naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
7d ago
I understand that users here tend to be particularly stupid
I assume there is no need for me to explain why you are banned for a week.
Of all the examples you list when "we were mistaken", the only one that isnt simply leftwing is sports gambling
The examples listed are progressive, which is related to but not the same as "left wing" (which is more particularly about democracy, or at least republicanism, though at one time this was properly "progressive"). In some sense, conservatives are shielded from mistake theory because they are focused on doing what has already been proven to work. The failure modes for progressivism and conservatism are different. Progressive politicians make mistakes; conservative politicians ossify. It can be a mistake to ossify, but people who are overcautious miss out on rewards (and may thus be outcompeted), while people who are undercautious fail more spectacularly (but may reap more substantial rewards when they succeed).
I don't think it's evidence of political bias to notice that progressives are more prone to costly mistakes; it's baked right into the cake. If they didn't take more risks, they'd just be a different flavor of conservative.
(EDIT: On reflection, this may help to explain the ethos of the "Grey Tribe" somewhat... people in the ratsphere tend to be progressives, sometimes to the point of being accelerationists, but are often not "left wing." The Grey Tribe may be specifically sensitive to ossification in left wing spaces that other left wing people regard as "progressive" but which are actually just re-litigating yesterday's battles, today.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
Congratulations, that's great! Best of wishes to you.
Communicate lots about money, and blend your finances as much as you possibly can. There is no "yours" and "mine" anymore, there is only "ours." You live in a tiny commune now, and it will succeed or fail based primarily on your joint commitment to its continued success.
Have sex frequently. What this means specifically depends a lot on the individuals involved, but roughly "more often than the lower-libido spouse prefers, but aim for at least 75% of the way from there toward what the higher-libido spouse prefers."
Have children, assuming you don't already.
Don't begrudge your spouse your labor. You're lucky to have someone to work with on the long term project that is now your family unit. Intelligent division of labor creates efficiencies that can do wonders for what each of you can accomplish (it doesn't take twice the time to do twice the laundry, or twice the prep time to cook for twice the mouths, e.g.). Leverage it together and enjoy the dividends together!
Have fun!
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
I'll probably also do chicken pox because I personally know 3 people who got shingles before the age of 50. Is this good epistemology? Probably not the best, but neither is relying on the American health system.
Chicken pox is "just" utterly miserable to suffer as a kid, but it can be quite dangerous to contract in adulthood. I think that, in a community where most children are vaccinated against chicken pox, it's probably important to get the vaccine because you're that much less likely to catch it as a child.
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
Anything by Ibram X. Kendi? Anything "by" Tony Robbins?
Or is is some particular totally-not-a-religion you have in mind?
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
I did not understand your question at all!
I think the answer will depend on where one draws a number of lines within important continua. Not everyone agrees (as far as I know) on the extent to which human civilization (and related egregore(s)) has or has not guided human biological evolution, so I didn't want to hinge my argument on prior agreement on that particular point. But I'm sure there is more than one way to usefully conceptualize the problem; if you prefer, for example, it wouldn't be incompatible with the substance of my post to suggest instead that competing egregores are at issue.
naraburns
nihil supernum
30d ago
Yes, but humans are also biologically selected for certain patterns of collective action - thats part of normal evolution for a social species.
...did you even look at the link, maybe? Or read what I wrote about reductionism not being useful in the context of this conversation? You're not saying anything I don't know, but perhaps more importantly, you're not saying anything you shouldn't anticipate me knowing. In the end, we're presumably all just subatomic particles doing what subatomic particles do! Your question was "why is it egregorian and not just normal evolution" and my answer was "because evolution describes biological patterns and arrangements, while egregores describe social patterns and arrangments." Your response appears to be "nah those aren't different things" but they are at least as different as diamond and graphite, for which we have different words despite their consisting of the same atomic substrate.
Maybe it would just be simpler to point out that British-descended humans in Britain, America, and Australia clearly share "normal evolution" in common--but not egregorian memespace?
Or maybe I just don't understand your question at all.
naraburns
nihil supernum
30d ago
Why is it egregorian and not just normal evolution?
Biological evolution gives us individuals. Egregores are (roughly) patterns of collective action. The latter is emergent from the former; this is not metaphysically uncontroversial, but I don't think reductionism is useful in this particular context. YMMV!
