Matthew Sheffield🟦
Editing @discoverflux@masto.ai
🟦 Writer, web developer, and former political pollster
🟦 Host, Theory of Change podcast
🟦 Front-end developer
🟦 Words in Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Daily Beast, and elsewhere
Posts about politics, religion, media, and technology with occasional memes
New book: "What Republicans Know"
https://flux.community/matthew-sheffield/what-republicans-know
Signal: 202-215-9123
Matthew Sheffield🧵
As AI systems grow in sophistication, some people are supposing chatbots are moving toward being conscious entities.
This is incorrect, but we should be more precise about what consciousness and perception are.
If we are, we realize that minds do not create experience; experience is what creates minds. https://plus.flux.community/p/its-like-this-why-your-perception
#philosophy #cognitivescience #cogsci #science #ai #chatgpt
Matthew Sheffield🧵 As a former Republican consultant who left in 2015, I'm often asked why Trump and his minions are willingly destroying science, K12 education, universities, international organizations, public broadcasting, and social welfare institutions.
There are many reasons, but the main ones are psychological rather than ideological. They struggle with abstract thinking and are afraid of the world...
Matthew SheffieldRenee Good and the problem of other minds: The basic questions of politics are mostly about whether all other people count as real, and should have the same rights. Conservatives and reactionaries have their doubts. https://plus.flux.community/p/renee-good-and-the-problem-of-other
Matthew Sheffield🧵 Charlie Kirk was a terrible person, but his prowess at organizing was astonishing.
Democrats, progressive and moderate, are using tactics from the 1970s.
Republicans spend hundreds of millions on networking, jobs, and outreach every year. Democrats waste their money on obsolete stuff.
There were many right-wing groups that were lavishly funded before Kirk. He was much more effective. Money isn't the problem for Dems, it's innovation and transparency.
https://plus.flux.community/p/what-charlie-kirk-knew
Matthew Sheffield🧵As AI systems grow in sophistication, some people are supposing chatbots are moving toward being conscious entities.
This is incorrect, but we should be more precise about what consciousness and perception are.
If we are, we realize that minds do not create experience; experience is what creates minds. https://plus.flux.community/p/its-like-this-why-your-perception
#philosophy #cognitivescience #cogsci #science #ai #chatgpt
Matthew Sheffield🧵 As a former Republican consultant who left in 2015, I'm often asked why Trump and his minions are willingly destroying science, K12 education, universities, international organizations, public broadcasting, and social welfare institutions.
There are many reasons, but the main ones are psychological rather than ideological. They struggle with abstract thinking and are afraid of the world...
Matthew SheffieldRenee Good and the problem of other minds: The basic questions of politics are mostly about whether all other people count as real, and should have the same rights. Conservatives and reactionaries have their doubts. https://plus.flux.community/p/renee-good-and-the-problem-of-other
Matthew SheffieldIs marketing to right-wing incels really this easy?
I guess we'll see.
Matthew Sheffield🧵 Charlie Kirk was a terrible person, but his prowess at organizing was astonishing.
Democrats, progressive and moderate, are using tactics from the 1970s.
Republicans spend hundreds of millions on networking, jobs, and outreach every year. Democrats waste their money on obsolete stuff.
There were many right-wing groups that were lavishly funded before Kirk. He was much more effective. Money isn't the problem for Dems, it's innovation and transparency.
https://plus.flux.community/p/what-charlie-kirk-knew
Matthew SheffieldVibe coding is often crap, but this guy managed to surpass Apple's "liquid glass" effect in KDE's KWin without knowing C++. Pretty impressive https://github.com/taj-ny/kwin-effects-forceblur/pull/235
#linux #KDE #kwin #plasma #ai
Matthew SheffieldThe news moves so fast that it's worth remembering that Trump said Jeffrey Epstein ‘stole’ Virginia Giuffre and that this was cause of their friendship ending.
Trump is so desperate for distraction.
https://apnews.com/article/epstein-trump-maxwell-giuffre-stole-family-40d4318c2ab7987e93a4fc8484464ec8
Matthew SheffieldTrump followers are absolutely desperate to avoid the conclusion that the vast, illegal conspiracies they believe in aren't real, and thus will never be prosecuted https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/08/trump-maga-world-arrest-opponents-00499426
Matthew Sheffield10/ Reactionary beliefs lost in the "marketplace of ideas" decades ago. Science proved the Bible's creation, Babel, & flood stories were fables.
Tax cuts don't pay for themselves. The fiscal multiplier is real. Vaccines work.
Trump wasn't lying when he said "I love the poorly educated."
To think that he's competent, honest, intelligent, or fair is an obvious delusion. He needs ignorance. https://plus.flux.community/p/the-science-behind-why-donald-trump
Matthew Sheffield11/ The only way Republicans win elections is ignorance. They can't govern. They have no reform ideas.
They just slash and burn because they hate the idea of community and shared responsibility. We saw that with their anti-mask and vaccine obsessions during Covid.
Reactionary Republicans have no affirmative ideas. They cannot build great things, only tear down what they cannot understand.
This is why they must lie and censor others. They'd never have a chance otherwise.
/end
Matthew Sheffield9/ In his second term, Trump has been far more censorial than any modern American president.
He signed executive orders banning "improper ideology" from museums. He's removed thousands of web pages honoring historical figures--simply because they were not European Americans.
Republicans love censorship. It's their primary intellectual vehicle. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-targets-improper-ideology-smithsonian-museums-executive-order-rcna198503
Matthew Sheffield10/ Reactionary beliefs lost in the "marketplace of ideas" decades ago. Science proved the Bible's creation, Babel, & flood stories were fables.
Tax cuts don't pay for themselves. The fiscal multiplier is real. Vaccines work.
Trump wasn't lying when he said "I love the poorly educated."
To think that he's competent, honest, intelligent, or fair is an obvious delusion. He needs ignorance. https://plus.flux.community/p/the-science-behind-why-donald-trump