tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62169102024-03-15T18:13:08.718-07:00Miniver Cheevysome things I think are interestingJonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.comBlogger3028125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-59406107682228586122024-03-14T11:22:00.000-07:002024-03-14T20:11:59.916-07:00Book of Job <p>
The Book Of Job is very strange.
</p><p>
Job calls Ha’Shem to account for the injustice of the world, and the Voice From The Whirlwind delivers a glorious rant that spans all of space and time, which starts off like this:
</p><blockquote>
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth?<br />
Tell me, if you have understanding. <br />
Who determined its measurements? Surely you know!<br />
Or who stretched the line upon it?<br />
On what were its bases sunk?<br />
Or who laid its cornerstone<br />
When the morning stars sang together<br />
And all the Sons Of Elohim shouted for joy?<small><em><br />
38:4-7</em></small>
</blockquote><p>
That’s not an answer, Dad.
</p><p>
But the King James translation has Job respond with goveling humility:
</p><blockquote>
I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes<small><em><br />
42:6</em></small>
</blockquote><p>
I fell in love with the Book Of Job through a different <a href="https://stephenmitchellbooks.com/translations-adaptations/the-book-of-job/">translation</a> by Stephen Mitchell, a Jewish <em>and</em> Zen Buddhist scholar of Hebrew. He said he was inspired to do his new transation by then-recent scholarship which suggested that the Hebrew word נחם was better <a href="https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5162.htm">understood</a> not as <em>I repent</em> but as <em>I take consolation</em>, which unlocked for him a whole other side of the book. In the introduction to his translation, Mitchell says:
</p><blockquote><p>
This is partly a matter of translation. The King James and most other versions present us with a Job who, in his last words, “abhor[s] [him]self / and repent[s] in dust and ashes.” They do this on the shakiest of philological grounds; though understandably, because they are thinking with orthodox Christian ideas and expecting to find penitence and self-abasement as the appropriate response to the righteous, ill-tempered god they expect to find. Nor is this only a Christian mind-set. (For example, the joke about the rabbi who on Yom Kippur walks to the front of his congregation, pounds his chest, and shouts, “I am worthless, Lord, I am worthless.” Then the president of the synagogue walks to the front, pounds his chest, and shouts, “I am worthless, Lord, I am worthless.” Next, to the surprise and scandal of everyone, the wimpy little beadle walks to the front, pounds his chest, and shouts, “I am worthless, Lord, I am worthless.” The rabbi turns to the president and sneers, “Look who’s saying he’s worthless!”)
</p><p>
But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance. Wherefore I abhor myself indeed! How could this poet, after a venture of unprecedented daring, end with a hero merely beaten into submission? Thereby proving that the friends’ degraded opinion is correct after all, since Job, by acknowledging that he is a vermin among vermin, acknowledges the god who mistrusts his angels and in whose nose heaven stinks.
</p><p>
Job’s response will not accommodate such whimpering. He has received his answer, and can only remain awe-stricken in the face of overwhelming beauty and dread. At Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, Robert Oppenheimer responded to another kind of vision by remembering a verse from the Bhagavad Gita: “I [God] am death, the shatterer of worlds.” And indeed, the only scriptural analogy to God’s answer (the other Biblical examples, except for the biting bush, are of a lesser god) is the vision granted to Arjuna in chapter 11 of the Gita, in which that prince experiences, down to the marrow of his bones, the glory and the terror of the universe, all creation and all destruction, embraced in the blissful play of the Supreme Lord. The manifestations there are more cosmic than in Job and the realization of God as “the Self seated in the heart of all creatures” is far clearer. But Job’s vision is the more vivid, I think, because its imagination is so deeply rooted in the things of this world. Reading the two together, we are likely to feel even more powerfully the earthliness that moved the author of Job to write in such magnificent, loving detail of the lioness and the wild ass and the horse, those creatures as radiant in their pure being as the light that is “brighter than a thousand suns.”
</p><p>
Job’s final words issue from surrender; not from submission, which even at its purest, in the “Naked I came…” of the prologue, is a gesture in a power transaction, between slave and master or defeated and conqueror, and is always a mode of spiritual depression. Surrender, on the contrary, means the wholehearted giving-up of oneself. It is both the ultimate generosity and the ultimate poverty, because in it the giver becomes the gift. When Job says, “I had heard of you with my ears; / but now my eyes have seen you,” he is no longer a servant, who fears god and avoids evil. He has faced evil, has looked straight into its face and through it, into a vast wonder and love.
</p><p>
Instead of bursting into fervid adoration as Arjuna does, Job remains a hairsbreadth away from silence. His words are a miracle of tact. We are not told the details of his realization; that isn’t necessary; everything is present in the serenity of his tone. All we know is that his grief and accusations, his ideas about God and pity for man, arose from utter ignorance. But we can intuit more than that. A man who hungers and thirsts after justice is not satisfied with a menu. It is not enough for him to hope or believe or know that there is absolute justice in the universe: he must taste and see it. It is not enough that there may be justice someday in the golden haze of the future: it must be now; must always have been now.
</p></blockquote><p>
So in his rendering, Mitchell gives Job’s response as:
</p><blockquote>
I had heard of you with my ears;<br />
but now my eyes have seen you.<br />
Therefore I will be quiet,<br />
comforted that I am dust.<br />
</blockquote><p>
A while back, I found myself musing on the Voice From The Whirlwind asking Job, “Where were you?”
</p><p>
I had always taken this as Ha’Shem pulling rank as a Cranky Old Timer: “What do you know? Back when I was setting Planck’s Constant with my Divine Calipers, just to get to work I had to create snow before walking through it <em>barefoot</em> because I had not yet created shoes.”
</p><p>
But decades after I read Mitchell’s translation and commentary, it finally occurred to me to take the question directly. Where <em>was</em> Job when Ha’Shem laid the foundations of the world?
</p><p>
And I thought of the Zen kōan which asks, “What was your face before you were born?” And then the one which asks, “Who is the Master who makes the grass green?” Or if that is too oblique, consider Dan Bern’s American folk kōan <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI32IjcfJws">“God Said No”</a>.
</p><p>
Invitations to finding the root of <a href="https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/what-did-the-buddha-mean-by-suffering/">suffering</a>. With that, one might feel comforted that one is dust.
</p><br /><p>
Or perhaps Job was <a href="https://www.bookforum.com/culture/a-rebellious-new-translation-of-the-book-of-job-23869"><strong>fed up</strong></a>.
</p>
<!--
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kjv4orxkfgwmvozil44to/Kollel-8-Bava-Batra-FINAL-2024.pdf?rlkey=cb5feznz7stvp4cdyc4n5l5ba&dl=0
The Book of Job reminds us of things
we humans continually forget: Beauty
does not equal good, health is not a moral
attribute, and success is not only for the just. It
tells us that it is no transgression to wish you had never
been born; to be angry at the world because of one’s suffering,
even to challenge God. In the most cliché of all ideas, we learn
that bad things happen to good people.
Additionally, Job asks the questions we ourselves ask: If God
is all-knowing and the writer of the world, then why punish
anyone? In the case where God divines our actions, what is
the difference between good and evil? Where is the bound
-
ary? The wall?
If we can look over that wall, does it cause damage? When
we cross from one side of the wall that the Shatan and the
Shaddai have built together, are we changing state ourselves? If
someone moves the boundary stones, are we still responsible
for knowing where that border is supposed to be?
I am left with the essential question of Bava Batra: If the Shatan
and the Shaddai build a wall that continually crumbles, whose
task is it to repair it?
-->Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-83032510399117866412024-03-12T11:04:00.000-07:002024-03-12T11:04:26.579-07:00The Absurd Pier <p>
The US has announced plans to build a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/07/biden-us-port-gaza-aid-delivery">pier</a> to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza. A friend on my feed shared a comment calling this is a ploy to secure a permanent US military presence in Gaza.
</p><p>
This is the kind of paranoid, dumb advocacy for Palestinian liberation which frustrates me, attributing not just malice to opponents of Palestinian liberation but <em>every possible</em> malice, defying logic.
</p><p>
To President Biden, the horrors in Gaza are a distraction from domestic concerns and the upcoming election. He wants an end to criticism of ongoing US support to Israel despite the <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/02/israel-gaza-war-and-genocide.html">brutality</a> of their attack on Gaza, but also wants to keep the alliance with Israel, because most Democrats still support Israel and US military strategy depends on Israel as a place where we can land planes.
</p><p>
Biden wants the Gaza crisis <em>off of his desk</em> as soon as possible; creating a permanent military presence in Gaza is a <em>nightmare</em> for him, not a goal. The Absurd Pier goes out of its way to be both materially & theatrically <em>not</em>-permanent. It keeps US troops’ literal boots off of the literal ground.
</p><p>
The US has a moral obligation as not just a major power but as a longtime ally of Israel to support Palestinian liberation, and I will not pretend that the Absurd Pier meets that obligation. But it <em>is</em> good on the merits, and given the constraints that Biden imagines he faces, a very clever move.
</p><p>
It allows the US to provide material support to the people of Gaza — more than the US has ever done for Palestinians before — without sacrificing the alliance with Israel we insist on retaining.
</p><p>
Doing this as a military operation deters interference which has thus far curtailed bringing aid. The Egyptians and other Arab states do not want to tangle with the US over it; they will not go that far out of their way. If Israel interferes with the aid effort, it undercuts American voters’ support for Israel, giving Biden cover to put more pressure on them or even sever the alliance. If Hamas interferes — as they could, being more interested in glory than the wellbeing of the Palestinian people — US would then have a stake in the conduct of the “war on Hamas”, enabling pressure on Israel to <em>stop doing brutal stupid things to the people of Gaza which put Americans in danger</em>. It even signals that a return to the status quo ante of Israel’s blockade of Gaza is unacceptable.
</p><p>
Take the modest win.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-50013806938751762972024-03-01T13:41:00.000-08:002024-03-13T12:49:47.589-07:00TESCREAL <p>
I need to write something proper about Timnit Gebru & Émile P. Torres’ coinage “<small><strong>TESCREAL</strong></small>” to describe the weirdnerd ideological cluster of <strong>t</strong>ranshumanism, <strong>E</strong>xtropianism, <strong>s</strong>ingularitarianism, <strong>c</strong>osmism, <strong>R</strong>ationalism, <strong>E</strong>ffective <strong>A</strong>ltruism and <strong>l</strong>ongtermism. I find the acronym very useful in registering how these ideologies are entangled and reflect a shared lineage, though I think Torres’ conclusion that these are Just All One Thing is a misleading overstatement. If we are going to confront this and neighboring movemements like <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/05/neoreaction.html">neoreaction</a> and Gray Tribe et cetera, it is important to make distinctions.
</p><p>
In the meantime, a few commentaries I find useful:
</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-acronym-behind-our-wildest-ai-dreams-and-nightmares/">
The Acronym Behind Our Wildest AI Dreams and Nightmares</a> lays out Torres’ thesis.
</li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XT4TWLzJw">
Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through AGI</a> is a video of a talk by Gebru & Torres
</li><li><a href="https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology">
The Californian Ideology</a> talks about an adjacent precursor ideology; back in 1995 it presciently described and critiqued the culture of the “tech” industry. I recommend it to people every chance I get.
</li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/601420658/posts/pfbid0Kpea7DFkT39vexc1tDVA3iCERB91uuxgV5gUKUtSSr5EXrWsLpRLTK4xnSFGSxAyl/">Aragorn Eloff</a> connects TESCREAL to the Californian Ideology through Dr. Timothy Leary in a way I find illuminating.
</li><li><a href="https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/01/23/the-eugenicists-are-always-oozing-out-of-the-woodwork/">
The Eugenicists Are Always Oozing Out Of The Woodwork</a> & <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/nick-bostrom-longtermism-and-the-eternal-return-of-eugenics-2/">Nick Bostrom, Longtermism, and the Eternal Return of Eugenics</a> describe recognizing the scent of “scientific” racism in this sphere.
</li><li><a href="https://aiascendant.substack.com/p/extropias-children">
Extropia’s Children</a> is a long exploration of the movement and its culture from Jon Evans, who is even more concerned than I am that Torres’ analysis simplifies it too much.
</li><li><a href="https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html">The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence</a> is an accessible introduction to why this movement is so fascinated by the prospect of superintelligent artificial intelligence
</li><li><a href="http://hdl.handle.net/10919/107009">
Morphological Freedom and the Construction of Bodymind Malleability from Eugenics to
Transhumanism</a> is a recent doctoral dissertation by Joshua Giles Earle which vigorously criticizes the moral & pragmatic assumptions woven deep into the ideology.
</li><li><a href="https://afutureworththinkingabout.com/?p=5738">
An Imagined and Incomplete Conversation about “Consciousness” and “AI,” Across Time</a> from Damien P. Williams (my favorite single commentator on this territory) conjures a Socratic dialogue which starts with Descartes and ends with the the current iteration of the <small><strong>TESCREAL</strong></small> crew.
</li><li><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/among-the-ai-doomsayers">Among The AI Doomsayers</a> is a generous-spirited portrait of the San Francisco Bay Area scene
</li><li><a href="https://beff.substack.com/p/notes-on-eacc-principles-and-tenets">Notes on e/acc principles and tenets</a> is a sort-of manifesto for “effective accelerationism” from within the scene, advocating “having faith in the dynamical adaptation process and aiming to accelerate the advent of its asymptotic limit; often reffered to as the technocapital singularity”, seeking to hasten as much as possible capitalist robots replacing the human species
</li><li><a href="http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/">
The Guy I Almost Was</a> is a delicious fictionalized memoir about brushing against the scene back in the early 1990s and realizing how it was more libertarian than libertine.
</li>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-20585149676059238092024-02-21T12:04:00.000-08:002024-03-04T15:06:19.668-08:00Cheap oil killed the Soviet Union, not Reagan <p>
I was just reminded of how conservatives like to claim that Ronald Reagan’s vast expansion of the US military budget and general “toughness” caused the collapse of the Soviet Union under his successor George HW Bush in 1991.
</p><p>
This is just not true.
</p><p>
Obviously it is impossible to attribute any turn so large and consequential to <em>any</em> single cause. It was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/why-did-the-soviet-union-collapse">complex and contingent on historical particulars</a>. But every informed analysis I have seen points to an overwhelming proximate cause.
</p><p>
The Soviets long had been unable to produce enough grain to feed their people. For decades, they had made up the difference by buying grain on the world market. They raised the foreign currency necessary to buy grain by selling oil. The price of oil fell sharply over the 1980s. Flat broke, the Soviet state simply could no longer function.
</p><p>
I have a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070703120837/http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25991,filter.all/pub_detail.asp">breakdown</a> of the mechanics from Russian Yegor Gaidar, published by the center-right American Enterprise Institute in 2007:
</p><blockquote><p>
[In 1985] the Saudis stopped protecting oil prices, and Saudi Arabia quickly regained its share in the world market. During the next six months, oil production in Saudi Arabia increased fourfold, while oil prices collapsed by approximately the same amount in real terms.
</p><p>
As a result, the Soviet Union lost approximately <sup>$</sup>20 billion per year, money without which the country simply could not survive.
</p><p>
[⋯]
</p><p>
The only option left for the Soviet elites was to begin immediate negotiations about the conditions of surrender. Gorbachev did not have to inform President George H. W. Bush at the Malta Summit in 1989 that the threat of force to support the communist regimes in Eastern Europe would not be employed. This was already evident at the time. Six weeks after the talks, no communist regime in Eastern Europe remained.
</p><p>
[⋯]
</p><p>
What were Gorbachev’s options at the time? He could not easily dissolve the Soviet empire; the conservative elements inside the Soviet leadership were strongly against this notion. Yet he could not prevent the dissolution of the empire without a massive use of force. But if force was employed, the Soviet state would not get the necessary funds from the West, without which Gorbachev had no chance of staying in power.
</p><p>
[⋯]
</p><p>
Even if they found one division able to crush all the people who demonstrated against the GKChP [the movement attempting a coup against Gorbachev in 1991], would the grain appear? Where would they find the food necessary to feed the larger cities? Would the West rapidly give the <sup>$</sup>100 billion? Their case, like the Soviet state itself, was entirely lost.
</p><p>
On August 22, 1991, the story of the Soviet Union came to an end. A state that does not control its borders or military forces and has no revenue simply cannot exist. The document which effectively concluded the history of the Soviet Union was a letter from the Vneshekonombank in November 1991 to the Soviet leadership, informing them that the Soviet state had not a cent in its coffers.
</p></blockquote><p>
Any telling of the Soviet collapse which does not rest on their need for grain and the price of oil is nonsense.
</p><p>
Indeed, there is a strong argument that Reagan’s hard line on military confrontation did not force the Soviets’ hand economically, but did make it <em>harder</em> for Gorbechev to unwind the Soviet Union when the time came. Richard Ned Lebow & Janice Gross Stein <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm">wrote</a> in <cite>The Atlantic</cite> back in 1994, informed by talking directly to Gorbechev:
</p><blockquote><p>
⋯ Neither the strong nor the weak version of the proposition that American defense spending bankrupted the Soviet economy and forced an end to the Cold War is sustained by the evidence.
</p><p>
The Soviet Union’s defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures.
</p><p>
[⋯]
</p><p>
Reagan’s commitment to SDI [the Strategic Defense Initiative attempting to create defenses against nuclear missiles] made it more difficult for Gorbachev to persuade his officials that arms control was in the Soviet interest. Conservatives, some of the military leadership, and spokesmen for defense-related industries insisted that SDI was proof of America’s hostile intentions. In a contentious politburo meeting called to discuss arms control, Soviet armed forces chief of staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev angrily warned that the Soviet people would not tolerate any weakening of Soviet defenses, according to Oleg Grinevsky, now Russia’s ambassador to Sweden. [Soviet ambassador to Canada] Yakovlev insists that “Star Wars was exploited by hardliners to complicate Gorbachev's attempt to end the Cold War.”
</p></blockquote><p>
One <em>might</em> credit Reagan indirectly for getting the US cozy with the Saudis. And I <em>do</em> give Reagan credit, sort of, in the sense that as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_gwnFSFzv0">Vulcan proverb</a> teaches, only Reagan could have allowed Gorbechev to attempt a soft landing for the shattered Soviet empire without suffering criticism in US politics for being “soft” on the Russians <em>late</em> in the process.
</p><p>
But Reagan boosters do not want to tell <em>those</em> stories, they want to talk about Reagan being “tough”. <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/23/reagan-condemns-beirut-bombing-oct-23-1983-921655">He was not.</a> And “toughness” had nothing to do with Soviet collapse.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-8789125687723224412024-02-08T12:39:00.000-08:002024-02-12T10:18:50.130-08:00Star Trek as liberal propaganda <p>
The root beer scene from the <cite>Star Trek: Deep Space Nine</cite> episode of “Way Of The Warrior” is my single favorite work of <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2014/05/democracy.html">liberal-as-in-Isaiah-Berlin-and-liberal-democracy</a> propaganda.
</p><p>
If you don’t know Trek, a little grounding:
</p><ul><li>
The guy with the ears is Quark; his society are quasi-libertarian space capitalists
</li><li>
The guy with the neck is Garak; his society are space fascists
</li><li>
The Federation are our space heroes, the liberal society that Kirk, Spock, and Picard come from, space rivals to the other two space societies
</li><li>
Over the next season of the show, the Federation will in fact decisively win the space war they are talking about
</li></ul><br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6VhSm6G7cVk?si=mOE0zT2Eagn-sex8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br /><br /><p>
I have watched this dozens of times and find it moving every time. (<a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/67275090/questioning-quark-star-treks-armin-shimerman">Evidently</a> actors Andrew Robinson & Armin Shimerman deserve credit for it!)
</p><p>
It has become common to mock conservatives grumbling about Star Trek “going woke”, since original Trek was very deliberately and transparently liberal-as-in-not-conservative propaganda in countless ways. But Trek is also <em>structurally</em> about liberalism in the deeper sense. A Star Trek story goes like this:
</p><ol><li>
Our protagonists encounter Something Strange.
</li><li>
The Something Strange seems hostile.
</li><li>
Our protagnoists assume that they do not understand why the Something Strange is presenting the threat.
</li><li>
Our protagonists work together as a team, combining their different knowledge, talents, and perspectives to figure out what is up with the Something Strange.
</li><li>
Though a blend of heart and reason, they figure it out. Yep, this was a big misunderstanding.
</li><li>
Armed with this knowledge, the protagonists do something difficult — even risky — to help the Something Strange.
</li><li>
Aiding the Something Strange makes it no longer a threat.
</li><li>
Now our protagonists have a new friend.
</li></ol><p><strong>
Star Trek is the dream of liberalism always working</strong>, just as <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2013/12/holy-guardian-angel.html">Superman</a> is the dream of refusing to accept the terms of the Trolly Problem and saving <em>everyone</em>.
</p><p>
Is this formulaic? Heck yes. This post started as a Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/miniver/status/1686526079228657669">thread</a>, where I noted a conservative wag mocking the then-forthcoming <cite>Marvels</cite> movie:
</p><blockquote><p>
Wait, wait … hang on … just a wild guess here, but I bet Carol Danvers discovers that only by Working As A Team and by Utilizing Diverse Strengths can she defeat the Big Baddie. Also, quips! And multiverse!
</p><p>
Calling MCU formulaic is an insult to formulas.
</p></blockquote><p>
That guy does not hate that Marvel movies are formulaic. He hates that they are a formula for <em>liberalism</em>.
</p><p>
Not that the formula always works, either in Marvel or Trek. I need to follow up this post with a look at the ways pop liberal propaganda fails at its own project, often revealing cracks in the foundations. I am particularly grumpy at how recent Trek so often <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenAesop">misfires</a>.
</p><p>
But I remain <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/07/what-if-not-liberal-democracy.html">committed</a> to libdem. When Trek delivers formulaic boosterism for liberalism, that is the <em>good</em> comfort food. I count root beer as the sacred libation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_Pandemos">Aphrodítē Pandēmos</a> — god of love for <em>all</em> in the shared space of the ἀγορά, and thus <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2017/08/charlottesville-my-patron-god-is-hermes.html">for me</a> god of liberal democracy — and my thirst for it is bottomless.
</p><blockquote><em>
Garak</em><br />
Might I trouble you for a glass of kanar?
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
Help yourself. It’s on the house.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
How uncharacteristically generous of you.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
I’m in an uncharacteristic mood. Besides, I’ve got eighty cases of this stuff sitting in my stockroom. And the way things are going, I’ll never unload another bottle unless it’s to you.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
How thoughtless of me not to consider the effect the destruction of my homeworld would have on your business. These must be trying times for you. Be brave.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
I should’ve listened to my cousin Gaila. He said to me, “Quark, I’ve got one word for you: <em>weapons</em>. No one ever went broke selling weapons.” But did I take his advice? No. And why not? Because I’m a <em>people</em> person. I like interacting with my customers. Like you and I are doing right now. Talking to each other, getting to know one another.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
I can see the attraction. For you.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
But when you’re dealing in weapons, buyers aren’t interested in casual conversation. They just want their merchandise, no questions asked. It’s so impersonal.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
Your charms would be wasted.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
Exactly. So now Gaila owns his own moon, and I’m staring into the abyss. And the worst part is, my only hope for salvation is the <em>Federation</em>.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
I know precisely how you feel.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
I want you to try something for me. Take a sip of this.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
What is it?
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
A human drink. It's called “root beer”.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
I don’t know.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
Come on. Aren’t you just a little bit curious?
<br /><br /><em>
Garak drinks, looks disgusted
</em><br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
What do you think?
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
It’s <em>vile</em>.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
I know. It’s so bubbly and cloying and happy.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
Just like the Federation.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
But you know what’s really frightening? If you drink enough of it … you begin to like it.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
It’s insidious.
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
Just like the Federation.
<br /><br /><em>
Garak</em><br />
Do you think they’ll be able to save us?
<br /><br /><em>
Quark</em><br />
I hope so.
</blockquote>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-65320340769141727882024-02-07T16:36:00.000-08:002024-03-14T15:11:44.022-07:00Decision-based evidence-making <p>
Once upon a time, I had an epistemological crisis at my day job.
</p><p>
When I was working at a consulting studio I did a lot of presenting with PowerPoint decks, communicating research and design work. I devote a lot of effort to my presentation materials and feel pride when clients admire them presenting complex ideas clearly. Occasionally this has resulted in clients asking for my help in assembling PowerPoint decks of their own, which is usually fun, easy, good for the studio’s client relationships, and makes the world a tiny bit better by spreading wisdom about making non-gawdawful presentations.
</p><p>
Several years ago, a client in a large organization asked for me to take a day or three to help their colleague from another part of their company to put together a presentation about some research they had done. This person came my office with a huge stack of binders full of research reports. “We need to figure out how to explain to people in <em>Department X</em> how this research shows that we need to pursue <em>Policy Y</em>.”
</p><p>
“Great!” I said. “Just walk me through it. Tell me in your words how you came to your conclusions, we will talk until I have a good grasp of it, then we can figure out together how best to explain it clearly, succinctly, and convincingly.”
</p><p>
This surprised them. “I don’t understand.”
</p><p>
“What don’t you understand?”
</p><p>
“Why are you asking <em>me</em> how this research shows that we should do <em>Policy Y</em>?”
</p><p>
Huh? “Is this not your research?”
</p><p>
“Well, some of this research we did ourselves, some of it we paid for. But what does that have to do with anything?”
</p><p>
I shrugged. “I’m sorry, I did not want to get sidetracked on how the research was done. I was asking because I want to understand what from the research lead you to choose <em>Policy Y</em>.”
</p><p>
“I don’t understand. <em>Policy Y</em> is my team’s plan.”
</p><p>
“Yes, how did you decide that?”
</p><p>
“What does <em>that</em> have to do with the presentation?”
</p><p>
They were visibly exasperated. I am sure I failed at concealing my irritation at how weird this conversation was.
</p><p>
Obviously I am abbreviating a longer, twistier conversation in which we were talking past each other. After a few rounds, I did <a href="https://criticalhandgestures.tumblr.com">the Shelf Sweep</a> with my hands and tried to take a conceptual step back.
</p><p>
“Okay. You did the research. You looked at it, you thought about it. Then you realized that you needed to do <em>Policy Y</em>. What in the research pointed you there?”
</p><p>
“That’s what I want you to figure out for the presentation!”
</p><p>
I tried another step back. “I think the folks who set this up confused me about what you need. Let’s start over. Can you tell me what you need me to do?”
</p><p>
“I need you to find the data in this research which shows that we need to do <em>Policy Y</em>, so I can convince <em>Department X</em> to do it.”
</p><p><strong><em>
Oh.
</em></strong></p><p>
“Now I think I am following you. You have already decided to do <em>Policy Y</em>, for your own reasons. You want to persuade the people in <em>Department X</em>. So you want to sift through all this research to find things which support <em>Policy Y</em>.”
</p><p>
“Yes!”
</p><p>
“I apologize for the misunderstanding.”
</p><p>
“It’s okay. Let’s get to it!”
</p><p>
“Um. No. We have had a misunderstanding about <em>what I do for a living</em>.”
</p><p>
“Aren’t you a research consultant?”
</p><p>
“Yes, I am, among other things.”
</p><p>
“So what is the misunderstanding?”
</p><p>
“I do research, and analyze it, to help clients make good decisions about products and services.”
</p><p>
“Right. I need help analyzing this research.”
</p><p>
“You are neither asking me to analyze that research nor to communicate an analysis of it.”
</p><p>
“Huh? I am asking for an analysis of how this research supports <em>Policy Y</em>.”
</p><p>
“Analysis is looking at research and figuring out what policies and solutions it suggests. That is a different thing.”
</p><p>
“I don’t get the difference.”
</p><p>
“Yes, I see that. I am very sorry to have wasted your time. Obviously our studio will not bill you for this meeting, because of the misunderstanding.”
</p><p>
Again, this was a much longer and clumsier conversation than I could hope to reproduce. They were not just astonished that I considered myself professionally obligated to refuse this work, they could not see what my objection <em>was</em>. Wasn’t this what researchers did? Wasn’t this what consultants did? My presumption that one should examine evidence before reaching a conclusion, rather than using it to support a conclusion, was not even an idea they could understand well enough to reject.
</p><p>
I am not against trying to be persuasive. That is a necessary art. But I was shaken they could not conceive of any use of information other than persuasion.
</p><p>
I have reluctantly come to believe that there are more people like them than there are like me.
</p>
<br /><hr /><br />
<p>
This post was born as a Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/miniver/status/1202661118595891200">thread</a>, and over time I threaded related observations from others.
</p><h1>
In tech / design / business
</h1><p><a href="https://www.MaiaBittner.com">
Maia Bittner</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/maiab/status/1565363101595205634">
sums up</a> my story succinctly:
<blockquote>
I have finally learned how “data-driven decision-making” works in business:
<ul><li>
First you make whatever decision you want to about your product or business.
</li><li>
Then you go spelunking to cherry-pick data to back up it being a good decision! 🍒
</li></ul>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mandarins-Future-Modernization-American-Intellectual/dp/0801886333">
Nils Gilman</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/nils_gilman/status/1581260061451567109">describes</a> the kind of consultant that client of mine thought they were hiring:
</p><blockquote>
Consultancies <em>claim</em> that what they’re providing is access to “best practices” — which is sometimes true. But much of the time what they’re <em>actually</em> providing is CYA for unpopular decisions and/or ammo for one side in an intra-firm political struggle.
<br /><br /><a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/10/05/do-mckinsey-and-other-consultants-do-anything-useful">
The Economist | Do McKinsey and other consultants do anything useful?</a>
<blockquote>
Though hated, they often provide a valuable service to the economy
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://spavel.medium.com">
Pavel A. Samsonov</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/PavelASamsonov/status/1354078470016557060">feels misunderstood</a> like I did:
</p><blockquote>
Was just introduced by a colleague as someone who will “validate business requirements” and a chill ran up my spine.
</blockquote><p>
Samsonov <a href="https://twitter.com/PavelASamsonov/status/1550117666320314368">describes</a> the underlying politics well:
</p><blockquote><p>
No amount of research will make stakeholders as confident as following all of their biases.
</p><p>
Sell stakeholders on the idea of <em>doing research</em> in the first place, or they will demand impossible bulletproof evidence for anything that doesn’t align with their existing assumptions.
