The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Tim Urban: Berkeley and UCLA require diversity statements for chemistry professorships
“Berkeley, right now, and UCLA, and about 20 other schools. If you want to apply to be a chemistry professor, The first thing that you do is you have to fill out a diversity statement, and it's called, that sounds nice, a diversity statement, but it's actually,…”
Urban: Wokeness is a far-left, postmodern, Marxist ideology
“I think wokeness is two things. It's a far left ideology, and it is far left. It's, you know, postmodern, and it's Marxist, and that's fine.”
Urban: James Bennet was fired for publishing Tom Cotton's op-ed
“We see James Bennett, the editor of the New York Times op-ed section, getting fired because he published an op-ed by Tom Cotton that 62% of the country agreed with, But it didn't jive with woke orthodoxy.”
Urban: Apple fired diversity head Denise Young Smith over comments
“You see Denise Young at Apple, a black woman who's the head of diversity, who says, to me, diversity is not, you know, it's more complicated than just about something like race. When I look at 12 blue-eyed, blond-haired guys, I see diversity. I see different p…”
Urban: Outrage mobs hijack reputable institutions and spend down their trust
“A mob like this, they don't build anything, you know, they don't create. What they do is they appropriate, they hijack something, they take its existing good reputation, which is real, which is a lot of power, And they spend it down.”
Tim Urban: The far left and far right aren't inherently bad
“The far left and far right aren't inherently bad.”
Tim Urban: Low-rung thinkers adopt rigid, predictable political checklists across all issues
“In high-rung politics, if someone tells me their position on guns, I have no idea what their position is on climate change or on abortion or on immigration. In low-rung politics, You hear one position from someone, boom. I, you can just look at their demeanor,…”
Tim Urban: Republican concern over national debt vanished under Donald Trump's tax package
“The classic example, the debt was the worst thing in the world during Obama's presidency, and then Trump comes in office, starts doing up these tax packages that are adding to it, and suddenly it's no problem.”
Tim Urban: High-rung thinkers share more with ideological opponents than partisans
“If you're in that, one of those upper giants, the other upper giant is a lot more on your ultimate team, if you take a big step back, than the lower giant that wears the same color.”
Tim Urban thinks political discourse is overly constrained to a one-dimensional axis
“I think that we are very constrained to this one-dimensional axis.”