Shaun

…I wonder, where did the "FACTS and LOGIC" meme come from? I assume from alt-right videos, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone use it seriously…

It was Ben Shapiro. He also coined 'facts don't care about your feelings' despite being a reactionary pundit who always acts based on his feelings and regularly ignores the facts.

I used to briefly watch his podcasts, but dropped it when I got fed up with the whole "Free market fixes everything" and "Israelites are oppressed!" bits.

Look, if you are constantly offended by anyone saying anything bad about Israel, fine. But don't go around making jokes about SJW.

Also, I noticed how so many of his "Ben Shapiro destroys/thug life" vids, his opponents tend to be college students and sometimes professors. Plenty of people can outargue them, it's not exactly a perfect demonstration of intellectual prowess.

Ben Shapiro threw a tantrum and ran very recently when someone started defeating his piss poor arguments.

Also, anyone else find it really pathetic that the dude has to tear college students arguments apart to feel better about himself. Like dude, that's accomplishing nothing special as college students are still figuring out shit to a certain degree. Of course they aren't going to be the best at arguments.

It doesn't help that the guy talks so fast you hardly have the time to register what he says…

That’s a deliberate tactic on his part.

Extremely quick turnaround, Shaun must've been real harried in how pressure he felt to make the video come out as fast as he possibly could.

The evil of the lie the sham of a university made is balanced by the easiness of proving it wrong, at the very least.

I also used to watch that videos.

Then they uploaded video about how the British Empire was responsible for democracy and made me go "Waaaaait a minute!"

First time I came across PragerU I was probably more right-leaning than I was now, and even then I was incredibly suspicious of what agenda they might be pushing. Those suspicions were vindicated with a vengeance.

…Were the Charlottesville protesters seriously afraid of being "replaced" by a group that's like 1% of the population…?

Anyway, quick video but I guess sometimes it's necessary… How much of an audience does Prager U have anyway?

Edited by Lyendith on Aug 8th 2019 at 12:34:04 PM

Well, the channel has 2.25 M subscribers. That's troublingly a lot.

The link Shaun gives is to their site, which claims the video has 2.8 million views...

You'd be surprised how many of those are bots to inflate their subscriber count

Edited by Ultimatum on Aug 8th 2019 at 10:42:05 AM

they dont care about things that happen or facts or reapity. Everything they claim or say or do is an ad hoc justification to be cruel and refuse to change.

The only good thing to ever come out of Prager U are those ytp videos people keep making. Seriously, this stuff is hilarious.

Oh, and they made a good video about civil war that one time.

That's because the "Was the Civil War about Slavery" video was by the Director of History at West Point. I was actually able to meet Colonel Ty Seidule in person, after listening to a lecture he gave on Confederate monuments, and was able to confirm that he has as low opinion of Prager U as I do.

Although he admitted that he didn't know how bad they were at the time, he didn't regret doing it (despite almost getting in hot water over it, because of the political nature of the site) because it meant the message would reach an audience that would otherwise be resistant to it, along with delivering it with the authority of a man in uniform, preventing them from spinning the issue another way.

Edited by Eschaton on Aug 8th 2019 at 12:16:43 PM

Shaun did a video about the Bell Curve. It's quite long so he put in time stamps in the description.

Holy cow, over two and a half hours? Guess I better fill my water bottle.

Yeah, it had been a while. He's been mentioning it in drips and drabs on Twitter for a while now, so I'm not exactly surprised at the wait.

What's the Bell Curve…?

edit: Oh okay, he explains it in the first 30 seconds. I'll watch that bit by bit later.

Edited by Lyendith on Dec 4th 2019 at 6:25:09 PM

From what I'm gathering, the Bell Curve argues that IQ is a biological trait passed down and determines socioeconomic status rather than the other way around. It honestly sounds like eugenics with extra steps and the veneer of impartiality.

Watched the first 45 minutes yesterday, got sleepy so I'm continuing it in a minute. But yeah, it's best to watch it in chunks if you're like me and get antsy watching longform stuff.

So that's why there hasn't been much from Shaun lately

The tl;dw is that the book uses bad science and bad data to argue that IQ is largely genetic in nature and furthermore that IQ is the main determinant of how one's life will turn out. It then goes on to propose a number of policy changes aimed at killing the poor. All while trying to sound reasonable. So, yeah, book's garbage

Edited by Hylarn on Dec 5th 2019 at 5:23:07 AM

There's a tweet from June researching this.

To add, many of the sources that the authors draw from are connected to a certain research fund that fully pushed an eugenics agenda back in the day, and basically co-operated with the Nazis (as in, the Nazis actually took cues from them regarding egenics and social engineering and vice versa) before the war. So, the book is directly based off home-grown Nazi-aligned American Fascist ideology. And just saying that doesn't exactly convey the depth of how closely aligned the two are, so I do recommend fully watching it.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Dec 5th 2019 at 1:47:46 PM