</p><p>
In one article, Jared Spool discusses how you must always ask executives for what they expect to happen <em>before</em> user testing. Otherwise they will pretend like they knew the outcome ahead of time, and it will not sway their thinking. This is an analogous concept.
</p><p>
If you produce results without creating the expectation that the stakeholder’s assumptions may have been wrong, they will find a way to reconcile the results with their existing mental model. Often that just means being dismissed: “you asked the wrong people/questions”.
</p><p>
As Alan Cooper says - user experience is a power struggle. In low-maturity product orgs, stakeholders gather political power through being Experts who are Always Right. Realigning attitudes away from assumptions is a political game, not a delivery one.
</p><p>
These orgs create a vicious cycle between assumption-driven design and brittle development. The cost of being wrong is massive (politically and financially). Rather than reducing the cost of being wrong, stakeholders find it safer to obfuscate how “right” is determined.
</p><p>
Introducing the idea of experimentation - controlled, rapid failing - is anathema to this environment. So you have to sell the whole thing at once: small, quick, cheap tests aimed at learning rather than “winning”. The only real failure is if we didn't learn anything new.
</p><p>
This is very scary because it requires stakeholders to commit to a real “definition of good” that’s not just “the team delivered the requirements.” They have to get buy-in for goals and hypotheses (you might recognize these as OKRs) and that takes work!
</p><p>
But more importantly, they give up control. They are no longer the Knower and Decider (instead, research determines the way forward). They no longer set the team's outputs (the team determines their own experiments). But they are still on the hook for results.
</p><p>
This is what you’re struggling against: convincing stakeholders to relinquish absolute power. If they do not, then regardless of the title on your business cards you are stuck as a feature designer or usability tester, not a UX designer or user researcher.
</p></blockquote><p>
Samsonov also talks about the <a href="https://twitter.com/PavelASamsonov/status/1516135936102387713">organizational dynamics</a> these deceits produce in the kinds of product development I do:
<blockquote><p>
Product teams fall apart when they start lying to themselves. This breaks the core mechanism:
</p><ol><li>
Define problem
</li><li>
Prioritize problem
</li><li>
Define appropriately scaled solution for problem
</li></ol><p>
Teams that lie to themselves can’t do 2, and therefore can’t do 3.
</p><p>
When teams lie to themselves, it usually looks something like this:
</p><ul><li>
🧑🏻: It would be cool and innovative to build <em>Widget</em>
</li><li>
🧔🏻: I’ll create the user story! “As user, I want to have <em>Widget</em>”
</li><li>
🧑🏻: Great! I’ll add it to the roadmap.
</li></ul><p>
Did you spot the lie? It’s when the team invents a problem simply to justify the solution. But because the problem is made-up, it can’t be scoped or prioritized. It’s impossible to determine the right amount of resources to dedicate to it, or to define success criteria.
</p><p>
Being honest with themselves doesn’t mean that the team can’t say “we want to build <em>Widget</em>.” But it does mean that the problem is defined as “we want to build <em>Widget</em>” and is prioritized accordingly (probably very low on the list). Due to the low prioritization, <em>Widget</em> receives the appropriate amount of resourcing (probably not much). This naturally creates scaled-down success criteria, from “we build <em>Widget</em>” to perhaps “we proved building <em>Widget</em> was possible” or “we proved <em>Widget</em> is desirable to users.”
</p><p>
Why do I say that teams who lie to themselves fall apart?
</p><p>
Because without being able to establish clear success criteria, the team lacks one of the two key aspects of what actually makes a team: shared goals (or in other words, the “definition of good”).
</p><p>
The issue is not that the outcome the team is working towards isn’t a user-facing outcome. It’s pretending that it is. Because real user-facing outcomes have real definitions of good: users being able to reach their goals better than before. Fake user stories don’t have goals. So trust begins to break down. PMs challenge designers on “what users would want.” Devs challenge PMs on what is doable. The guiding principle for each role shifts towards outputs - we will follow our process and produce an output. “Shipped” over “good.”
</p><p>
The team that lies to itself loses trust in itself and starts to focus more and more on project management, chasing deadlines, and treating responsibility for outcomes like a hot potato. “We followed the Scrum process, it’s not our fault.”
</p><p>
Teams that are honest with themselves can identify an appropriate definition of good, even if it’s not user-facing (which is not inherently bad, a lot of valuable work isn’t easy to trace to user outcomes). But crucially, everyone can align on what the desired team outcome is. A team that is honest about its problems, and therefore is able to align on desired outcomes, can work backwards from those outcomes to make decisions in a real Agile way. There is no need for appeal to authority or “I’ll know it when I see it” type feedback/”acceptance testing”.
</p><p>
A team that is aligned on desired outcomes can say “we learned that <em>solution X</em> will not work to achieve goal Y” and can try something else.
</p><p>
A team that lies to itself cannot admit this, because building <em>solution X</em> is their problem. Without <em>solution X</em>, the team has no mandate.
</p><p>
The members of the team that lies to itself are not stupid, however. Individually, eventually, they realize that “build <em>solution X</em>” is not a valuable problem to solve. But without public recognition of this fact, they feel lost & bitter: why can’t anyone else see what I see?
</p><p>
This is the point at which the team starts to fall apart. Enthusiasm evaporates, work that used to energize the team becomes draining. People start leaving. But the team promised <em>solution X</em> to leadership. Stopping would be a crushing blow to credibility.
</p><p>
So now you have a zombie, shambling forward without any objective beyond devouring as many brains as it can. All because the team was initially organized around a lie.
</p></blockquote><p>
Samsonov comes <a href="https://twitter.com/PavelASamsonov/status/1184503017493663745">directly</a> at how yes, this is about <em>epistemology</em>:
</p><blockquote><p>
Software orgs are shaped by their source of truth.
</p><p>
If the source of truth is users, Agile is great for helping the team continuously develop understanding of fixed user needs. If the source of truth is executives, needs are <em>not</em> fixed. Execs constantly change their mind.
</p><p>
To an outside observer, these may look the same. The team starts out with some understanding of what needs to be built, and that understanding changes over time. But understanding of users can only improve. Exec-driven development is always at risk of being flipped upside-down.
</p><p>
When the goal is to understand users, experimentation is the norm. We don’t build features - we make bets, manage the risks, and learn.
</p><p>
Exec-driven development is extremely hostile to experiments. The HiPPO told you what to build, just build that. Don't ask questions.
</p><p>
So we can’t simply say, “let’s switch to Agile” without effecting change <em>outside</em> the dev team. Agility under HiPPO rule doesn’t look anything like agility for user-facing development. Teams are only thinking about making it easiest to keep up with exec flip-flopping.
</p><p>
An “agile” team in a feature factory must first build expensive, highly flexible architecture, so that pivoting along with exec whims is easy. Story point estimates are punitive to slow down the rate of requests for changes.
</p><p>
But execs don’t want architecture, they want UI! So one or two Java developers draw the short straw, spin up a web app, and start making some kind of website. This is when the org expects designers to contribute. We don’t need testing or research since the exec decided that already. Here is the BRD, draw us some mockups.
</p><p>
You will never be able to justify the value of design in an environment where design is the rendering of executive fiat. The designer can’t change their role simply by making better outputs, or challenging the PM. After all, it's not the PM’s decision either - it’s the exec’s. Rocking that boat is a huge risk.
</p><p>
The only way forward is to take on that risk.
</p><p>
Just because your outputs change from wireframes to processes doesn’t mean that the “make a bet and reduce the risk” model stops applying. Your users: <em>management</em>. Their goals: <em>make money</em>. Unknown: <em>their mental model around converting features into value into money</em>.
</p><p>
There are different schools of thought on how to do that. But it all boils down to: how can you change management’s mental model that experiments are risks, failure, and wasted work? How do you convince them that “just do what I tell you” is actually more risky?
</p></blockquote><p><a href="https://mstdn.social/@mathcolorstrees">
Roja</a> tells a tale of this breakdown <a href="https://twitter.com/mathcolorstrees/status/1396271456393175041">happening</a> at Twitter:
</p><blockquote>
<p>
Years ago when I was a new PhD grad working at Twitter, there was a director of product who had strong ideas about how to solve the abuse and harassment problem on Twitter.
</p><p>
I worked as a new Data scientist, building a model to detect abuse and then was responsible for A/B testing the solution. <em>His</em> product solution, which he was pretty sure was going to change abuser behavior.
</p><p>
His idea was that if victims did not see the abuse and did not respond to trolls, the trolls would stop the harassment (<em>facepalm</em>). I did the analysis and no change was detectable in abuser behavior.
</p><p>
I was told this guy had already drafted a press release ready for my numbers to be added, claiming that abuser behavior had changed. My results were not good news. There was real pressure on me to keep looking at different cuts of data. Something not super kosher in stats.
</p><p>
I kept getting the same results. And if anyone asked me, I’d have said his solution wasn’t going to change abuser behavior. Anyone who has ever been harassed online or offline knows that “not engaging” the trolls does not protect you from abuse.
</p><p>
I didn’t have a manager at the time (my new manager was on parental leave). There was no one to push back and be on my side. I remember a Google doc where I kept adding comments saying “no evidence of behavior change” wherever there was such a claim. It killed the press release.
</p><p>
But I felt so powerless, in a team of all men, who had a lot of confidence but very little understanding of the problem and even less empathy for the victims of abuse on Twitter (the Sr eng on the team made some disgusting comments about sexism and racism online).
</p><p>
The team’s director of engineering thought the abuse issue on Twitter was a matter of optics (he said this in a meeting I was in). That it wasn’t that bad and if we quickly shipped a few solutions for the supposed abuse problem the media would move on.
</p><p>
I also remember the director of product sitting in a meeting with people from rights groups and folks who were harassed on Twitter and had a very condescending conversation with them. The idea was that he knew what he was doing and these people needed to be handled.
</p><p>
It felt like I was a failure for not getting the “desired” results. What’s worse is that I was part of a wave of layoffs that happened right then, where 30% of employees were let go. I stayed strong but there was a voice inside me that told me I was bad at my job.
</p><p>
I’ve been managing teams of engineers and data scientists for a few years now. But the remnants of that first experience have stayed with me. The feeling that I am an outsider. That these arrogant men owned the place even when they did not understand the problem.
</p><p>
Those eng and product leaders stayed a while and then moved on to the next hot startup and accrued connections and wealth, stabilizing their position in our industry. They didn’t really face any consequences for getting the Twitter abuse problem wrong back then.
</p><p>
I had to get this story off my chest today. But there is a silver lining too. During that same period I met so many amazing people who worked at Twitter. Coworkers who made me feel connected and whom I enjoyed their company greatly and whom I am friends with to this day ♥️.
</p><p>
You all know who you are :) thank you for being great. I appreciate you.
</p><p>
(P.S. I think Twitter has come a long way in terms of cleaning up the timeline from the days of gamergate. Still would love to see it do better, especially in non-English languages)
</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://sensemaya.org">
Arvind Venkataramani</a> has <a href="https://twitter.com/_arvind/status/1554584798953238529">encountered</a> a weird self-awareness about this:
</p><blockquote><p>
A belief that exposure to human-centered design can overcome inherent power differences is a great way to be blind to the ways in which people are misusing power.
</p><p>
I’ve been told to my face (by someone solidly entrenched in the organisation) after presenting research insights and the raw data and analysis process that led me there, that I was making it all up.
</p><p>
At some point it is a useful heuristic to suspect people in power 🤷♂️
</p></blockquote>
<p>
Cat Hicks offers <a href="https://www.drcathicks.com/post/five-things-i-ve-learned-in-ten-years-of-being-a-social-scientist-in-tech">Five Things I’ve Learned in Ten Years of being a Social Scientist in Tech</a>
</p><blockquote><ol><li>
We keep saying data when we mean measurement
</li><li>
Specificity is ok, qualitative is ok
</li><li>
Ships of Theseus & Zombie Luggage
</li><li>
Is Social Science any good?
</li><li>
Evidence Science
</li></ol>
</blockquote><p>
Several Twitter gems from Erika <a href="https://abookapart.com/products/just-enough-research"><cite>Just Enough Research</cite></a> Hall:
</p><blockquote>
I also turn down every job which can be described as “help us do research so we can use the data to convince the person in charge of the value of research”. If that person doesn't already value a particular source of evidence, it's not going to happen.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Never say “validate” unless you are talking about parking. Evaluate!
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
I get asked “How do I use data to convince someone of a thing?” all the time. And my answer is always, “Go back in time and build a relationship with that person before trying to change their mind.” In the current moment, you can listen to their reasoning and ask questions.
</blockquote><blockquote>
Too often, the reason research findings are ignored by the business, is that the business model itself is based on a combination of fiction and extraction.
</blockquote>
<h1>
Other domains
</h1>
<p>
A comparable example from an <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2021/8/18/22631299/mike-richards-jeopardy-host-search-process-past-comments">article</a> about picking a host for <cite>Jeopardy</cite>.
</p><blockquote>
For example, much has been made of Sony’s use of analytics to identify a front-runner. “We want to go at this with real analytics and real testing and not just go, ‘Hey, how about this guy?’” Richards <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/jeopardy-host-favorites-levar-burton-aaron-rodgers-ken-jennings-1589512">told a Wall Street Journal podcast</a> in April. Indeed, the studio called out this element in its announcement of Richards and Bialik, who Sony TV chairman Ravi Ahuja said “were both at the top of our research and analysis.” On Saturday, The New York Times reported that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/14/business/media/jeopardy-mike-richards-ken-jennings.html">Richards alone selected the episodes</a> that were sent to focus groups for review; the show’s two supervising producers, Lisa Broffman and Rocky Schmidt, who are both in their fourth decade working on the show, were excluded from the process. When The Ringer asked about the Times focus group report, neither Sony nor Richards offered comment.
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://DorianTaylor.com">
Dorian Taylor</a> gets <a href="https://twitter.com/doriantaylor/status/1471166981747392513">philosophical</a> about decision-based evidence-making maybe being the root of evidence-based decision-making:
</p><blockquote><p>
over the last two years i have thought about this paper more than ever <a href="https://dan.sperber.fr/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/MercierSperberWhydohumansreason.pdf">Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory</a>
</p><p>
and i still will make the effort to point out that they missed the most amazing opportunity for a title: <cite>an argument for argument as the reason for reason</cite>
</p><p><em>
tldr</em> <ul><li>
we take the positions that align with our agendas; if people agree or disagree with us then okay, but what about the people on the fence?
</li><li>
that's where reasoning comes in
</li><li>
the fact that reasoning also yields logic and math and science and problem-solving is pure side effect
</li></ul><p>
i love this idea. i think it is absolutely delicious
</p><p>
is it true? i don’t know. i don't care. i’m doing what they said i would
</p><p>
but holy crap it explains so much
</p><p>
the way i have come to treat theories in the social sciences is like a bet: they are often too spongy to be conclusively true but what if you behaved <em>as if</em> it were true? what kinds of outcomes would you get? i find that’s pretty easy to game out a lot of the time
</p><p>
also it exposes a lot of bad theories because you just ask “what evidence would it take for this theory to be false” and i mean that’s like elementary my dear popper
</p><p>
but in the same vein it doesn’t matter if a theory is “true”, just if it predicts outcomes reliably enough
</p><p>
and being true and predicting outcomes aren’t the exact same thing
</p><p>
like take physics: are quarks real? they are “real” in the sense that you can make calculations with them and predict real outcomes, but a physicist will tell you a quark is really just a prosthesis for thinking
</p><p>
is there a thing there For Real?™
</p><p>
at that scale what does that even mean
</p><p>
so, back to the paper’s hypothesis: people reason in order to persuade people on the fence to come over to their side first, and to solve problems a distant second
</p><p>
what would falsify that hypothesis? dunno man, it’s psychology. falsifying their hypotheses can actually get pretty tough, i’d have to think about it
</p><p>
okay, what if it were true? what bets could you make and could you attribute any payoff to the hypothesis being true?
</p></blockquote>
<p>
The implications of decision-based evidence-making in politics politics are immense. Consider the question <a href="http://digital.nybooks.com/publication/?i=712841&article_id=4064555&view=articleBrowser">Why Did We Invade Iraq?</a>:
</p><blockquote><p>
But the intelligence analysts who were most expert in the region and in the technology for making and handling WMDs couldn’t find persuasive evidence to make the case that Saddam had any, and Tenet did what he could to suppress their skepticism. A holdover from the previous administration, he had been frustrated by Bill Clinton’s lack of interest in what the CIA had to offer. For any CIA director, the president is the “First Customer”—the sole source of the agency’s power—and under Clinton that power had dissipated. By contrast Bush, especially after September 11, was riveted by the agency’s reports; he had Tenet personally deliver its Presidential Daily Briefing at 8 AM, six days a week. At last, the CIA had a seat at the big table, and Tenet wasn’t going to blow it.
</p><p>
[⋯]
</p><p>
Senior officials throughout the national security bureaucracy—Tenet very much among them—inferred from these and other incidents that the decision to invade was a fait accompli and made sure to hop aboard, lest they lose their influence. This “fevered swamp of fear and genuine threat” particularly pervaded Cheney’s office, which Draper calls “the Bush administration’s think tank of the unthinkable.” Tenet went so far as to supply Team Cheney with a “Red Cell”—a group whose job was to invent the scariest scenarios and draw the most far-fetched connect-the-dot conspiracies imaginable in “punchy” three-page memos. (“Our goal,” one of its members said, “was plausibility, not anybody’s notion of truth.”) Cheney, Libby, and Wolfowitz loved its work. (The one question the Red Cell did not ask, Draper notes, was “What if Saddam Hussein did not possess WMD?”)
</blockquote>
<h1>
AI as a bullshit machine
</h1>
<p>
One of my very favorite essays on the internet, Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s <a href="http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005850.html">Common Fraud</a>, concludes with the chilling conclusion about faux research that “deceiving us has become an industrial process”. <a href="https://pookleblinky.github.io">Pookleblinky</a> speculates on the political implications of it becoming <a href="https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1532730081956835329">fully automated</a>:
</p><blockquote><p>
In <cite>Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency</cite>, a programmer is working on an AI system that proves theorems. He fucks up, and makes it run backwards instead: given a statement, it constructs a proof for it. The Pentagon immediately falls in love with it.
</p><p>
At the time, this was considered a joke. The idea that you could ask a computer how to justify why you need to go to war, or make something illegal, or kill some group of people, and it’d pop out a whole argument for it.
</p><p>
Now consider <small><strong>DALLE</strong></small> and similar systems. The exact same generative model can generate text, code, data, etc. Not just images. With only a bit of tweaking, a <small><strong>DALLE</strong></small>-alike could generate persuasive arguments given a prompt. A wall of text, with accompanying generated stock footage, that you could text-to-speech (TTS) and upload to youtube.
</p><p>
Youtube has <em>a lot</em> of channels which simply read news articles and reddit posts aloud, accompanied by stock images. Boomers spend <em>hours</em> watching this like babies watching pregnant elsa foot torture on autoplay. There is a huge youtube genre that consists of a TTS voice, reading text, while stock footage is shown. When boomers say “I do my research” they mean they watch 5+ hours of these videos each day.
</p><p>
With a tiny bit of tweaking, you could make a <small><strong>DALLE</strong></small>-alike that effortlessly produces basically infinite such videos. Endless content. “Dalle, make a 5 minute video about how george soros and fauci are lizard people, stock footage of scary doctors”. The mean cost of producing a truly staggering amount of propaganda, drops to basically nothing.
</p><p>
“<strong>D<small>ALLE</small></strong>, give me a 3 hour long compilation of urban decay and a narrator arguing against immigration.”
</p><p>
“<strong>D<small>ALLE</small></strong>, give me 10 30-minute videos of angry amber heard caricatures with upbeat ragtime piano music”
</p><p>
“<strong>D<small>ALLE</small></strong>, give me a 20 minute video of ben shapiro's voice talking negatively about trans people, over stock footage of monty python wearing dresses”
</p><p>
Basically: infinite, endless propaganda, in a form effortlessly consumed.
</p><p>
You already know how autoplay traps vulnerable people into radicalization rabbit holes. How much <em>more</em> effective do you think the pipeline to blood libel will be, when the cost of saturating the infosphere drops to basically zero? Picture a boomer, watching 10 hours of virulent hate speech on youtube, not a second of which was made by a human.
</p><p>
“Kermit as tony soprano” and “kermit as comic book count dracula,” except it’s mutually contradictory versions of blood libel or false flag conspiracies. Picture layers of algorithms that target an audience, generate content to show to that audience that ensures high engagement metrics, and not one of those algorithms understands what hate speech is.
</p><p>
Imagine a boomer, trapped in an infinite conspiracy theory rabbit hole, made just for them.
</p>
<p>
This brings us back to tech & design by way of Pavel Samsonov again, who observes <a href="https://uxdesign.cc/no-ai-user-research-is-not-better-than-nothing-its-much-worse-5add678ab9e7">No, AI user research is not “better than nothing” — it’s much worse</a>.
</p></blockquote>
<h1>
Another epistemic break
</h1>
<p>
I cannot resist transcribing into this post a <a href="https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1657613428540993538">Twitter thread</a> from Emmett Sheara about a similarly-astonishing dialogue revealing a different epistemic disjoint.
</p><blockquote>
<p>
I attended Hereticon in 2022, and I had an experience there that made a truly deep impact on me. Getting to the conclusion was a trek for me, so you’re going to have to listen to the whole story.
</p><p>
The conference itself was effectively TED from the Nega-Earth dimension: only talks the NYT would <em>not</em> approve of, lots of interesting young people, low prep talks, great parties.
</p><p>
While it is true that, as they say, reversed stupidity is not Intelligence, I had a great time. Only a couple of the talks grabbed me but I had some incredible conversations. Did you know you can use nicotine gum as a reinforcement tool to condition yourself to exercise?
</p><p>
At the end of the weekend I was lounging by the pool with a few friends, talking about the future.the sky was clear and the moon was up, and I said something like, “it still fills me with wonder and joy that we managed to actually land someone on the moon”.
</p><p>
Another conference attendee pipes up from the next seat over. “You know that was faked, right?”
</p><p>
It’s Hereticon. Of course someone thinks the moon landing was fake. I’m barely surprised.
</p><p>
“I did not know that. I’ve seen a video … tell me, how do you know?”
</p><p>
“Oh. Well, that’s pretty straightforward. Space doesn’t exist.”
</p><p>
I have to admit, this caught me a little flat-footed. It is true, if space isn’t real then the moon landing was definitely faked.
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “That’s a new one for me! Ok, I’ll bite. What happens if I keep going up?”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “You hit the crystal sphere.”
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “Ok, cool. So I have a question about what it’s made of, but let’s just say I drill through the sphere and keep going. Then what?”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “Water. Lots of water.”
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “Ok, we bring a submarine. What happens if I keep going?”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “You know I’m not sure … no one’s ever gone to see.”
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “Ok fair enough. How does the crystal sphere stay up? Why doesn’t the massive weight of water crush it and fall in on us?”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “I don’t think it works that way, but I’m not an expert. I can send you some YouTube videos.”
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “That’s ok. Let’s talk about another part of it. How do satellites work?”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “High altitude weather balloons”
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “But they go really fast, wouldn’t they burn up?”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “I’m not sure but I think the atmosphere is really thin.”
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “No problem, how about the ISS? I’ve seen phone calls to there in zero gravity.”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “Sound stage, it’s all faked.”
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “I’m not sure how they fake the gravity, but you know you can literally see the ISS from earth right? Like we could go look up where it is and see it tonight w a telescope. And it’s moving <em>really</em> fast … if it was in the atmosphere it would burn up.”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “Well I should go check that out, I haven’t heard that before. But it’s probably faked somehow, I just don’t know how.”
</p><p>
At this point, I basically gave up on the space thing. I assume he’d gotten brainwormed by flat earther YouTube videos. Let’s move on. But it’s Jan 2022 … <small><strong>COVID</strong></small> was still very much on everyone’s mind … so I have to ask.
</p><p>
“So, I have to ask. The vaccines, what’s up with them?”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “They don’t work, obviously.”
</p><p><em>
Me</em>: “obviously, I mean that’s what I expected. But how do you know?”
</p><p><em>
Guy</em>: “that’s easy. Viruses aren’t real. I mean, infectious diseases in general aren’t real.”
</p><p>
At this point I have to understand.
</p><p>
He seems so reasonable and well spoken, but his epistemology is completely deranged. What the hell is going on???
</p><p>
I dig. I dig. I ask every question, I offer mental models, I give challenges he can’t answer but nothing works.
</p><p>
Finally, I hit on the right question. “What is the underlying nature of knowing truth to you? What’s the gold standard for evidence? Everyone has to take a lot on faith, there’s too much to figure it all out. But ultimately, what form of evidence trumps all others?”
</p><br /><p>
Interregnum: I encourage you to actually consider this question. What is it that grounds out truth for you? This isn’t a trick question, go with the obvious and naive answer.
</p><p>
Srsly think about your answer (and what other people might answer) before you keep reading. It’s more fun that way and you learn more.
</p><br /><p>
So eventually he comes to his answer. When someone presents an idea, he connects with them. He looks in their eyes. He considers their motivations. And if their argument is internally consistent with itself. And if all the signs are green, he trusts them and that’s truth.
</p><p>
This just blew me away. It’s a fundamentally social theory of truth. Truth is based on credible arguments presented by trustworthy people.
That is not what truth is to me, at all.
</p><p>
For me, the gold standard of truth is what I can see, hear, taste, smell, feel for myself. What is “true” is what my current conceptual model of the world can infer from that data.
</p><p>
(Actually truth is whatever reflects the underlying nature of reality, we are talking here only about our current best guess at truth, but this is an unavoidable distinction for finite beings who cannot know Truth)
</p><p>
I’d never heard someone actually say the quiet part out loud like that before. I think perhaps many people have his relationship to the truth, but with more normal choices for people to trust, and therefore more standard beliefs (and more correct ones IMO).
</p><p>
At this point I completely lost interest in discussing space and viruses and etc w him any further. Because I’d understood what had been driving me to ask and ask … I’d figured out how this seemingly smart man had come to conclusions that seemed so insane.
</p><p>
I’ve come up with names for these two sides (tho I’d be interested in better ones, if anyone has them): <em>team words-mean-things</em>, and <em>team alliances</em>.
</p><p>
The sense-data theory of truth leads to team words-mean-things. Because the goal of words, at least outside of art, is to convey sense data impressions and models inferred from them. And to do this well, one must care fanatically that your use of the word is the same as theirs.
</p><p>
The canonical sign you are talking to a words-mean-things person is the exasperated sigh followed by “wait but i thought you said X was Y, but now it’s not Y?”
</p><p>
The credible-talk-from-trusted-sources theory of truth by contrast leads to team alliances. Because if you get the words a little wrong, it’s fine, you can trust the ultimate conclusions regardless as long as you can trust them. As long as they’re on your team.
</p><p>
The canonical sign you’re talking to a team alliances person is when they seem more interested in figuring out whether you’re on their team than whether the details of your words make sense. “Is he a good guy?”
</p><br />
Alliances : Words-Mean-Things<br />
::<br />
Mimesis : First Principles
<br /><br /><p>
Given my team, my take feels anti-alliances. But learning-via-trust has a lot to recommend it. I don’t think one is “better”. But know yourself, know who you’re talking to, and connect at their level.
</p>
</blockquote>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-67803885108270190472024-02-07T11:18:00.000-08:002024-02-07T13:19:32.314-08:00Israel, Gaza, war, and genocide <p>
In several discussions of the ongoing situation in Gaza I refer to it as a <em>genocidal attack</em> by Israel rather than a “war”. My language reflects some deliberate and technical choices which merit unpacking, not least because I have ambivalences about those choices.
</p><h1>
Genocide
</h1><p>
As someone with an unwholesome interest in genocide, I consider it vital to recognize violences short of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminationism">eliminationist</a> mass murder as nonetheless <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention#Definition_of_genocide"><em>genocidal</em></a> when they direct harm to a people <em>as a people</em>. This is important in dignifying that range of violences as important, in understanding how genocide works, in preëmpting mass murders before they start.
</p><p>
The 13 October Jewish Currents article <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide">A Textbook Case Of Genocide</a> persuaded me early on that Israel’s response to Hamas’ horrifying 7 October attack qualified.
</p><blockquote>
The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under its definition. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza.
</blockquote><p>
And of course Israel has <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/01/israel-must-comply-with-key-icj-ruling-ordering-it-do-all-in-its-power-to-prevent-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/">escalated much further</a> in the months since.
</p><p>
We need to register this as a phase transition. Israel had a longstanding program of brutal apartheid military policing of Gaza & the West Bank; wrong, but not genocidal. Deliberately attacking the Gazan people as a people is categorically different.
</p><h2>
Confusions
</h2><p><em>
And</em> I feel very uneasy with the term “genocide” allowing — even inviting — bonehead critics misunderstanding what is happening so badly that they manage to <em>overstate</em> wrongs as immense as those Israel is committing.
</p><p>
Yes, there <em>are</em> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahanism">Kahanist</a> maniacs in the Likud government like Ben-Gvir, eager to purge Gaza of Arab Palestinians even before 10/7, thinking that their moment has come. Their frank admission of that intent are a key part of why we must see Israel’s attack as already genocidal and threatening a spiral into even greater horror. But they are not the mainspring of events; reading the situation as <em>nothing other than</em> them realizing their dreams of genocide is absurd.
</p><p>
Most galling are the inevitable comparisons to Nazi genocide. It should be obvious why it is offensive to compare Jews to Nazis, period, and the comparison is also offensive in its stupidity. The Nazis are a metonym for evil because they ran death factories where they carefully calculated the right rations of stale bread to ensure that people died at precisely the fastest rate at which they could despose of the bodies. Deadly as the attack on Gaza has been, they are not that. Israel obviously <em>could</em> kill far more civilians than they have.
</p><p>
Fantasies that Israel has long plotted this purge of Arab Palestinians from Gaza, even engineered the Hamas attack to justify it, are equally preposterous. Why would the Likudniks withdraw settlers and the IDF from Gaza for twenty years before finally getting around to executing this plan?