The 'Human Experience' is incredibly diverse, to say the least. Is an orphan, someone raised in an institution and lacking any parents, less human because of it?
I think so, yes, but I think you have already used the phrase "less human" in a way that I was trying, however perhaps poorly, to move away from. I mean it in the same way that is meant when someone, after a long day of grimy work, emerges from a shower and says, "Ah! I feel human again."
Consider it this way: is it a tragedy, to be orphaned? Like--if there was a shortage of orphans, would it be okay to deliberately make some?
Because yes--yes, of course!--it is better for a child to be raised by loving and involved adopted parents (of whatever kind) than to be institutionalized, "raised" in the absence of intimate family relationships. Adoption is a little bit (if you're willing to limit the metaphor) like chemotherapy, or post-trauma limb amputation. You do it to save people from greater harm, but it's not the sort of thing you would do absent the initial tragedy. You don't adopt children because adoption is totally cool and we should make more orphans so more people can do it, you adopt children because something tragic has occurred that can't be perfectly fixed but maybe we can mitigate the harm.
If this woman agreed to birth the child, even if it was her eggs that were used in the process, then I do not see any room for her to complain about handing the baby to Altman and his husband.
Well, sure, probably she can't complain, at the personal level: she agreed to be used. She rented out her womb. But whether it's good public policy to let people rent out their wombs is not just a question of personal liberty. If we let people sell their organs, or become prostitutes, or replace their brains with digital machinery, that doesn't just change the lives of those who have consented to the change. It changes the cultural landscape. (If we allow people to sell themselves into slavery, this would be bad for society even if each individual involved was fully consenting.) Hence my reference to egregores like Moloch--everyone can individually be doing what is actually best for themselves, given the circumstances, and this can give rise to horrifying circumstances that no individual within the system can, or would even choose, to change.
I would like transhumanism to be deliberate, in other words, rather than allowing it to emerge accidentally.
I fail to see much reason to care if future humans are gestated in the 'ol biological 3D printer, or in an external replica of such.
I'm not saying you should be mad if future humans are bio-printed. I'm saying bio-printed people won't be humans, so it's a better future where our decision to bio-print transhumans fully accounts for the differences that will emerge between evolved beings, and designed ones. Especially if (when) the designed ones become noticeably superior in every way, given our own tendency to use as commodities those beings we regard as beneath us. If transhumans share this tendency, such future humans as may remain will be in some trouble.
"Surrogacy" is a classic bioethics problem for a reason.
The question of the 21st century, and (hopefully!) beyond, is what role humans will play in the future. We are accustomed to using the word "dehumanizing" as a pejorative, as we treat pretty much everything else in the world worse than we treat one another (which is often saying something...)--so to be not human is by definition to be less than human. But "dehumanize" can be a purely descriptive term.
(This is also a big part of AI anxiety, I think--if there's something higher than us on the intellectual food chain, doesn't that make us food? See e.g. The Matrix as an early example of taking this somewhat literally...)
For hundreds of thousands of years at least, maternal affection has been a matter of life and death for our species. There is basically nothing more fundamentally human, except perhaps the act of heterosexual coupling that creates infants in the first place. And (perhaps contra some other commenters) I think there are fully human roads to practices like adoption (women have often shared the task of breastfeeding with other women, e.g.).
But artificial reproductive technologies--even as basic as your IUI "turkey baster" techniques"--head down a slippery slope. By applying technological progress to ourselves, we objectify humanity itself. We step outside our species, however slightly, and subject ourselves to egregorian evolution (usually, Moloch).
So my own perspective on this is that the problem isn't the womb rental (so to speak) per se. It's the fact that we don't approach it with a clear and widespread understanding that it is in fact transhumanist to do. That the resulting relationships are transhuman relationships. That the mother of this child has been used, for a time, as (spoilers for Dune):
Is it wrong, to "rent out" the human body? Is it wrong, to deprive a human child of a mother? I'm open to the possibility, and doing such things has historically been closely associated with monumental evil, in the details even if not in the act itself. But I think the problem in the case of surrogacy for same-sex couples is precisely that we insist on pretending that there's "nothing to it," rather than observing that this is transhumanism in action, the activity of reducing our bodies to the level of chattel--to the level of moveable property, of mere technology. Philosophers have long observed that the body is mechanical in nature!
