tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.comments2023-11-05T01:11:04.903-08:00Omniorthogonalmtravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comBlogger2528125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-7484079524169161002020-10-31T08:31:13.933-07:002020-10-31T08:31:13.933-07:00@Anonymous@7:59 -- I agree, and I've tried. I&...@Anonymous@7:59 -- I agree, and I've tried. I've tried intellectual engagement with rightists. More than most people on my side, I've tried to accept that my opponents aren't inherently evil or stupid, at least by their own lights, and tried to understand their motivations.<br /><br />This post is mostly an admission of failure. Just as political civility in general seems to be breaking down, my project of understanding is also going under. I don't care about the ideas or values or hopes of Trumpists, I just want them defeated. I look on them and I don't see good intent. I see evil, murderous, dangerous, destructive intent.<br /><br />This is not to say the left doesn't have problems of its own, smugness being one of them. But they aren't the ones driving the country full-steam-ahead into apocalypse.<br /><br />mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-8139920238822349482020-10-31T07:59:43.320-07:002020-10-31T07:59:43.320-07:00I don't like Trump, but:
I think the right...I don't like Trump, but:<br /><br />I think the right's hatred of the Left is a major fuel, and<br /><br />They hate the left (in part) because so many on the left are so smug, so addicted to the rush of moral superiority, so willing to chastise. The left can come across as stubborn, self-righteous bullies. The kind of bully that LOLs at bad grammar, bad manners, bad fashions.<br /><br />The right does this too.<br /><br />We'd all be better off if we treated the other side with respect, curiosity, assumption of good intent. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-27749445395345353842020-10-30T09:15:09.728-07:002020-10-30T09:15:09.728-07:00That is to say: I can to some extent understand th...<i>That is to say: I can to some extent understand the arguments and the emotional dynamics that lead someone into being, say, a libertarian or neoreactionary, or even a frothing racist. These ideologies may be wrong or loathsome, but it feels like I kind of understand them, in that I can imagine what it is like to hold to them. They may be rooted in bad emotions (anger, hate, fear), but I'm human, I have my share of that stuff, I can sort of understand how it can warp your beliefs.</i><br /><br />I've seen actual reasoned arguments for all three, so why assume they have to be rooted in negative, I mean "bad", emotions rather than (potentially erroneous) logic and (potentially inaccurate or incomplete) facts?<br /><br /><i>Something in my imagination balks. He is such a viscerally repellent figure.</i><br /><br />That sounds like a position based on bad emotions. :)<br /><br /><i>(since Trump is quite directly responsible for the massive US death rate from Covid)</i><br /><br />We're on the high end, but we're not an outlier. His stuffing things up really didn't help, but the D's initial boneheaded "it's really not that bad" response to his "blame China" also didn't help. I see a lot of demands that we have a Federal mask mandate, but I'm skeptical that that would actually hold up after immediately being challenged in court as a thing that the Federal government does not have the power to do. I am skeptical that we would have done more than just a little bit better with someone else in charge.<br /><br />.<br /><br />More generally, the things that have gotten done are somehow not the unmitigated disaster I expected based on his personality.<br /><br />I don't like him. At all. But a large part of that is about standards of personal behavior. Which is a culture / social class thing. Which means other people likely see it as a positive. Even the objectively bad parts (he's clearly a crook, and having crooks in power has a long history of being harmful), well if you're a conflict theorist and think he's on your side even that can look like a positive if you assume he's only a crook towards people trying to hurt you (note, I see "we're fighting because the pie is fixed" conflict theorism as distinct from "we're fighting because it's personal" hatred).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-24683721125752944822020-08-23T10:50:27.542-07:002020-08-23T10:50:27.542-07:00Fixed. The dry rot is my fault; I made an automate...Fixed. The dry rot is my fault; I made an automated thing to convert dead links into archive.org links, which works but it sometimes unaccountably generates unicode barf as well.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-60383473330742884162020-08-23T09:27:48.405-07:002020-08-23T09:27:48.405-07:00Wierd content dry rot in that post, the linked art...Wierd content dry rot in that post, the linked article at archive.org is fine still.exuberancehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02180872922559635562noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-21081016360020267452020-08-18T13:52:25.627-07:002020-08-18T13:52:25.627-07:00Aw, I miss BART. I miss commuting, full stop (so t...Aw, I miss BART. I miss commuting, full stop (so to so to speak). Nice to hear from you!Dain Fitgeraldhttps://twitter.com/DainFitzgeraldnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-40171621647094868032020-05-06T08:23:26.183-07:002020-05-06T08:23:26.183-07:00I had not heard of that documentary, thanks for th...I had not heard of that documentary, thanks for the pointer!