Chinese society shows a notable comfort with contradiction that contrasts with Western demands for logical consistency, allowing behaviors like widespread VPN use despite illegality to coexist without cognitive dissonance.
Nathan observes that VPNs are technically illegal in China yet universally used by researchers and even officially provided by major companies, and people are completely open about it without fear — a contradiction that Westerners would feel compelled to resolve but Chinese society simply accepts. ✦ AI generated
Nathan · The Cognitive Revolution · 2026-07-27 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 114:24
it's illegal to use a VPN but everybody does it. And not only does everybody do it now everybody the people that I met with all do it right. They and you might have noticed of course there's a lot of Chinese people on Twitter a lot in the AI space like how are all these Chinese AI researchers at Chinese companies on Twitter if Twitter is blocked by the great firewall. The answer is they use VPNs even though it's technically illegal it's accepted to the point of being commonplace and companies even provide them in some cases. They have a company VPN that they can use that is official. It's officially provided by the company to them. So, it's not just random one-off people downloading apps and circumventing the rules. It's like the company is giving you a VPN and this is a fairly well-known company. So, what's up with that? People are not worried about getting busted for their VPNs. That was like they're very comfortable with it, open with it. Never heard of anybody getting into trouble. Somebody said it would be like getting struck by lightning.
verbatim transcript · starts at 114:24
114:24the people that I met with all do it right. They and you might have noticed of course there's a lot of Chinese people on Twitter a lot in the AI space like how are all these Chinese AI researchers at Chinese companies on Twitter if Twitter is blocked by the great firewall. The answer is they use VPNs even though it's technically illegal it's accepted to the point of
114:46being commonplace and companies even provide them in some cases. They have a company VPN that they can use that is official. It's officially provided by the company to them. So, it's not just random one-off people downloading apps and circumventing the rules. It's like the company is giving you a VPN and this is a fairly well-known company. So, what's up with that? People are not worried about getting busted for their
115:09VPNs. That that was like they're very comfortable with it, open with it. Never heard of anybody getting into trouble. Somebody said it would be like getting struck by lightning. They were like, "Has it happened? Could it happen?" And yeah, somebody maybe could be made an example of if they stepped out in some other way, but it's fine. They were not worried about it at all. And similarly
115:28on the censorship point, there was this notion several times that I heard where it was like people were sort of decrying the censorship regime saying complaining about it also all the while they were like getting around it via VPN. But then in the next breath they would say but it is kind of necessary or it is there are good reasons for it because we wouldn't want the whole Chinese public people
115:52aren't so educated. You're talking to me. I'm a worldly person. I've spent time outside the country. I can handle this access to information. And so it's annoying to me that I'm officially denied it and I have to go through this VPN thing. But I do that and I'm also not worried about being caught. But I'm also maybe I don't think they would necessarily go as far as saying they're