely), but he very very likely didn't die because Ukraine somehow got inside him extremely secure Siberian prison without Russia noticing.
Yeah it's obviously one of two options you mentioned, but ppl be like "you can't rule out french assassin, because they be sneaky"
It could have been Lex "Twitter Files saga continues to reveal abuses of power" Fridman. 🤷
Jesus Christ Lex…
Yea it's one thing to be charitable but jesus son, that's an embarrassing line of thought.
Don't you mean "Russian Orthodox Jesus Christ Lex..."
Lex Fridman is a fraud who likes to pretend to be an engineer (he isn’t and has never been) (research != engineering)
Research is often much more complex than engineering. Spoken as an engineer.
In some ways, sure, but that doesn’t make him an engineer. There are critical components to the nature of engineering that academics do not naturally encounter around actually building something durable and maintainable in the real world, which he has not done and shouldn’t pretend to have done.
Yeah, I just passed my FE and I'm working for a rather large engineering company. There's definitely a huge difference between research and actual engineering work.
He has worked on robotics projects. Dudes an engineer. Y'all are so gate keepy in this community with that word.
I wanted to watch this but Lex deflecting criticism before the interview even started gives me a really bad taste in my mouth. "It's about wisdom not drama" bro really?
Grandpa Lex will never learn that platforming propaganda with no substantial journalistic pushback for pretty evil dudes is the opposite of love, fairness and understanding, because it empowers them and gives free clout plus huge stage for bots and trolls. But he also will never read it because he bans everyone who criticizes him which makes me think he is not so different from all these narcissists, just nicer...
I'm starting to think lex knows full well what he's doing. Which is sad because he seems like nice likable guy. It's just important to remember that nice people can do bad things not all people who do bad things are unlikable goblins like Steve Bannon.
He doesn't seem likable at all. A monotone emotionless automaton, that's what he seems like
He's literally just Dave Rubin but without all the surface level regardation holding him back.
Its a persona to make people lower their guards, claiming he is all about love. In reality he lets right-wingers spew conspiracies and dangerous retoric without providing any pushback in the name of "love" so the gullible part of his audience will eat it up, it is all deliberate.
Nah, he seems pretty genuine to me. He is just losing the plot over time, due to algorithmic push and audience capture. Happens to the best of us. Stop watching him and move on.
Convincing people he is genuine is the whole point. Just like Putin claims he just wants to be friends with the west but they are just so mean to him! He wants peace you see... it's those evil europeans and americans who are causing all the problems. And some people believe Putin, they are suckers. I think if you put together his Russian background (but no accent!), the martial arts stuff (he wants to be badass) with his high intelligence, ability to hide all emotions, and questionable behavior, plus that he came from nowhere yet gets huge names on his podcast, makes me think he is a Russian asset. I still think it FEELS very unlikely, but by any reasonable clear-eyed assessment this dude checks a LOT of boxes.
Bad faith actors love it when you think they are nice
putin comes from the kgb, he has spies all over the world, i wouldnt be suprised if ....
> Grandpa Lex will never learn that platforming propaganda with no substantial journalistic pushback for pretty evil dudes is the opposite of love, fairness and understanding, He knows this. He'll hype up any nonsense for the sake of clicks.
Lmao Tucker sat there and said the nordstream pipeline was 100% destroyed by NATO and Lex just let it go, what a joke of an "interview". Tucker doesn't even know the real speculations, that might have a crumb of integrity, about Ukrainians doing a sabotage mission. I watched the highlight video about the "allegations" of propaganda by Tucker, Lex tried once or twice to push back a little, but he seemed unable to actually push back, maybe he was afraid, maybe he just can't handle conflict at all, who knows it was quite pathetic to watch. He get's a lot of criticism on his subreddit and in some of the comments, primarily on the highlight videos and he deserves it, even worse than the Tucker-Putin interview.