</p><p><em>
Callousness</em> explains more than bloodthirstiness. Netanyahu and his Likudnik political coalition are in a panic to retain power, cynically trying to rally shocked Israelis to them, after 10/7 demonstrated the catastrophic failure of Likudniks’ promises to ensure Israelis’ secruity. Americans who remember the Bush administration’s reaction to 9/11 should recognize the pattern. And many experts <a href="https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/israels-war-hamas-what-know">foresaw</a> (or even <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/11/what-israels-ground-offensive-can-and-cannot-accomplish.html">advocated</a>) Israel trying to break Hamas using the bloody military tactics Sri Lanka <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2015/04/how-sri-lanka-won-the-war/">used</a> to destroy the Tamil Tigers at cost of immense civilian casualties. It is no defense of Israel to register these evils as <em>different</em> evils from <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/please-stop-talking-about-zionism.html">pure malice</a>.
</p><p>
I consider it better to correct these misunderstandings of the implications of the word “genocide” by insisting on digging in to how we understand genocide rather than by backing off from the word. We need sophistication about genocide to understand what is happening in Gaza … and, alas, the <em>world</em>.
</p><h1>
War?
</h1><p>
The IDF attacking Gaza is not a military conflict between national belligerents with clear stakes; though we need to recognize the genocidal escalation it represents, I think we also need to register its continuity with the long process of <em>military policing</em> by Israel which began in the occupation era and has continued through Israel’s efforts to control the quasi-sovereign Palestinian Authority. Calling this a “war” thus has misleading implications, so I refer to it as an “attack”, and refer to “crimes against humanity” rather than “war crimes” on the part of both Israel <em>and</em> Hamas.
</p><p>
And my stubbornness over this language presents problems.
</p><p>
Some refer to the situation not as an “Israel-Gaza war” but an “Israel-<em>Hamas</em> war”, and I envy this naming Israel driven at destroying Hamas specifically.
</p><p>
And there is a rhetorical turn I wish I could make. With Gaza extraordinary in such important ways, there is something deeply strange in horrors which are tragically ordinary in fighting around the world — destroyed buildings, captured fighters on their knees, dead civilians — shared with a note of such intense shock and and fascination that I want to ask, “<a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2019/01/an-open-letter-to-anti-zionist.html">Why is <em>this</em> so special in Israel’s case?</a> Are you only now noticing that war is bad?”
</p>
Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-83871792354991736942024-02-05T11:55:00.000-08:002024-02-15T11:13:25.651-08:00Omelas <p>
Ursula K. LeGuin’s short story <a href="https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf">The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas</a> is rightly celebrated.
</p><blockquote>
How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children--though their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! But I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you.
</blockquote><p>
Some bracing responses:
</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/">
The Ones Who Stay And Fight</a> by N. K. Jemisin
</li><li><a href="https://kenzimmerman.net/blog/2018/06/23/the-ones-who-walk-in/">
The Ones Who Walk In</a> by kenz
</li><li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200227173125/https://shedoesnotcomprehend.tumblr.com/post/169244532951/once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-city-called-omelas">
Once Upon A Time</a> by moriwen
</li><li><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/a-house-by-the-sea/">
A House By The Sea</a> by P. H. Lee
</li><li><a href="https://medium.com/@hondanhon/the-oneswho-advocated-for-a-casus-belli-intervention-in-omelas-and-twenty-more-9650c3146ea7">
The Ones Who Advocated for a Casus Belli Intervention in Omelas, and Nineteen More</a> by Dan Hon
</li><li><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/">
Why Don’t We Just Kill The Kid In The Omelas Hole</a> by Isabel J. Kim
</li><li><a href="https://www.onbeyondzarathustra.com/traintoomelas">
The Ones Who Take The Train To Omelas</a> by John Holbo
</li></ul> Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-61126491795426067542024-02-02T10:59:00.000-08:002024-02-02T11:11:37.394-08:00The weapon hand <p>
A reflection on a theme in movies.
</p><br />
<p>
In the Evil Dead movies, Ash lives in a world of literally monstrous violence.
</p><p>
When this costs him his hand, he learns to accept that he will never be able to escape the violence of his world, so he must embrace how this has transformed him into an someone capable of responding to the world he inhabits.
</p><p>
But this makes him incapable of returning to an ordinary life. His hero’s journey does not bring him home.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcM15Ap6SJv3TwW4f2Ue-WJ2-dsltyPIkThKyDSmSOSUmPbCOpNC-0cwj_nMK2DGlvAhctnXbWng3fkppNGoYUl-eoqQ8D8bsqtgMipaXb9FmeNFULTzvQHB_3IALk8hQ99osNJ0TdE-GiAMUcWWe10I-iw-1pjpsM-e0CFsfe_zcQ_G-HYjUv/s1249/ash.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="1249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcM15Ap6SJv3TwW4f2Ue-WJ2-dsltyPIkThKyDSmSOSUmPbCOpNC-0cwj_nMK2DGlvAhctnXbWng3fkppNGoYUl-eoqQ8D8bsqtgMipaXb9FmeNFULTzvQHB_3IALk8hQ99osNJ0TdE-GiAMUcWWe10I-iw-1pjpsM-e0CFsfe_zcQ_G-HYjUv/s400/ash.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>
In <cite>Videodrome</cite>, Max Renn’s exposure to violent propaganda created by a corporation intent on brutal control makes him so obsessed with his gun that he experiences it becoming a part of him.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuptDmzbeIteZpbKru7mid8r6x1197R1-M-Z_o8RgVxgNbrVc0jjZGr-BF2JeHK-PSf8W7sIYwXqiP_hgYn24l7If_VaKSkNGuUfx9Q3uzVHMe0Z57CJi708-gejuoYpTwK6qNPYK5wJ2X5C7csC4x9vE7QubiZt_IVJIvX5KmPnZAaj43tY76/s1280/max%20gun.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuptDmzbeIteZpbKru7mid8r6x1197R1-M-Z_o8RgVxgNbrVc0jjZGr-BF2JeHK-PSf8W7sIYwXqiP_hgYn24l7If_VaKSkNGuUfx9Q3uzVHMe0Z57CJi708-gejuoYpTwK6qNPYK5wJ2X5C7csC4x9vE7QubiZt_IVJIvX5KmPnZAaj43tY76/s400/max%20gun.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>
Eventually this destroys Renn — either by detaching him from reality or by driving him to literally destroy himself, we never get to be sure which.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvUwFzUI1qgGQi4US3iEZMSWdtYSebxTGPgsIe5sw6vM3upb11uEiUNdCp42prTChT8OB4e9vty52nYkpOLWDThgvRcDcWHZOZcmCl_4bozcstP2Aoxoo4yuMkqRcwqScV2VxMrFMrrhn49CgyqkLq7jKOHXGsEvxpiw9Cp9tqrVxeT8EBcNkV/s693/new%20flesh.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="693" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvUwFzUI1qgGQi4US3iEZMSWdtYSebxTGPgsIe5sw6vM3upb11uEiUNdCp42prTChT8OB4e9vty52nYkpOLWDThgvRcDcWHZOZcmCl_4bozcstP2Aoxoo4yuMkqRcwqScV2VxMrFMrrhn49CgyqkLq7jKOHXGsEvxpiw9Cp9tqrVxeT8EBcNkV/s400/new%20flesh.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>
To ensure that we do not misunderstand the horror of <cite>Videodrome</cite> as reflecting the intrusion of the mechanical into the organic, Cronenberg gives us a repulsively organic gun in <cite>eXistenZ</cite>.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr109cfmvcQ7InyAr5KM9PmT9C76c85yo0E_XeywXZTEJrHI5_LieVfweqTwlzZOCxJaTsC2O5NP9GmWPjlfO1bjwD5Sjo6WcrrTxqWX1vnNCO0-W2zIuebsFZYEqzTxUtzLfkno6UKVYWKaU6UDjT8ZNB8bKbn8ytA1EwsCwMdY9JlrQrPSHU/s732/tooth%20gun.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="732" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr109cfmvcQ7InyAr5KM9PmT9C76c85yo0E_XeywXZTEJrHI5_LieVfweqTwlzZOCxJaTsC2O5NP9GmWPjlfO1bjwD5Sjo6WcrrTxqWX1vnNCO0-W2zIuebsFZYEqzTxUtzLfkno6UKVYWKaU6UDjT8ZNB8bKbn8ytA1EwsCwMdY9JlrQrPSHU/s400/tooth%20gun.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>
The horror comes from holding a weapon, not from holding a machine.
</p><br />
<p>
Luke Skywalker confronts violence with violence and it costs him his weapon hand.
</p>
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<p>
Palpatine urges Luke to embrace violence. But Luke sees how that has transformed Vader. Contemplating his weapon hand, seeing the same process happening to him, he chooses to renounce violence.
</p>
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<p>
A much older Luke has stopped hiding his weapon hand under a glove. Maybe he needs the reminder of the corrupting power of violence in front of him. He has renounced the entire world.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjubbLhFmnQWo2vIPT4aPJXLQPHaIjlgMkke3dyoqGqz4iUoKXC8ffXUcBppaD-4n7A68z3IFZ9Ta_D6SHpTdRRMDxrX_isDR9hdurqZkf3tmvY_cF5g-WOi-4rUBBTIVGQEa00vOJWtZ9fMc_AYYXfMQAy7aBTFSa_DuN-OZiWfHIShOGiUNLd/s1200/old%20luke.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjubbLhFmnQWo2vIPT4aPJXLQPHaIjlgMkke3dyoqGqz4iUoKXC8ffXUcBppaD-4n7A68z3IFZ9Ta_D6SHpTdRRMDxrX_isDR9hdurqZkf3tmvY_cF5g-WOi-4rUBBTIVGQEa00vOJWtZ9fMc_AYYXfMQAy7aBTFSa_DuN-OZiWfHIShOGiUNLd/s400/old%20luke.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>
In Luke’s final moments he returns to the world, having finally learned to serve it without violence, as his mentors taught him. Weapons cannot stop him.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdN0_X14gmUMmFqcQElQIPdK9WA1FBJl_R56AOeP5l7BW8OePmmvb2NmDX7UZqZ7VMnEOqT0Ug5wm_0LJG5pKjZqAWmpnwzWSagHdY3HeGX81t1zdV5pGebzILTqC0KdbNJ7JHNkijIoBIeZJlWXJvW7_Bo7SCvzW2mVEE0xCCHIpOSUSDBzdx/s711/zen%20luke.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="711" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdN0_X14gmUMmFqcQElQIPdK9WA1FBJl_R56AOeP5l7BW8OePmmvb2NmDX7UZqZ7VMnEOqT0Ug5wm_0LJG5pKjZqAWmpnwzWSagHdY3HeGX81t1zdV5pGebzILTqC0KdbNJ7JHNkijIoBIeZJlWXJvW7_Bo7SCvzW2mVEE0xCCHIpOSUSDBzdx/s400/zen%20luke.jpeg"/></a></div>
<br /><p>
The Iron Giant is not tempted to pick up a weapon in his hand; someone made him to be a weapon before he had any choice.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilJMfDNn_bUd7EAA6-cx5f86kgpcvisjaPv6DmdEOXybb-SWsUiBUzixWpr0qlOUwb6EZpdFZ92RvfF209-e4sM1Vj7l9x0AgXmkGW3zSbMZSRNE_fEiG52My3BO8RbdVPa63x6VX30uTf7WGlfswRebx8qWxIoT_PL71KNiCdFMSlQg-lLE_H/s853/iron%20giant.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="853" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilJMfDNn_bUd7EAA6-cx5f86kgpcvisjaPv6DmdEOXybb-SWsUiBUzixWpr0qlOUwb6EZpdFZ92RvfF209-e4sM1Vj7l9x0AgXmkGW3zSbMZSRNE_fEiG52My3BO8RbdVPa63x6VX30uTf7WGlfswRebx8qWxIoT_PL71KNiCdFMSlQg-lLE_H/s400/iron%20giant.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>
Then when the Iron Giant does have a choice, he knows it. He is not a gun.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXy-MeNKLSu4FP48TPUl5_Sbzzr2EHs0okBnX5EAdJUcW-fTJ3VhK5YxwZxMkmQMyDW4xKThPRNN7iT_z9WxK_7ttUEfueEugC9BKbaiFfucd9xegFac1xArJ3n-QNxAiA89uZt1i-sBfXbVepGF-GLmyYiE2oo5BfcmxFUG1kUY38IoDgbPkV/s900/superman.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXy-MeNKLSu4FP48TPUl5_Sbzzr2EHs0okBnX5EAdJUcW-fTJ3VhK5YxwZxMkmQMyDW4xKThPRNN7iT_z9WxK_7ttUEfueEugC9BKbaiFfucd9xegFac1xArJ3n-QNxAiA89uZt1i-sBfXbVepGF-GLmyYiE2oo5BfcmxFUG1kUY38IoDgbPkV/s400/superman.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>
He knows who he is.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-55011334977226046532024-01-31T18:10:00.000-08:002024-02-01T11:54:22.786-08:00Apple Vision Pro, eye tracking, and the cursors of the future <p>
I am fascinated by how the Apple Vision Pro identifies where the user is looking, treating that locus of attention much like the cursor used on the Mac and other desktop computers; one “clicks” with hand gestures. This is a cunning way to make desktop software usable on this very different platform, and discerning this by watching eye movements is an astonishing technological feat. It is not just a matter of precisely detecting where the eye is pointed, which would be hard enough; our eyes constantly jitter around in saccades, so the Vision Pro has to <em>deduce</em> from this complex unconscious movement where the user has their attention in their subjective experience.
</p><h1>
Modifying desktop computer interfaces
</h1><p>
It is fun to think about exotic alternatives to the conventional mouse/trackpad & cursor combination. The big gestural interfaces seen in science fiction movies mostly turn out to be a bad idea — Tom Cruise was exhausted after fifteen minutes of just <em>pretending</em> to use them in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Raqx9sFbo"><cite>Minority Report</cite></a> — but I <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2021/05/intuition-pleasure-and-gestures.html">believe</a> that there are opportunities for innovation. Clayton Miller’s <a href="https://vimeo.com/6712657">10/gui</a> considers ways we might take advantage of a <em>huge</em> multi-touch surface instead of a little trackpad. Bruce Tognazzini’s <a href="https://www.asktog.com/starfire/">Starfire</a> from 1994 is still ahead of available technology, bursting with both good & bad ideas for combining direct manipulation with touchscreens & styluses together with indirect manipulation using a mouse or trackpad. Devices like the iPad have begun to unlock the <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2012/02/finger-stylus.html">promise</a> of distinguishing fingers from styluses to create more graceful, complex interaction idioms by combining the two; a few specialists use stylus input tools like Wacom tablets at the desktop, and I feel an itch that more people might benefit from integration of stylus input into their desktop experience.
</p><p>
So might we just replace the mouse/trackpad & cursor with eye tracking? No. I cannot imagine that it could ever provide the fine precision of the mouse/trackpad (or a stylus). But I think eye tracking could combine well with those input tools to make some things more graceful. It would not require fine precision, just the ability to register which window the user is currently looking at.
</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/@impactology/111857713834174827">
Discussion</a> with Raghav Agrawal underlines that I am proposing something I hope would deliver a fundamentaly different experience than the Apple Vision Pro. A user of the Vision Pro feels that they control the system with their gaze. A user of the desktop should still feel that they control the system with the mouse, with the system <em>aware</em> of their gaze and using that to ensure that it Just Does The Right Thing.
</p><h1>
Solving some multi-monitor challenges
</h1><p>
I think this will prove especially valuable if one has multiple big screens, which I expect more and more people to do as they get better and cheaper. I am a lunatic who uses a big wide monitor, a big tall monitor, my laptop’s 16" display, <em>and</em> a little teleprompter display at my desk. I love being able to look around at several open windows, and expect that many people will discover how good this is for work.
</p><p>
But using existing mouse-cursor-window interfaces with multiple big screens does come with disadvantages. Dragging-and-dropping across expansive screens gets clumsy. One can lose track of the cursor in all that space; even wiggling the cursor does not always make it easy to find. With a lot of windows open, one can easily lose track of which one is currently selected.
</p><h1>
A radical proposal for multiple cursors
</h1><p>
Rather than drive the cursor to appear at the point of one’s visual focus — one does not want the cursor racing back and forth across the screen every time one glances at information on another screen — I think it would work to <strong>have <em>a cursor in each window</em>, with mouse/trackpad actions affecting only the window one is currently looking at</strong>. When one looks away from a window, its cursor stays where one left it.
</p><p>
This puts a cursor within view wherever one looks, easy to find. Maybe on a big window, if one has not looked at it in a while the cursor returns to the center or gets a little momentary flash of emphasis when one looks back at that window.
</p><p>
The Mac puts the Menu Bar at the top of the screen because the edge preventing overshooting make it easier to decisively mouse to an element there. Keeping the cursor confined to the boundaries of each window makes all four window edges this kind of convenient interface territory.
</p><p>
Integrating eye tracking also eliminates the need to have a selected window to keep track of. In existing systems, actions like using the mouse scroll wheel can produce an awkward surprise when it does not affect the document in view, instead disrupting the content of a window which one has forgotten remained selected. With eye tracking, user actions can always just affect the thing they have in view, eliminating that problem. (I will get to one important exception to this pattern in a moment.)
</p><h1>
Acting across multiple windows
</h1><p>
Confining input effects to within windows seems like it would break a lot of interaction gestures which require moving across multiple windows, but I think everything one must do that way now can work at least as well in my proposal.
</p><p>
Again, we do not need to move the cursor across windows to select one; attention tracking eliminates the need for a selected window.
</p><p>
One need not move the cursor across windows to do window management. The edges of windows remain drag handles for resizing them and moving them around, and as I said above, with the cursor confined to the window, these become easier targets. One can combine this with the buttons and other controls I envision putting at those edges: drag to affect the window, click to use the control. I am a crank who perfers a tiled display to overlapping windows, but handling overlapping windows is fine: look at the protruding bit and click to pop it to the front.
</p><p>
Drag-and-drop across windows would require a <em>bit</em> of an adjustment, but eye tracking enables an improvement. One starts dragging an object in one window — turns to the other window — and that window’s cursor is right there with the object attached, responding to mouse movements. This will be more graceful, with less mouse movement and less risk of dropping onto the wrong window when dragging between windows on separate screens.
</p><p>
Imagine working with two text documents, referencing an old one while authoring a new one, bouncing back-and-forth between the two. Turning from the new document to the old one briefly, one might scroll to the next page in the old document, use the cursor in that document to select something one wants to quote, copy it, then turn back to the new document to find the cursor waiting right where one left it, ready to paste in the quote.
</p><h1>
Plain text as the input exception
</h1><p>
Keyboard shortcuts would act on the window one is looking at, just like mouse movement and clicks. But plain text is a little trickier.
</p><p>
It should be obvious how in the new-and-old document example above one may want to type into the new document while looking at the old one. There are a lot of situations like that. Text input boxes need a standard interface element allowing one to lock the box as the target of plaintext input from the keyboard; when that is active, other text input boxes show as unavailable. So one need not hunt down the locked text input box to unlock it, when a text box shows as unavailable, it would a control to unlock the old locked text box, allowing text input to go where one is looking ... or to immediately make that text box the new locked input target.
</p><p>
Having proposed this interface idiom, I am tempted to want the this ability to lock the text input target, overriding the selected window, in the conventional systems we have now!
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-26639949431404959442024-01-29T09:03:00.000-08:002024-03-04T17:36:30.411-08:00Scott Alexander Siskind & Slate Star Codex <p><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander">
Scott Alexander Siskind</a> — of the long-running blog <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com">Slate Star Codex</a> and newer Substack newsletter <a href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com">Astral Codex Ten</a> — cannot be trusted as a source or a commentator because he carries water for far right ideas which are transparently wrong both factually and morally.
</p><ul><li><a href="#core" name="top">
The core critique
</a></li><li><a href="#sloppy">
Rhetorical & intellectual sloppiness
</a></li><li>
Very bad ideas
<ul><li><a href="#nrx">
Credulity about NRx
</a></li><li><a href="#eugenics">
Eugenics?!?
</a></li><li><a href="#iq">
Racist pseudoscience about IQ
</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="#abuser">
Support for a NRx-ish abuser
</a></li><li><a href="#justification">
Alexander justifies his legitimization of NRx
</a></li><li><a href="#theory">
So what <em>is</em> it with Alexander?
</a></li></ul>
<a href="#top" name="core"><h1>
The core critique
</h1></a>
<p>
Elizabeth Sandifer <a href="https://twitter.com/ElSandifer/status/1275817351515168768">says</a>:
</p><blockquote>
Here’s what any good overview of Scott Alexander is going to need to say.
<ol><li>
He emerged out of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s LessWrong community. This community consists almost entirely of hobbyists attempting to reinvent academic disciplines from scratch. The results occasionally have moments where they frame interesting questions or perspectives that might not occur to an expert. The signal to noise ratio, however, is extremely low. Most of the time they just fall blindly into well-documented errors and refuse to admit it.
</li><li>
Alexander belongs to a particular subgroup of that community who has gotten seduced by pseudoscientific ideas about the genetics of race. These ideas should be dismissed the same way climate denial is. Alexander is good at looking like the wide-eyed, innocent speculator who’s merely asking questions. Maybe he actually is. In practice, that community’s tolerance for racist pseudoscience is routinely exploited by white supremacists.
</li><li>
This is extra specifically true for Alexander himself, whose blog has created a community that is extremely fertile grounds for white nationalist recruitment. Alexander cannot plausibly claim ignorance of this. If you’re writing any sort of overview that does not have a very clear view of those three facts, you’re probably going to end up directing attention and curiosity towards Alexander’s community and in doing so aiding white nationalist recruitment.
</li></ol>
</blockquote><p>
Sandifer wrote a book on that circle of people, <a href="https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/neoreaction-a-basilisk-new-edition"><cite>Neoreaction: A Basilisk</cite></a>, which I <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/05/neoreaction.html">recommend</a> as both entertaining and insightful in understanding neo-reactionaries (“NRx”). I maintain my own <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/05/neoreaction.html">index of resources about NRx</a>; they are a far right movement distinct from fascism but no less evil in their opposition to democracy and equality.
</p><p>
Alexander’s writing is dangerously credulous about far right ideas. One need not know more than that.
</p><p>
But a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that I should declare the causes for concluding that Alexander’s thinking is so dangerously bad, I should examine why Sandifer and I think he might be a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot">useful idiot</a> for reactionaries rather than really one of them, and I should examine the implications.
</p>
<a name="sloppy" href="#top" ><h1>
Rhetorical & intellectual sloppiness
</h1></a><p>
Alexander <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8e2838/comment/dxv9let/">admits</a> that he does <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8e2838/comment/dxt8wlm/">not</a> write carefully.
<blockquote><p>
It takes me a couple of hours to write a post.
</p><p>
I work a forty hour week, so having a couple of hours each week to write posts isn’t really a problem. In my own life, I've noticed that time is almost never a real constraint on anything, and whenever I think it is, what I mean is “I have really low energy and I want some time to rest before doing the next thing". But writing posts doesn’t really take that much energy so I am okay with it.
</p><p>
Also, I have no social life and pretty much avoid all my friends and never talk to anybody, which is helpful.
</p></blockquote>
<blockquote>
I guess I don’t really understand why it takes so many people so long to write. They seem to be able to talk instantaneously, and writing isn’t that different from speech. Why can’t they just say what they want to say, but instead of speaking it aloud, write it down?
</blockquote><p>
Sandifer does a deep dive into the implications of his resulting rhetorical style in her essay <a href="https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method">The Beigeness, or How to Kill People with Bad Writing: The Scott Alexander Method</a>:
</p><blockquote>
My contention is that Siskind’s prose — which I view as representative of a larger style — works through a sort of logorrheic beigeness. Siskind is good at giving readers the sense that they are being intelligent — that they are thinking about serious issues at considerable length. In practice, he says… not quite nothing, but very little, at least on a moment to moment basis. Instead he engages in a litany of small bullshits — shoddy arguments that at their best compound into banality, but at their worst compound into something deeply destructive, all made over such length that smoking guns are hard to find, which is of course the point.
</blockquote><p>
I have quibbles with some of the particular criticisms Sandifer makes in the full post, but her central point is correct: Alexander’s writing demonstrates a kind of anti-rigor in a form which obscures its worst implications.
</p><p>
In a telling example, Kevin Drum <a href="https://jabberwocking.com/a-3-part-story-about-short-bowel-syndrome-and-the-fda/">looks closely at</a> Alexander <a href="https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/adumbrations-of-aducanumab">criticizing the FDA</a> and discovers that he is intellectually incoherent:
</p><blockquote><blockquote>
I mentioned in a section of my recent post, “Sympathy For The Devil”, that I think the FDA as an agency is often quite good. They’re smart, caring people, and they usually carry out their mandate well — so well that the few exceptions, like aducanumab, are highly newsworthy. I have no objection to Dr. Gura’s mostly-positive portrayal of them.
</blockquote><p>
This bears no resemblance — none — to [Alexander’s] diatribe in Part 1:
</p><blockquote>
Every single hour of every single day the FDA does things exactly this stupid and destructive....I am a doctor and sometimes I have to deal with the Schmoe’s Syndromes of the world and every f@$king time there is some story about the FDA doing something exactly this awful and counterproductive.
</blockquote><p>
I have no idea how you can write “they usually carry out their mandate well” in one place and then, in your main post, just go ahead and repeat your original belief — backed by an example you know is wrong — that the FDA does stupid and destructive things on practically a daily basis.
</p></blockquote><p>
That shows Alexander confused. But he is also wrong about easy questions — logically, factually, and morally.
</p>
<h1><!-------------------------------------------->
Very bad ideas
</h1>
<a name="nrx" href="#top"><h2><!-------------------------------------------->
Credulity about NRx
</h2></a>
<p>
Consider a relatively mild example <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/b47t9t/comment/ej500kg/">
from Reddit</a> in 2019. For the uninitiated, <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement#The_Cathedral.3F">The Cathedral</a> is NRx’ers name for the conspriacy of leftists which holds an iron grip on all meaningful institutions.
</p>
<blockquote><p>
When the nrxers talk about the Cathedral, I find it tempting — sure, they flirt with conspiracy theory, but it seems they’re at least <em>good</em> conspiracy theories, in the sense that they explain a real phenomenon. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories have their flaws, but one of their strong points is that Kennedy is in fact dead. If you’re coming up with a conspiracy theory to explain why people are biased in favor of capitalism, that seems almost like coming up with an Obama assassination conspiracy theory — not only are conspiracy theories bad, but this one doesn’t even explain a real fact.
</p><p>
Trump got elected after promising tariffs and immigration restrictions that no business or plutocrat wanted. Bernie Sanders was on top of the prediction market for next Dem nominee as of last week (today it’s Biden, but Sanders is close behind). The richest people in the world spend most of their time constantly apologizing to everyone for trumped up charges, and loudly (one might say fearfully) confessing they don’t deserve their wealth. This just really doesn’t seem like the world where capitalism is in control of the narrative, unless it’s doing some weird judo I’ve never heard communists try to explain.
</p></blockquote>
<p>
So:
</p><p><em>
Though it is silly of reactionaries to see a conspiracy, capitalism has lost control of society as NRx’ers say. In crituqes of capitalism? No. In discussion of alternatives? No. But some policies do not <strong>perfectly</strong> suit the liking of rich people!
</em></p><p>
This is detatched from logic and reality. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/b47t9t/comment/ej56nor/">Alexander doubles down and gets weirder</a>.
</p>
<blockquote><p>
The latest studies suggest that the rich do not get their policy preferences enacted any more than any other class (a study came out before showing the opposite, but seems to have been wrong). I’m not sure what else you mean by “capital really is in power”, other than that rich people can buy yachts or something.
</p><p>
I’m tempted to take an extreme contrarian position that everything interesting happens in a parallel status economy. The money economy isn’t “in power”, it’s a (weak) brake on power, or a force orthogonal to power which is helpful in not concentrating power 100%. That's why overthrowing capitalism keeps producing authoritarians.
</p>
<blockquote>
Where is the “yes let’s overturn capitalism” side of the debate represented? Certainly not in the editorial line of any major newspaper, TV station or radio station.
</blockquote>
<p>
I mean, it’s better represented than libertarianism. Yes, the Overton Window goes between “slightly more capitalism” and “slightly less capitalism”, but the “slightly less capitalism" side always seems to have the upper hand. I agree the war of ideas isn't yet a total massacre, I’m just saying the anti-capitalist side always seems to be winning, and pro-capitalist on the defensive. Propaganda victory exerts a weak pressure on reality, it doesn’t shift it all at once.
</p></blockquote>
<p>
So:
</p><p><em>
Since capitalism is not a locus of actual power, calls for Slightly Less Capitalism will eventually develop into a massacre.
</em></p><p>
Preposterous.
</p><p>
On SSC, he <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200228054021/https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/#comment-23688">offers</a> other “insight” from NRx to harness:
</p>
<blockquote>
I’ve said many times that I think the Reactionaries have some good ideas, but the narrative in which they place them turns me off (I feel the same way about Communists, feminists, libertarians, et al). Even though I like both basic income guarantees and eugenics, I don’t think these are two things that go well together — making the income conditional upon sterilization is a little too close to coercion for my purposes. Still, probably better than what we have right now.
</blockquote><p>
We must skip over how ripe it is to put neo-reactionaires, libertarians, feminists, and communists in the same category to pay attenton to …
</p>
<a name="eugenics" href="#top"><h2><!-------------------------------------------->
Eugenics?!?
</h2></a>
<p>
Among the good ideas to draw from reactionaries Alexander finds … <em>eugenics</em>? Yikes.
</p><p>
Alexander gives us the cold comfort that he would not march “undesirables” into death factories at rifle-point with his rejection of “coercion”. Cold comfort while we untangle what he <em>does</em> mean.
</p><p>
He brings up eugenics in more than just this bizarre aside so we can try to make sense of things. On his LiveJournal back in 2012 he <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131230050925/http://squid314.livejournal.com/338295.html">asked</a> …
</p><blockquote><p>
So if you had to design a eugenics program, how would you do it? Be creative.
</p><p>
I’m asking because I’m working on writing about a fictional society that practices eugenics. I want them to be interesting and sympathetic, and not to immediately pattern-match to a dystopia that kills everyone who doesn’t look exactly alike.
</p></blockquote>
<p>
To be generous: contrarian science-fictional world-building as a whetstone for thinking about principles has a noble tradition which includes satire, cautionary thought experiments, and visualizing dystopian outcomes. But one must be wary with topics like eugenics where bad actors speaking in bad faith do a lot of Just Asking Questions as a veil over the monstrous answers they have in mind. Alexander is not treading nearly carefully enough.