I consider myself fairly pro-transhumanism. I would like us to be more than we are, and I would like us to approach that in a careful and thoughtful way. But we don't actually have the technology to make that happen, yet, and if we ever do I think it will be an extinction-class event for our species. People who do transhumanesque things now--employ surrogacy for same sex "reproduction," have their sex organs removed to fulfill a personal aesthetic, etc.--are like small children "playing house" in alarmingly sexual ways, doing grown-up things without adult supervision or a mature understanding of what they do. It is a form of arrested development; unable or unwilling to accept the reality of the world they live in, gay men buy children so they can play house. But matters are not so simple, and the resulting child will be raised without some historically central human experiences. It is not nice to say that makes them "less than human," but in the fully transhuman sense, it clearly makes them less human. I hasten to add--there are many experiences we may all have, in this sense, that make us "less human!" But even so, it seems like a terrible thing to deliberately inflict such things on biological humans who have not chosen transhumanism for themselves.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
If anything is the Harvard of Canada it's the U of T, but perhaps you mean to suggest that's not saying much.
That was ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek bait for the enjoyment of McGill stans. Though my understanding is that they are close in many ways--U of T generally ranks higher in U.S. News, but McGill is both slightly older and generally held to have the finer medical school.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
That's not the work I intended that phrase to do. It was more of a factual observation about the extent to which outcomes are actually (not) within OP's control, which was the overall point of my post.
Specifically, "ought" implies "can." Ensuring that some people are employed might be the right thing to do; say for the purposes of argument that it is in this case. If in such a case it's not really up to you that those people will stay employed, it can't really be a moral requirement that you keep them employed. The claim "if you don't do it, eventually someone else will" is not a justification for any particular course of action, but an empirical claim about the extent to which a certain outcome is likely (not) within OP's control.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Are you running a business, or a charity?
My perspective is that your "career development" is mostly illusory. If automating part of your process results in a better product or cheaper manufacturing, perhaps you will get a bonus? Certainly you will get a resume point. Perhaps it will get you a promotion? A raise? You don't seem to think it will result in you, too, being replaced by a machine, at least not immediately, so in terms of self interest it seems like an obvious choice.
As for the moral implications of making low-skilled people unemployed, like... if you don't do it, eventually someone else will, except you will get none of the benefits while still suffering all the possible downsides. There may be public policy arguments about this that matter from a moral or legal perspective, but unless it is your job to make or enforce public policy, then you don't really have a seat at that table.
In the medium-term future (two or three centuries at most), I think that we either get widespread universal basic income, or we get rampant Luddism. Authoritarian governments and relatively culturally homogeneous nations seem likely to weather that transition better than pluralistic democracies, as identitarian competition for resources and handouts ramps up toward infinity. You will contribute to this process no matter what you choose to do in your current role; the best you can do is what is best for yourself, as that is what you have the most control over and the greatest understanding of.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
One thing I think everyone forgets
One of the things that really struck me about the article was that the authors introduced the concept of "competitive democracy" in a book that explained how, to the best of my understanding, Western ties and influence were a major distinguisher between autocracies that "fully" democratized, and autocracies that did not. Way in particular seems to have in mind exactly your points about Russian history. It was weird to read an article that appeared to be written by two scholars who knew substantially more about the 20th century history of other nations, than about the 21st century history of the nation they were writing about.
It's Different When We Do It, Chapter 27
or
Did I Just Get Trolled?
tw: old news, unapologetic whataboutism
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have a free essay at the (reportedly centrist!) Foreign Affairs: "The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown." (Archive link.) You may notice the URL has "trump" in it, despite that word not appearing in the title. Curious.
But wait--who are Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way? After all, one can scarcely throw a cursor across a website these days without hitting, say, six or seven hyperlinks to "think pieces" about Trump, fascism, fascist Trumpism, or even Trumpist fascism. But never fear--this is no Average Andy/Joe Sixpack collaboration. This is professional work by a team of scholars whose most famous contribution to the canon of political scholarship is the term "competitive authoritarianism." What, you may ask, is competitive authoritarianism? Read on!