<br /><br />I don't have any claim to the phrase "You're Soaking In It", which is a reference to an old commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bEkq7JCbikmtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-50262658526767310002020-05-06T03:30:32.032-07:002020-05-06T03:30:32.032-07:00Did you know "You're Soaking In It" ...Did you know "You're Soaking In It" is now a documentary movie based on ideas that flow right out of this essay? I was going to send you a note, and stumbled onto the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=steAzhqSn2o<br /><br />Originally what I meant to write is that the AI parable about being buried in paper clips flows directly from the unspoken adage of modernity: "If in doubt, optimize something" (I came up with the words, but the adage has always been there in some form).Hal Morrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08662079870429206811noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-59131613759637053862020-03-23T20:05:32.679-07:002020-03-23T20:05:32.679-07:00Hey thanks for visiting! It's been too quiet a...Hey thanks for visiting! It's been too quiet around here.<br /><br />You are right, blogging isn't dead, it's a pretty basic form that will outlive whatever trends come and go. I'm just not sure I'm as motivated to put words in that form. <br /><br />Found my way to your blog, looks like we have quite a few common interests, including PKD and flannel shirts.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-47466389407598206542020-03-22T18:24:48.351-07:002020-03-22T18:24:48.351-07:00I've been continuously blogging dozens of post...I've been continuously blogging dozens of posts since the Aughts. I guess I never got the message that blogging died or became unpopular. I guess I spend my time around people who are out of tune with cool crowd. <br /><br />I actually blog more now than in the past. It's social media that I've mostly given up on. Much of blogging is simply longer form writing, like articles or essays, if a more informal form of it. <br /><br />I doubt it will ever go out of style. Even mainstream media maintain blogs these days. But I realize many younger people have decreasing attention spans. I bet there will be a reversal in this over the coming years or at least decades.<br /><br />It probably goes in cycles. When newspapers and penny dreadfuls became popular, there probably was a drop in sales of novels. But novels made a resurgence later on. If you stick with a medium long enough, like keeping those old clothes in the closet, it will come back into style eventually.<br /><br />I found that happened with my flannel shirts. I was wearing them since the 1990s. Then they suddenly became all the rage these past years. Suddenly, my clothing was cool and people were praising me for my shirts. I found it amusing.Marmaladehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02701062765483715442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-69487716820650646742019-09-03T22:27:22.250-07:002019-09-03T22:27:22.250-07:00I've been avoiding public comment on that, bec...I've been avoiding public comment on that, because my feelings are extremely mixed and the topic is extremely fraught.<br /><br />But since you asked:<br /><br />- I think it unlikely that he committed the sexual crime he is being accused of. It just doesn't seem plausible given what I know of the man, although I suppose anything is possible.<br /><br />- But he is certainly guilty of hanging out with Epstein, taking his money, and legitimizing him. That's bad enough, and thoroughly documented. It's a permanent stain on his reputation and legacy, and that's going to have to be dealt with somehow.<br /><br />- There's a growing murmur on Twitter and elsewhere that Minsky was some kind of horrible patriarchal monster, hostile to women colleagues and students. This is absolute nonsense and I've done what I can to combat it.<br /><br />What Epstein means for tech culture and specifically MIT is going to be a hotly contested issue for the foreseeable future. Marvin's dead, but there are plenty of others who were just as cozy with Epstein, and they are going to have to deal with it. Currently there is a battle to oust Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, who took Epstein money for the lab and for his private ventures. This seems like a sensible move, but he is being <a href="https://wesupportjoi.org/" rel="nofollow">defended by a lot of people I respect</a>, or thought I did. It's getting political and it's getting nasty.