</p><p>
The discussion community does not respond with the mortified <em>“whut?!?”</em> they should. Instead, one commenter <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131230050925/http://squid314.livejournal.com/338295.html?thread=3053175#t3053175">replies</a> with …
</p><blockquote><p>
Paying undesirables to be sterilised is happening! There’s a charity that pays drug addicts £200 to be snipped: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140110153306/http://projectprevention.org/">Project Prevention</a>. Seems like a good idea to me.
</p><p>
How about a benign eugenics regime that is about preserving diversity of human mental types while minimising disease? Everyone is profiled, and nerdy Aspergers types are encouraged to mate iwth empathisers rather than other nerds, ensuring that they don’t make full on autistic babies. Some of the funniest, most creative people I know are definitely touched by the spectrum and have fully autistic relatives in some cases, so old-fashioned eugenics response of sterilising everyone who is even vaguely autistic would destroy a lot of human capital.
</p><p>
In general, a eugenics regime that isn’t pushing toward a single human ideal, but is aware of the value of diversity, could be sympathetic. Maybe go the other way and have them maintain castes of specially bred ultra-systematisers, ultra-empathisers, synaesthetes, etc. The key to avoiding a retread of Brave New World or Morlocks/Eloi is that the castes are not ranked, and everything is done to make each caste happy. There would have to be safeguards to stop the empathisers manipulating everythgin for their own benefit — what would those be? At some point, are the castes reproductively isolated? What if there is some slow-motion catastrophe where humans will have to be very different a few generations hence — maybe it becomes obvious that climate change will collapse advanced civlisation and humans have to rebuild from hunter-gatherer level, so it becomes necessary to breed robust humans who’ll survive a population bottleneck ...
</p></blockquote><p>
Alexander as <em>squid314</em> responds to this with none of the pointed questions one should. (“Castes? Human capital?! Arranged mating?!? <em>Undesirables</em>!?!”) Instead, he is enthusiastic about this <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/what-s-wrong-paying-women-use-long-term-birth-control">creepy</a> realworld organization:
<blockquote>
I ... actually think I am probably going to donate to that charity next time I get money. Though I’d feel better if it was something more reversible.
</blockquote><p>
Ew.
</p><p>
And. Of course. This <em>does</em> go where one expects eugenics to go …
</p>
<a name="iq" href="#top"><h2><!-------------------------------------------->
Racist pseudoscience about IQ
</h2></a>
<p>
On SSC in 2016, Alexander <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/23/three-great-articles-on-poverty-and-why-i-disagree-with-all-of-them/">praised</a> Charles Murray of the <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-real-problem-with-charles-murray-and-the-bell-curve/">notoriously racist bullshit</a> <cite>The Bell Curve</cite>.
</p><blockquote>
The only public figure I can think of in the southeast quadrant [<em>of an imagined political compass for poverty policy</em>] with me is Charles Murray. Neither he nor I would dare reduce all class differences to heredity, and he in particular has some very sophisticated theories about class and culture.
</blockquote><p>
That is <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/12/clarification-to-sacred-principles-as-exhaustible-resources/">not the only time</a>:
</p><blockquote>
my impression of Murray is positive [⋯] One hopes Charles Murray pursues what he thinks is true, and any offense caused is unintentional
</blockquote><p>
Neither post directly supports Murray’s racism. But both are stupidly credulous about what he <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/07/why-is-charles-murray-odious">pretends</a> to advocate. His arguments are <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/does-the-bell-curve-ring-true-a-closer-look-at-a-grim-portrait-of-american-society/">overwhelmingly</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech">nonsense</a>. Even if Alexander is not knowingly promoting Murray’s most evil and disingenouous arguments, taking Murray as credible demonstrates hopelessly bad judgement.
</p><p>
In the course of in addressing current “scientific racists” offering evil crackpot pseudoscience about intelligence, Kiera Havens’ Medium post <a href="https://medium.com/@Keira_Havens/box-of-rocks-7-ouroboros-3cc530d7782e">Oroborous</a> racks up pointers to these and other examples of how Alexander is deeply entangled with that movement.
</p><blockquote><p>
Siskind chose to deliberately hide his affinity for race science for writings on his popular blogs, SlateStarCodex and AstralTenCodex. In 2014 <a href="https://twitter.com/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001/photo/1">emails where he detailed his strategy for mainstreaming hereditarianism came to light</a> and Siskind (with all the confidence of a toddler emphatically declaring through crumbs and chocolate that <strong><small>THEY</small></strong> did not eat that cookie) posted a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150110045518/http://raikoth.net/">categorical denial</a> on another one of his websites, raikoth.net [a reference the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180131201320/https://shireroth.org/shirewiki/Raikoth">utopian society</a> Siskind spent years developing]. The same webite linked to an account used six months prior to <a href="https://savageminds.org/2014/05/06/get-ready-for-nicholas-wades-a-troublesome-inheritance/comment-page-2/#comment-818412">solicit resources on Asheknazi IQ to improve the arguments on “my side”</a>. The recommended items later emerge as a lengthy post on SlateStarCodex where <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/">he finds the same discredited theory Pinker promoted “really compelling”</a>.
</p><p>
[⋯]
</p><p>
Siskind defends the genetic basis of IQ in 2016 and 2021, often citing Plomin (<a href="https://x.com/SashaGusevPosts/status/1696337989050220794?s=20">who was wrong in many different ways</a>). In 2017 he sighs to his audience that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170510045728/https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/09/links-517-rip-van-linkle/">the hereditarian left “seems like as close to a useful self-identifier as I’m going to get”</a>. In 2012 he <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170222073559/https://squid314.livejournal.com/338295.html">solicits thought experiments on eugenics</a>, graduating to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200228054021/https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/#comment-23688">“I like both basic income and eugenics”</a> in 2013. A now deleted 2017 comment has him argue that the <a href="https://twitter.com/Biorealism/status/997277769141600256/photo/1">science isn’t settled</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Biorealism/status/997277769141600256/photo/2">skull-measuring is actually a scientifically rigorous way to determine cognitive ability</a>. When challenged on the welcoming atmosphere he is creating for ‘race science’ and its proponents (also in 2017), Siskind says that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200624105054/https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/631haf/on_the_commentariat_here_and_why_i_dont_think_i/">people on Twitter seem to think Emil Kirkegaard is okay</a> , a claim that Kirkegaard later uses to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210203232021/https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2017/04/on-crackpottery/">convince himself he’s not a crackpot</a>. To put a finer point on this one — Kirkegaard is *also* installed at [self-described <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/richard-lynn">scientific racist</a>] Richard Lynn’s publishing mill [the Ulster Institute for Social Research], started his own self-published, self-reviewed journal to publish folks like Willoughby and Fuerst (and host their conversations), and as part of his truly enormous body of work to promote scientific racism, spent years <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/03/12/wikipedia-wars-inside-fight-against-far-right-editors-vandals-and-sock-puppets">seeding Wikipedia with hereditarian talking points</a>.
</p></blockquote><p>
Alexander avoiding this stuff in his SSC essays explains how I missed it, but it <em>does</em> sometimes turn up. <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/">On SSC</a> in 2020 Alexander said:
</p><blockquote>
Normally this would be a hidden thread, but I wanted to signal boost <a href="https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2020/06/support-freedom-of-ideas-and-inquiry-at.html">this request for help</a> by Professor Steve Hsu, vice president of research at Michigan State University. Hsu is a friend of the blog and was a guest speaker at one of our recent online meetups – some of you might also have gotten a chance to meet him at <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/02/bay-area-ssc-meetup-1-6/">a Berkeley meetup</a> last year. He and his blog <a href="https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/09/some-favorite-posts.html">Information Processing</a> have also been instrumental in helping me and thousands of other people better understand genetics and neuroscience. If you’ve met him, you know he is incredibly kind, patient, and willing to go to great lengths to help improve people’s scientific understanding.
</blockquote><p>
Hsu is unmistakably <a href="https://altrightorigins.com/2020/06/19/hsu-irresponsible/">aligned</a> with Holocaust deniers, white nationalists, and racist pseudoscientists. Not maybe kinda. Not by coy implication. Directly. He is not someone one should support, have in one’s community, or point to for help “understanding genetics and neuroscience”. Alexander’s support for Hsu is unforgivable.
</p><p>
Alexander also <a href="https://archive.is/6Avrb">financially sponsors</a> Quillette, another bad actor so pernicious that I keep a <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/quillette.html">page</a> about them.
</p><blockquote class="me"><p>
Quillette is an instrument for credibility-washing evil far right pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
</p><p>
I am sympathetic to people who get fooled by <strong><em>an</em></strong> article from them. They publish a lot of genuinely intriguing contrarian articles, often by left-leaning commentators, to create an impression that they are a venue for smart, serious, adventurous ideas. But this is a ploy, to create a good impression so that one becomes open to entertaining one of their articles arguing Oh So Reasonably for [⋯] racist & sexist pseudoscience, nonsense about “censorship” by the Left, and even doxxing “antifa” journalists <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/alt-right-antifa-death-threats-doxxing-quillette-a8966176.html">knowing</a> that the violent fascist cult Atomwaffen used their article as a “Kill List”.
</p></blockquote><p>
It would be bad enough if Alexander shared an article from them, or a pointer to them. But he <em>gives them money</em>. Unforgivable.
</p>
<a name="abuser" href="#top"><h1>
Support for a NRx-ish abuser
</h1></a><p>
GorillasAreForEating on Reddit has a damning <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/14fpdr9/comment/jp20eqn/?context=3&share_id=KrXeQDQOJtXe6cv5qt6rS&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1">timeline</a> of rape-y Rationalist community culture which has a lot about Brent “ialdabaoth” Dill, whom Alexander supported in his community in a demonstration of astonishingly bad judgement.
</p><p>
A 2001 LiveJournal <a href="https://ialdabaoth.livejournal.com/337.html">post</a> from Dill says:
</p><blockquote>
I firmly believe that it’s nearly every man’s dream, somewhere deep inside, to have a harem of beautiful women that he objectively owns. Whether it is or not, it’s certainly <strong><small>MY</small></strong> dream.
</blockquote><p>
I keep enough company with libertines to wholeheartedly defend unwholesome daydreams, polyamory, and kink as good clean fun for consenting adults, but I have to recommend against clicking through the read more of that post; it made me want to bathe in bleach, and not just because it describes then-28-year-old Dill as delighting in sexually dominating a <em>sixteen-year-old</em>.
</p><p>
I cannot guess whether Alexander ever saw that post, but it informs reading Dill’s comments on SSC, where he was a frequent commenter by 2014. In April Dill <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/18/confounder-of-the-day-how-sexy-your-parents-were/#comment-55756">said</a>:
</p><blockquote>
I suppose ‘reactionary’ is just the closest affiliation I can latch onto; my actual worldview is a weird sort of nihilistic, depersonalized, ultra-authoritarian fascism straight out of 1984, so it’s kinda hard to find people to flag tribal affiliation towards. 🙁
</blockquote><p>
Alexander <em>did</em> respond to <em>that</em> comment “I am hard to creep out, and you are creeping me out”, but Dill remained welcome in SSC comments. Commenting on an August <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/09/friendship-is-still-countersignaling/">post</a> Dill said:
</p><blockquote>
manipulation is my only natural skill, and the one that I’ve honed the most. (Remember, narcissistic upbringing; probably a lot of unpleasantly narcissistic tendencies in myself as well.)
<hr /><em>
I completely get and agree with Neoreaction</em>, my only objection is about scale. In the world I want to live in, I am a Sovereign King of my own household, where the only options are Obedience and Exit.
<hr />
I lived with a harem of attractive, submissive women who called me their ‘Master’ and pretty much voluntarily structured their lives around making me happy.
</blockquote><p>
A month after those comments, Alexander did a SSC <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/19/open-thread-5-my-best-friends-threadding/">post</a> forwarding a lengthy plea for financial and other support for Dill saying, “If you read the comments at SSC, you’ll recognize him as a contributor of rare honesty and insight.”
</p><p>
Four years later, <a href="https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/brent-dill-is-an-abuser/">multiple</a> <a href="https://medium.com/@mittenscautious/brent-a-warning-38e447c55ab0">community</a> <a href="https://medium.com/@mittenscautious/warning-2-153ed9f5f1f3">accounts</a> of <a href="https://medium.com/@mittenscautious/warning-3-8097bb6747b1">Dill’s</a> <a href="https://rationality.org/resources/updates/2019/cfars-mistakes-regarding-brent">abusiveness</a> <a href="https://pastebin.com/fzwYfDNq">surfaced</a>.
</p>
<a name="justification" href="#top"><h1>
Alexander justifies his legitimization of NRx
</h1></a><p>
In 2021, Topher T Brennan <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210217195335/https://twitter.com/TopherTBrennan/status/1362108632070905857">shared</a> a 2014 email Alexander sent him defending his thinking and motives in addressing reactionaries’ ideas.
</p><blockquote><p>
I’ve decided to say “screw it” and post receipts showing that Scott Siskind (the guy behind Slate Star Codex) isn’t being honest about his history with the far-right.
</p><p>
The context is that I’d been publicly critical of the rationalist community’s relationship with a branch of the online far right that called themselves “neoreactionaries”, and Scott (a vague internet acquaintance at the time) basically responded by saying, “oh, I agree the people you’re thinking of don't have much of value to say” but offered to point me to supposedly “better” examples of neoreactionary thought. This is what he sent me—something I was very much not expecting. (And no, he did not first say “can I tell you something in confidence?” or anything like that.)
</p><p>
Posting this now because Scott accusing Cade Metz [author of the NYT article <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-codex-rationalists.html">Silicon Valley’s Safe Space: Slate Star Codex</a>] of dishonesty and a lot of people are jumping on that to smear Metz and the NYT. The thing is, Metz never said Scott endorsed the far-right or anything like that — just that the Slate Star Codex community was far more welcoming to the far-right than to so-called “SJWs”. That’s a simple fact that has been a matter of public record for years. Scott and his defenders says it’s dishonest to point that out because it might lead people to infer Scott is far more sympathetic to the far-right than he’s admitted publicly. But the inference is correct.
</p></blockquote><p>
I feel a certain hesitation about re-sharing a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/lm36nk/comment/gntraiv/">message</a> Alexander sent in confidence, but many Alexander critics reference it so the cat is already out of the bag … and it is too illuminating to ignore.
</p><br /><p>
Some context for the uninitiated:
</p><ul><li>
“HBD” stands for “human biodiversity”, a term used by people promoting <a href="https://forward.com/news/347207/how-the-alt-right-manipulates-the-data-to-prove-the-existence-of-race/">intellectually dishonest racist pseudoscience</a> about how different “subgroups” of humanity are different from each other, focusing of course on differences in intelligence & temperament
</li><li>
“LW” is short for <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong">LessWrong</a>, the Rationalist forum focused on the ideas of the <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky#Genius_or_crank.3F">weird crank</a> Eliezer Yudkowsky whom Sandifer criticizes in the references at the top of this post
</li><li>
Robin Hanson is a <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Robin_Hanson">creepy crank</a> prominent in the Rationalist community
</li><li>
“Moldbug” is the nom de guerre of NRx leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin">Curtis Yarvin</a>
</li><li><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page">
RationalWiki</a> is an index maintained by the Rationalist community — a useful place to <em>start</em> when looking for resources debunking bad ideas & bad actors, and you’ll notice that this post points to their article on Alexander early on
</li></ul>
<blockquote><p>
I said a while ago I would collect lists of importantly correct neoreactionary stuff to convince you I’m not wrong to waste time with neoreactionaries. I would have preferred to collect stuff for a little longer, but since it's blown up now, let me make the strongest argument I can at this point:
</p><h2>
1. HBD is probably partially correct or at least very non-provably not-correct.
</h2><small><a href="https://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/the-facts-that-need-to-be-explained/">
https://occidentalascent.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/the-facts-that-need-to-be-explained/
</a><br /><a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/survey-of-psychometricians-finds-isteve.html">
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/survey-of-psychometricians-finds-isteve.html
</a></small>
<p>
This then spreads into a vast variety of interesting but less-well-supported HBD-type hypotheses which should probably be more strongly investigated if we accept some of the bigger ones are correct. See eg <small><a href="http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/theorie/">http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/theorie/</a></small> or <small><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed</a></small>.
</p><p>
(I will appreciate if you <strong><small>NEVER TELL ANYONE I SAID THIS</small></strong>, not even in confidence. And by “appreciate”, I mean that if you ever do, I’ll probably either leave the Internet forever or seek some sort of horrible revenge.)
</p><h2>
2. The public response to this is abysmally horrible.
</h2><p>
See for example Konk’s comment <small><a href="http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/jpj/open_thread_for_february_1824_2014/ala7">http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/jpj/open_thread_for_february_1824_2014/ala7</a></small> which I downvoted because I don’t want it on LW, but which is nevertheless correct and important.
</p><p>
See also <small><a href="http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/crazy-talk/">http://radishmag.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/crazy-talk/</a></small>
</p><h2>
3. Reactionaries are almost the only people discussing the object-level problem <strong><small>AND</small></strong> the only people discussing the meta-level problem.
</h2><p>
Many of their insights seem important. At the risk (well, certainty) of confusing reactionary insights with insights I learned about through Reactionaries, see:
</p><small><a href="http://cthulharchist.tumblr.com/post/76667928971/when-i-was-a-revolutionary-marxist-we-were-all-in">http://cthulharchist.tumblr.com/post/76667928971/when-i-was-a-revolutionary-marxist-we-were-all-in</a>
</small><br /><small><a href="http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/review-of-exodus-by-paul-collier/">
http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/review-of-exodus-by-paul-collier/</a>
</small><h2>
4. These things are actually important
</h2><p>
I suspect that race issues helped lead to the discrediting of IQ tests which helped lead to college degrees as the sole determinant of worth which helped lead to everyone having to go to a four-year college which helped lead to massive debt crises, poverty, and social immobility (I am assuming you can fill in the holes in this argument).
</p><p>
I think they’re correct that “you are racist and sexist” is a very strong club used to bludgeon any group that strays too far from the mainstream — like Silicon Valley tech culture, libertarians, computer scientists, atheists, rationalists, et cetera. For complicated reasons these groups are disproportionately white and male, meaning that they have to spend an annoying amount of time and energy apologizing for this. I’m not sure how much this retards their growth, but my highball estimate is “a lot”.
</p><h2>
5. They are correct about a bunch of scattered other things
</h2><p>
the superiority of corporal punishment to our current punishment system (google "all too humane" in <small><a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/">http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/</a></small> ). Robin Hanson also noted this, but there’s no shame in independent rediscovering a point made by Robin Hanson. I think the Reactionaries are also correct about that it is very worrying that our society can’t amalgamate or discuss this belief.
various scattered historical events which they seem able to parse much better than anyone else. See for example <small><a href="http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/review-of-the-last-lion-by-paul-reid/">http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/review-of-the-last-lion-by-paul-reid/</a></small>
Moldbug’s theory of why modem poetry is so atrocious, which I will not bore you by asking you to read.
</p><p>
Michael successfully alerted me to the fact that crime has risen by a factor of ten over the past century, which seems <strong><small>REALLY IMPORTANT</small></strong> and nobody else is talking about it and it seems like the sort of thing that more people than just Michael should be paying attention to.
</p><h2>
6. A general theory of who is worth paying attention to.
</h2><p>
Compare RationalWiki and the neoreactionaries. RationalWiki provides a steady stream of mediocrity. Almost nothing they say is outrageously wrong, but almost nothing they say is especially educational to someone who is smart enough to have already figured out that homeopathy doesn't work. Even things of theirs I didn’t know — let’s say some particular study proving homeopathy doesn't work that I had never read before — doesn’t provide me with real value, since they fit exactly into my existing worldview without teaching me anything new (ie I so strongly assume such studies should exist that learning they actually exist changes nothing for me).
</p><p>
The Neoreactionaries provide a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold in them. Despite considering myself pretty smart and clueful, I constantly learn new and important things (like the crime stuff, or the WWII history, or the HBD) from the Reactionaries. Anything that gives you a constant stream of very important new insights is something you grab as tight as you can and never let go of.
</p><p>
The garbage doesn’t matter because I can tune it out.
</p><h2>
7. My behavior is the most appropriate response to these facts
</h2><p>
I am monitoring Reactionaries to try to take advantage of their insight and learn from them. I am also strongly criticizing Reactionaries for several reasons.
</p><p>
First is a purely selfish reason — my blog gets about 5x more hits and new followers when I write about Reaction or gender than it does when I write about anything else, and writing about gender is horrible. Blog followers are useful to me because they expand my ability to spread important ideas and network with important people.
</p><p>
Second is goodwill to the Reactionary community. I want to improve their thinking so that they become stronger and keep what is correct while throwing out the garbage. A reactionary movement that kept the high intellectual standard (which you seem to admit they have), the correct criticisms of class and of social justice, and few other things while dropping the monarchy-talk and the cathedral-talk and the traditional gender-talk and the feudalism-talk — would be really useful people to have around. So I criticize the monarchy-talk etc, and this seems to be working — as far as I can tell a lot of Reactionaries have quietly started talking about monarchy and feudalism a lot less (still haven't gotten many results about the Cathedral or traditional gender).
</p><p>
Third is that I want to spread the good parts of Reactionary thought. Becoming a Reactionary would both be stupid and decrease my ability to spread things to non-Reactionary readers. Criticizing the stupid parts of Reaction while also mentioning my appreciation for the good parts of their thought seems like the optimal way to inform people of them. And in fact I think it’s possible (though I can't prove) that my FAQ inspired some of the recent media interest in Reactionaries.
</p><p>
Finally, there’s a social aspect. They tend to be extremely unusual and very smart people who have a lot of stuff to offer me. I am happy to have some of them (not Jim!) as blog commenters who are constantly informing me of cool new things (like nydwracu linking me to the McDonalds article yesterday)
</p><h2>
8. S<strong><small>ERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY</small></strong>, the absurdity heuristic doesn’t work
</h2><p>
You’re into cryonics, so you’ve kind of lost the right to say “These people, even tough they’re smart, are saying something obviously stupid, so we don’t have to listen to them”
</p><p>
Drew has even less of a right to say that — he seems to be criticizing the Reactionaries on the grounds of “you wouldn’t pay attention to creationists, would you?” even while he discovered Catholic philosophy and got so into it that he has now either converted to Catholicism or is strongly considering doing so.
</p><p>
If there is a movement consisting of very smart people — not pseudointellectual people, like the type who write really clever-looking defenses of creationism — then in my opinion it's almost always a bad idea to dismiss it completely.
</p><p>
Also, I should have mentioned this on your steelmanning creationism thread, but although I feel no particular urge to steelman young earth creationism, it is actually pretty useful to read some of their stuff. You never realize how <strong><small>LITTLE</small></strong> you know about evolution until you read some Behe and are like “I know that can’t be correct...but why not? Even if it turned out there was zero value to anything any Reactionary ever said, by challenging beliefs of mine that would otherwise never be challenged they have forced me to up my game and clarify my thinking. That alone is worth thousand hours reading things I already agree with on RationalWiki.
</p></blockquote><p>
Some call this peek into Alexander’s thinking & motives a smoking gun which demonstrates that he <em>is</em> a crypto-reactionary. I want to chew on that …
<a name="theory" href="#top"><h1>
So what <em>is</em> it with Alexander?
</h1></a><p>
We can conclude that we must shun Alexander and his work for carrying water for dangerous nonsense without needing to understand Alexander’s motives and thought processes.
</p><p>
But I have reasons to want to dig for an understanding of him.
</p><br /><p>
Sandifer and I suggest that we might read Alexander as foolish rather than just a crypto-reactionary. Why?
</p><p>
Despite knowing the worst from him, I confess that I <em>still</em> find Alexander’s long 2014 poetic evocation of rigorous liberalism <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/">In Favor Of Niceness, Community, And Civilization</a> moving.
</p><blockquote><p>
Liberalism does not conquer by fire and sword. Liberalism conquers by communities of people who agree to play by the rules, slowly growing until eventually an equilibrium is disturbed. Its battle cry is not “Death to the unbelievers!” but “If you’re nice, you can join our cuddle pile!”
</p><p>
But some people, through lack of imagination, fail to find this battle cry sufficiently fear-inspiring.
</p></blockquote><p>
In 2013 Alexander was early to take a <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/">hard</a> and <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/"><em>critical</em></a> look at NRx on SSC in 2013, predating most other <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/05/neoreaction.html">critiques I know about</a>. In those posts he steelmans NRx ideas … and finds them badly wanting. His anti-Reaction essay concludes:
</p><blockquote>
Some Reactionaries are saying things about society that need to be said. A few even have good policy proposals. But couching them in a narrative that talks about the wonders of feudalism and the evils of the Cathedral and how we should replace democracy with an absolute monarch just discredits them entirely.
</blockquote><p>
Recall how in the leaked email, Alexander called NRx:
</p><blockquote>
a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold
</blockquote><p>
I find it impossible to imagine Alexander concocting these as nothing other than a smokescreen over his <em>true</em> reactionary agenda. Yet Alexander unmistakably supports some of the <em>worst</em> reactionary ideas and actors. How to reconcile that?
</p><p><a href="https://eaton.fyi">
Jeff Eaton</a>, one of my favorite <a href="https://rightcast.substack.com">commentators</a> on far right ideology in the US, <a href="https://twitter.com/eaton/status/1362441267947388935">distils</a> the leaked email and finds too much sympathy for NRx:
</p><blockquote><p>
In the context of what he’s writing (i.e., the whole message rather than an isolated phrase or two) it seems straightforward that:
</p><ol><li>
He believes the NRx movement / thinkers are tackling critical questions few other people are
</li><li>
They don’t get everything right, but that is better than not trying
</li><li>
He takes information from them credulously and considers them a unique pool of insights
</li><ol type="a"><li>
He cites specific ideas NRx folks have offered to him that critics have debunked but Scott accepted and went on to consider important ingredients in his thinking
</li><li>
He believes smart people should listen to them, because of the positives
</li></ol><li>
He avoided publicly associating himself with NRx in part because felt it would affect his credibility with non-NRx people, not because he condemned the movement’s priors or conclusions
</li><li>
He considers almost everything to be a stream of garbage that intelligent people must sort through to find the valuable elements
</li><li>
He believes that NRx is on the balance better than other “dismissable” ideas like homeopathy, and should be listened to
</li><li>
He believes that smart people like himself will not be affected by whatever poor conclusions or bad priors the NRx movement brings to the table
</li></ol><p>
In that context the “stream of garbage” phrase doesn’t carry a lot of weight.
</p></blockquote><p>
I disagree with Eaton a bit on that last point — I find it important to distinguish between Alexander simply supporting the movement versus finding it wrong-but-instructive — but agree with his conclusion about Alexander’s failure.
</p><p>
The “gold” Alexander finds is not merely worthless. It is <em>poisonous</em>.
</p><p>
So — again — what is going on with him?
</p><br /><p>
Consider how Alexander also wrote a long <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/">Non-Libertarian FAQ</a> which, like the Anti-Reactionary FAQ, steelmans libertarian ideas then rejects them.
</p><blockquote>
The main reason I’m writing this is that I encounter many libertarians, and I need a single document I can point to explaining why I don’t agree with them.
</blockquote><p>
I intend the post you are reading now to do something similar: accumulating particulars about Alexander and examining generous readings of him, to criticize him thoroughly rather than just dismissively. I have <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2005/04/liberty-and-capitalism.html">done</a> <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-livelihoods-of-far-right-cranks.html">similar</a> <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2011/12/ron-paul.html">posts</a> <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2012/12/guns.html">before</a>.
</p><p>
Given the parallel between posts he and I have both done, I recognize Alexander as a species of nerd who has a high tolerance for intellectual disgust, has a taste for examining evil ideas and picking them apart, and lives in the sphere of California nerds who talk about this stuff. That recognition comes of our similarities. It would comfort me to believe that we fundamentally differ because his liberal protestations are just an act, to believe that he only feigns his commitment to the deep <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/07/what-if-not-liberal-democracy.html">egalitarian and democratic values</a> at the core of my own thinking. I might then feel confident that I could not go as wrong as he has.
</p><p>
Instead, I take his liberal side as sincere, which inspires my <strong><em>dis</em></strong>comfort. If we are so alike, I must dread the possibility that I could make comparable mistakes. After all, I <em>have</em> failed in recognizing Alexander’s worst too slowly. I have an obligation to examine what brought him to where he is, to learn to avoid his failings.
</p><br /><p>
An anonymous commenter <a href="https://queersingularity.wordpress.com/2021/02/15/scott-siskind-on-capitalism-wealth-power/">offers</a> a reading of Alexander’s driving psychology, in response to another example of his mortifying moral tone-deafness.
</p><p>
(<em>For the uninitiated, <a href="https://intelligence.org">MIRI</a> is an artificial intelligence “research” project entangled with the Rationalist community.</em>)
</p><blockquote><p>
Many of Scott’s house-mates from the rationalist community are extremely weird and awkward (I guess I can’t name them without sharing personal info so you’ll have to take my word for it) and are often sad about their lack of status. They are very wealthy by worldwide standards if not by the absurd local-regional standards which is still enough to at least feel obligated to feel guilty by community standards. (Think: people who are making making donations MIRI well over the US median household income)
</p><p>
If you combine this with the frequent inability of people perceive their own privilege and the high levels of narcissist-like traits exhibited in the rationalist community you end up with people around you saying “I have all this money and yet no one respects for the Gift to the world that I am and instead keeps treating me like a weirdo…” and maybe you start thinking money doesn’t matter much.
</p><p>
Some of this likely stems from conflating status and power as a result of overvaluing what other people think of you as a result of living in a group house (similar to how high-schoolers are stereotyped as thinking their life is over at every bump in their social lives).
</p><p>
Let me offer an alternative explanation (in pseudo mathy terms so the rationalists can pretend that its deeply insightful): Power is a normalized product of many factors:
<br /><br /><em>
P<sub>you</sub> <br /> <strong>
=</strong><br />
( F1<sub>you</sub> * F2<sub>you</sub> * F3<sub>you</sub> … * F<strong>n</strong><sub>you</sub> )<br /><small>
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━<br /></small>
( sum( product(F<strong>n</strong>)<sub>everyone</sub> ) )
</em><br /><br />
and many of these factors are highly correlated with wealth: education, connections to other people with high power: things like free time, safety from starvation, good health, affiliation with socially powerful groups, level of control over the time of others (e.g. owning a business), freedom from biological/social persecution…
</p><p>
Some of these factors could rightfully be considered latent forms of wealth in themselves (in that they inevitably result from or lead to wealth). As a result, <em>P</em> changes with wealth raised to some high power but weakness in a non-wealth respect can still handicap you.