Steve Levitsky, according to his employer (Harvard University, naturally), is a
Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America.
His focus is not exclusive--he also writes on Israel policy while calling himself a "lifelong Zionist" (admittedly, in an article endorsing something like BDS)--but his interest in Latin America is apparently more than skin-deep:
Levitsky is married to Liz Mineo, a Peruvian journalist with degrees from the National University of San Marcos and Columbia University who currently works at The Harvard Gazette.
Lucan Way is no less distinguished. Well, maybe a litte less--the University of Toronto is not even the Harvard of Canada, much less the Harvard of, well, Harvard. But his title--his title! He is literally a Distinguished Professor of Democracy. Where Levitsky's focus is Latin America, however, Way's might best be described as "Cold War and Cold War adjacent." He credits at least some of that interest to family ties to historical events:
My stepfather's family were Jewish socialists, and his grandfather, Henrik Ehrlich, was a Menshevik during the 1917 revolution. This familial link to such a pivotal historical moment gave the chapter on Russia a deeper, more personal resonance.
This is an academic power couple, right here. Get one expert on authoritarianism in the New World, one on authoritarianism in the Old World, and baby, you've got a stew going! A book stew. An article stew. A bottomless cornucopia of cosmopolitan political commentary and analysis. Their 2010 text, "Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War," focuses on democratization (or its lack) under authoritarian regimes. David Waldner gave a blurb:
Regimes that blend meaningful elections and illicit incumbent advantage are not merely resting points on the road to democracy; Levitsky and Way guide us along the multiple paths these regimes can take and provide powerful reasoning to explain why nations follow these distinct paths. This deeply insightful analysis of an important subset of post-Cold War regimes is conceptually innovative and precise, empirically ambitious, and theoretical agile, moving fluidly between international and domestic causes of regime dynamics. Read it to understand the dynamics of contemporary hybrid regimes; then read it again to appreciate its many lessons for our general understanding of regime change.
So: you've literally written the book on how democracies are (or are not) born. What are you going to do next? No, no, you're not going to Disneyland--you're going to witness the election of Donald Trump and stop telling people that you study the birth of democracies, but instead the death of democracies. From the Amazon page for Levitsky's (but not Way's) How Democracies Die:
Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes.
That's the preliminaries. This week, Levitsky and Way published an article, and I have to say, I found it... kinda convincing? Except, I couldn't help but Notice some things that gave me pause. The thesis of the piece, as I mentioned, was that the United States is headed toward "competitive authoritarianism." The article provides a small explainer:
The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country's professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.
But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism--a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent's abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori's Peru, Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey. Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.
(As an aside, Way seems to think India is doing alright, actually? Not sure where that fits in with the above but, co-authored pieces do sometimes result in these little puzzles.)
What actually struck me first about this description was my memory of posters here in the Motte discussing "Brazilification," the process by which the U.S. is, as a result of economics, immigration, and identity politics, gradually adopting the political norms of South and Central American nations. But my experience has been that it is usually more conservative, even arguably nationalist people expressing this concern. While Levitsky and Way do not use the term "Brazilification," they definitely seem to be placing the United States on that trajectory.
They elaborate on the problem at length:
Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably: Democratic Party donors may be targeted by the IRS; businesses that fund civil rights groups may face heightened tax and legal scrutiny or find their ventures stymied by regulators. Critical media outlets will likely confront costly defamation suits or other legal actions as well as retaliatory policies against their parent companies. Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it.
This is where I started to wonder, just a little, whether I was being trolled. While Trump's second term has indeed set a record pace for executive orders, Joe Biden's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders was a greater departure from the norm. Most readers here will be well-acquainted with the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Many will also be aware of the time regulators inappropriately targeted the NRA. Conservative media outlets faced expensive defamation lawsuits (losing some, winning others). The fit with the Biden administration just seems too close in this paragraph, to be pure coincidence... but what am I supposed to conclude from that? Am I supposed to be doing a Straussian reading?
