Thought: If you try to be on all the good guy teams, you’ll almost certainly end up one of the unambiguous bad guys. The trick is to carefully pick a few thoughtfully chosen bad-guy teams.

Mine:

1. Anti-Straussian
2. Pro-mediocrity

I probably have room for 3 more

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

Have you written on your take around "Pro-mediocrity" anywhere yet @vgr? Will you?

Why yes, I've written almost an entire book's worth on mediocrity 
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/series/mediocratopia/

(not to mention it being a B-plot theme in various other writings)

https://warpcast.com/pjc/0x2acbefbe

Success is paved with mediocre attempts.

Einstein was mediocre with tensors. He reported it took him forever to use them. Mathematical tooling that was necessary for him to formalize what he is know for.

Mediocre used to mean “medium”, not bad. And to get high (!), easier (perhaps necessary) from a medium stance.

I thought you might appreciate this demonstration of decoding straussian messages via ChatGPT https://x.com/eigenrobot/status/1792748484845805672?s=46

With the conclusion that only one straussian reading exists 😂