"You actually end wars by making peace too valuable to miss out on." #VenkateshRao #vgr https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/war-rooms-and-peace-rooms ht @akkartik
is mid cringe or basic? (surely it's not based.)
Text: The rigor and exactitude of social sciences offer real advantages, but it is easy to overstate them. Social science is quantitative, precise, analytically sophisticated — and thus seems far superior to the educated guesswork of drawing lessons from history. Yet the models of social science are quantifiable and analytically manipulable only because of their reductionism — that is, because of all they leave out. The model is not reality: its relationship to reality is analogical. Accordingly, when we are presented with two different models that yield very different conclusions, how do we determine which is the better fit to current circumstances? In exactly the same way that we decide whether this or that historical precedent is more relevant — by judging which analogy is the more apt. Social science provides us with new concepts and new techniques as the basis for making analogies, but ultimately the best social scientists, like the best historians, practice the art of developing, refining, and exhibiting well-informed good judgment.
in my cultural revolution there are snuggle sessions.
they say money doesn’t buy happiness, but very wealthy people seem a lot more excited to fund research into longterm life extension than the rest of the population.
Vila @llimllib's essential notes: "A really lovely, well presented table of all the unicode characters" https://symbl.cc/en/unicode-table/#basic-latin
the buried lede is we are one step closer to human-like AI. the bots have figured out how to shit.
from @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/
"The delay in the use of puberty-blockers is presented as a precautionary concern over irreversible change, but it looks a lot like a desire to preserve childhood innocence by paradoxically embracing puberty." #DavidTimoney https://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2024/05/zones-of-interest.html
When will AI switch to proof-of-stake? https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/05/northern-virginia-fact-of-the-day.html
This post is unhinged.
so next month begins the summer of love, right?
@FlashMobOfOne You too! Pleasure to chat, agreement isn’t everything!
@FlashMobOfOne I think quite the opposite. Peaceful political activity accomplishes pretty much everything actually virtuous and desirable. There is perhaps some role for the threat of disorder, but its actuality beyond a very limited degree provokes segregation into warring camps and fascist hierarchy. All that rioting discredited the post George Floyd movement. Once nothing happened in the immediate aftermath, there’s nothing politically viable to build from.
@FlashMobOfOne I guess I disagree. Armed protests would either be violently crushed, or if widely accommodated while violating the law, would so weaken state authority any hope of a decent society would be impossible. if you’re an anarchist, you’ll see that last as nonsequitur, but i think anarchists very badly mistaken. i do not support Waco / Bundy style resistance, and think “sovereign citizens” who occupy Federal land unlawfully should be held to account.
@FlashMobOfOne are Columbia students not largely rich people? do you see the Palestinian cause as somehow socialist/redistributionist? do you think armed challenge of state authority Waco / Ammon Bundy style a path forward for your values and causes that you support?
@divya "always" is *always* overstated. social affairs are complicated. but very very often! disorder on the streets is not the same as street protest. die-ins can be awesome. but street action has to be careful, disciplined, should appeal not just disrupt, unless the cause is already super popular.
melees, brawls, circumstances that lead less engaged outsiders come to fear play into the core fascist trope, there are enemies among us who will hurt you, we will provide order and protect you. 1/
@divya i've written a piece that people sometimes read as making the opposite case. i don't disown it. but i intend a view a bit more nuanced. as from our Civil Rights Movement discussion, i do think sometimes some degree of fear things fall may fall apart serves a role in motivating positive reform. but i think it very dangerous as prescription, because it's hard to titrate and very often yields backlash, crackdown, or apartheid solutions. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5911.html /fin
@divya Is Kissinger not a war criminal? “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. … It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?” Bombing of Laos and Cambodia, and obviously Vietnam, had begun under LBJ. But boy, at least in Cambodia, did the new guys ramp it up. 214 tons under LBJ out of 2,756,941 tons. Do you think LBJ would have done the same? Do you think the protests had something to do his not contesting or winning the 1968 election?
Yes! Exactly! Ashes! Die ins! They blocked the Queens-Midtown tunnel once, the clearest example I could find of generalized disruption. But they mostly targeted specific institutions — FDA, the White House, NYSE, in clever, performative ways. No one feels their safety is at risk at a die-in. (I guess there may have been people paranoid enough to think they could get AIDS from ashes?) Their actions were powerful! But by performance more than just sand in the gears.
@divya I haven't read Schulman's history, but I think there's no dispute the outside track played a crucial role. (I think the inside track did too.) But Act Up protest was mostly (not always) pretty targeted at powerful institutions. Act Up was not a disruptive or frightening force for bystanders going about their lives. Act Up largely substituted brilliant performance for generalized disruption as a way of attracting media attention. Outsiders could sympathize without having been messed with.
@divya There was a lot going on, sure. And there was violence. You can make a case that a generalized sense of threat played bad cop to the ostentatious virtue of MLK's nonviolent movement. Riots sometime lead to change. But they often lead to reaction. 1/
@divya You can tell lots of stories about the 60s. But I don't think you can fairly look at the world and conclude that violent chaos frequently births leftish or liberal or just orders. You can maybe claim CRM as a counterexample, if you want to emphasize the sense of threat. But then the political aftermath of the 60s was mostly reaction. Vietnam War protests just picked off LBJ, which did not redound to the benefit of people in Indochina. /fin