The piece continues:
[M]uch of the coming authoritarianism will take a less visible form: the politicization and weaponization of government bureaucracy. . . . Even in countries such as the United States that have relatively small, laissez-faire governments, this authority creates a plethora of opportunities for leaders to reward allies and punish opponents. No democracy is entirely free of such politicization. But when governments weaponize the state by using its power to systematically disadvantage and weaken the opposition, they undermine liberal democracy. Politics becomes like a soccer match in which the referees, the groundskeepers, and the scorekeepers work for one team to sabotage its rival.
Republicans have long complained against the weaponization of government against conservatives, and Democrats have long ignored those complaints. Whether it's a county clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses or the throw-the-book-at-them attitude toward January 6th protesters, conservatives regularly find the scales of justice thumbed against their interests. Similarly-situated Democrats need fear no prosecution at all.
Levitsky and Way have more to say about this sort of thing:
The most visible means of weaponizing the state is through targeted prosecution. Virtually all elected autocratic governments deploy justice ministries, public prosecutors' offices, and tax and intelligence agencies to investigate and prosecute rival politicians, media companies, editors, journalists, business leaders, universities, and other critics. In traditional dictatorships, critics are often charged with crimes such as sedition, treason, or plotting insurrection, but contemporary autocrats tend to prosecute critics for more mundane offenses, such as corruption, tax evasion, defamation, and even minor violations of arcane rules. If investigators look hard enough, they can usually find petty infractions such as unreported income on tax returns or noncompliance with rarely enforced regulations.
Tax evasion, you say? As for minor violations of arcane rules and rarely enforced regulations, well, the whole "Trump committed a felony" charade in New York was recognized well in advance as "novel" and "built on an untested legal theory."
The argument continues!
Moreover, much of the Republican Party now embraces the idea that America's institutions--from the federal bureaucracy and public schools to the media and private universities--have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies. Authoritarian movements commonly embrace the notion that their country's institutions have been subverted by enemies; autocratic leaders including Erdogan, Orban, and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro routinely push such claims. Such a worldview tends to justify--even motivate--the kind of purging and packing that Trump promises.
Why would the Republican Party embrace the idea that America's institutions have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies? After all, just 63% of senior executives in government posts are Democrats; only 58% of public school teachers identify as Democrat; fully 3.4% of journalists identify as Republicans, and the ratio of liberal to conservative college professors is a measly 17 to 1!
I guess "believing facts about the ideological makeup of our country's institutions" qualifies as authoritarian, now?
There's more to the article--I invite you to read it. But maybe some of you want to ask, in total exasperation, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Maybe none! I am not here to do apologetics for Trump. I was just really struck by the idea that this article could have been written, almost word for word, about Biden, or even Obama. Maybe Bush! Maybe others--FDR for sure, right? But I can find no evidency of Levitsky or Way ever actually noticing, or worrying, about American competitive authoritarianism, until Trump. They think he's special. I don't think he's special! I think that, so far, he has actually committed far fewer of the sins on their list, than Biden did. That doesn't mean I endorse Trump's actions, so much as I am confused that a couple of highly-credentialed experts on the matter only seem to recognize American authoritarianism when it is coming from their right (or, more accurately, even when it might eventually be coming from their right).
Aside from that, I don't see any obvious problems with the picture that they paint. Having pundits on both sides of the aisle say similar things about our nation's political trajectory serves to increase my worry that "Brazilification" might be a real thing, and makes me wonder how quickly it might happen, and how seriously I should take the possibility.
(Insert butterfly meme: is this authoritarianism? Insert spaceman meme: always has been.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
This is not really sufficient effort for a top level post. It's good that you at least added a link to a story in a response downthread, but that should have been proactively provided (particularly given the overt partisanship of your post) in the first place. You also haven't really explained what each of the parties under discussion actually did, or made any attempt to steelman either side.
Remember,
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light...
So low effort wishcasting is frowned upon generally, but doubly when it is a top level post.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
EA is meaningfully different.
I'm sure there are charities, including EA charities, that are better than the "average" charity along the relevant axis, sure.
But according to your own link, the managing director of GiveDirectly pulls down almost $500,000 per year. That's a hell of a grift, and perfectly analogous to my university consultant example. I'm sure the managing director has the relevant expertise, and probably is directly responsible for a healthy chunk of charitable cash transfers that would otherwise have gone elsewhere (or nowhere). But no one--absolutely no one--is doing controlled experiments in which they determine whether that $500,000 actually makes a difference, or whether there are cheaper alternatives with similar (or better) results. Personally, I know several very competent administrators who are happy to make $100,000 managing sums similar to those laid out by GiveDirectly.