</p><p>
So yes, you can have some modicum of wealth and still have low power by being very weak in other respects, such as not having enough EQ to realize when your “just asking” has ventured into extremely offensive and impolitic waters or too much selfishness to cut it out if you do realize. This does not change the fact that wealth is a universal solvent able to radically simply many concerns and a nearly impassable barrier for many goals.
</p><p>
Over time, you become your friends in many respects. Choosing who you spend time with is one of the biggest things someone can do to influence their future personality. Comparing the Scott of today to the one who wrote the anti-libertarian FAQ feels to me like looking at someone who hasn’t made the best decisions of this kind.
</p></blockquote><p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/7gnzdb/is_it_the_people_or_the_philosophy/">
Is it the people or the philosophy?</a> asks about that Rationalist community reflected in Alexander and SSC, describing a certain white-guy-nerd hubris. I too am a white guy nerd. I should beware.
</p><em><p>
For the uninitiated:
</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.ReadTheSequences.com">
The Sequences</a> is a web book of eccentric essays about thinking by crank Rationalist star <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky">Eliezer Yudkowsky</a>
</li><li>
Bayes’ Theorem is a way of approaching probability problems which Yudkowsky and many other Rationalists tend to emphasize as inspiring <a href="https://www.cold-takes.com/the-bayesian-mindset/">useful intuitions</a>
</li></ul></em>
<blockquote><p>
Every once in a while, someone with real credentials in a trendy domain like genetics or economics will drop in to mention how jarring it is to see so many people talking so enthusiastically about their academic discipline with such esoteric vocabulary, yet the vast majority of it is utter horseshit that wouldn’t pass a 101-level class. One response I got when I did this was that someone, with no apparent irony, accused me of “LARPing” because the scientific establishment is clearly just pretending to epistemological “prestige” that can only be truly earned by studying the Sequences.
</p><br /><p>
PhD <strong><</strong> Bayes’s theorem (<strong><</strong> IQ).
</p><br /><p>
This is, of course, the perfect description of what the Rational community is up to. Instead of labs they do their research in armchairs; instead of peer-reviewed journals they publish their findings in blogs (whose posts still get actual citations years later). But they’re creating a parallel world of alt-academia in fields that are already well trod by the genuine article, like philosophy and economics and quantum mechanics and oh-so-much genetics. They do happily admit real-world publications into their body of knowledge, but then they also admit pseudoscientists like that Kirkegaard guy or the crackpot virologist whom Peter Thiel paid to give people herpes in order to prove we don’t need the FDA. I think this is where Rationalists are the most cultlike and earn their capital R: not the abundance of unnecessary jargon/shibboleths, nor the alarming tendency to handle everything in their daily lives (even their health) through the community, but the whole ecosystem they have of theories and thought-leaders that are constantly discussed inside the community yet no one outside has ever heard of them.
</p><p>
Maybe this comes back to the evasion of empathy, the reluctance to give any weight to other people’s experience — a doctor’s opinions about health are just as irrelevant as an African American's opinions about racism. In that sense it could just be one more battleground in the eternal conflict between rationalism and empiricism.
</p></blockquote><p>
I take comfort that I have a view of power much more heavily informed by a social justice analysis and a view of expertise much more skeptical of fringe figures. But most of all, I find myself dwelling on Alexander saying in the leaked email:
</p><blockquote>
The garbage doesn’t matter because I can tune it out
</blockquote><p>
Alexander can be very smart. His essay <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/">Meditations on Moloch</a> remains a marvel I recommend to anyone. His two essays on NRx are necessary reading if one wants to <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/05/neoreaction.html">understand</a> the movement. And my fascination with his <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/">Niceness, Community, and Civilization</a> essay is not dulled by his failings at the values it describes but rather <em>sharpened</em> by the cautionary example of how thinking his principles protected him from bad actors failed, may even have made him dangerously overconfident.
</p><p>
But he is also very stupid. No, he <em><strong>cannot</strong> tune out the garbage</em>.
</p><p>
This presents a problem, because <em>someone</em> has to debunk false and evil ideas and <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/09/social-media-shitstorms.html">present the critiques to a candid world</a>. This post is among my attempts to do that work. I have a sober sense of how that is <a href="https://everything2.com/title/The+Turner+Diaries+and+The+Iron+Heel"><em>difficult</em></a> and important.
</p><blockquote>
When I read something like <cite>The Turner Diaries</cite>, the men in the sub-mircron filtration Chemurion suits emerge from the clean room with their vacuum traps. They hoover up the memes and peel back the protein sheath. The virus gets spun down in the centrifuge, cut to pieces with enzymes, run through the sequencer. And the white coated man emerges from the lab, with a clipboard, and announces, “You know what? This looks very similar to something we indexed in 1995…” And they begin to formulate a vaccine — for widespread distribution, to stop the spread.
</blockquote><p>
Alexander, for all his genuine wit at his best, is just far too intellectually reckless to be trusted with the delicacy of sifting through bad ideas. He demonstrates us how garbage sources are <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2014/12/not-source-of-information.html">bad for you</a> even if you go in knowing they are garbage. His wit is a handicap. It makes him overconfident. It presents an illusion that he is a rigorous thinker.
</p><p>
Beware.
</p><br /><hr /><hr /><br />
<p>
This post emerged from a <a href="https://twitter.com/miniver/status/1361047386135568384">Twitter thread</a> accumulating particulars, inspired by a nightmarishly bushy Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/ArsonAtDennys/status/1360701986774089734">discussion</a> with critics of Alexander’s. Twitter is of course both an inconvenient format and a dying platform serving the far right at Elon Musk’s hands, so I have made an attempt to capture the essentials here. I have refined this post since originally posting it and intend to keep refining and expanding it, so I encourage readers to drop me a line pointing to anything important I have missed.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-613486934647488202024-01-23T17:43:00.000-08:002024-02-05T10:49:26.371-08:00Quillette <p><a href="https://quillette.com">
Quillette</a> is an instrument for credibility-washing evil far right pseudo-intellectual bullshit. One should never share anything they publish.
</p><p>
I am sympathetic to people who get fooled by <strong><em>an</em></strong> article from them. They publish a lot of genuinely intriguing contrarian articles, often by left-leaning commentators, to create an impression that they are a venue for smart, serious, adventurous ideas. But this is a ploy, to create a good impression so that one becomes open to entertaining one of their articles arguing Oh So Reasonably for reactionary bullshit.
</p><p>
It is a very effective method; the Wall Street Journal has done something similar for decades, maintaining a right-leaning but rigorous news operation which <a href="https://www.cjr.org/special_report/breaking_right_wall_street_journal_stubborn_murdoch.php">provides cover</a> for their editorial page’s lying propaganda.
</p><blockquote><p>
The <cite>Journal</cite> holds a peculiar position in the American press. Murdoch, who acquired the paper along with Dow Jones in 2007 for five billion dollars, is perhaps the most hated executive in media, yet the <cite>Journal</cite> has managed to maintain a serious news operation, providing a training ground for excellent journalists for decades. The <cite>Journal</cite> has a distinctly conservative, finance-focused sensibility; it also belongs squarely among the New York media elite. It is not where many reporters aspire to land, however, in large part because its reputation is so tainted by incendiary op-eds. For decades, the Journal newsroom has grumbled about leaps of logic and reckless ideology on the opinion side. During Trump’s presidency, the grumbling grew into a roar.
</p><p>
In July 2020, more than two hundred and eighty newsroom employees signed a letter addressed to Almar Latour, the CEO of Dow Jones & Company and the <cite>Journal</cite>’s publisher, complaining about a “lack of fact-checking and transparency” on the editorial page, which they believed was undercutting the paper’s credibility
</p></blockquote><p>
Quillette’s influence is not confined to weird corners of the internet. Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers <a href="https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1564046963024199681">cites</a> them:
</p><blockquote>
I hope that university presidents will defend academic freedom by echoing these sentiments. Leading journals like
<a href="https://nature.com/">Nature</a> gatekeep tenure for young scholars and publications in them can determine career paths for older scholars.
<br /><br /><a href="https://quillette.com/2022/08/28/the-fall-of-nature/">
The Fall of ‘Nature’
</a></blockquote><p><a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2014/12/not-source-of-information.html">
One must reject the fruit of the poisoned tree.
</a></p><p>
Quillette’s far right mission becomes plain if you look at reporting on them at <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quillette">RationalWiki</a>, the <a href="https://www.cjr.org/analysis/quillette-antifa-journalist-smear-campaign.php">Columbia Journalism Review</a>, <a href="https://jacobin.com/2019/08/archie-carter-quillette-dsa">Jacobin</a>, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/154205/quillettes-antifa-journalists-list-couldve-gotten-killed">The New Republic</a>, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/quillette-fascist-creep/">The Nation</a>, or <a href="https://www.pinkerite.com/2019/06/quillette-doubles-down-on-race-science.html">Pinkerite</a> detailing them promoting racist & sexist pseudoscience, nonsense about “censorship” by the Left, and even doxxing “antifa” journalists <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/alt-right-antifa-death-threats-doxxing-quillette-a8966176.html">knowing</a> that the violent fascist cult Atomwaffen used their article as a “Kill List”.
</p><p>
David Neiwert, one of the best journalists covering the far right in the US, <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidNeiwert/status/1192123505598287873">responds</a> to Quillette founder & editor Claire Lehmann about that last:
</p><blockquote><blockquote><p>
Activists such as <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/author/robertevans/">Robert Evans <small><@IwriteOK></small></a> continue to lie about the authorship of <a href="https://quillette.com/2019/05/29/its-not-your-imagination-the-journalists-writing-about-antifa-are-often-their-cheerleaders/">our article</a> published back in May in order to target Andy Ngo.
</p><p>
I wonder why they hate the article so much. Is it because it cuts close too close to the bone? 🤔
</p></blockquote><p>
Actually, Claire, the reason every working journalist who has been covering these events loathes these stories with a white-hot passion is that it reveals that you all literally have no idea how journalism works. It conflates sourcing with ideology, info-gathering with activism. Throughout the piece, it works from the assumption that if a journalist is talking to antifascists and getting info from them, then they must be sympathetic with them. It doesn't reach a similar conclusion when these journalists also do the same with the other side as well.
</p><p>
But that’s how journalism -- done properly -- has always worked. You seem to think that overt bias -- the kind Andy Ngo regularly displays in who he talks to and the kinds of questions he asks, not to mention his on-scene behavior -- is OK if it’s on your side.
</p><p>
Here’s your tweet attacking <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/wilson-jason">Jason Wilson <small><@jason_a_w></small></a> because of who he was standing next to while covering one of these events.
</p><blockquote>
Here is @guardian journalist @jason_a_w (left) next to Portland Antifa organiser Luis Enrique Marquez. Note that Marquez is wearing the same assault gloves that injured Andy Ngo, standard practice for Antifa activists.
</blockquote><p>
But as I pointed out, Jason can easily be found in photographs talking to peopler on both sides of the divide.
</p><hr />
Hey, Claire, here are some shots of @jason_a_w interviewing alt-righters at a similar rally in Portland -- the one immediately following two murders on a commuter train by a man who had marched with Patriot Prayer. Have you ever been a reporter? Any idea how all this works?
<hr /><p>
This is simply standard reportorial practice, and you simply don’t get it.
</p><p>
So yeah, the colleagues of all the journalists who wound up on that Atomwaffen list (and your disingenuousness on the subject of its existence is running thin, BTW) are fucking pissed about it. You're endangering our lives simply for doing our jobs professionally.
</p></blockquote><p><a href="https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1164662119050162176">
More</a> from journalist <a href="https://alexanderreidross.net">Alexander Reid Ross</a>:
</p><blockquote>
<blockquote><em><a href="https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1164406638519803905"></a>
Tweet by Alex Zielinski <small><@alex_zee></small></em><br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awN9J88j4mA">
This clip</a>, shot right before Patriot Prayer arrived at Cider Riot on May Day, is the clearest evidence I’ve seen supporting the claim that PP & leader Joey Gibson were intent on instigating a fight that afternoon.
</blockquote><p>
It’s now clear that, a few weeks before Quillette produced a dubious article attempting to link journalists to antifa (including yours truly), their editor Andy Ngo joined a group of far-right street brawlers as they planned out a surprise attack on a local pub.
</p><p>
You can see plain as day Andy hanging out with the group, leaving with an apparent scouting crew to investigate the unsuspecting bar patrons, and then returning to divulge information on the number of people and their potential capacity to defeat their own group
</p><p>
When they finally did attack (after being joined by leader Joey Gibson), the Quillette editor joined in to film the whole thing, obviously from the right-wing side. In the ensuing altercation, provoked entirely by the right, a fascist attacked a woman and broke her vertebrae.
</p><p>
Aside from Quillette getting totally hoaxed and their founding editor Claire Lehman apparently promoting phrenology, this is a major indication that their standards are nonexistent, their pose as “intellectuals” is bunk, and they are merely a far-right propaganda site.
</p><p>
Last point — Andy made a small fortune holding himself out as a victim of violence. Now that we get the whole picture, apparently implicating him in a surprise attack that left one woman seriously injured, will ppl finally recognize his pleas against violence are pure hypocrisy?
</p></blockquote>
<p>
When Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote an article <a href="https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39">debunking racist crap about IQ</a>, his article had an aside about them.
</p><blockquote>
Note the online magazine Quillette seems to be a cover for a sinister eugenics program (with tendencies I’ve called “neo-Nazi” under the cover of “free thought”.)
</blockquote><p>
This inspired a <a href="https://twitter.com/clairlemon/status/1155588550022201344">Twitter thread</a> from Quillette founder & editor Claire Lehmann — who regularly gets up to <a href="https://twitter.com/NiceMangos/status/1471246757342421005">shenanigans</a> tipping her hand on Twitter — revealingly playing a familiar songbook of pseudo-science “just asking questions” to justify racism, sexism, and other reactionary themes.
</p><blockquote><p>
I’m going to put a few things on the record.
</p><p>
I created Quillette in late 2015 after dropping out of a masters in forensic psychology. My aim was (and is) to provide a space for journalism that is informed by evidence. In particular, I wanted to provide a space where academics & others could challenge blank slate dogma.
</p><p>
In my view, blank slate dogma is pernicious. It exists on both the Left and the Right. Here is one example of us taking a look at it on the Right.
</p><p><a href="https://quillette.com/2017/01/12/the-blank-slateism-of-the-right/">
The Blank Slate-ism of the Right</a>
</p><p>
My interest in countering blank slate dogma sprung from my profound disillusionment with contemporary feminism, which from my point of view was becoming increasingly anti-intellectual & anti-science. I wrote this in 2013.
</p><p>
<a href="https://clairelehmann.net/2013/08/22/how-about-some-evidence-based-feminism/">
How About Some Evidence-Based Feminism?</a>
</p><p>
In 2017, I wrote an article for Commentary, about the price women pay because of the widespread denial of sex differences. The medical community’s avoidance of studying this topic has led to women overdosing on sleeping pills for decades.
</p><p>
<a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/claire-lehmann/the-xx-factor/">
The XX Factor</a>
</p><p>
Yet gender is not the only area in which blank slate dogma operates. We’ve also published articles on heritability, and the counter-intuitive results of decades of twin-studies research.
</p><p> <a href="https://quillette.com/2015/12/01/why-parenting-may-not-matter-and-why-most-social-science-research-is-probably-wrong/">
Why Parenting May Not Matter and Why Most Social Science Research is Probably Wrong</a>
</p><p>
But we have never hosted an argument which claims that genes or biology account for 100% of human behavioural or psychological outcomes. The argument is simply that genes and biology account for more than zero.
</p><p>
<a href="https://quillette.com/2016/05/21/giving-genes-their-due-but-not-more/">
Giving Genes Their Due, But Not More</a>
</p><p>
Have we published on intelligence? Yes. Admittedly, intelligence is an incredibly complex area of study, & technical discussion is best suited to journals. That being said, the denial of intelligence is not helpful in a society that is rapidly changing.
</p><p>
<a href="https://quillette.com/2017/02/06/dealing-with-the-reality-that-not-everyone-can-succeed/">
Dealing with the Reality That Not Everyone Can Succeed</a>
</p><p>
People like to paint intelligence research as an exercise in vanity. Smart people like to prove how smart they are, <em>etc</em>. But who actually gets their IQ tested? Kids being screened for learning difficulties. Adults who’ve had brain injuries. Elderly suffering dementia. A good real world example of the utility of IQ testing is in army. When the army stopped screening for a certain level of cognitive functioning, it cost lives. The soldier's own lives.
</p><p>
<a href="https://quillette.com/2018/08/25/the-dangers-of-ignoring-cognitive-inequality/">
The Dangers of Ignoring Cognitive Inequality</a>
</p><p>
Have we published on race? Yes we have. The writing on this topic speaks for itself. We abhor racism and yet do not believe that race is merely a social construct, (another pernicious blank slate dogma that has repercussions in the real world).
</p><p>
Importantly: we have never argued that the science on these topics is settled or in any way complete. Science is always provisional. But our editorial position is that people should be allowed to hypothesise & research without having their lives destroyed by smear campaigns.
</p><p>
We have to put all of this in context: we live at a time where it is controversial to say that a woman is not the same as a man, where you're not allowed to notice that some people are naturally bright & others struggle, that some people are better at some sports than others. All we are doing is pushing back on the dogma which says:
</p><p>
“You are not allowed to ask this question”
</p><p>
“You are not allowed to study this topic”
</p><p>
“You are not allowed state observable facts”
</p><p>
Now <a href="https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com">Nassim Nicholas Taleb <@nntaleb></a> has weighed in with his characteristic belligerence. He doesn’t like IQ tests so he has attempted to “debunk” them using math. His debunking has convinced no-one in the relevant fields & has only impressed his gaggle of sycophants. I politely asked him to put forward some suggestions as to how psychology could improve its methodology and he flew off the handle. He’s now smearing me, <cite>Quillette</cite> & anyone who reads us as neo-Nazi.
</p><p>
If you think pushing back against blank slate dogma is easy, it’s not. It’s really not. But somebody has to do it. If you’ve read this far, please support the work we do.
</p></blockquote><p>
Another little <a href="https://hivelife.com/claire-lehmann-cancel-culture/">gem</a> from Lehmann, found through a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/are-all-white-people-racist-why-critical-race-theory-has-us-rattled-20201105-p56bwv.html">newspaper article</a> suckered by Quillette into referring to it as a “liberal politics and philosophy website”:
</p><blockquote>
Being anti-racist is not harmful. What is harmful is this notion that’s proposed by Ibram Kendi, that everything is either racist or anti-racist. That’s a really damaging idea because it doesn’t allow for neutrality.
</blockquote><p>
“Neutrality” about racism. Hm.
</p><p>
If you know the scent, you recognize it all over what she is saying. If you don’t, a good place to start is looking for anyone who says the things she says there.
</p><p>
Ted McCormick <small><@mccormick_ted></small> <a href="https://twitter.com/mccormick_ted/status/1337917918982664194">breaks down</a> an example of how it works:
</p><blockquote><p>
This is a good example of Quillette’s and the IDW’s [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dark_web">“intellectual dark web”</a>] style of engagement with ideas: rather than thinking, find the quickest way to a simplistic one-line dismissal, ideally putting a Nazi reference in your target’s mouth, naturally.
</p><blockquote><em>
Tweet from <a href="https://linktr.ee/jonkay">Jonathan Kay</a> <small><a href="https://twitter.com/jonkay"><@Jonkay></a><br /><strong>
Editor, writer, & podcaster at Quillette.</strong> Book author. Substacker. <a href="https://linktr.ee/fairforall_org">@fairforall_org</a> advisor. Ex-lawyer -engineer -coder. Lapsed Jew. Gamer. Problematic Canadian</small>
</em><br /><br />
So true. I saw an old woman tending to her petunias a little while back, and I immediately got her canceled. She told me that growing flowers is the only thing that gives her joy in life. and I was like, “tell it to your good friend, Joseph Goebbels, nazi bitch”
<hr /><em><a href="https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1337692740268777473">
Quote-tweet</a> from James Wong <small><@Botanygeek></small></em><br /><br />
Absolutely U.K. gardening culture has racism baked into its DNA.<br />
<br />
It’s so integral that when you point out it’s existence, people assume you are against gardening, not racism.<br />
<br />
Epitomised, for example, by the fetishisation (and wild misuse) of words like ‘heritage’ and ‘native’.
<hr /><em><a href="https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1337692740268777473">
Quote-tweet</a> from Ed Wall <small><@eddwall></small></em><br /><br />
Gardens are denied their political agency because ehty too often reveal uncomfortable politics of individual ownership, spatial inequity, & unsustainable practices. There needs to be more honest converstations about gardens in the UK! <br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/nov/29/james-wong-other-arts-are-often-political-who-says-gardening-shouldnt-be-too"><strong>
Other arts are political, why not gardening?
</strong></a><blockquote><p>
All aspects of horticulture are based on political ideas. The reason why British-style gardens have been replicated around the planet – recreating the green lawns of Surrey in the deserts of Arizona, or introducing UK wildlife in places as far flung as Australia in order to mould entire landscapes into a “Beatrix Potter” ideal – is because of political beliefs. At flower shows, “tropical” gardens aren’t considered simply to be those using plants from a climate zone, but rather a distinctive style of gardening, usually set with colonial maps and explorers’ pith helmets. This may not seem political to many visitors, but they are, of course, deeply political statements.
</p><p>
That “native” or “heritage” are often used as a byword for “better” in UK gardening, even if the plants given this accolade aren’t actually either, reflects and reinforces inescapably political ideology. In fact, the very idea that politics should be kept out of gardening is itself a resoundingly political statement, as it dismisses the status quo as apolitical, objective reality and anything challenging it as inapposite “activism”.
</p></blockquote></blockquote>
<p>
Now, you may or may not agree with the point the article and tweets make about gardening; you may be unable to get past their language. But it’s not really controversial that gardening is and has been “political.” It is, after all, a matter of land and labor (or leisure). It’s also a matter of longstanding historical knowledge not only that gardening has been a form of elite display but also that botanical gardens (like Kew, with which the author of the piece is familiar) have been centrally in extracting wealth and knowledge through colonialism.
</p><p>
See virtually any work on Joseph Banks (of Kew) or the Comte de Buffon (of the Jardin Botanique) or on the network of botanical gardens set up by every European imperial power to transplant, domesticate, and commodify colonial flora. This is old hat. If you read.
</p><p>
So much for imperial institutions. But “ordinary” gardening was also a way of pacifying and civilizing colonial places and people, at least by the English (I will limit myself here to what I know directly from my own archival research, but I would be surprised if it was unique). In Ireland, for example, Cromwell’s helper and early economic writer William Petty made the creation of English-style houses and gardens part of his project to subdue rebellious Irish Catholics. Forcing them to intermarry with English women was another part of his scheme. To the extent that the garden was part of the ideal English household, gardening was an aspect of the civility colonizers hoped to impose on colonial territory. It required, of course, the prior imposition of a suitable set of property arrangements. This is not hard. If you read.
</p><p>
Beyond and behind all this, of course, the argument that uncultivated land was vacant was (and remains) a major justification for imperial conquest. The absence of “recognizable” gardening had political consequences, just as its introduction had political requirements.
</p><p>
Anyway, this knowledge is not by any means new to readers of history. So Kay here is not making some clever point about the current hyperpoliticization of everything. He’s just showing his own ignorance of facts that are neither far to seek nor hard to grasp.
</p><p>
In no particular order, here are some works that deal with the political (especially colonial/imperial) history of gardening:
</p><ul><li><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300091434/science-and-colonial-expansion/">
Lucille Brockway, <cite>Science and Colonial Expansion
</cite></a></li><li><a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo3638071.html">
Emma Spary, <cite>Utopia's Garden
</cite></a></li><li><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674025684">
Londa Schiebinger, <cite>Plants and Empire
</cite></a></li><li><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/universitypress/subjects/history/regional-history-after-1500/green-imperialism-colonial-expansion-tropical-island-edens-and-origins-environmentalism-16001860?format=PB&isbn=9780521565134">
Richard Grove, <cite>Green Imperialism
</cite></a></li><li><a href="https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2018/05/22/gardens-and-gardening-by-jill-francis/">
Jill Francis, <cite>Gardens and Gardening
</cite></a></li><li><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/universitypress/subjects/history/regional-and-world-history-general-interest/ceremonies-possession-europes-conquest-new-world-14921640?format=PB&isbn=9780521497572">
Patricia Seed, <cite>Ceremonies of Possession
</cite></a></li><li>
Joan Thirsk, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Agricultural-change-proctice-1500-1750-Chapters/dp/0521368820"><cite>Agricultural Change: Policy and Practice</cite></a> (not her most recent work but a favourite of mine) and her <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Alternative-Agriculture-History-Black-Present/dp/0198208138/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1607820258&refinements=p_27%3AJoan+Thirsk&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Joan+Thirsk"><cite>Alternative Agriculture: A History</cite></a>
</li><li><a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/O/bo71583168.html"><em>
ed</em> E. C. Spary and Anya Zilberstein, <cite>Osiris, Volume 35 — Food Matters: Critical Histories of Food and the Sciences</cite></a> — It’s not my main focus, but I touch on some links between gardening and empire in the seventeenth century here.
</li></ul>
<p>
I could add more but I think the point is made. If you’re getting your history from Quillette, please stop before you hurt yourself. It really is just a machine that substitutes outrage (mostly faked, for its editors; apparently real, for its fans) for learning
</p><p>
In this, of course, it’s not alone. The replies are a masterclass in getting people who won’t read a whole tweet thread upset about what they imagine that thread might say.
</p><blockquote><em>
Tweet from Stephen Knight <small><@GSpellchecker></small></em><br />
In case you’re wondering what’s racist today, it’s gardening.
</blockquote><p>
The best response, though sadly it requires reading.
</p><blockquote><em>
Tweet from James Wong <small><@Botanygeek></small></em><br />
There has indeed been a lively debate on my feed over the past 24 hours. Many people seem to be absolutely astonished at the idea gardening could reflect and reinforce the values of wider society. Well, I have written all about it here. Hope you enjoy.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/nov/29/james-wong-other-arts-are-often-political-who-says-gardening-shouldnt-be-too">
Other arts are political, why not gardening?
</a></blockquote><p>
I guess the real Nazis here are the ones who read, research, and think about their subjects.
</p><p>
And here are some entirely predictable examples of how further explanation by the author just meets with doubling down on the original, intentional misreading. Not one engagement with any specific point he makes. The only move they have is to amplify their own disinformation.
</p><blockquote><em>
Tweet from Jonathan Kay <small><@Jonkay></small></em><br />
Update<br />
Gardening-is-so-racist guy is still at it
</blockquote><blockquote><em>
Tweet from Terry Newman <small><@TLNewmanMTL></small></em><br />
When academia becomes about finding the thing no one else has gotten angry and written about yet, for the purposes of publishing this is what you get.
</blockquote><blockquote><em>
Tweet from Delightful Dissident <small><@DissidentDelite></small></em><br />
I would like to projectile vomit across the world until it hits this guy. Seeing racism in gardening is whacked! Way to interrogate that rose bush genius!
</blockquote><blockquote><em>
Tweet from Jonathan Kay <small><@Jonkay></small></em><br />
They won’t stop until every single activity that brings people joy and fulfilment is decried as a racist sin. Puritanism in social justice garb.
</blockquote><p>
This isn’t “satire”; it’s neither witty nor related to the specifics of the piece. It’s not criticism, either, because, again, none of the actual claims he makes enter into it at all. It’s just unintelligent disinformation, repeated in different tones for different audiences. The point isn’t to educate, or debate, or challenge on the merits; any of these requires engagement, not mischaracterization. It’s to demonize and dismiss academic work. It’s to keep the audience from reading or thinking about things, from engaging with unfamiliar or new ideas.
</p><p>
And here’s the entirely predictable (because so often repeated) result of the Quillette method of engagement.
</p><blockquote><em>
Tweet from James Wong <small><@Botanygeek></small></em><br />
Back for a quick update:<br />
As these comment appear to have started to turn into death threats on platforms like insta and dms, I will be reporting them to the police
</blockquote><p>
One way of telling whether something is witty satire or rational critique or just mindless outrage is how quickly and directly it leads to threats against its target.
</p><p>
This way of misrepresenting, demonizing and dismissing academic work only ever results in making life and work harder for the researchers involved. And that is the point. It’s not about ideas, it’s not about truth, and it’s not about humour, either. It’s about shutting people up.
</p></blockquote><p>
I have an <a href="https://twitter.com/jonkay/status/1617207167978962945">example</a> of my own from Kay, showing the logic of the transphobic “groomer” narrative equating support for kids closeted from their bigoted parents with molesting kids, in service of indicting all social justice efforts:
</p><blockquote>
When your social justice movement requires you to say, “let’s not tell mommy and daddy our little secret, okay?”, it isn’t hard to know how it’s all going to end
<br /><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/us/gender-identity-students-parents.html">
New York Times| When Students Change Gender Identity, and Parents Don’t Know</a>
</blockquote><p>
Using misrepresentations to cultivate deadly harassment is the <em>point</em>.
</p><p><strong>
Never</strong> give Quillette credibility by sharing something from them.
</p>
Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-89264193229750557532024-01-22T15:23:00.000-08:002024-01-23T12:55:49.991-08:00Vampire preferences <em>
Answering a question from an internet friend:
</em><h2><strong>
fangs only when feeding</strong> || strong preference
</h2>
I am OK with hordes of pure evil ugly vamps with permanent fangs, but otherwise the fangs should only appear when feeding, else the vamps cannot hide, and what fun is that?
<h2><strong>
evil</strong> || moderate preference
</h2>
My ideal vampire is the Goatee Spock version of the person they were, but Slowly Corrupted By The Hunger can work <em>if</em> that is central to the story.
