Twitter was David’s public platform and tools for practicing a new language – clear and understandable for everyone, it was a space where he made friends and enemies.

Tweets 7,501 Replies 51,144 Retweets 24,559 Everything 83,204
Fri 10 Jul 2020 16:47

RT @Charmika14: @dominichills5 @jasonhickel @davidgraeber @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @davidwengrow The argument, as far as I…

Fri 10 Jul 2020 16:43

RT @Delicious_Tacos: Most jobs should not exist. Half or more workers should be fired and paid the same amount to do nothing.

Fri 10 Jul 2020 11:59

@ItzSmiT so I’ve never seen anyone say we should take down sculptures of Plato or Julius Caesar or St. Augustine even though they owned slaves, because the descendants of their slaves are indistinguishable from anyone else

Fri 10 Jul 2020 11:50

@ItzSmiT if you want an actual answer, I think people object to monuments that celebrate those who owned the ancestors of people who are still the object of differential treatment as descendants of slaves today

Fri 10 Jul 2020 11:48

@ItzSmiT most Muslims believe it is sacrilegious to make any visual representation of the Prophet https://t.co/ypoeHHwYhV the argument being ignorant, or pretending to be ignorant of, something that basic made most conclude it wasn’t worth replying to

Fri 10 Jul 2020 11:42

@joshiamitabhevo @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel well 40 million killed in just a couple decades seemed like it should at least be up there on the list.

Fri 10 Jul 2020 11:22

@noisegroove @qikipedia okay, I am procrastinating so I looked up the numbers from the Bureau of Prisons. They are here. You will note far and away the most frequent (56%) are indeed non-violent drug offenses. Assault hardly figures. https://t.co/iswaiclel6

Fri 10 Jul 2020 11:08

@noisegroove @qikipedia Might be a confusion between “jail” and “prison” going on here

Fri 10 Jul 2020 11:05

@dominichills5 @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel so we reply with the example of the “Romito dwarf” burial of a significantly deformed person who survived to healthy old age 10k years ago, & must have required constant care & attention. What if we wrote all human history around him?

Fri 10 Jul 2020 11:02

@dominichills5 @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel understandable mistake. So for ancient times, he just pulls out well-known individual cases like ‘Otzi the Iceman”, who got shot by an arrow, rather than even arguing about the actual numbers. Taking just one or two cases you can prove anything.

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:48

RT @jasonhickel: @davidgraeber @dominichills5 @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @davidwengrow Argument here: https://t.co/O5rHzaUekU

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:48

@dominichills5 @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel if you look at my tweet, I said Pinker cherrypicks the evidence on Hobbesian origins of human society, I wasn’t talking about the World Bank statistics he cites about what’s happening right now, so you’re kind of changing the goal-posts, presumably inadvertently

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:45

@dominichills5 @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel I know about the historical material, which is systematically anecdotal & not statistical despite the fact empirical, e.g., archaeological evidence is available (been working with .@davidwengrow on this). The modern statistics have been challenged by .@jasonhickel amongst others

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:40

@dominichills5 @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel I don’t remember seeing Pinker face off against the spokesperson for an Indian or Latin American farmers union, or shanty town dweller movement in Africa, describing actual conditions on the ground. Those guys WERE on the air twenty years ago.

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:39

@dominichills5 @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel this is what amazes me – when you see debates about global poverty now, actual organisations representing and campaigning for the global poor have been basically squeezed out. Unless I’m missing something.

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:38

@dominichills5 @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel yeah then if some people get poorer, cook the books and pretend it didn’t happen – which necessarily, I should emphasise, means creating structures to shut them up when they try to point it out, so only people like Pinker himself get heard on the subject

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:36

@LiegeOf @spectraldiscord @STimpromptu @jasonhickel I thought the use of “scientism” was just meant to suggest Pinker does think psychology is a positive science, & that social problems can be reduced to equations, thus justifying anti-democratic technocratic rule by people like himself. But that was just my reading.

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:31

RT @lightacandleOTM: Excellent article to understand exactly what is going on, and who controls things, and what we need to do. Do read! ‘…

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:30

RT @davidgraeber: @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel so yeah, I’d say that Pinker is being directly racist in his argume…

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:30

RT @davidgraeber: @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel since “the West” (term basically used as a substitute where 75 year…

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:29

RT @davidgraeber: @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel so what Pinker is insisting is that the forces that conquered the r…

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:29

RT @davidgraeber: @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel instead he decided to argue that only “the West” & Enlightenment pr…

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:29

RT @davidgraeber: @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel this would be wrong, since Hobbes was wrong & Pinker cherrypicks th…

Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:28

@SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel so yeah, I’d say that Pinker is being directly racist in his argument. Plus it’s an apologia for what was basically the worst behaviour in human history with the possible exception of Genghis Khan 6/

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:25

@SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel since “the West” (term basically used as a substitute where 75 years ago the same person would have said “the white race”) & the West alone made our present wealth, security, & freedom possible, including that of the survivors of its various genocides 5/

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:23

@SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel so what Pinker is insisting is that the forces that conquered the rest of the world, massacred, raped, enslaved, & tortured millions, destroyed whole civilisations, were just behaving normally (everyone was a Hobbesian monster back then), but really they were the good guys 4/

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:21

@SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel instead he decided to argue that only “the West” & Enlightenment produced all that good stuff, no one else, despite the fact that Enlightenment thinkers never suggest anything of the sort (quite the opposite reality) 3/

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:19

@SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel this would be wrong, since Hobbes was wrong & Pinker cherrypicks the evidence, but he could have done it by pointing out how explicit ideas of freedom, equality, rule of law, developed as they did across the world & came together. He chose not to do that 2/

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Fri 10 Jul 2020 10:17

RT @davidgraeber: @SMBHarris1 @SirPaulHartley @STimpromptu @jasonhickel oh I’d say Pinker’s argument overtly racist. Look, you could make a…