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Penn Jillette (en.m.wikipedia.org)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by TwoBeeSan to c/wikipedia

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Neat quote saw when reading. Admitting you're wrong in a genuine way is something you see rarely these days.

"In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic after a libertarian group asked him to speak at an anti-mask rally. "The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change" adding "Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, 'It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,' and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate."[56]"

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[–] tehmics 47 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm really glad to see this.

Penn Jillette played a big role in who I am today. Bullshit! helped shape my skepticism in my late teens, and I was fascinated with magic even earlier than that. I went on to adopt some libertarian views and listened to his podcast for years, but I grew away from him during COVID because I was seeing how his position was harming people. I always thought he was a smart respectable guy, so seeing him reflect and change is heartwarming.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've been rewatching Bullshit! recently and found myself disagreeing with him quite a lot. I used to like the show a lot, and the same as you it helped build my skepticism. Some episodes are still good, some have aged terribly.

[–] tehmics 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Which episodes?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

They had a pretty shitty take on wealth redistribution

Also compared social security to a pyramid scheme

I don't love their stance on gun regulations

They do have some pretty based takes though. They're against the death penalty, and they've always been right about vaccines

Incredibly based take on drug regulations as well

[–] tehmics 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yikes, I haven't seen the wealth distro one in a while.

I'm still firmly in the 2nd amendment camp, especially given the current climate.

Thanks for the links

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah, I'm of two minds on 2a. On the one hand, in a country where anyone could have a gun, everyone should, and if they start trying to round up political dissidents to put in camps, I should hope that enough of us have guns that we can successfully prevent it.

On the other hand, we are the only country where school shootings regularly happen. A 16 year old kid was shot to death at a high school two days ago, and I didn't even know about it until I looked it up.

This is the one topic where I do not know where I stand. I don't know if the very real, very present innocent people dying on a regular basis is worth the potential to resist tyranny, should the need arise.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

Second hand smoke and the Walmart episodes I disagreed pretty heavily one.

The college one had some fallacies in their arguments.