<h2><strong>
sunlight vulnerable</strong> || <em>emphatic</em> preference
</h2>
Yes, I have read <cite>Dracula</cite> — a few times! — but this is one I am adamant about. Popculture vamps have to be very vulnerable to the Sun; it gives you the day-night cycle for everyone to face. Even Dracula is better that way — Christopher Damm Lee!
<h2><strong>
garlic vulnerable</strong> || mild preference
</h2>
Fun and works with either very- or not-very-supernatural vampires.
<h2><strong>
silver safe</strong> || mild preference
</h2>
In my headcanon vamps & werewolves have different vulnerabilities, <strong>duh</strong>, but it does not <em>bother</em> me when vamps are vulnerable to silver, and if our Fearless Vampire Slayers are action-hero types, then you want them to have guns, so ... fine.
<h2><strong>
holy symbols safe</strong> || mild preference
</h2>
I prefer holy symbols to be bullshit, but if they do work the wielder <em>must</em> have strong devotion. I am very not OK with Buffy’s cross working even though she never goes to church.
<h2><strong>
normal reflection</strong> || emphatic preference
</h2>
The mirror thing is just stupid and raises complicated vampire science questions with weird corner cases for cameras and stuff. Only acceptable in a production of the stage play of <cite>Dracula</cite>.
<h2><strong>
werewolf enmity</strong> || strong preference
</h2>
If you don’t want monster politics, what are you even doing here?
<h2><strong>
sleep anywhere</strong> || strong preference
</h2>
The metaphysics of what even counts as The Earth Of Your Gravesite is just confusing, and don’t get me started on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus">Coffin Of Theseus</a>. But you <em>do</em> need that rule to adapt <cite>Dracula</cite> properly, which <em>someone really ought to do someday</em>.
<h2><strong>
running water safe</strong> || emphatic preference
</h2>
Again, this is just weird and a nuisance to include, which is why it is routinely ignored. What about water mains?
<h2><strong>
entering uninvited</strong> || it depends
</h2>
For a single novel or movie, I have a mild preference for this being Not A Thing, but for a long-running <em>series</em> you need it to create complications for safe havens and keeping the secret.
<h2><strong>
turned by drinking vamp blood</strong> || strong preference
</h2>
If being killed (or even just bitten) by a vamp turns someone, eventually you just run out of humans. No beuno. Much more interesting to have it a deliberate choice by the sire, which also comes with Who Do You Turn vampire politics. The old-fashioned bite-three-times rule can also be fun for particularly supernatural vampires.
<h2><strong>
non-human blood</strong> || it depends
</h2>
When vamps are Just Evil, I have a strong preference for requiring human blood, though having them occasionally muddle through and get weak drinking animal blood can play. If vamps are Corrupted By The Hunger, then non-human blood being “nutritionally” adequate but unsatisfying is the way to go.Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-10772825100580069832024-01-19T15:21:00.000-08:002024-02-05T20:35:38.529-08:00The Point Is <p>
I had the good fortune to be at this talk at the 1996 Computer Game Developers’ conference, and it has stuck in my mind ever since. In retrospect, it anticipated not just Facebook’s Metaverse project but <em>Facebook itself</em>. Since Moriarty’s original <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190310205420/http://ludix.com/moriarty/point.html">post</a> has linkrotted, I am re-posting it here for my convenience.
</p><p>
A few preparatory observations for young readers:
</p><ul><li>
In 1996, it was still common for computers in an office to not even be networked to each other, much less to the internet. Few people used internet at home. Those who did used modems to connect their computer over their phone line to a nerdy internet service provider ... or more likely AOL, which was still more a walled garden than a connection to the internet. <em>Google had not yet been founded.</em>
</li><li>
Seriously, those modems were <em>slow</em>. People used interlaced GIFs on web pages because they would give you a blurry version of the image first, while you waited another half a minute for the images to fully load.
</li><li>
It was a common practice for web pages to include a counter at the bottom of the page tallying how many times the page had <em>ever</em> been visited.
</li><li>
The Pentium was a new chip used in Windows computers. Incremental differences in chip speeds we would now consider laughable made a big difference in what computers could and could not do; just a few years earlier, the release of the computer game <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/doom-and-keeping-company-with-skilled.html">Doom</a> with real-time 3D graphics — primitive as they were — was a happy shock about what had just become possible on ordinary home computers.
</li><li>
Sand Hill Road was (and still is) a street in Palo Alto with the offices of many venture capital firms funding Silicon Valley.
</li><li>
In this context, “<small><strong>MUD</strong></small>” stands for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-user_dungeon">“multi-user dungeon/dimension/domain”</a>, a very early form of proto-social-media proto-virtual-reality. A large number of people could communicate in text with a computer which had a map of a world with multiple connected spaces — the name comes from the earliest implementations which had maps of a Dungeons & Dragons type “dungeon” full of monsters to slay and magical items to find, but in later versions an array of weird and interesting possibilities. When connected to a <small><strong>MUD</strong></small>, the system understood you as occupying in a particular “room” on the map, and one could move through the map by telling the system to go through doors or whatever; if multiple people were “in” the same place, they would “see” each other in the description of the room, “hear” each other talking (in text chat), and could interact in other ways mediated by the system.
</li></ul>
<hr /><hr />
<h1>
The Point Is — 1996 — Brian Moriarty
</h1><p><strong>
The Point Is</strong> was the first of my fully scripted lectures. Today, writing on the 10<sup>th</sup> anniversary of its premiere, it seems to me rather quaint, inspired by the psychedelic muse of San Francisco, and representative of the wide-eyed techno-optimism of the mid-1990s. Parts of it make me cringe. Other parts seem eerily prescient. I must have been on drugs, or something.
</p><p>
Version 1 was originally presented on 1 February 1996, at Mpath’s Internet Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. On this occasion, I was fortunate enough to command a decent budget and broad control over the venue and equipment, allowing the lecture to be presented under nearly ideal conditions.
</p><p>
The large conference room was completely darkened. Suspended above the stage area was an equilateral triangle, one meter on a side, covered with black light-absorbing material. Affixed to the center of the triangle was a dime-sized dot of 3M retro-reflective plastic. The beam of a 3-watt liquid-cooled green argon laser was focused onto the reflective dot to produce a dazzling point of coherent radiation. Although the point was completely motionless throughout the performance, random wave interference caused it to twinkle and scintillate eerily. The live narration and recorded music were reproduced at room-shaking volume through a high-performance stereophonic sound system.
</p><p>
Excerpts of Version 1 were presented on 21 February 1996 at Imagina in Monte Carlo, and 3 March 1996 at the SPA Spring Symposium, San Francisco.
</p><p>
Version 2 (reproduced below) was given on 31 March 1996 at the Game Developers Conference in Santa Clara, California. The presentation was similar to that of 1 February, although the laser and sound system were less authoritative. George “Fat Man” Sanger provided an introduction.
</p><p>
Excerpts of Version 2 were presented on 5 November 1996 at Online Entertainment ’96 in London.
</p>
<br /><hr /><br />
You are about to take part in an experiment.
<br /><br />
An experiment in group attentiveness.
<br /><br />
For this experiment to work, it is important that you not look at me while I am speaking.
<br /><br />
I have extinguished the house lights to discourage you from watching me.
<br /><br />
Instead of looking at me, or anything else, I invite you to contemplate this point of coherent light.
<br /><br />
Fix your eyes on the point as you listen to the sound of my voice.
<br /><br />
The point will not move while I am speaking.
<br /><br />
But, if you gaze at it steadily, expectantly, it may appear to wander.
<br /><br />
The point will not change color or size.
<br /><br />
But, if you fix your eyes upon it conscientiously, it may appear to oscillate in diameter or hue.
<br /><br />
These illusions will occur only if you still your mind, and fix your eyes on the point.
<br /><br />
Regard the space around the point, and together we will share an illusion.
<br /><br />
This is not an attempt to hypnotize you. I am not a hypnotist.
<br /><br />
I am an engineer of illusions that can be shared.
<br /><br />
We are all about to become engineers of shared illusion.
<br /><br />
This particular illusion has been engineered to fascinate you.
<br /><br />
To fascinate you with possibilities.
<br /><br />
The possibilities of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
<br /><br />
Engineered to suspend your skepticism.
<br /><br />
To transfix your attention. Attention.
<br /><br />
The point of this experiment is to achieve attention.
<br /><br />
Attention has not been a problem for the Internet or the World Wide Web.
<br /><br />
Everybody here knows that the Net has become too important to ignore.
<br /><br />
What is surprising is that the Web is succeeding in spite of the fact that it is based on very primitive technology.
<br /><br />
Almost all of the home computers connected to the Web employ modems and analog voice lines.
<br /><br />
Even the fastest modems are too stately. Even 28.8 V.34 is too majestic.
<br /><br />
Many consumers are using service providers with out-of-date equipment or inadequate infrastructure.
<br /><br />
This makes the torpid Web experience even more frustrating.
<br /><br />
We know these problems will go away soon.
<br /><br />
Consumers are beginning to learn about digital alternatives to modems and voice lines.
<br /><br />
The cost of these alternatives is plummeting faster than anyone dared to hope.
<br /><br />
Soon modems will be doorstops.
<br /><br />
Consumers are learning that some Internet service providers are more reliable than others.
<br /><br />
Soon anything less than lively, robust access to the Web will be unacceptable.
<br /><br />
These trends are encouraging.
<br /><br />
There are also ways to maximize the performance of the Web.
<br /><br />
Strategic deployment of servers. Enlightened application design.
<br /><br />
Other approaches that make the most of existing hardware and connections.
<br /><br />
These technologies are effective.
<br /><br />
But the Web’s success isn’t relying on these trends or technologies.
<br /><br />
The Web doesn’t need any new technology in order to become popular.
<br /><br />
It already is popular.
<br /><br />
Despite modems and analog voice lines and generally crummy service, the Web is one of the biggest success stories of the 90s.
<br /><br />
Thousands of people sign up every day.
<br /><br />
Over a hundred new Web sites appear every hour.
<br /><br />
There must be something about the Web people like.
<br /><br />
What is it that makes people like the Web?
<br /><br />
What is it that makes people like anything?
<br /><br />
What is the origin and purpose of pleasure?
<br /><br />
Biologists tell us that our brains contain faculties for creating enjoyable sensations.
<br /><br />
They have coined a sophisticated technical term for these faculties.
<br /><br />
They call them “pleasure centers.”
<br /><br />
Nobody knows how they really work.
<br /><br />
But everyone knows that some behaviors feel better than others.
<br /><br />
Behaviors like eating, gathering, talking, playing, and having sex.
<br /><br />
Biologists explain pleasure by invoking a process they call “natural selection.”
<br /><br />
This process is said to favor the evolution of brains that give positive feedback for behaviors which provide a survival advantage.
<br /><br />
In other words, nature rewards life-affirming behaviors with pleasure.
<br /><br />
That’s why it feels good to eat.
<br /><br />
Nature rewards a healthy appetite.
<br /><br />
That’s why it feels good to collect things.
<br /><br />
Nature rewards acquisitiveness.
<br /><br />
And that is why it feels good to talk and to play.
<br /><br />
Nature rewards communicators.
<br /><br />
It feels good to communicate.
<br /><br />
People like the World Wide Web because it satisfies the need to communicate.
<br /><br />
The need to feel connected.
<br /><br />
The need to not be alone.
<br /><br />
Yet today, the Web is a curiously lonely experience.
<br /><br />
You are surrounded by millions of surfers, but you can’t wave to anybody
<br /><br />
All you get is a number at the bottom of the home page, indicating how many chances to meet someone you missed.
<br /><br />
Happily, this is beginning to change.
<br /><br />
Soon the Web will begin to notice you.
<br /><br />
Soon the Web will be able to process commands faster than you can submit them, and formulate interesting responses in real time.
<br /><br />
When that happens, the Web will become conversational.
<br /><br />
When that happens, the Web will become interactive.
<br /><br />
There will be two very popular uses for this new Interactive Web.
<br /><br />
One will be conversation. The other will be multiplayer games.
<br /><br />
Multiplayer games offer people the joy of communication.
<br /><br />
Single-player games do not.
<br /><br />
Multiplayer games are more involving.
<br /><br />
More addictive. More delicious. More fun.
<br /><br />
The designers and engineers of computer games have always known this.
<br /><br />
The designers and engineers of computer games have always known that multiplayer games would someday challenge and eventually eclipse single-player games.
<br /><br />
The designers and engineers of computer games have been waiting for over twenty years for a chance to become the designers and engineers of shared illusions.
<br /><br />
All we need is an adequate network with an adequate number of users.
<br /><br />
All we need is adequate computing power.
<br /><br />
All we need is an adequate operating standard.
<br /><br />
Thanks to the Internet, the wait is almost over.
<br /><br />
Thanks to the Pentium, the wait is almost over.
<br /><br />
And, like it or not, thanks to Windows, the wait is almost over.
<br /><br />
So what are waiting for now?
<br /><br />
We are waiting for a chance to build the games.
<br /><br />
For a visionary executive. For an enlightened venture partner.
<br /><br />
Somebody who understands that a multiplayer option tacked on to a single-player game at the last minute and with great reluctance is not going to be good enough.
<br /><br />
But history suggests that these things are unlikely to materialize on demand.
<br /><br />
History suggests that we will probably have to wait for the first Big Online Hit.
<br /><br />
Sometime soon, somebody, possibly somebody in this room, is going create an online game that will capture the imagination of the world.
<br /><br />
An online game that will become so popular the network will be threatened with collapse.
<br /><br />
Congress will scramble to investigate it.
<br /><br />
Wall Street and Sand Hill Road will scramble to invest in it.
<br /><br />
Pundits will scramble to say they predicted it.
<br /><br />
And everyone, everyone, everyone in this room will scramble to imitate it.
<br /><br />
Sometime soon, the Gold Rush will begin.
<br /><br />
The Big Online Hit will probably not be like Doom or Wing Commander or Super Mario World.
<br /><br />
Although popular among hobbyists, these games are too brash and complicated for anybody else.
<br /><br />
The Big Online Hit will probably reach beyond the hobbyists to a much larger group of people.
<br /><br />
The people who loved Trivial Pursuit. The people who hated Rubik’s Cube.
<br /><br />
The millions and millions of ordinary people who went crazy over Pac-Man.
<br /><br />
Like these games, the Big Online Hit will be easy to learn, but difficult to master.
<br /><br />
It will be approachable and inviting.
<br /><br />
It will be abstract. It will be non-violent. It will be inexpensive.
<br /><br />
It will be everywhere.
<br /><br />
What kind of market will develop to support the Big Online Hit and its many imitators?
<br /><br />
What will we be selling our customers on the Interactive Web?
<br /><br />
To begin with, we will not be selling them things anymore.
<br /><br />
Our products will be digital.
<br /><br />
Digital products do not need to be wrapped in boxes if our customers are wired to our offices.
<br /><br />
Everything we have to offer them could be downloaded.
<br /><br />
Everything we build for them should be designed to be downloaded.
<br /><br />
Unfortunately, the first online games will probably be too big.
<br /><br />
Developers have yet to outgrow the fetish of gratuitous data streaming made possible by <small><strong>CD-ROM</strong></small>.
<br /><br />
Publishers are still unwilling to face the fact that the parts of their games they’re spending the most on are the parts their customers care about least.
<br /><br />
They will stubbornly continue to produce games that require a <small><strong>CD-ROM</strong></small>.
<br /><br />
This is not a practice that should be encouraged.
<br /><br />
This is our chance to transcend <small><strong>CD-ROM</strong></small>, and all physical packaging.
<br /><br />
Well-designed online games will be entirely downloadable.
<br /><br />
Don’t forget that modems will soon be a thing of the past.
<br /><br />
How soon?
<br /><br />
Within two product cycles, a twenty or thirty megabyte download will seem only slightly excessive.
<br /><br />
And it only gets better from there.
<br /><br />
The convenience and economics of online distribution are irresistible.
<br /><br />
Everyone will be much happier when the age of online distribution begins.
<br /><br />
Everyone, that is, except the distributors and retailers of boxes.
<br /><br />
Let us have a moment of silence for the distributors and retailers of boxes.
<br /><br /><strong>
§
</strong><br /><br />
If we won’t be selling our customers things anymore, what will be selling them?
<br /><br />
We will be selling our customers the pleasure of communicating with each other.
<br /><br />
We will be selling our customers to each other.
<br /><br />
How can we best sell our customers to each other?
<br /><br />
We should first recognize that we are about to enter into a profound social contract with our customers.
<br /><br />
We’ll no longer have retailers to handle our customers for us.
<br /><br />
Soon we’ll be handling them directly.
<br /><br />
We’ll be handling their problems, handling their money directly.
<br /><br />
But they’ll be entrusting us with more than just their problems and money.
<br /><br />
They’ll be entrusting us with the way they look and sound online.
<br /><br />
With the way they come across.
<br /><br />
With their secrets. With their dignity.
<br /><br />
Our customers will insist that we respect their privacy.
<br /><br />
That we protect their anonymity.
<br /><br />
That we allow them freedom of expression.
<br /><br />
That we mirror those expressions without distortion.
<br /><br />
That we treat adults like adults.
<br /><br />
That we offer parents the tools they need to make informed choices for their children.
<br /><br />
To serve our customers best, we have to get out of our customers’ way.
<br /><br />
Our customers don’t want to remember that we are facilitating everything they say and do online.
<br /><br />
The more we make them aware of our presence, the more they will resent our presence.
<br /><br />
Our goal should be to magnify our customers presence while concealing our own.
<br /><br />
Our customers will be attracted to those games and services that offer the highest quality of presence.
<br /><br />
Ours will be an economy of presence.
<br /><br />
How do we measure the quality of presence?
<br /><br />
It can measured by answering a few simple questions:
<br /><br />
How easy is it to arrive?
<br /><br />
How easy is it to congregate?
<br /><br />
How easy is it to communicate?
<br /><br />
In these pioneering days, it’s to be expected that some of the solutions being offered for managing the quality of presence will be somewhat primitive.
<br /><br />
One of the most primitive is the prevailing aesthetic of virtual presence.
<br /><br />
The aesthetic known as “virtual reality.”
<br /><br />
Some definitions.
<br /><br />
By virtual presence, I refer to any artificial extension of awareness.
<br /><br />
By virtual reality, I refer to a particular style of virtual presence.
<br /><br />
I refer to a simulation of perceptual reality that tries to make you feel as if you are someplace else.
<br /><br />
So virtual presence and virtual reality are not necessarily the same thing.
<br /><br />
Nevertheless, many people seem to believe that they are.
<br /><br />
The aesthetic of virtual reality is overwhelmingly pervasive.
<br /><br />
Especially among engineers, and also among the fans of a category of science fiction called cyberpunk.
<br /><br />
In the cyberpunk novel <cite>Snow Crash</cite>, there is a very exclusive virtual night club called the Black Sun.
<br /><br />
One of the things that makes the Black Sun so exclusive and special is that, unlike the low-rent portions of cyberspace where avatars pass through each other freely, patrons of the Black Sun must walk around each another or collide.
<br /><br />
I read this description and thought it was a witty satire.
<br /><br />
Unfortunately, many would-be engineers of shared illusion have read <cite>Snow Crash</cite> and adopted it as a specification.
<br /><br />
The heresy needs to be spoken: The cyberpunk conception of virtual reality is not really very interesting.
<br /><br />
Only a hacker would find the problem of avatar collision interesting.
<br /><br />
Virtual reality imposes a materialistic space-time metaphor on the experience of virtual presence.
<br /><br />
Space and time are exalted in virtual reality.
<br /><br />
Even the word “cyber-SPACE” acknowledges their eminence.
<br /><br />
But the space-time metaphor is not powerful enough.
<br /><br />
Virtual reality is plagued with serious problems about how many people will fit in a conversation space and how to avoid overlaps and log-jams and backing yourself into a virtual corner.
<br /><br />
Proposed solutions have been awkward and unsatisfying.
<br /><br />
Distances and obstacle avoidance may be realistic, but they are not elegant.
<br /><br />
Having to wait before you can arrive may be lifelike, but it is not efficient, or fun.
<br /><br />
These constraints are appropriate if you’re building a flight simulator or some other model of a real space-time process.
<br /><br />
But space-time simulation is being adopted as the metaphor of choice for all virtual presence.
<br /><br />
Verisimilitude is not our concern. Simulation is not our business.
<br /><br />
Communication is our business.
<br /><br />
We are not necessarily selling our customers an alternative reality.
<br /><br />
We are selling our customers to each other.
<br /><br />
The space-time metaphor represents a monumental failure of the imagination.
<br /><br />
This metaphor has exactly one benefit: it is familiar.
<br /><br />
So how important is familiarity?
<br /><br />
The history of motion pictures offers an amusing lesson.
<br /><br />
In the early days, stories were adapted to the screen by framing a stationary camera view around the field of action.
<br /><br />
This technique yielded a stage-like perspective that was familiar to audiences.
<br /><br />
A few pioneers came along who thought it might be interesting to move the camera closer to the actors for dramatic emphasis.
<br /><br />
A couple of real troublemakers wanted to move so close that only the actors’ heads would be visible.
<br /><br />
Producers and exhibitors were aghast.
<br /><br />
Producers and exhibitors thought the idea of showing parts of actors was macabre.
<br /><br />
They actually declared that if the frameline divided an actor’s image at the neck, the audience might conclude that the actor had been decapitated.
<br /><br />
They believed that film was a reproduction medium only.
<br /><br />
But audiences were more sophisticated than that.
<br /><br />
They were happy to embrace unfamiliar ideas if they made movies more powerful and interesting.
<br /><br />
They came to understand that movies could be used not only to reproduce perception, but to represent the process of thought itself.
<br /><br />
Now, if the hundred-year-old technology of perforated film can be used to represent the thought process, why can’t virtual presence?
<br /><br />
Isn’t the thought process more interesting than collision detection?
<br /><br />
We need to ask ourselves how to make virtual presence do what we really want, rather than how well we can make it approach what reality will always do better.
<br /><br />
We are talking about the quality of presence again.
<br /><br />
So ask the questions:
<br /><br />
How easy is it to arrive?
<br /><br />
How easy is it to congregate?
<br /><br />
How easy is it to communicate?
<br /><br />
We can begin by devising ways to transcend the conventions of space and time.
<br /><br />
Our bodies and our brains seem to be trapped in space and time.
<br /><br />
But the Web is not an environment for the body or the brain.
<br /><br />
The Web is an environment for the mind.
<br /><br />
For the mind.
<br /><br />
We’ve been thinking about virtual presence as if we have to send our bodies out there.
<br /><br />
We don’t.
<br /><br />
If we could design reality for our minds, what powers would we grant ourselves?
<br /><br />
The ability to be anywhere instantly would be a step in the right direction.
<br /><br />
The ability to be everywhere all at once, without going mad, is the real challenge.
<br /><br />
Why should our minds roll around like cameras, when they can zoom and focus like lenses?
<br /><br />
Why settle for avatars, when we can be angels?
<br /><br />
Our goal should not be virtual reality.
<br /><br />
Our goal should be actual ubiquity.
<br /><br />
Space and time are not intrinsic properties of virtual presence.
<br /><br />
Space and time will not exist in virtual presence unless we bring them with us.
<br /><br />
Space and time are boring.
<br /><br />
Let’s not invite them.
<br /><br /><strong>
§
</strong><br /><br />
Now, it’s all very well to talk about evicting space and time from virtual presence.
<br /><br />
It’s quite another to imagine what virtual presence would actually be like without them.
<br /><br />
What will it be like when we transcend space and time?
<br /><br />
How will we navigate without dimensions?
<br /><br />
How will we tell things apart?
<br /><br />
How will we separate things?
<br /><br />
There can be no rational answers to these questions.
<br /><br />
To formulate a response, we must be prepared to set aside rationality.
<br /><br />
I first heard the word “strange” used this way to describe future technology by Peter Bergman of the Firesign Theater, at a lunch in 1994.
<br /><br />
We must be prepared to embrace Strangeness.
<br /><br />
I’m not talking about strangeness that is merely curious or weird.
<br /><br />
Not strangeness as in bungee jumping or platypuses or Michael Jackson’s pet monkey.
<br /><br />
I’m talking about the kind of Strangeness that goes beyond language.
<br /><br />
The kind of Strangeness that is offensive to the intellect.
<br /><br />
Strangeness so profoundly alien, a shift of consciousness is required to deal with it without going mad.
<br /><br />
The kind of Strangeness that Lovecraft used to write about.
<br /><br />
This is Strangeness with a capital S.
<br /><br />
Strangeness like the square root of negative one.
<br /><br />
Like superstrings and black holes.
<br /><br />
Really Strange things seem to emerge from outside space and time.
<br /><br />
From the realm of imagination.
<br /><br />
So, when we ask what virtual presence would be like without space and time, the general answer is that it will be imaginary.
<br /><br />
The precise answer is that it will be Strange.
<br /><br />
Some of you are wondering why you should concern yourself with Strangeness.
<br /><br />
Isn’t it enough to keep building knockoffs of the last big hit?
<br /><br />
Isn’t it safer to let somebody else take the arrows in the back?
<br /><br />
The truth is that every single one of you is going to be building Strange products.
<br /><br />
The question is, who will have the vision to build them while they still seem Strange?
<br /><br />
We must explore Strangeness because that is what the future would look like if we could see it today.
<br /><br />
Embracing strangeness doesn’t mean abandoning the dictates of common sense or sound business practice.
<br /><br />
It simply means you must be willing to take enough risk.
<br /><br />
How do you know when you are taking enough risk?
<br /><br />
If nobody is complaining about your work, you’re probably not taking enough risk.
<br /><br />
If nobody is slapping themselves upside the head.
<br /><br />
If nobody is saying, “I knew that!”
<br /><br />
If anybody can afford to ignore what you are doing, you are not being Strange enough.
<br /><br />
The format of this lecture may have seemed strange to you at the beginning.
<br /><br />
By now you are probably getting used to it.
<br /><br />
So let’s raise our collective attention to a higher level of Strangeness.
<br /><br />
Keep your eyes on the point, and together we will explore Strangeness.
<br /><br />
Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that ancient civilizations did not necessarily share our Western concept of the Self.
<br /><br />
The concept that each of us is a separate, independent consciousness moving through space and time.
<br /><br />
The basic dualism of the perceiver and the perceived.
<br /><br />
The concept Freud called the Ego.
<br /><br />
Most of us accept experiential dualism as a fundamental aspect of reality.
<br /><br />
But some religious traditions maintain that Dualism and the Ego have nothing to do with reality.
<br /><br />
These religions teach that separateness is only an illusion.
<br /><br />
An illusion that can be dispelled by certain esoteric practices.
<br /><br />
These religions possess Strange but demonstrably effective technologies that allow individuals to achieve states of consciousness that transcend the illusion of separateness.
<br /><br />
And what do these transcendent individuals have to tell us?
<br /><br />
They tell us that we all deeply connected.
<br /><br />
Part of a network of minds. A web of souls.
<br /><br />
An economy of presence.
<br /><br />
Does any of this sound familiar?
<br /><br />
And they tell us that it is space and time that prevent us from realizing our essential unity.
<br /><br />
That space and time are precisely the illusions that keep us apart.
<br /><br />
Scientific materialists don’t like to hear this stuff.
<br /><br />
A materialist might concede the possibility that space and time and separateness are some kind of mental illusions.
<br /><br />
But they will expect us to postulate an evolutionary purpose for these illusions.
<br /><br />
The doctrine of natural selection demands that our brains must have developed these basic organizing metaphors because they provide some kind of survival advantage.
<br /><br />
What is the advantage of believing that we are all separate?
<br /><br />
All different?
<br /><br />
Consider that without differences, there could be no comparisons.
<br /><br />
Without separateness, there could be no dissatisfaction.
<br /><br />
There could be no striving or competition or progress.
<br /><br />
Without separateness, we would never have bothered to leave the paradise of Africa.
<br /><br />
We would never have become farmers or builders or warriors.
<br /><br />
We would never have aspired to the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution or, not one, but two devastating world wars.
<br /><br />
Only arrogance and pride born of separateness could challenge space and time with railroads and airplanes and guided missiles.
<br /><br />
Only righteous malevolence would presume to harness the Strange power of special relativity to create an atomic bomb.
<br /><br />
Only hatred driven by the illusion of separateness could produce conflicts and weapons horrible enough to shake us all out of the collective nightmare we call history.
<br /><br />
Only institutionalized greed could concentrate enough wealth to wire the entire planet.
<br /><br />
We have taken the long way around, my friends.
<br /><br />
Somehow, amazingly, perhaps undeservedly, we are about to achieve global interactive connectivity without blowing ourselves up first.
<br /><br />
The ways of natural selection are indeed Strange.
<br /><br />
Some of you are going to cash in on the Internet and attain positions of power and influence.
<br /><br />
Nature rewards a healthy appetite.
<br /><br />
Some of you will create new technologies and companies and become comfortably wealthy.
<br /><br />
Nature rewards acquisitiveness.
<br /><br />
Nature rewards life-affirming behaviors that lead to a survival advantage for the species.
<br /><br />
The illusion of separateness may have been necessary to push us to this threshold of realization.
<br /><br />
But before we can Realize, before we can evolve, we must discard that illusion.
<br /><br />
We must discard it like the space shuttle discards its solid rocket boosters.
<br /><br />
We must discard it like an inflamed appendix.
<br /><br />
The illusion of separateness has outlived its usefulness.
<br /><br />
It is turning against us and subverting our destiny.
<br /><br />
It is time to outgrow it. It is killing us.
<br /><br />
And we, in this room, are the architects of its demise.
<br /><br />
The point is that we are beginning to remember something we have all forgotten about ourselves.
<br /><br />
Something wonderful about ourselves.
<br /><br />
We don’t have the words in our Western languages to describe what that something might be.
<br /><br />
But we can feel it. We can feel it.
<br /><br />
So we’re doing what anyone who is having trouble describing something does.
<br /><br />
We are trying to draw a picture of it.
<br /><br />
We are struggling to construct a model of it.
<br /><br />
We have succeeded in laying the foundations of that model.
<br /><br />
And we have given our model a name.
<br /><br />
We call it the World Wide Web.
<br /><br />
By using the Web, by thinking about its possibilities, and especially by helping to build the Web, you are changing the way you realize the world.
<br /><br />
You are changing your mind about the world.
<br /><br />
The Web isn’t just something that is happening in the world.
<br /><br />
It’s something that’s happening in you.