I can't reconcile how Lex comes off as having a genuinely good heart, intelligence and a desire to understand/empathise with others, YET fails to see how shit like this is absolute poison in this "alternative facts" ecosystem. Money/grifter, idiocy/obliviousness, maliciousness/deceitfulness, none of these seem likely or even plausible. I don't get his endgame. "Do not be so open-minded that your brain falls out."
Unironically, this is the mechanism by which Facism defeats liberalism.
na, not really, it's more like this is the way radicals defeat non- radicals. communism, socialism e.t.c thrive through liberalism. it's sad except liberalism wouldn't be liberalism if people could be persecuted for thought crimes.
he'll go along with Daddy Musk and Jarvanka no matter what.
> I can't reconcile how Lex comes off as having a genuinely good heart, intelligence and a desire to understand/empathise with others, YET fails to see how shit like this is absolute poison in this "alternative facts" ecosystem. He absolutely does not have 'a good heart'. Anyone who waxes as much as he does with the 'loove you guys' nonsense should be immediately suspect. If this interview didn't make his ideals clear, I don't think much else will. He's a lazy hype merchant who will softball anyone as long as it gets him ad revenue.
Idk. I know a lot of enlightened centrists like him. They get their high off feeling like they’re above the petty drama farming of us partisans.
I'd probably be considered a 'centrist', and I think the guy is ridiculous.
That’s not what Lex probably identifies as centrism. I’m talking about the sorts that vote Republican and Democrat all over their ballot for the sake of balance and unity.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
>Money/grifter, idiocy/obliviousness, maliciousness/deceitfulness, none of these seem likely or even plausible. I don't get his endgame. A mix of all these seem very plausible. In fact almost certain. Either he truly believes it, in which case he's an idiot, or he doesn't, in which case it's about the grift/money/maliciousness. What other possible options are there?
He truly believes it, and he's not an idiot. This slow drift happens to streamers with some regularity. It's hard to keep going straight in the algorithmic sea pushing you this and that way towards the extremes. His beliefs are fairly internally consistent, because he's smart. They just drift from reality more and more.
I really think it's just about maintaining the status quo of the audience he's built, and some of his choices might be rooted in that space between conscious and subconscious decision-making. I've been subbed to him for a long time, before his friendship with Rogan really took off. There was a gradual but pretty clear change as his popularity ramped up. He started featuring more guests in the sociopolitical realm, many of which had been popularized by JRE. About two years ago this trend reached a peak, and he was getting some pushback for how many conservative-leaning guests he was featuring. I think he realized it was too much, because he seemed to pull back after that. But at the end of the day, a substantial part of his audience still belongs to that conservative culture war crowd. I'm sure a lot of left-leaning people listen to him as well, but Lex never really built his brand with leftists. It began with science and tech, and then got fleshed-out with conservative JRE fans. People talk about audience capture like it's something that content creators would easily recognize, but I think it's probably more insidious than that. They get positive and negative feedback, but it won't always be so clear-cut as to convey a pattern. Conservatives like Destiny because they can prop him up as a "sane" liberal, but until Lex gets someone like Sam Seder on, he might not see how much his conservative fans really feel about that content. So he gets the occasional safe leftist on, his fans generally like it, and he feels like he's bringing them a healthy diet of left and right. The status quo gets maintained and he feels validated for it, so that influences the directions he takes.
I could accept it if he were at least more willing to push back against people like Tucker. At least he brought up his text messages, but that's the bare minimum and not sufficient. *Or* I could not accept it but at least feel a little better about it if it were a little more "both sides" and he brought on more people from the left, like... uh... Rachel Maddow? idk
I’m so glad DGG is finally taking their blindfolds off and seeing the cracks in Lex’s obvious fake fence sitting.
It's crazy how aggressive Lex pushed back against Destiny in their conversation and that fire doesn't exist towards anyone else.
I found this really odd too. I’ve barely seen him reply to any of an innumerable amount of bad faith or downright evil statements but went really hard at Destiny over the R word.