Charity in America is Big Business(TM), and even EA is no clear exception.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Youth groups and drag shows don't cost $6.3 million.
The administrative salaries of the people running youth groups and drag shows, the venues for youth groups and drag shows, the consulting fees for ensuring that your youth groups and drag shows are totally compliant with all applicable rules and regulations, well... that costs $6.3 million, easy.
I have seen universities pay $100,000+ to consultants to give single day seminars on grant writing. Sometimes these consultants have a history of writing successful grants, so the expertise is definitely there. And some of the grants that result can be worth millions of dollars to the university, so the expense is justified on paper. But no one--absolutely no one--is doing controlled experiments in which they determine whether these consultants actually make a difference, or whether there are cheaper alternatives with similar (or better) results. It's all part of the higher education grift; if you know the right people, and have the right friends, you can quit your underpaid research post and instead make millions telling other underpaid researchers to try harder.
I strongly suspect it is the same in every grant-driven industry everywhere. (Indeed, the whole "Effective Altruism" grift has largely consisted in insisting that EA is totally different, it's definitely going to make real change, instead of just creating new jobs and generous salaries for charismatic people who would rather attend conferences in exotic locales, than do the hard work of producing meaningful work.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
It gave me Thomas Sowell, and when I asked for others it suggested Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Apparently I missed my calling as an economist.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
Where should I post this?
Reddit? You seem keen to make a reddit alternative, there is a whole subreddit for those.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
So, this is borderline, but on balance I am not approving this post.
It's not quite recruiting for a cause, but the reference to "infested with commies/radical leftists" kinda puts it in that territory. You're also a "new user" which kind of pings "spam" to me. Or maybe I just don't see the value in using a top post in this space to recruit for... an alternative to this space.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1mo ago
What are your thoughts?
You are just continuing to privilege your own perspective on any given term, above the term's actual history and usage.
I would argue that neoliberal has more meaning than some of the terms we discussed last week because its proponents have actively adopted it and have proudly worn the label for decades.
Proponents of "woke" actively adopted it and wore it proudly for decades (though it did not "go viral" until more recently); many still wear it proudly today.
If a particular word is getting in the way of you making a substantive point clear, then by all means, taboo it. But very close to nobody is confused by the use of words like woke, fascist, or neoliberal. If those words are being used in a merely pejorative way, the audience generally understands this, whether or not they can articulate it. If I say "Hitler was a Nazi," essentially no one outside of small children and the mentally infirm is seriously confused if I later say "Obama is a Nazi." People will in general understand that the first claim is historical, and the second, rhetorical.
But deciding to taboo words should be something you do in the process of clarifying discourse on a particular point of substance. Sweeping declarations distinguishing "woke" and "fascist" from "neoliberal" would be inadvisable linguistic prescriptivism even if you had the facts and history right--and you don't even seem to have that going for you.
Rather I think there are many layers of various pillars of society going towards the shitter that I think makes some kind of collapse of Western Civilization inevitable.
Living in a material world under the known laws of physics makes the collapse of all civilizations inevitable.
History gives me strong priors that most such "collapses" are local and move slower than most individual human perception. By the standards of Western Civilization circa 1800, Western Civilization has already collapsed and been replaced with something comparatively grotesque, which we today call "Western Civilization." The prevalence of atheism, pornography, premarital and extramarital sex, illegitimate birth, etc. would shock most Westerners from the mid 20th century, never mind the 19th. By the standards of those days, we already live in a dystopian hellscape.
And yet if you spend much time talking to nonagenarians, you will often hear resignation to the idea that the world simply changes (though some will definitely tell you that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket). Humans are incredibly, almost comically adaptable. Just about anything can become a "baseline" experience for us, given sufficient exposure (and lack of exposure to alternatives).