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-58877074631815532472019-09-03T20:09:49.303-07:002019-09-03T20:09:49.303-07:00What's your take on Minsky's connections t...What's your take on Minsky's connections to Epstein?patchworkZombiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18279408952877283952noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-70652494641287851012019-06-27T20:54:50.669-07:002019-06-27T20:54:50.669-07:00Nice post. I really enjoy reading it. Very instruc...Nice post. I really enjoy reading it. Very instructive, keep on writing.Thanks for sharing.Arielhttps://www.clippingpathquick.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-34264950687015380542018-12-27T00:11:44.055-08:002018-12-27T00:11:44.055-08:00You made an article that is interesting. You made an article that is interesting. Clipping Pathhttps://www.clippingpathquick.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-46307712923850539702018-11-06T17:23:53.060-08:002018-11-06T17:23:53.060-08:00Whew, this is scary shit. Very Alex Jones. I'm...Whew, this is scary shit. Very Alex Jones. I'm done with this blog.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-57406729434071650572018-09-26T19:33:25.861-07:002018-09-26T19:33:25.861-07:00People could try building parallel institutions. G...People could try building parallel institutions. Granted, those will be shaky, but at least it has a chance of success, while clinging to the old institutions doesn't.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12971462016582295386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-48942489584079120732018-09-19T11:15:05.601-07:002018-09-19T11:15:05.601-07:00Archive.org version of the above link from Lorrain...<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160826005851/http://voodothosting.com/23/question.php?q=31" rel="nofollow">Archive.org</a> version of the above link from Lorraine (very belated thanks).mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-26934026333859031362018-06-05T05:09:27.248-07:002018-06-05T05:09:27.248-07:00Starting conditions. That's what your'e mi...Starting conditions. That's what your'e missing. Every computation is determined by the Shroedinger Equation (always the same) and staring conditions (usually different).1Zhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15540342141981143876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-8504112801054474732018-06-04T16:09:54.661-07:002018-06-04T16:09:54.661-07:00@OP,
Dude, if you think "Against Murderism&q...@OP,<br /><br />Dude, if you think "Against Murderism" was about defending racism then your reading comprehension is terrible.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-58440019201601476022018-04-17T11:28:29.529-07:002018-04-17T11:28:29.529-07:00"And to the extent that their ideas are wrong..."And to the extent that their ideas are wrong and distract from the actual struggle at hand, I՚m against them as well."<br /><br />That would put you into conflict with A LOT of people. After all, by that criteria everyone who doesn't make the Alt Right their overriding priority is your enemy. The bleeding hearts in the EA movement e.g. would be included.<br /><br />Even for a conflict theorist it's wise to limit the scope of perceived conflict where you can, on purely pragmatic grounds. <br />Mupetblasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05679108807930898123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-55057562310981526722018-03-22T01:49:21.774-07:002018-03-22T01:49:21.774-07:00Inherent functional generators is probably a littl...Inherent functional generators is probably a little strong, but the premise is pretty simple, if you recognise that conflict has the capacity to obscure the path to the true resolution of conflicts in rational compromise, you want to give power to people whose interests align more to truth than propaganda, while also balancing that with pushing to strengthen actors whose displayed interests and strategies head towards increasing justice as it is currently understood.<br /><br />This isn't precisely an endorsement, it's an investigative procedure; so even if we don't have a watertight ethical definition of the bounds of whistleblowing, we can still support it's expansion in areas that we believe have obscured the calculation of just outcomes with their power relationships. We can say that society is making certain patterns of mistake, and either act within a conflict domain to lessen them, or leave that to someone else.<br /><br />I'd like to say that this varies from the standard “progressive” model of supporting vanguard groups because it also supports disinterested or even misanthropic academics etc. but more recently, the political storms around fact checking and so on suggest that the dividing line has moved to match this more closely.<br /><br />So we end up with something like a conflict theory, but which "side" is the right side can shift according to their strategies and the current state of knowledge, as they align or dis-align to current systemic patterns of knowledge production. In another sense, you could say that "avoiding mistakes" becomes a self-conscious side of it's own, although that reveals the flaws and capacity for co-option that is possible if this perspective is taken too far..Josh Wnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-69413393149385805832018-03-22T01:39:26.888-07:002018-03-22T01:39:26.888-07:00I have a lot of sympathy for a "mistake"...I have a lot of sympathy for a "mistake" theory of politics, in the sense that when given two participants of equal power, negotiating carefully, they will do best if they find a compromise synthetically, and if you look at conflict resolution or arbitration structures that are designed to artificially make participants equal, that is what they tend to seek.