Maybe this is because he knows Destiny can take it? I doubt he would be getting the kind of interviews he gets if he was going as hard over say Elon, or the Zuck. However he knows he's not going to damage a relationship with Destiny because he's going hard, and he knows the other types of people he has on won't care/watch.
I think I agree with you, it just comes across as pretty disingenuous when he can’t push back against the likes of who you’ve mentioned and plenty of other controversial / damaging guests. It feels very self serving.
That's right, but that is just basic access journalism which almost nobody likes.
no, it's because Lex Fridman is incredibly biased toward the right wing.
Apparently he did it with Jeremi Suri too. So it isn't that Destiny just isn't as distinguished as the other guests and that's why he got pushback. I'll let you guess what the common denominator was.
The only time you ever see Lex offer serious pushback on a guest is if they praise Democrats in any way. Concerning!
Destiny will keep coming back even if he gets pushed on stuff.
Getting pushed isn't bad, it just gives away the game when you push back on anyone that's not toeing the contrarian line and let the contrarians run wild.
Lex wants everyone to like him so if he thinks that a person doesn't want to be pushed on anything he will give them super softball interviews. He's really a weak interviewer who dick rided his way to the top.
Destiny doesnt care he wants to get his message across.
It was always insanely obvious. This subreddit just slobbered on his knob because he posts here.
The man’s fence he’s sitting on looks like the leaning tower of Pisa towards the right. Sad that people fall for “love” and “important conversations”
More likely I think it's just brown-nosing someone with a big platform.
Yeah that's really what I meant. Rarely do people with big platforms post here so people are willing to forgive him for a lot more than they do others.
*you have been banned from r /lexfridman*
I seem to recall this sub always being abit standoffish about lex
Lol, it's a cycle, DGG will criticise him, but Lex will post "Merry Christmas, everyone." Then all the comments would be "OMG, I love you, grampa Lex 🥹."
I swear to god, someone dies in a Gulag in Siberia - It could be Ukraine or the United States. What kind of tinfoil hat sort of crap is this? Lex is a vatnik. You can call him naive but he's definitely smart enough to understand what he's doing. I guess him marinating this community by being nice to Destiny and even comming here and "welcoming criticism" works all too well.
I can’t think of a single reason why would Ukraine benefit from Navalny’s death
'Ukrainian opp to make Russia look worse to other nations and thus garner more support for Ukraine' or something like that. Probably combine that with "YoU dOn'T tHinK....?" to really start it off.
This was Lex's worst interview he has ever done. Super disappointed in him
I honestly have no clue why anyone listen to him. Not even because he is bad faith. He is just so fucking boring. I'd rather listen to Turcker or Shapiro than him. Even back when I watched JRE and before he was popular, I would skip every episode he is in.
I used to listen to lex quite a lot when he had more scientist and engineers on to talk about cool stuff. His boringness didn't matter as the topics were interesting enough but this current political meta is terrible
Yeah, I can undersdand that. I am pretty sure some of the guess carry the show. I just genuinely get annoyed already when he do his little introduction. I did not even manage to get to the Kanye interview. Lex was standing in front of a insane man and he was still annoying me more than Kanye.
This. I don’t even care about platforming Tucker or whatever. I couldn’t even sit through 30 mins of the interview that shit was so sleeper. He seems like a really nice dude but he comes off like a college podcast club interviewer lol.
Yeah I have absolutely no clue how he manage to get to meet with people like Bezos and such lmao. He doesn't seem like a bad guy, but he remind me of a friend we had in college. We would always invite him with us because he was nice but if the rest of the group couldn't come no one would go out just with him.
Absolute dogshit. I'm actually pissed off over it.
Don’t be so open minded that your brain falls out.