<br /><br />
When people set up email accounts or personal Web sites or join chat rooms or create <small><strong>MUD</strong></small> personas, what are they doing, really?
<br /><br />
They are saying to the world, I Am.
<br /><br />
I Am.
<br /><br />
I signify. I am part of a larger community.
<br /><br />
I am part of something bigger than myself.
<br /><br />
These are empowering acts.
<br /><br />
These acts are an expression of hope.
<br /><br />
These are spiritual acts.
<br /><br />
Why is a game designer talking to you about spirituality?
<br /><br />
The adjective spiritual simply refers to things which have no body, form or substance.
<br /><br />
So spirituality is about things that are disembodied.
<br /><br />
Things that are formless. Things that are insubstantial.
<br /><br />
Things that are virtual.
<br /><br />
Spiritual experiences are nothing to be ashamed about.
<br /><br />
Spiritual experiences are, in fact, quite practical.
<br /><br />
Spiritual experiences are, in fact, our business.
<br /><br />
Ours will be an economy of spirits.
<br /><br />
Some of you are now thoroughly embarrassed by my pretensions.
<br /><br />
Some of you think that spiritual purposes are fuzzy-minded, and not respectable.
<br /><br />
If the development of an effective spiritual technology does not interest you, then do it for your resume.
<br /><br />
If being part of something bigger than yourself doesn’t inspire you with hope, then do it for your portfolio.
<br /><br />
The reasons you use to justify your investment are not important.
<br /><br />
The name of the spirit that moves you is not important.
<br /><br />
What is important is that you are moving.
<br /><br />
What is important is that you are building this.
<br /><br />
We have to build this.
<br /><br />
We’re not out of the woods yet.
<br /><br />
We could still blow ourselves up before we build enough of this thing to recognize ourselves in it.
<br /><br />
Everything else we have ever built will be for nothing if we fail to build this now.
<br /><br />
Build this. Just build this.
<br /><br />
You came to this conference because you sensed opportunity.
<br /><br />
Your instinct was profoundly correct.
<br /><br />
Conversation and multiplayer games are indeed the killer apps of the Internet.
<br /><br />
The next big things. The Trojan horses.
<br /><br />
Multiplayer games will attract scores of millions to the World Wide Web.
<br /><br />
They’re easy to understand. They’re compelling.
<br /><br />
They’re lots and lots of fun.
<br /><br />
They will be a potent catalyst for global interactive connectivity.
<br /><br />
They will help to bring us all together, at last.
<br /><br />
They will help to bring us all together, again.
<br /><br />
Are you ready to be a part of something bigger than yourself?
<br /><br />
Are you ready to suspend your skepticism and entertain possibilities?
<br /><br />
The possibility that something Strange and wonderful is trying to happen?
<br /><br />
The possibility that the World Wide Web may be one of its manifestations?
<br /><br />
Are you ready for the shock of recognition?
<br /><br />
The point is that we are instruments of something bigger than ourselves.
<br /><br />
We don’t know what this something is.
<br /><br />
But we can feel it. We can feel it.
<br /><br />
I call it “the point,” because the point is to find out what the point is.
<br /><br />
The point is urgently prodding us.
<br /><br />
The point is pointing at itself.
<br /><br />
The point is infinitely small, and mathematically perfect.
<br /><br />
The point has no volume, but it is never silent.
<br /><br />
The point has no radius, but it is eternally radiant.
<br /><br />
It is the shining Void. The empty Source.
<br /><br />
It is expanding and collapsing simultaneously.
<br /><br />
It is all-encompassing, and coincident with every other point in the universe.
<br /><br />
The point is that there are no coincidences.
<br /><br />
The point is that our hand is being guided here.
<br /><br />
The point is that our attention is being fixed.
<br /><br />
The point of this experiment is to achieve attention. Attention.
<br /><br />
The point is not familiar.
<br /><br />
The point is Strange. The point is Other.
<br /><br />
The point is not contingent upon anything. Not even itself.
<br /><br />
It is the First Cause. The Prime Mover.
<br /><br />
The point is emergent.
<br /><br />
The point is an emergency.
<br /><br />
Emergency! Attention! The point is on fire!
<br /><br />
But the point is inextinguishable.
<br /><br />
The point is the burning bush.
<br /><br />
The point is the I Am.
<br /><br />
The I Am.
<br /><br />
The point is not good.
<br /><br />
The point is not evil.
<br /><br />
The point is not even indifferent.
<br /><br />
The point simply is. The point is.
<br /><br />
The point is not an object or a noun.
<br /><br />
The point is an action. The point is a verb.
<br /><br />
The verb is to be.
<br /><br />
The point is Being. It is Being.
<br /><br />
The point is that we are don’t have to be alone anymore.
<br /><br />
The point is that we have never been alone.
<br /><br />
The point is that we can all be as one.
<br /><br />
The point is that we are all one.
<br /><br />
The point is that we are all one.
<br /><br />
The point is that we are all one.
<br /><br />
Fix your eyes upon the point, and together we will achieve attention.
<br /><br /><hr />
Copyright © 1996-2016 Brian Moriarty. All rights reserved.Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-86505311088995825362024-01-19T11:26:00.000-08:002024-01-19T11:35:49.789-08:00Doom and keeping company with skilled professionals <p>
Capturing a <a href="https://twitter.com/miniver/status/1072506059162558464">Twitter thread</a> I wrote on the 25<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the release of the computer game <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game)">Doom</a>.
</p><hr /><p>
25 years ago today, a colleague of mine interrupted people at their desks. “You have to come see this.” I was working at a little shop of about a dozen people making computer games. And one of the programmers had just downloaded the first level of Doom.
</p><p>
Computer programmers use fast computers (to save compile time, and because they are demanding primal donnas) but this was 1993 and Doom did not seem possible. Guys would look at the screen and 30 seconds later ask, “This is ... realtime ... ?”
</p><p>
Baffled amazement.
</p><p>
The guy who had downloaded Doom explained that the game’s designers had planned for people with slower computers. It was easy to re-size the display down so there were less pixels to render. On his machine, though, we got realtime 3D at fullscreen, as smooth as Frogger.
</p><p>
After a couple of minutes, the programmers started making little observations.
</p><p>
“You can’t tilt your head, can you?” “Yeah. There’s yaw, but no roll and no pitch.”
</p><p>
“The monsters always face you. The room is 3D but they are pre-rendered sprites.”
</p><p>
“That texture repeats. There’s actually only a few textures visible at any one time.”
</p><p>
“We go up and down stairs but I don’t think the map ever overlaps, vertically.”
</p><p>
My colleagues were finding little coding hacks that made Doom possible, by watching the gameplay.
</p><br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MnqLJpgq7jc?si=Gg5s9gtlzI6Wc5bm" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br /><br /><p>
The first time we racked the shotgun on Doom there was a wicked Cheer Of Awesome from a dozen professional computer game nerds. But by then we had already lost our innocence.
</p><p>
Baffled awe had given way to a rueful but delighted awe. My colleagues had reverse-engineered the fundamentals of Doom together watching fifteen minutes of gameplay. Computers had been ready for <em>us</em> to make Doom, <em>if</em> we were sly enough. Nobody had realized it.
</p><p>
One of the great pleasures of life is seeing skilled professionals work a hard problem together.
</p><br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1cYzkyXp0jg?si=Q971lr_1_KYLHEYS" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br /><br /><p>
I was very lucky to see Doom for the first time in a room full of computer game programmers seeing Doom for the first time.
</p><br /><p>
That year at the Computer Game Developers’ Conference, the guys from id Software all wore jeans with T-shirts that said “DOOM” on the front ... and “wrote it” on the back.
</p><p>
Everybody there allowed them a little swagger.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-18077469880550652232024-01-17T14:36:00.000-08:002024-01-17T14:37:29.409-08:00Good rounded corners are hard <p>
A <a href="https://twitter.com/kocienda/status/1567872688173248514">Twitter thread</a> from Ken Kocienda <small><@kocienda></small> I want to keep about rounded rectangles, a signature element of Apple <a href="https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html">from the Eldar Days</a>:
</p><hr /><p>
Consider the round rectangle (roundrect), a four-sided figure with rounded off corners. They are often used in user interface designs… but they have a built-in aesthetic glitch which I’ll describe later. First, to make one.
</p><p>
Round rectangles are generally specified with a rectangle’s width and height plus a radius for the corners, like this 200×120 rectangle with a corner radius of 20.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-gRUZwP4OsvM3NitDlAD9nOTyQrwAuNXe5mWPrtEWfRIVkFxG_teYpwwW4LaRMgnXwasdX7isqrWHSbds9oQNLFMpaL6QvqQ7VwrTlfOX_JrJ0OlGi_Fe20Xyjux4uEXofUraYA-guNjO9wNDL-1xaxwQHk9CJm6gE0dAtAhurR5LM1lVzT4e/s1800/rr1.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-gRUZwP4OsvM3NitDlAD9nOTyQrwAuNXe5mWPrtEWfRIVkFxG_teYpwwW4LaRMgnXwasdX7isqrWHSbds9oQNLFMpaL6QvqQ7VwrTlfOX_JrJ0OlGi_Fe20Xyjux4uEXofUraYA-guNjO9wNDL-1xaxwQHk9CJm6gE0dAtAhurR5LM1lVzT4e/s320/rr1.png"/></a></div>
<p>
A fully-rounded off roundrect has a corner radius equal to one-half the shorter side, like this 200×120 rectangle with a corner radius of 60.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsQT-wvsWMNtjz5_VXeLJ8urbjOlRmyvunrU0S_StmRRd411RPjV-rRKTYJ0XZitdlwOP5fpyYsvWKkAKKL46BLQuRXX1dQ0varF3oaWBhXb28rzjM4t4uG5hkDaLcDP9z5VXi6RVpaIGCJNJ-rFUrQkDEpp9PDeOKZMVHQ9pgLWTQU7sAVSBU/s1800/rr2.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsQT-wvsWMNtjz5_VXeLJ8urbjOlRmyvunrU0S_StmRRd411RPjV-rRKTYJ0XZitdlwOP5fpyYsvWKkAKKL46BLQuRXX1dQ0varF3oaWBhXb28rzjM4t4uG5hkDaLcDP9z5VXi6RVpaIGCJNJ-rFUrQkDEpp9PDeOKZMVHQ9pgLWTQU7sAVSBU/s320/rr2.png"/></a></div>
<p>
Once you have one of these fully-rounded off roundrects, you can imagine making them in a different way. Start with two circles of radius 60, position their centers 80 units apart, connect the top-most and bottom-most points of each circle with a straight line.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy2gGHfJb2akYOXafuyn6d8aAQofnEwRzYHGmm-ZnaN3icnN-dMs8lisveiibqOjqTS1v5ooag7QdWH6OnyHgwkDn2UmL1JRMC00Nf5wLbcAa908-PpSXYBPt-1O3HJxp0xoc7EqpfZvgVKgJdfmn-iDdedar8FSz8waS7C7j3Dux79ipP9ZmO/s1800/rr3.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy2gGHfJb2akYOXafuyn6d8aAQofnEwRzYHGmm-ZnaN3icnN-dMs8lisveiibqOjqTS1v5ooag7QdWH6OnyHgwkDn2UmL1JRMC00Nf5wLbcAa908-PpSXYBPt-1O3HJxp0xoc7EqpfZvgVKgJdfmn-iDdedar8FSz8waS7C7j3Dux79ipP9ZmO/s320/rr3.png"/></a></div>
<p>
Then erase all the interior lines. This shape is also 200×120, two times the radius + 80 = 200, and two times the radius = 120. QED.
</p><p>
The problem is with those connecting lines. That line is straight, but the remaining parts of the circle are not. These lines are tangents to the circles, i.e. they meet the circle at a single point.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLoh8shz_FzqMquzZivGFEzGN7q7s_KGTWbTn6rGMnA6PfJp2ElHlR3OJVYakkMViqT4RN9Y-JRC1V6Io98j2pT0cnRXYQZUDXSmhKzlo3kLoZdOHEQvXmH62zMQvIMmtD8jBvs-oxWi2-DoLwvqvjpocDUF0cK7XK1Kp_xwFQ9K4Kdf12g-jo/s1800/rr4.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLoh8shz_FzqMquzZivGFEzGN7q7s_KGTWbTn6rGMnA6PfJp2ElHlR3OJVYakkMViqT4RN9Y-JRC1V6Io98j2pT0cnRXYQZUDXSmhKzlo3kLoZdOHEQvXmH62zMQvIMmtD8jBvs-oxWi2-DoLwvqvjpocDUF0cK7XK1Kp_xwFQ9K4Kdf12g-jo/s320/rr4.png"/></a></div>
<p>
Crucially, at that point, there is a discontinuity between a straight element and a curved element. The effect becomes even more pronounced as the aspect ratio between the width and the height of the rectangle increases. Look at the points I didn’t circle. See it?
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqzX2d2h3T4UQNOXTdYMraSOfBbv7FHGnMsIfsFFyxCB8ot1VGOZyh-0P17oLZvAo0Q9-Cbsk-3HDvqdLDxwiWLDwFAi6TsJxxR9tvLn-9CRdgoEGmwgw2RZL31uu0QxG0hPUYL1AH4OBjM5YzW0sxnGjOTjnwc1DS8ZVFuqLVj-vusR4n7QgJ/s1800/rr5.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqzX2d2h3T4UQNOXTdYMraSOfBbv7FHGnMsIfsFFyxCB8ot1VGOZyh-0P17oLZvAo0Q9-Cbsk-3HDvqdLDxwiWLDwFAi6TsJxxR9tvLn-9CRdgoEGmwgw2RZL31uu0QxG0hPUYL1AH4OBjM5YzW0sxnGjOTjnwc1DS8ZVFuqLVj-vusR4n7QgJ/s320/rr5.png"/></a></div>
<p>
Once I saw this, it became hard to unsee. At least it was for me.
</p><p>
There are shapes that don’t have this glitch. Consider the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superellipse">superellipse</a>.
</p><p><a href="https://www.desmos.com/calculator/pgdpvn3ujk">
This</a> is the shape used for iOS icons (or very close to it). The industrial design team at Apple used this shape in many of their designs.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW5mOQPECvzBZGPDdg9tmP2GqLatgN53N2SqbrXpBpG9hfFYCi3dWAtw7mQwIDHPwOOMhQXIDGQP0sXn2cMvJ1ZU_8T5bMSCgqP7y30LT8hfgSSigHJIFiz7MrwEYo2uOwqlyTVpoFlf7PwGzot-3f_rOWupI1zLrm1zq_tFeXr9O9DE0aRKU7/s1800/rr0.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW5mOQPECvzBZGPDdg9tmP2GqLatgN53N2SqbrXpBpG9hfFYCi3dWAtw7mQwIDHPwOOMhQXIDGQP0sXn2cMvJ1ZU_8T5bMSCgqP7y30LT8hfgSSigHJIFiz7MrwEYo2uOwqlyTVpoFlf7PwGzot-3f_rOWupI1zLrm1zq_tFeXr9O9DE0aRKU7/s320/rr0.png"/></a></div>
<p>
Inside Apple, we usually referred to these shapes as “continuous curves”, since they didn’t have this point discontinuity glitch. It’s a subtly more pleasant shape. By <a href="https://desmos.com/calculator/4beqtmkrct">playing around with the numbers</a>, it’s possible to approximate the original 200×120 roundrect without the glitch.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaIp1zNK6iI4zItDuPMlKnhOWFYhJfiTI7buP2JVVfMeKsSzjpOqmOT72s7b0KTSDkL87GpP16Uz1I1Plc4HhBZvTsYo4sxJnJrV6FJYtsc7-dtlO4kijGt-oRlgDkLfLVmTS0P5j9JtcThk2LoELiBokkx6ReI2ZRL4SuLMZ7vSfU5Ylcmnej/s1800/rr6.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaIp1zNK6iI4zItDuPMlKnhOWFYhJfiTI7buP2JVVfMeKsSzjpOqmOT72s7b0KTSDkL87GpP16Uz1I1Plc4HhBZvTsYo4sxJnJrV6FJYtsc7-dtlO4kijGt-oRlgDkLfLVmTS0P5j9JtcThk2LoELiBokkx6ReI2ZRL4SuLMZ7vSfU5Ylcmnej/s320/rr6.png"/></a></div>
<p>
Note the comparison between the continuous curve (in blue) and the roundrect (in black). The roundrect sticks out right in an unsightly way at the point of the discontinuity.
</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6B2Fphc7DP9d7tMeklonyxPOwK9wyA8gurCbpY0rDft6f3SJXEIY6MqeIff1yLWlT7ksMb70e_oqkrebffVSAzYC-GfEUILzQB0tljnMEEqdovFaMvgmsdflNkk1p5Ub_0jCJsyxOvvcgmmsE9z_rVM4CCF1L0qjElBTg9c4lXUjRxm0I8ME2/s1800/rr7.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6B2Fphc7DP9d7tMeklonyxPOwK9wyA8gurCbpY0rDft6f3SJXEIY6MqeIff1yLWlT7ksMb70e_oqkrebffVSAzYC-GfEUILzQB0tljnMEEqdovFaMvgmsdflNkk1p5Ub_0jCJsyxOvvcgmmsE9z_rVM4CCF1L0qjElBTg9c4lXUjRxm0I8ME2/s320/rr7.png"/></a></div>
<p>
Now the “problem” with continuous curves is that they they aren’t built into to any 2D computer graphics system in any operating system I know about, and they can only be approximated by bezier curves, which is a common 2D graphics feature. So, a lot of people are familiar with bezier curves, and they’re easier to work with, so that’s usually what gets used. Too bad.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-15338956923609415822024-01-09T11:20:00.000-08:002024-01-19T15:35:19.407-08:00So long as we are wishing <p>
None of us get to decide anything, so one may as well make a statement of principle. <a href="https://twitter.com/miniver/status/1720122080497402363">I proposed 2 November 2023:
</a></p><ul><li>
Ceasefire.
</li><li>
Return of all hostages and political prisoners.
</li><li>
Israel within its Green Line borders and no more.
</li><li>
Full sovereignty for Gaza & the West Bank as a state (or two?) of Palestine, with free and fair elections.
</li><li>
Shared governance of Jerusalem.
</li><li><a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/teshuvah-a-jewish-case-for-palestinian-refugee-return">
Right Of Return</a> for Palestinians where practical; reparations by Israel where impractical or unwanted.
</li><li>
Israel and Palestine <em>disarmed</em>, under <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm">NATO Article 5</a> protection.
</li></ul><p>
On the <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2022/07/what-if-not-liberal-democracy.html">merits</a> I prefer a single democratic state, or even better <a href="https://www.alandforall.org/english/?d=ltr">a federated democratic state</a>, and I respect and support anyone advocating for those, but the reasons to doubt that Palestinians & Israelis can build a shared polity from here are familiar, so I fall back to pretty conventional two-state thinking as the achievable minimum just resolution for the liberation of Arab Palestinians.
</p><p>
Except for that last point, my crackpot attempt at cutting the Gordian knot of security & stability.
</p><p>
The last 55 years have shown that shown that the IDF is a threat to the rightful sovereignty of Palestinians <em>and cannot even deliver security to Israelis</em>. It should be evident why countering that with an armed state of Palestine threatens to produce an escalation spiral even worse that the one which has sabotaged any resolution for generations.
</p><p>
I see no solution other than radical disarmament. But how can both be secure against each other and their <em>other</em> neighbors? Palestinians would have to worry about neighbors other than Israel. Israelis will protest that they face existential threats from their neighbors, and though the wars against Israel ended in 1973 when it was clear that they had the Bomb, total disarmament is a lot to ask. They need a <em>shared</em> guarantor of their security.
</p><p>
It should be evident why the US cannot perform that function, and why the UN is inadequate. But NATO <em>would</em> want security and stability for <em>both</em> states ....
</p>
Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-13857883278171882952024-01-04T20:43:00.000-08:002024-01-04T22:40:45.019-08:00Bad metaphors for Israel-Palestine <p><a href="https://medium.com/@yoavlitvin/i-told-you-so-caitlin-johnstone-is-a-con-job-8d67467da809">
Crypto-fascist grifter</a> Caitlin Johnstone <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-israel-supporter-and-the-sandwich">analogizes</a> the conflict in Israel-Palestine with a sandwich.
</p><p>
I have heard a thousand variants of this sort of allegory. They drive me bats because despite Israel hardliners being thoroughly terrible, anti-Israel commentators reliably insist on <em>overstating their strong case</em> with disingenuous misrepresentations of the history of Israel-Palestine and pro-Israel arguments.
</p><blockquote><strong>
Israel supporter</strong>: [<em>Walks up to a guy at a restaurant, grabs his sandwich, starts eating it.</em>]
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy</strong>: Hey!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter</strong>: What?
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy</strong>: That’s my sandwich!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter</strong> [<em>still eating</em>]: Sandwich? What sandwich?
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy</strong>: Right there! You’re eating it right now!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter</strong>: No I’m not.
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy</strong>: Oh my God! You’re standing right in front of me eating my sandwich! I can see you doing it with my own eyes!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter</strong> [<em>finishing sandwich</em>]: Nope. Never happened.
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy:</strong> You owe me another sandwich you prick! You stole from me!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter:</strong> So you’re saying Jews steal? That’s an anti-semitic canard!
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy:</strong> What?? I didn’t even know what religion you are! I’m just mad you stole my sandwich and ate it right in front of me!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter:</strong> That never happened. Or if it did happen it wasn’t me. Or if it was me I had to do it because another guy did something that left me no choice, so you should blame him.
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy:</strong> Gah!!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter:</strong> Actually come to think of it I’m beginning to suspect maybe YOU ate MY sandwich.
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy</strong>: How is this happening? This is ridiculous!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter:</strong> Again with the Jew hating!
<br /><br /><strong>
Guy</strong>: Why the hell do you keep babbling about Jews?? This has nothing to do with Jews! This is about you personally and the specific thing you just did!
<br /><br /><strong>
Israel supporter:</strong> Okay Hitler. [<em>Steals silverware on the table, exits.</em>]
</blockquote><p>
So here’s my attempt at a version which recognizes the injustices and power relationships without misrepresenting the arguments, <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2021/05/settler-colonialism-in-israel.html">history</a>, or dynamics so badly.
</p><blockquote class="me">
<strong>
I:</strong> [<em>eating a sandwich</em>]
<br /><br /><strong>
P:</strong> You stole my sandwich.
<br /><br /><strong>
I:</strong> Maybe my <em>grandmother</em> took your <em>grandfather</em>’s<br />
sandwich. Get over it.
<br /><br /><strong>
P:</strong> Doesn’t make that sandwich yours.
<br /><br /><strong>
I:</strong> She shared it with a starving Auschwitz survivor.
<br /><br /><strong>
P:</strong> So? <em>I’m</em> starving, and you owe me my sandwich.<br />
[<em>punches I</em>]
<br /><br /><strong>
I:</strong> Fine, I’ll share. Just stop that!<br />
[<em>hands a small portion to P</em>]<br />
[<em>puts knee on P’s neck</em>]
<br /><br /><strong>
P:</strong> No compromises on what’s mine!<br />
Give me your whole sandwich!<br />
[<em>punches I</em>]
<br /><br /><strong>
I:</strong> [<em>leans on P’s neck</em>]
<br /><br /><strong>
I</strong> & <strong>P:</strong> This maniac hates me for no reason!
</blockquote><p>
Of course what this most reveals is the inadequacy of a sandwich as a metaphor.
</p><p>
Over on Twitter, a friend objected to an earlier version of this reframing of the sandwich story, offering a different metaphor:
<p><blockquote>
If the police illegally kicked you out of your home, gifted it to a random family, and then said, “we’ll give you the basement, but that’s all”, would you be okay with splitting your home with those illegally occupying it? Or would you only accept your home back as solely yours?
</blockquote><p><em>
I replied:
</em></p><br /><p>
I understand and respect why many Palestinians refuse to accept any legitimacy for Israel, or for Israelis’ presence in Israel.
</p><p>
If Ali bursts into Ben’s house and kills one of Ben’s children, because Ben’s grandparents stole the house from Ali’s grandparents, I also understand and respect why Ben is going to itch to have cops treat Ali roughly.
</p><p>
I am not drawing an equivalence between Both Sides here. Israel has perpetrated countless wrongs. It is simple to see that this newest round of horrors is unjustifiable. And a truly just way forward is not so simple.
</p><blockquote>
It’s damn near impossible. Israel has actively provoked Palestinians, by continually encroaching on their land, allowing settler colonialists to violently displace more Palestinian families, claiming “iF i dOn’T sTeAl iT, sOmEoNe eLsE wiLl”. That “lOgiC” is insane.
<hr />
You’re assuming Ben isn’t provoking Ali. Is Ben nested on top of his illegally acquired home, with a sniper rifle, taking shots at Ali & his family, permanently disabling Ali’s children in the process? Does this result in Ali seeking justice? Yes. Is that bad? No.
</blockquote><p>
Frankly, accusing Israel of “actively provoking Palestinians” while thousands of Israelis have fresh memories of friends and family killed on 10/7 is poor form. Israel is wrong enough without this fantasy of Israeli insanity.
</p><p>
This is where the sandwich and house metaphors break down. If Ali and Ben represent The Nation Of All Palestinians and The Nation Of All Israelis, then treating them like a singular individual gets weird. Or do they represent a “Typical” Palestinian & Israeli?
</p><p>
IDF snipers gunning down Palestinian kids is wrong, but referring to it simply as a one-sided “provocation” elides the cycle of violence which produced it.
</p><p>
The Likudniks who have run Israel for almost two decades are callous numbskulls, not sadists. The snipers are doing military policing of the pseudo-sovereign PA, in response to attacks on Israel.
</p><p>
Some Palestinian fires a rocket at an IDF truck from an office building in Gaza, Israel responds with overwhelming force, shelling the office building.
</p><p>
Why is this disproportionate brutality Israel’s policy?
</p><p>
Because if I am a 45 year old Israeli voter, I remember how the Oslo Agreements seemed to have turned the corner on violent conflict. The creation of the PA ended the overt military occupation. But then Palestinian hard-liners rightly unsatisfied with the meagre territory and pseudo-sovereignty of the PA committed terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens a couple of times a week. So I heard bombs and gunfire, I knew people who lost daughters & brothers, and when the Likudniks said “there is no making peace with these animals”, I did not vote for them but I understood why so many of my friends & family did.
</p><p>
And then in the years after, I started voting for them too because the Likudnik “security” strategy seemed to work. The bombings of Israeli civilians stopped, turning into things like those less bloody (for Israelis) rocket attacks on the IDF, which mostly slowed down over time. The military policing of Gaza was brutal but it seemed to work.
</p><p>
Until 10/7, which was not quite as brutal as Israeli hardliners’ propaganda said, but that is damning it with the faintest imaginable praise.
</p><p>
All of this violence by Palestinians is a response to their oppression, yes. As are the cycles of violence which came before.
</p><p>
What measure and kind of violent Palestinian response is justified? Feh. I would rather focus on the need to end the current genocidal attack by Israel and to liberate Palestinians from dispossession and oppression.
</p><p>
But don’t insist that the story is nothing other than relentless violent “provocation” by Israel. That is a crock. This is a <em>cycle</em> of violence in which hardliners on <em>both</em> sides sabotage goodwill.
</p><p>
Israel bears the responsibility to end it because Israel has held the upper hand for my entire lifetime, because Israel’s violence has supported an unjust order.
</p><p>
We can hold Israel responsible without having to misrepresent the history with horseshit.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-10418191710714557492024-01-04T15:23:00.000-08:002024-02-21T14:00:34.490-08:00Please stop talking about ‘Zionism’ <p>
Seeing the word “Zionism” is now a yellow flag for me, with “Zionists” a bright <em>red</em> flag.
</p><p>
I <em>hate</em> having this reaction.
</p><p>
After the decades of homework I have done as an American Jew climbing out of pro-Israel propaganda — after a history rich in injustices committed under the flag of Israel — in this moment when worst Israel hardliners are driving a <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide"><em>genocide</em></a> — I resent developing a reflexive cringe which makes me resemble apologists who dismiss <em>every</em> criticism of Israel as “antisemitism”.
</p><p>
I have no investment in Zionism. Though I place myself as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Zionism">“post-Zionist”</a> rather than “anti-Zionist”, I count some schools of anti-Zionism as allies, and disagree <em>respectfully</em> with others.
</p><p>
But those are not the criticisms of ‘Zionism’ filling my feed daily, describing a moustache-twirling evil ideology defining & directing the state of Israel, enthusastic about every wrong, thirsty for genocide, filling all ‘Zionists’ with hot malice toward Arab Palestinians. An imaginary ‘Zionism’ which is false, facile, and dangerous.
</p><p>
The word “Zionism” <em>just does not mean</em> this thing I constantly see people talking about. Many early Zionists opposed the homeland they sought taking the form of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system">Westphalian nation-state</a> like Israel; after the founding of the state in 1948, the core of Zionism becomes nothing other than support for Israel continuing to exist in <em>some</em> form. The history of the Zionist movement <em>is</em> riddled with bad ideas and brutality, but those do not <em>define</em> a multifaceted movement which also includes <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2014/02/what-does-word-mean.html">strains</a> directly opposed to the violences committed by early Zionists, by Israel historically, and by Israel’s Likudnik leadership now.
</p><p>
There is plenty in Zionism to criticize — <em>don’t get me started!</em> — but one cannot dismiss support for the existence of Israel as so transparently evil that it is <em>illegitimate</em> ... especially for Israelis who have never had another home.
</p><p>
Nor can one point to the specific injustices found in the history of Israel as proof of Zionism’s aims or inevitable consequences. Zionism is not A Plan For All This. Wariness of apologists who <a href="https://theconversation.com/whataboutism-what-it-is-and-why-its-such-a-popular-tactic-in-arguments-182911">shrug</a> over Israel-Palestine as Too Complex For Mortals To Judge should not drive us to overreact by dismissing the genuine complexity of the <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2021/05/settler-colonialism-in-israel.html">overlapping, historically-contingent actors and forces</a> which brought us here.
</p><br /><p>
The terms <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahanism">“Kahanism”</a> and <a href="https://prospect.org/world/2024-02-21-neglected-history-state-of-israel/">“Revisionist Zionism”</a> are right there if you need them, but one needs to <em>understand</em> the history of Zionism to know them.