<br /><br />But this mutually beneficial position is sort of like the calculated equilibria of neoclassical economics; you assume that all conflict-based components cancel out, leaving a mutually comprehensible optimisable situation for both participants.<br /><br />The problem comes when you try to apply the same reasoning to situations with people with varied power, then instead of the conflict related part you exclude from consideration being the earnest effort of conflict-resolution-experts to bring equal parties to the table in a negotiation, it becomes the efforts of people to get parties to accept as a starting point things they have recently won from them, according to the current dynamics of the conflict between them.<br /><br />In other words, the mutually agreed rationally accepted state of facts, "the best reasonable state of affairs for both parties", becomes "the best you can accept seen as I took your house".<br /><br />In that sense, a true "mistake theory" which is not based on an avoidance of conflict, but it's rational resolution, would be happy to reopen those wounds, and would recognise certain kinds of gains from conflicts as illegitimate, and not a reasonable starting point.<br /><br />At the limit, you'd consider how people's interests would be treated in a hypothetical world of equal power, such as the various "veil of ignorance" approaches.<br /><br />Once you reject that as too theoretical, and stop collating people's different assessments of their own priorities and interests, and then optimising political solutions from a position of absolute justice, then you have a theory that either blindly follows trends in conflict, seeking to help people set the appropriate amounts of money for ransom, given the resources available to a kidnappee's family, or alternatively your realism must force you to consider the existence of conflict.<br /><br />If it does not, then this "peaceful" model of politics will be constantly embroiled in conflict against it's will, as the perfect accompaniment to unexpected attacks, helping to secure their gains, and it's foundations, will constantly shift as the conflict moves underneath them, making it less and less useful analytically the more the power relationships it assumes are uncertain or time varying.<br /><br />Considering mistakes within the context of conflict, without assuming that justice can be known completely, results in an iterative and normative approach, in that political theory describes what you need to do next to act politically at the current state of knowledge.<br /><br />It is forced to be normative because it takes a side, in the sense that unlike the hypothetical world in which all parties will agree to the most rational approach, it is expected that some people's interests and resource positions gained according to illegitimate modes of conflict, will be found inevitably to be unjust, and so they will have an interest to act against clarity itself, perpetuating mistakes.<br /><br />So even if you're focusing just on seeking a clarified state of affairs, you will have to define it in terms of direction, setting up some state-space surface that the system should pass through to become more just, given our current state of knowledge, and more able to determine future surfaces. Then because you have considered people as inherent functional generators of certain kinds of misunderstanding, or reductions of it, you'll end up proposing redistribution of power according to whether people will help to move it through that threshold, even if you leave the details of that to conflict theorists.Josh Wnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-91963846621576099012018-03-12T20:50:36.893-07:002018-03-12T20:50:36.893-07:00@Mupetblast
You are just as privileged as Hanson...@Mupetblast<br /><br /><i> You are just as privileged as Hanson. So that particular criticism won't get us anywhere.</i><br /><br />What criticism? I am not saying Hanson is wrong because he is privleged, I՚m saying that his ideology is suspiciously self-serving. Consider the possibility that I am just as privleged as Hanson but pushing a less-self-serving set of ideas. <br /><br /><i> "That՚s the really irritating thing about these antipolitics people, they end up being apologists for the established order."</i><br /><br /><i> The status quo is up to its eyeballs in partisanship and ideologues, so that description seems way off. </i><br /><br />Again, I՚m not really sure what you are saying (or that you understand what I am saying). I agree that “The status quo is up to its eyeballs in partisanship and ideologues”, the people who pretend that it isn՚t can՚t help become unconscious apologists for it. If you believe that the current order of power just somehow is a reflection of reality, and any attempt to change it is “politics”, you are a tool. <br /><br /><i> I think what you mean is that by muddying the waters of confident leftism with doubt, they are effectively boosting the established order. </i><br /><br />Huh?