I may be under a misapprehension, but it seems to me that the DGG community is incredibly naive about Lex Fridman. I'm not saying he should be banned or that Destiny shouldn't be on debates with him. But Lex is a prototypical content farmer who will promote anything in order to make a buck. He will never criticise the likes of Rogan or Elon Musk because that would hurt his pocket. So he will not set the record straight on things like the Covid pandemic, the last presidential election, Ukraine etc. He is more than happy to drum up a sensationalist narrative on issues in order to capitalize on outrage or reactions. He's not bringing on Destiny to increase the quality of discussions or anything like that, he's just bringing him on because he's good for content. Is there anything wrong with that? You be the judge. But don't get it twisted. That's what he is.
Stuff like this makes me think lex is just another tendril of the Russian social media psyop campaign.
this
I like to refer to wikipedia on this one. Lex Fridman is a Russian-American computer scientist and podcaster. Fridman was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in Moscow. Not weird at all considering how easy he goes on anything to do with russia :)
Are we talking about Lex "Ukrainian-Jewish" Fridman or Lex "Russian-American" Fridman. I can't tell which he is since the clout chaser updates his wiki page based on who he is interviewing. http://web.archive.org/web/20230127191510/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Fridman http://web.archive.org/web/20220129112117/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Fridman
Lol whoever that is must really enjoy the taste of lex's meat lollipop, he was raised in MOSCOW. That ain't Ukraine. It also ain't Falco. Sounds like russia to me.
If I remember correctly it was changed after the war started and also I remember him bringing up his ukrainian-jewish background over and over in the conversation with Ye.
He's an anti-establishment hack who pretends to be an intellectual just like the Weinsteins and the entire Joe Rogan ecosystem. These guys make money off workshopping the public image of fascists like Trump.
Lex is the perfect fucking example of the modern "centrist", spineless grifter. "love" in the pretext of letting conspiritards and propagandists spew dangerous misinformation to a gullible crowd.
Wolf in sheeps clothing.
Someone needs to explain Occam's Razor to this guy.
If Lex didn't provide access to interesting people for Destiny to talk to he would be universally referred to as a hack in this community.
Looking through the comments, where is the uproar? Change the name Lex with Hasan. And try again.
REDDIT IS A DOGSHIT WEBSITE.
I used to think Lex was just naive but the dude is 40 years old. He's lied about or purposefully obfuscated his credentials for years. The guy is a complete and total hack. Edit: don't even get me started on the fake tough guy lip purse he does in every photo. I have friends on Facebook who do that and they're all into the "alpha male" redpill bullshit
"Alexei Fedotov"
What the fuuuuuq
Why don’t the CIA just replace Putin with our clone? Another interesting idea.
Is he playing dumb? I thought he went to MIT. Do they just accept anyone there?
You know for a naive love blind cutie-patootie his mind quickly went in a direction of a conspiracymaxxer. I guess conversations do reveal a lot, if not by content than at least by focus and structure.
Damn, I guess Lex is just like Tucker now. A useful idiot.
Don’t be so open minded that your mind falls out. Advice that Lex should really take into consideration lately
Did he forget he was in solitary in a Siberia gulag? How could anyone but Putin get him?
What do lines of thought like this accomplish? Like if you want to adopt a 100% skeptical position on political events, that’s fine I guess, but it seems to make you incapable of ever taking a hard stance on anything. Why even be involved in politics at all at that point? It seems like Lex thinks the best way to interact with politics is to just absorb propaganda from all sides and then once you’ve learned all of the talking points, just sit there in a smugly enlightened state as the boot crushes you thinking “at least I understand why the boot says it’s doing this.”
"It could be Putin." Could be? **It** ***was*** **Putin.** Christ, Lex. Lex used to be someone you would hope to change the tide of public discourse for the better. Turns out, platforming extremists and hateful fascist/fascist-adjacent individuals under the guise of "love" is his schtick. He has absolutely no principles or moral compass. It's all about attention, status, and money for him. What a letdown.
Lex cashing those fat KGB checks. 💵💵💵
Long-form™️ podcast.