</p><br /><p>
Whether one misrepresents ‘Zionism’ out of <em>ignorance</em> of what actual Zionists say & do, or out of <em>arrogance</em> claiming a right to decide what the word means —
</p><p>
— whether one faults ‘Zionism’ for making Israel an <em>exceptionally</em> evil nation, or sees it as exemplifying an evil inherent in all nations but chooses to <em>single out and emphasize</em> the particular example of ‘Zionism’ —
</p><p>
— whether one curses ‘Zionists’ <em>unaware</em> how how this parallels actual Nazis using “Zionists” as a euphemism for “Jews”, or <em>unconcerned</em> about the parallel —
</p><p><a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2019/01/an-open-letter-to-anti-zionist.html">
— these moves are ugly.
</a></p>
<br /><p>
I know many of the people offering faux ‘Zionism’ well enough to see that they share my lefty commitments to justice, to see that antisemitic bigotry does not animate what they say, to see that they are hungry for explanations of the real evils of Israel’s ongoing attack on Gaza. But bigots <em>did</em> originally author this story of ‘Zionism’, and antisemitism <em>is</em> the payload. Getting played by this kind of propaganda is among many ways <a href="https://leftrenewal.net/">the left has not been thoughtful enough about the moves we make</a> in response to the Gaza crisis.
</p><p>
It is unfair that having to step even more carefully than usual to avoid disinformation from crafty bad actors on <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-minefield-of-anti-zionism.html">all sides</a> compounds the other burdens on advocacy for Palestinian liberation. Wrestling over the meaning of “Zionism” and over the roots of the horrors in Israel-Palestine distracts from talking directly about stopping Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.
</p><p>
But here we are. Talk of nonsense ‘Zionism’ riddled with antisemitism has already eroded my trust in too many people.
</p><p>
This need not deter us from doing what we must. The most important things <em>are</em> simple. Israel’s current attack on Gaza is unjustified and brutal and must stop. The longstanding oppression of Arab Palestinians under the power of the state of Israel is unjust and must stop. Please stand <em>there</em>, so that I can stand with you.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-84516349023151903832023-12-15T16:42:00.000-08:002024-01-04T22:40:45.020-08:00Gaza and the Left <p>
The open letter <a href="https://leftrenewal.net/">For a consistently democratic and internationalist left</a> says so much of what has been driving me bats in this season of having a hard time with people <em>on my side</em> in opposing Israel’s brutality against Gaza.
</p><blockquote>
We are longtime left activists and organisers. In this text, we want to engage with the prevailing moods on the left, and through it let others who feel as we do know that they are not alone. It is also an invitation to other leftists to join us in taking a stand against antisemitism, truncated antiracism, campism, nationalism, accommodation with Islamism and other left-right alliances. We write in the hope that a better internationalist left is possible.
</blockquote><p>
Read the whole thing.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-62666558972027113442023-12-08T15:44:00.000-08:002023-12-22T18:01:08.898-08:00The Conspiracy Theory <p>
In an important sense, there are not conspiracy theorie<strong><em>s</em></strong>, plural; there is only <em>one</em> conspiracy theory, singular. I confess to borrowing from (and reversing) this witty joke:
</p><br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C6UePtuIyDo?si=Hnzh76bBg0fVAXdT" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br /><blockquote><p><em>
Enough! Don’t listen to this guy. Everything’s conspiracies with him.
</em></p><p>
Not conspiracies. Conspiracy. <strong>Singular.</strong> Reaching back to Ancient Egypt, there’s been a single cabal of powerful individuals directing the course of human history. But the common man prefers to believe they don’t exist. Which aids their success.
</p><p><em>
Global warming? Military upheavals in the third world? Actors elected to public office? The spread of coffee bars? Germs outpacing antibiotics? And boy bands? Come on! Who would gain from all this?
</em></p><p>
Who indeed?
</p></blockquote><p>
The particular terms of The Conspiracy Theory are endlessly mutable, but the basic story is the same whether it is QAnon or the New World Order or the Illuminati or whatever:
</p><blockquote class="me"><ul><li>
a small homogeneous group, <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2006/05/who-are-they.html">Them</a>, secretly control the world to nefarious purpose
</li><li>
<em>simultaneously</em> They are
</li><ul><li>
pervasive <em>and</em> hidden
</li><li>
seductive <em>and</em> repulsive
</li><li>
vulnerable enough to need to act through guile <em>and</em> capable enough to control almost everything
</li></ul><li>
They are sexually perverse, including personally abusing children out of cruelty and literal thirst for their blood
</li><li>
wars and social breakdown come from Their deliberate efforts, <em>simultaneously</em>
</li><ul><li>
to profit materially
</li><li>
to make people at large easier for Them to control
</li><li>
to satisfy a perverse desire to destroy everything good (which may feed the inhuman source of Their power)
</li></ul><li>
most seemingly powerful leaders in politics, business, et cetera are puppets whom They manipulate through Their direct control of
<ul><li>
banks
</li><li>
popular art & media
</li><li>
universities
</li></ul></ul></blockquote><p>
This should sound familiar.
</p><p>
The Conspiracy Theory is a cognitohazard: a seductive, simplistic funhouse mirror version of how power works. By collapsing the frustratingly diffuse mix of people and institutions which enable systemic processes of power into a far less unruly package — an imagined small coördinated circle of villains of pure malice, <em>Them</em> — The Conspiracy Theory offers a paradoxically comforting nightmare. Someone <em>is</em> in control of All This. The world can be made right, simply, by eliminating Them. The quip <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_is_the_socialism_of_fools">“antisemitism is the socialism of fools”</a> alludes to this: antisemitism says that our troubles come not the <em>system</em> of capitalism, but from The Jews.
</p><p>
One cannot avoid addressing antisemitism when thinking about The Conspiracy Theory, because the first perfected form of it was published as propaganda in a tsarist disinformation campaign at the dawn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion"><cite>Протоколы собраний ученых сионских мудрецов</cite></a> — the fabricated <cite>Protocols of the Elders of Zion</cite>, which cast The Jews as Them.
</p><p>
The Conspiracy Theory tends to feed fascism, in a way that illuminates how fascism works and what it really is. Fascism is <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2020/10/fascism-authoritarianism-totalitarianism.html">not simply authoritarianism</a>, but a way of thinking about politics and society which says We Must Use Violence To Destroy Those Who Have Corrupted The Natural Greatness Of The True People Of The Nation. Since Nazis put The Jews at the top of the list of Those Who Corrupt, drawing on the <cite>Protocols</cite> and its decendants, it is tempting to imagine that antisemitism is part of the definition of fascism.
</p><p>
But neither fascism nor The Conspiracy Theory are always or simply antisemitic.
</p><p>
One popular variant of The Conspiracy Theory says that They are <a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/David_Icke">shapeshifting space lizards</a>.
</p><p>
Many contemporary fascists <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2023/12/transphobia-and-far-right.html">cast</a> trans people as Them, a <a href="https://www.damemagazine.com/2022/03/15/trans-people-are-in-grave-danger/">frightening</a> and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/tiktoks-algorithm-leads-users-transphobic-videos-far-right-rabbit-holes">frighteningly</a> <a href="https://xtramagazine.com/power/far-right-feminist-fascist-220810">effective</a> innovation, since in amplifying fascism’s anxieties about masculinity, in being a small-yet-pervasive population, in and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2021/oct/23/judith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash">many other ways</a> trans people fulfill the function of Them in fascism and <a href="https://healthliberationnow.com/2021/04/12/the-mechanisms-of-tanon-what-is-tanon/">The Conspiracy Theory</a> even better than Jews do. This is not an <em>entirely</em> new development, nor does it entirely displace antisemitism: transphobia & antisemtism were deeply <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/4188-the-eradication-of-talmudic-abstractions-anti-semitism-transmisogyny-and-the-national-socialist-project">entangled</a> in the Nazis’ eyes, <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2023/12/transphobia-and-far-right.html">of course</a>, much as they <a href="https://progressive.org/magazine/antisemitism-meets-transphobia-greenesmith-lorber/">are now</a>.
</p><p>
Since the <cite>Protocols</cite> cast a long shadow, people who fall deep into <em>any</em> version of The Conspiracy Theory have a tendency to find their way into antisemitism, or at least into alliance with people who <em>do</em> cast The Jews as Them.
</p><p>
Since The Conspiracy Theory is a cognitohazard, its gets into <em>everything</em>, including a lot of things I love like <cite>The X-Files</cite> and <a href="https://twitter.com/silentpenitent/status/1314843908182953984"><cite>Blade</cite></a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/jan/09/they-live-john-carpenter-neo-nazis"><cite>They Live</cite></a>. That does not mean one has to walk away from them.
</p><p>
Learn the scent.
</p><p>
Build up intellectual defenses.
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-8847236981014165642023-12-08T12:25:00.000-08:002024-03-14T15:15:26.538-07:00Lost’s sloppy storytelling was morally wrong <p>
When I call <cite>Lost</cite> “morally wrong” I’m sort-of engaging in hyperbole for emphasis. But in a small way, I also believe it. A while back I <a href="">tweetranted</a> inspired by a Film School Rejects post <a href="https://filmschoolrejects.com/evolution-of-the-mystery-box/">The Evolution of the Mystery Box</a>.
</p><blockquote><p>
TV shows actively teach you how to watch them. <cite>Lost</cite> taught its viewers to be hungry, attentive sleuths, rewarding viewers who searched for clues, answers, and easter eggs.
</p><p>
[⋯]
</p><p>
The <cite>Lost</cite> finale decided to leave a lot of threads open and mysteries unanswered. It focused on character development over plot resolution (a perfectly valid choice). But viewers who were trained to focus on answers – trained to see plot as a puzzle, not as a means to character development – were let down. When the writers infused the plot with ambiguity, viewers rejected it because they were taught that the story was meant to be solved.
</p></blockquote><p>
I see apologists for <cite>Lost</cite> saying things like this all of the time. This is not a failing by the viewers — FSR themselves say that the <em>show told viewers to look for answers</em> before refusing to deliver them.
</p><p>
It would be a valid choice for the <em>show</em> to focus on character development over plot. But the show pointed directly to plot all of the time, so the finalé refusing to pay off its promises was a betrayal.
</p><h2>
Tactical drama
</h2><p>
That quote from FSR compels me to call shenanigans on the way <cite>Lost</cite> apologists say that the show was “about the characters”. Absolutely not.
</p><p>
Consider Evangeline Lilly’s character Kate. Is she nice, or mean? Smart, or dumb? Brave, or craven? What drives her? What does she want? We don’t have answers, and she got an immense amount of screen time.
</p><p>
The storytelling was structred around the characters encountering a series of daunting dilemmas without enough information to make a clear decision. The characters would yell at each other about what to do, and make desperate moves. The show had very good tactical-level craft in presenting these conflicts — especially in the strength of the actors’ performances.
</p><p>
This kind of storytelling <em>could</em> unfold something about the characters, showing how they change or just revealing who they are. What they want, fear, and value. How they understand the world and themselves. Instead we got only the hand-wave-y-est themes. John Locke “has faith”. Jack Shephard “wants to fix things”. And it kept breaking even this level of thin characterization. Sawyer was “just out for himself” … except when he wasn’t. Ben Linus “understands what is going on” … except when he doesn’t.
</p><p>
These reversals on characterization came from the way <cite>Lost</cite> sustained interest with twists. Often these picked up a mystery from earlier, hinting that the show had a design undergirding its story, promising the payoff which never came. The twists were a key move in the shows method of focusing on delviering dramatic <em>moments</em>. In order to deliver these transient thrills, <em>anything</em> could happen without regard for the logic of plot, character, theme, our physical universe, or the show’s own world, so nothing ever really mattered.
</p><p>
The show’s craft in constructing powerful scenes sometimes did deliver real magic, like Charlie’s hero moment, Michael’s dedication to his son, the VW bus. But then in pursuit of more <em>moments</em> of drama, the show revisited them until any truth or flavor they had was destroyed.
</p><h2>
Mysteries and mystery
</h2><p>
One <em>can</em> do a story — even a serialized TV story — which is not a mystery in a detective-story sense but a mystery in a mythic-unto-esoteric sense: <em>unanswerable</em>.
</p><p><cite>
The Prisoner</cite> resembles <cite>Lost</cite> in a number of ways. Our protagonist finds himself in an isolated place which operates by its own unique, puzzling rules, full of characters with mysterious motives: The Village. In the course of an episode, we typically learn both a bit about the characters’ backstories before they arrived at The Village and a bit about The Village itself. Each episode’s opening titles succinctly reminds us how the pilot episode set up that our protagonist was some kind of spy, that he angrily resigned from the work, that the leaders of The Village want to know why, that they refuse to answer when our protagonist asks which side they work for. In the show’s final episode, it steadfastly refuses to answer these questions, and steps up the way in which the fantastical Village is an elaborate metaphorical space for exploring themes about power, individualism, the social order, moral responsibility, human nature. Its rejections of the <em>plot</em> questions from the text of the story are part its point; the show is largely about why they do not matter. It tells us how that the puzzle of The Village’s in-world nature was misdirection rather than breaks a promise.
</p><p>
Even a mystery with a detective can become a mystery in this sense of refusing to answer. According to legend, when in the middle of making the film adaptation of <cite>The Big Sleep</cite>, director Howard Hawkes telephoned Raymond Chandler because he realized that he did not know who had committed the murder which accelerates the plot in the turn at the end of the first act, and Chandler replied, “<em>Now</em> you <em>get it</em>. I don’t know.” The story challenges the logics of detective stories in which a hero can uncover the whole truth, offering instead a world in which digging reveals questions and corruption faster than it produces answers and justice.
</p><p>
But <cite>Lost</cite>’s refusal to address the plot questions it raised delivers no such thematic payload.
</p><p>
One may protest that not every story driven by twists & reveals needs such a deep purpose to get away with incomplete plotting. Hitchcock’s <cite>The Man Who Knew Too Much</cite> and <cite>North By Northwest</cite> have so much momentum that it does not bother us that do not really hold together on close examination. <cite>The Usual Suspects</cite> actually makes no sense (which is why one should resist the temptation to watch it a third time) but that does not spoil the charms of seeing things seem to fall into place on a first and second viewing.
</p><p>
But those works do not break a promise, because they do not <em>make</em> a promise to pay everything off. <cite>Lost</cite> had so many little clues and easter eggs that it <em>invited</em> the audience to speculate what they meant.
</p><h2>
The moral problem
</h2><p>
I submit that this is more than just sloppy or disappointing, it is <em>dishonest</em>. It did not fulfill its promises badly; it broke them. This does not merely fail the audience; it <em>cheats</em> them.
</p><p><cite>
Lost</cite> is hardly the first or only TV series to do this. <cite>The X-Files</cite> teased audiences with a conspiracy-mythos which never quite added up to anything. <cite>Battlestar Galactica</cite> told us in in every episode’s opening titles that the Cylons “have a plan”, and ultimately revealed in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica:_The_Plan">story sequence</a> <em>called “The Plan”</em> that no, they did not.
</p><p>
This hurts more than the viewer, it robs other artists by eroding the resource of audience trust, rather than enriching the culture with a touchstone which others can build on. Exploitation.
</p><p>
So yes, <em>morally</em> wrong.
</p><h2>
Trust
</h2><p><em>
Updated to add
</em></p><p>
In a very instructive commentary on <a href="https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=17692">“plot holes” and trust</a>, Shamus underlines my point:
</p><blockquote><p>
This trust becomes really important when the audience is presented with something that doesn’t seem to follow naturally. Maybe it’s a plot hole. Maybe not. But something jumps out at the viewer. <em>Hey! This character isn’t acting according to their stated goals, therefore…</em>
</p><ol type="A"><li><em>
…I must have missed something earlier. Or maybe this will be explained later. Maybe this will even pay off in a later reveal.
</em><br /><br /><p>
OR:
</p><br /></li><li><em>
…THIS STORY IS STUPID.
</em></li></ol><p>
Here’s the thing: It’s the job of the storyteller to create and maintain that trust. Talking about how to build trust is like talking about how to build creativity or enthusiasm. It’s not really something you can force. Let us agree that it’s a lot of work to get a stranger to trust you, and even harder if you’ve already proven untrustworthy in the past.
</p></blockquote>
Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-64126462978508437282023-11-30T12:22:00.000-08:002023-11-30T12:33:23.875-08:00Saying grace <p>
A helpful internet friend shared a lovely <a href="https://notalwaysright.com/can-i-get-an-amen-please/309109/">little story</a> worth a minute of your time.
</p><blockquote>
I was and am Jewish, and at thirteen, I had never in my life done the whole “saying Grace” thing before, though I was at least aware that the practice existed
</blockquote><p>
I have a different funny story about this culture gap.
</p><p>
In my freshman year in college I dropped in to a few Christian dorm lounge Bible studies, which lead to my sweetheart finding Jesus, which led to several instructive months of hanging around Evangelicals. Among other things, it made me feel very Jewish — the God I did <em>not</em> believe in turned out to be a very different figure than the one they <em>did</em> believe in.
</p><p>
Their style of saying grace was pretty improvisational: “Would anyone like to say grace?” Then someone would volunteer, with lots of “lift up my sister Colinda who has a midterm tomorrow” et cetera. I never offered. But one day we wer sitting down to pizza or something and nobody was feeling like doing it, so someone turned to me and asked if I would like to. I imagine that they expected one of the friendly demurrals I had gotten good at. But instead I felt a bit inspired.
</p><p>
“Can I do it in Hebrew?”
</p><p>
I had not yet absorbed how the unnerving philo-semitism of Evangelicals works, so I was not prepared for how enthusiastic they were about this idea.
</p><p>
I could not resist a little theatrical wave of my hands over our repast as I exhausted a good 20% of my entire Hebrew vocabulary saying “בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַמּוֹצִיא לֶחֶם מִן הָאָרֶץ” adding a hearty “אָמֵן” and pronouncing it “ah-mayn” instead of their “ah-men”. I wryly added, “For those of you who do not speak Hebrew, that means, ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord, our god, king of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth’.”
</p><p>
They were <em>very</em> impressed. I had (mis)understood their enthusiasm for me proposing it — exposure to the cool practices of other cultures and all that — but the aftermath was <em>too much</em>. What the heck?
</p><p>
Then it hit me maybe a week later. They must have assumed that I just <em>made that up on the spot</em>, that I could have gone on like that for hours if I felt like it!
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-956159487269259822023-11-16T23:09:00.000-08:002023-11-30T13:01:51.549-08:00Victor von Doom <p>
With rumours making the rounds about Marvel Studios’ casting of the Fantastic Four, I’m thinking about how they will handle Victor von Doom.
</p><p>
Almost a decade ago, when it started looking like Fox & Marvel were going to work things out for Marvel Studios to share the rights to use X-Men, as Sony eventually did for Spider-Man, I <a href="https://twitter.com/miniver/status/1456673883411546115">said</a> “eyes on the prize”: forget the X-Men, Marvel Studios needs to get their hands on Doctor Doom.
</p><p>
That was an exaggeration ...
</p><h2>
A long aside about Marvel, Fox, and the X-Men
</h2><p>
When I said right after the release of <cite>Winter Soldier</cite> that Marvel Studios had <a href="https://miniver.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-perfect-franchise.html">the perfect media franchise</a> I thought maybe I was speaking the obvious too late. But their best days were still ahead of them. Right now a lot of people think their best days are now already <em>behind</em> them, but not me. Yeah, Marvel Studios have had a run of stuff which has not been <em>bad</em> but has been <em>weak</em>. I think that has largely been echoes from covid shaking <em>everything</em> up.
</p><p>
I believe that Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige <em>already</em> deserves a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_G._Thalberg_Memorial_Award">Thalberg award</a>, and is gunning for one when he <a href="https://variety.com/2023/film/news/marvel-kevin-feige-superhero-fatigue-1235499609/">says</a> “there’s 80 years of the most interesting, emotional, groundbreaking stories that have been told in the Marvel comics, and it is our great privilege to be able to take what we have and adapt them”. Disney Imagineers are undoubtedly hard at work disassembling that deep bench of experiments in overlapping, serialized stories to assemble new giant killer francise robots from the parts.
</p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/dongwon/status/1464313763633508361">
Dongwon 송동원 raises a legitimage concern</a> about that:
</p><blockquote><p>
honestly pretty annoyed by the “thanos was right” thing. I feel like it mocks a lot of us long term x-men fans who are deeply invested in magneto’s perspective as a more radical, revolutionary voice in comics’s most prominent and consistent examination of marginalization.
</p><p>
especially considering how many alt-right bros latched onto Thanos’s fascist genocidal logic. I know it’s ridiculous, but I honestly feel like “Magneto was right” actually means something to a lot of us that isn’t just contrarian, crypto-fascist, genocidal apologia.
</p><p>
I dread the days feige finally figures out what he wants to do with the x-men, honestly. I genuinely enjoy so much of the MCU nonsense, but what makes the x-men so special is so antithetical to the underlying logic of the MCU machine.
</p></blockquote><p>
But I feel hopeful that Dongwon has it backwards. I think that as Feige’s control over Marvel Studios strengthens, he will give more latitude to the different creators, which will enable stuff like giving us the X-Men with a sensibility in tension with what we have gotten with the movie Avengers. Plus I think that desite a wobbly start, streaming series will turn out to be a great format for Marvel. Their first long run of movies like a huge, slow TV series was great but showed how the canvas of a few features each year is still not big enough for what the characters and setting can do.
</p><p>
Marvel Studios has their <cite>Game Of Thrones</cite> waiting in reserve: Chris Claremont’s epic, soap-operatic run of X-Men comics. Douglas Wolk, who literally <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/549063/all-of-the-marvels-by-douglas-wolk/">wrote the book</a> on how much storytelling space there is in Marvel Comics, <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23483917/marvel-movies-next-10-years">says</a>:
</p><blockquote>
If you only know the X-Men from Fox’s movies, you may not suspect how deep that catalog gets, and how many characters it involves. Marvel Comics currently publishes 11 monthly X-Men-related titles, and that’s not even a record. 2019’s simultaneous miniseries House of X and Powers of X — the former about mutants establishing a nation of their own called Krakoa, the latter showing the X-Men’s secret past and what might become of them 100 and 1,000 years in the future, each triggering bombshell revelations in the other — set up seemingly endless story possibilities that have been playing out ever since. The current era of X-comics, focused on Krakoa becoming a global political force, could easily turn into a cluster of movies and TV shows and specials bigger even than the MCU in its current form.
</blockquote><p>
I believe it. We are mad at him now, but remember that the first guy to show up writing TV inspired by a youth reading Claremont’s X-Men drew on its moves to create <cite>Buffy The Vampire Slayer</cite> as not just a hit TV show but a cultural phenomenon. There is an army of nerdy, brilliant, seasoned middle-aged creators whom Marvel Studios can tap to work on this.
</p><br /><p>
So yeah, I was exaggerating when I said that Marvel Studios could forget about how buying Fox meant getting the X-Men back. But. Spending a few billion dollars on Fox would have been worth it to the Mouse even <em>without</em> the X-Men.
</p><h1>
Victor Über Alles
</h1>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR3bO-MHGmYfMoJMUtD3EmsaoYdNKsP-0voVjf05T_M69FtCOymtK9liAVtn8G8WGYMrFjs7v113hTuYQimUZLKV8ySmWkOLIM6XDsNogeFUroQqVyZHuggucsJs7cqSiJhGsAr85phsMK64mHk03bU5TSyartVFolIOyz37K0xgHhyphenhyphenLV_L0MV/s1280/IMG_6727.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR3bO-MHGmYfMoJMUtD3EmsaoYdNKsP-0voVjf05T_M69FtCOymtK9liAVtn8G8WGYMrFjs7v113hTuYQimUZLKV8ySmWkOLIM6XDsNogeFUroQqVyZHuggucsJs7cqSiJhGsAr85phsMK64mHk03bU5TSyartVFolIOyz37K0xgHhyphenhyphenLV_L0MV/s400/IMG_6727.png"/></a></div>
<p>
At this point I really feel the Marvel Cinematic Universe having a Doom-shaped hole in it.
</p><p>
Marvel Studios has been doing more and more cosmic stuff, giving us references to the baffling cosmic godlike Celestials. Thanos is gone for the forseeable future, which points us right to Galactus. They don’t <em>need</em> the Fantastic Four on stage to tell stories about Galactus, but his key story involves them so you want them there before too long. Plus when RDJ wriggled out of the golden handcuffs, it left them with an opening for the <em>real</em> irresponsible “hero” mad scientist with his fingerprints all over Marvel stories: Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four.
</p><p>
To bring Galactus on stage, Marvel Studios needs the human who stands taller. With Richards on stage, they need the man whose brilliance is greater. With Celestials on stage, they need the mortal daring enough to rival their power.
</p><p>
Scientist. Wizard. Tyrant. Meglomaniac. Genius. The greatest villain in Anglophone literature.
</p><h2>
How I would do it
</h2><p>
Obviously it starts with teasing.
</p><p>
First a post-credits stinger, of course. I like Moviebob’s idea from his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VehLxh5wCU8&t=62s">elaborate, clever Fantastic Four</a> pitch of giving him just one word after the first FF appearance — “<strong>Rr</strong>rri<strong>i<em>i</em>i</strong>hch<em>ARDS</em>!!”. But it could be anything. Maybe a secondary character who got driven off earlier in the movie shows up to reveal that they were not simply defeated, because they got away with an unnoticed MacGuffin to deliver to Doom. Maybe have Doom on his Latverian throne steepling his fingers to signal to civilians that he ranks like a Thanos-like master villain, so they ask their nerdy friends about him.
</p><p>
Then there is a thing in a movie or two where we catch a glimpse of him on the periphery. Maybe he’s on video of some shenanigans and someone says “is that who I think it is?” and one of the less experienced heroes is all “who?” and gets blown off with “the most dangerous person on Earth — you don’t want to know”. Maybe he aids someone with an escape.
</p><p>
Then we get a <em>proper</em> cameo, with Doom in his genteel, regal mode. Maybe he’s at an international conference where he debates with Shuri and arrogantly corrects her about nanotechnology or some such — the worst part being that it turns out later in the movie that Doom was <em>right</em>.
</p><p>
Then in his first major appearance, Doom crushes a few heroes (or villains!) in an early scene. Who <em>is</em> this guy? Reed is there to explain with some essentials from Doom’s elaborate backstory. This includes a flashback of young Doom swearing his vendetta against Richards over The Accident leaving a few tiny scars which only made him look more badass. Toward the climax of that movie, Doom gets his hands on some earthshattering power — maybe siphoning it off of Wanda or an Eternal — and the <em>first</em> thing Doom does is wish away the scars he owes to Richards, triumphantly removing the mask. Of course doing that delays him enough that he does not get time to complete his plan to open a portal, nuke Madripoor, turn the Sahara into a garden, or whatever. The heroes (or villains!) witness how Doom is brilliant and powerful but undone by his own ego.
</p><p>
Then we get a movie with a one-scene cameo. Some character we need to establish as badass gets a flashback to a few years back, when for a moment they <em>knocked Doom’s mask off</em>. We don’t want to overwork the disfigured villain trope so this will be the first, last, and only time we see Doom severely scarred. Richards didn’t know about <em>this</em>! Nerds go <em>yeah</em> and civilians go <em>whoa</em>.
</p><p>
At this point Marvel can treat Doom as a fixture of the world. We don’t <em>see</em> him much, but it seems like he is connected to almost everying. Some character has Latverian tech. Someone has a meeting cut short with Namor or Contessa de Fontaine because Doom is here to talk. Et cetera.
</p><p>
Then we get a movie where magic is a big piece of the plot. In the course of things, Reed Richards and a few other characters track down a renegade monk from Ta Lo or Kamar-Taj who explains that the only person who has the plot token or secret knowledge or whatever our heroes need is Doom. “But you don’t want to talk to that madman.” Why not? “I was there when he put on the mask for the first time. In his obsession, he reached for it before it had finished cooling. He did not scream, or even gasp. There was only the sizzle as it burned his flesh.” Reed is shocked ....
</p>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6216910.post-70188564976149969622023-11-13T10:02:00.000-08:002023-11-13T10:05:35.610-08:00Holtzmann <p>
With the great Twitter exodus, I have to rescue my musing about the 2016 <cite>Ghostbusters</cite> and how I liked it more than a lot of folks did, but the thing I <em>love</em> was of course Kate McKinnon as Dr. Jillian Holtzmann. It is now unmistakable that we will never get another movie in the 2016 Ghostbusters continuity, which is fine — I think we should let the ghostbusters conceit go entirely — but that doesn’t mean we cannot have more Holtzmann. She could show up in <em>all kinds of places</em>.
</p><p>
Tell me an audience won’t go berserk for a cameo in just about any comedy.
</p><p>
Heck, you could shoehorn her into a lot of action movies. Holtzmann doesn’t make any less sense than anything else in the Fast & Furious universe, f’rinstance.
</p><p>
MacKinnon could have a side career playing cameos of Holtzmann forever, like Bebe Neuwirth does with Lilith. We would always be happy to see her.
</p><p>
C’mon Hollywood, take our money.
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVt0GussA4KcGjZTKUbp2hl19_ZinIBRpc9s45i2u3BK0Lw3MC298xF2nsJDbVK4XPzXPigJ3f5w55XzKS3ViRlRjn6idrwL7-WLOF7rx9MiiZsT_e1zSt7LSDdSc-3zkk-5_qsfA0550xsmxr3L_LHrm3WgfFa1vU8apWUM4aghwtFxj-SMuI/s983/D569B440-D298-4473-A0E9-EACFAB1D23E1.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt=
"Holtzmann does not hate you
nor does she love you
but you are made out of atoms
which she can use for something else"
border="0" width="400" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="983" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVt0GussA4KcGjZTKUbp2hl19_ZinIBRpc9s45i2u3BK0Lw3MC298xF2nsJDbVK4XPzXPigJ3f5w55XzKS3ViRlRjn6idrwL7-WLOF7rx9MiiZsT_e1zSt7LSDdSc-3zkk-5_qsfA0550xsmxr3L_LHrm3WgfFa1vU8apWUM4aghwtFxj-SMuI/s400/D569B440-D298-4473-A0E9-EACFAB1D23E1.png"/></a></div>Jonathan Kormanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06249159323930786199noreply@blogger.com0