[gsf_emergency_7]

Liked this comment:

"If we could convince [any] Sociopath that we were all Losers, we might be able to entice them into spilling their secrets as 'Straighttalk'. (Arguably that's what this book is..)"

On one hand Rao doesn't say much about Gametalk (he basically defers to Eric Berne) which is the Loser's sociolect and should well be our default.

On the other, Rao much more optimistic than Orwell, who declared doublespeak the lingua franca?

[BoxOfRain]

> On the other, Rao much more optimistic than Orwell, who declared doublespeak the lingua franca?

If time travel were possible, one of the first things I'd do is introduce Orwell to the 'algospeak' of today. This would do two things, firstly it'd show him a decent piece of evidence that Newspeak isn't as effective a tool for limiting human thought as he believed, and secondly he'd have to write another version of Politics and the English Language aimed at the language sins of attention economy era social media.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

and then I'd show him a news broadcast from last week, where the president of the United States of America literally said "War is peace".

[wavemode]

Is the use of "literally" here, and the use of quotes, meant to be taken literally (as in, he literally said this)?

Or is this the sense of "literally" which actually means "figuratively"?

[asdfasvea]

I love that we ruined our escape character in language.

We now need a new way to convey to listeners that our words need to be taken literally. Perhaps the VBA method and just double the 'literally's:

I took a flaming shot of tequila and my mouth is literally literally on fire

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The escape term is "actually". "My mouth is actually on fire".

[yakz]

A post to the Truth Social account for Donald Trump included: "The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!"

That's the closest thing I'm finding. Not seeing reporting that he literally said "war is peace".

[rl1987]

That sounds more like "peace through superior firepower" rather than "war is peace".

[pphysch]

There's a vast gulf between "having" superior firepower as a deterrent and "using" superior firepower for mass murder, particularly against elementary schools and desalination plants. The latter is war, at its worst.

[nyeah]

Can we be literal? It means peace through using superior firepower to kill people.

[xorcist]

Beatings will continue until morale improves?

You can't make this up.

[OgsyedIE]

The Berne books Rao cites as explanations of Gametalk are solidly good entries in of themselves, although it's probably best to use an LLM to get search results of the best introductions to TA first to see if they've been surpassed.

[gsf_emergency_7]

Adhering to the predictable/ritualistic/comfortable nature of "Gametalk",

Here's one question I asked:

"How does Eric Berne's Gametalk as interpreted by Venkatesh Rao signal to the sociopaths that those who engage in them are losers worth talking to? Distinguish between "channels" that Eric has identified as well as new signals that Rao or others have discovered."

https://youtu.be/9B3oem_56jg?t=52s

[hrimfaxi]

Can you expand on your included youtube link? It's not clear the relationship.

[gsf_emergency_7]

I'll admit the connection is loose, personally found it amusing because:

Mike is the archetypal nihilist (Sociopath or Loser), the other two would potentially be engaging in a Clueless interaction if Mike wasn't there, according to the Scott/Rao theory of jokes, you need 3 for a Loser joke.

The preceding banter seems to be more of a Loser Gametalk: no social status is at stake; it's irrelevant to their white-collar role. Mike's Straighttalk intervention is typical of a sociopath; the wall breaking joke is that these Losers don't know what his real job is. If they did, the pointless but playful debate would have died a violent death-- because it'd get too real

If these were Clueless middle managers debating their value to their company, it might even be out of character for Mike to notice them..

[ajb]

I guess one day there will be a massive leak of executives chats with their LLMs, and we'll find out what they really think.

[conception]

I think that’s called the Epstein Files.

[gsf_emergency_7]

Used to think that Epstein was a Posturetalker but turns out he is a native Gametalker