<br /><br /><i> But "established order" isn't very informative. For the alt right - to whom Hanson et al. are aspie cucks or something - and evangelicals, Muslims, Scientologists etc. the established order is described differently than you'd describe it. </i><br /><br />Everyone may have different descriptions of the established order, but that doesn՚t make power into something amorphous and subjective. Charles Koch and George Soros both have more power than I do, no matter what I or anybody else thinks about it, and even evangelists or the alt.right will acknowledge it, even if (especially if) they want to change it. <br /> <br /><i> Mistake theory allows us to hash out our differences and look for common ground. (Barring this, property rights help, but you seem to dislike libertarians as much as liberals.)</i><br /><br />I think you have a mistaken notion of "mistake theory", which is not about "hashing out" anything (that is conflict-y!) but in denying or avoiding conflict entirely. Read the original SSC posts if you don't believe me. <br /><br /><i> You seem steeped in zero sum conflict thinking. It's weird to see it coming from the left. </i><br /><br />I can՚t really imagine why you would think that.<br /><br />Take an example dear to the libertarian heart, two individulals engaged in a business transaction and negotiating over it. Like, say A has a house on the market and B is a buyer. Their goals are very much in conflict, since A wants the highest possible price and B wants the opposite. But, they have a mechanism for resolving their conflict which has presumably non-zero-sum results. <br /><br />That is an apolitical example of conflict, possibly irrelevant, but it is a lot better captured by “conflict theory” than by “mistake theory”, which would require some objective standard of who deserves the house (or something -- it doesn't actually make much sense). Political conflicts get resolved by other mechanisms, but even so the normal process is negotiation and finding settlements that resolve the conflict. Of course sometimes you need a revolution, which I guess is more zero-sum, but hardly weird "coming from the left".<br /><br /><i>Ut's a very Schmittian attitude. </i><br /><br />Not really, Schmitt had a very particular version of conflict theory that I (obviously) don՚t endorse. I actually had a whole section on that in the original post, but cut it because it was going in yet another direction...may eventually finish and post it. <br />mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-38847867855653858192018-03-12T15:28:53.084-07:002018-03-12T15:28:53.084-07:00You are just as privileged as Hanson. So that part...You are just as privileged as Hanson. So that particular criticism won't get us anywhere.<br /><br />"That՚s the really irritating thing about these antipolitics people, they end up being apologists for the established order."<br /><br />The status quo is up to its eyeballs in partisanship and ideologues, so that description seems way off. I think what you mean is that by muddying the waters of confident leftism with doubt, they are effectively boosting the established order. But "established order" isn't very informative. For the alt right - to whom Hanson et al. are aspie cucks or something - and evangelicals, Muslims, Scientologists etc. the established order is described differently than you'd describe it. Mistake theory allows us to hash out our differences and look for common ground. (Barring this, property rights help, but you seem to dislike libertarians as much as liberals.)<br /><br />You seem steeped in zero sum conflict thinking. It's weird to see it coming from the left. It's a very Schmittian attitude. Then again it's also weird to see the "right" coming off as cultural relativists asking us to tolerate all POVs and open our mind. But that's another conversation. We live in interesting times...Mupetblasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05679108807930898123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-91931571264151066672018-03-09T22:10:59.423-08:002018-03-09T22:10:59.423-08:00@Dain – I think you are missing the point, and so ...@Dain – I think you are missing the point, and so is Hanson. Conflict is everywhere, it certainly informs every aspect of American life (which, contrary to th post you linked, has always managed to find a way to provide separate institutions for different races, classes, and ideologies). To think that the existing order somehow descended from heaven and it is only those unruly people who are trying to change it who are guilty of conflict is the standpoint of the privileged. <br /><br />That՚s the really irritating thing about these antipolitics people, they end up being apologists for the established order. <br />mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.com