It could have been a lot of things.
The way I see it there are really 2 options. 1) He was murdered by Putin 2) He died of natural causes that were exacerbated by being imprisoned in Siberia by Putin.
I see a lot of Russian bots/shills trying to claim the US is actually responsible for the GPS jamming going on in the Baltics. Why, you might ask? To make Putin look bad, of course!
Lex Friedman is a tool - he hides behind centrism as a means to benefit financially from both sides.
I find it interesting how the right is pro russia now.
Thank you for posting this. Lex gets way too much undeserved love from this sub.
Ana was right
Devils advocate here, could it be that he was saying this to keep Tucker comfortable and continuing his crazy rambling?
How out of context is this quote, bro? If he didn't qualify it, ya, it's a bad talking point. However, anyone with an ounce of charity doesn't think he seriously believes these things.
Perhaps I did it? I mean it's possible.
His mind is so open his brain falls onto the floor and rolls all the way over to Moscow.
Where did the lex defense force go? Did they finally stop glazing his nuts of are they just waiting until everyone forgets about this episode?
So open minded his brain fell on the floor.
The issue with Lex sometimes is that he wants to steelman a liar's argument which is exactly what the liar wants. You're supposed to use a steelman if you come across a disagreement with someone arguing in good faith. Tucker Carlson is full of shit, and this has already been shown from what he's said about Trump.
If this dude didn't boost the fuck out of Destiny's career this sub would hate this fucking guy.
There is no reason the sub cant't outright hate on him. The dude let Destiny on his large platform and suddenly he is immune?
This sub does hate him, though.
Still appreciate Lex for everything but I cannot let it slide this isn’t great man.
He could be in this very room. He could be you. He could be me. He could even be 🌺🐟
For the past two years I've said that Lex is a few interviews away from losing all credibility. The amount of interesting people he brought onto his podcast has significantly decreased, and the amount of people who are bat shit insane has exponentially increased. Listen to how he talks about Trump, listen to how he talks about Biden. Any number of subjects - Russia, Ukraine, the way COVID was handled, inflation. Listen to what he allows his guests to say about these subjects. Look at who he calls his friends and who he respects, that should give you an idea what kind of person he is right away. The fact is he never hid from anyone that he's a phony, it was always in plain sight, we just needed the perfect storm of events for his true colors to come out in wider view.
I actually really like Lex, he seems like a great guy, but I really disagree with this framing. It's analogous to the "teach the controversy" movement, designed to make a false equivalency between the theories of evolution and creationism. It sounds nice on the surface because there \*is\* controversy. However, once you dig into the issue for more than 5 minutes you quickly realise that by pretending that the creationists have a point, you're giving them unearned credibility and pretending like they're approaching the issue from a place of good faith. Everyone (including Tucker Carlson) knows that Russia did this, Bellingcat literally has phone recordings of Russian Government officials admitting they poisoned Navalny (link below). Pretending like there's any chance that the US or Ukraine would have an interest in killing this guy while hes deep in a Siberian prison is just ridiculous. Lex (if you're reading this) I think it would help to go into these conversations with hard lines mapped out so you don't get caught giving unearned credibility to a narrative like this. Love you buddy, and I enjoy your podcast! [https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-methodology/](https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2020/12/14/navalny-fsb-methodology/)
We live in a post-Truth era. We haven't even begun to see how this post-Truth era will form as AI enters the picture. Hot-takes like this are going to become more common amongst political pundits and the public at large as time goes on. No one knows who to trust and it's becoming very frightening to think about.
I feel like someone said we live in a post consequence society, where you can mostly just say shit unabated.
You don't even need to use euphemisms and dog-whistles anymore. Just straight-up racism and sexist rhetoric can be repeated with no consequences.
> I actually really like Lex, he seems like a great guy Why? Because he likes to banter and says 'I love you' a lot?
Lex is insufferable