Now, some of the more extreme climate eschatology, political alarmism, nuclear war worries, AI doomerism, etc. will be quick to remind that some collapses are more dramatic, sharp-edged, and/or final than others. This is surely true. But given the number and variety of collapses I can see through history, the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it is shaping up to be more of an evolution than a revolution, and sufficiently gradual that it will annoy me when I am a nonagenarian (knock on wood), but probably not kill me or even cause me very much suffering. At worst, it will inspire in me only deep disappointment.
At best, I will have alien descendants born on Mars, whose lives and lifestyles would shock and horrify me. But hey--Mars!
The end will come for humanity, eventually, too. It would be nice, I think, if we could escape that. But I do expect, to my sorrow, that I will not be alive to see how our story ends.
Thanks for those examples. I think they are okay. Certainly they are better than your examples from this space. What I would say I see happening in the "woke Fed" example is wokism getting generalized to leftism-writ-large, rather than applying to leftist identitarianism. It's guilt-by-association, basically. Not really a "nebulous bogeyman" but certainly a sloppy use.
The "woke Democrat DA" I would need to know more about. Leftist identitarianism often has a lot to say about criminal justice through a racial lens; was this such a case? I don't know. Certainly this could also be a sloppy case.
Give me an example of it being used as a "sneer" before 2010--which I think you are going to have a lot harder time doing. Why? Because the definition has had significant "creep" since then, which is my point.
I think you're maybe underestimating the rapid timeline on the pejoration process. Circa 2010 it was "social justice warriors," not "woke." Before that, I'm not sure... "cultural Marxism" probably, though my memory is that was more of a 1990s thing, driven in large measure by Pat Buchanan. I think maybe the first decade of the 2000s was sufficiently focused on "Islamophobia" and "Islamofascism" that maybe we didn't have a dominant shorthand meme for leftist identitarianism then? (Right now, "DEI" seems to be rising to the top as the preferred nomenclature of leftist identitarians, which is why it, too, has become something centrists and rightists mock. Once it was just called "affirmative action," and that became a bit of a sneer, too. New viral memes meet cultural immune systems every day!)
What is more common us the use of the word as primarily a sneer, but a smaller amount of truth to deride that person, object, idea, or company.
I don't really get why you're so fixated on this. I've granted that it gets used as a sneer, sometimes. But you're insisting the sneer is the "real" or "primary" definition or use, and as far as I can tell that simply isn't true. "Woke" means "leftist identitarianism" and sometimes overgeneralizes to "leftism" and rarely overgeneralizes to simply "bad." What's surprising about that? We could say similar things about "Nazi" ("German national socialist" overgeneralizes to "fascist/racist/authoritarian" overgeneralizes to "bad") or any of a host of other political identifiers.
But its primary use today (January 2025) is to tar and feather others, before finding out more about what is being described.
This is just false--especially here on the Motte. The primary use of "woke" today is to describe leftist identitarians in a single syllable. Personally, I don't blame anyone for feeling bad if they are leftist identitarians; on my view, they should feel bad, and should repent! So sure, right wingers and centrists and Marxists all probably say "woke" with a sneer, but that's because they find leftist identitarianism genuinely awful.
And this last bit in your response is an excellent demonstration of what I am talking about, and it looks like the person getting the pejorative treatment is me.
Look, you are a "new" account that fits the MO of certain ban evaders and known trolls. You show up saying you're a "long time lurker" and immediately pick a super common topic of discussion, on which the Motte has a much, much better handle than the wider world of so-called journalists writing on the topic. Then you steadfastly insist that the stupidest possible interpretation of "woke" is the "real" one, which is exactly the position woke people are taking right now, because the word has become an effective way to limit their political power--in the face of multiple well-considered explanations for why you're mistaken.
If you are not yourself a leftist identitarian, then I don't know why you would take that position--unless you are trying to make a particularly pedantic argument about language, in which case I would expect you to bite the bullet and also argue that "Nazi" and "alt right" and "Communist" and "Neoliberal" and the like are all just meaningless slurs, given their common deployments, despite the possibility that they once had analytic content. But you don't appear to have found that angle interesting.
Conversely, if you are a leftist identitarian, then several people have given you very clear answers to your question which defuse your complaints entirely; you would be better off learning from those responses, I think, than stubbornly sticking to the current dogma as promulgated by MSNBCNN.
Three prior warnings for antagonism, with explicitly attacking the community as an aggravating factor.
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