So, if Cathy O’Neil is writing posts about futurism-the-social-phenomenon from a leftist and mostly negative point of view, and Scott is writing pleas for there to be discussion of futurism-as-in-the-actual-future, then where are the people who are writing about futurism-the-social-phenomenon from a positive point of view? Where are the people who are forming coalitions on the other side from O’Neil? Where are the ideologues she’s afraid of? Can I join them?
Well, upon actually reading the article, it seems that many of the people she’s scared of aren’t ideological in the way I’d normally think of the word. The “prophets of capitalism” she mentions are Sheryl Sandberg, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and John Mackey—extremely rich, politically moderate, and hardly anybody I could go to a party with. Ray Kurzweil doesn’t produce a lot of content; the Seasteaders have been quiet for years. I’m used to “ideologies” or “movements” having, y’know, a vanguard—a population of young readers and writers producing endless discussion and propaganda. Techno-optimists don’t, it seems. That doesn’t mean they don’t have power, of course, but it’s mostly practical power (money, technology) and implicit power (framing, marketing) rather than mindshare.
With the exception of the EA/X-risk people, who are more conventionally “ideological” in the sense of being big talkers. But, again, those people are mostly like Scott, at least claiming to be interested in the actual future rather than the “future” as a lens upon the present.
It’s just weird to me. The O’Neils of the world don’t have an equal-and-opposite opposition. They have “opponents” who are doing very different things than them. It’s almost an asymmetric warfare situation.
It is! It is definitely analogous to an asymmetric warfare situation, and like many asymmetric warfare situations, the entrenched side’s narrative is that it’s just trying to run things sensibly, not aggress on anyone or self-aggrandize.
I think this is related to our culture’s aestheticization of revolutionaries somehow, but am not sure exactly how.
Ok, so I suspect “ideology” in the sense of “production of lots of identity-flavored text and protests and sometimes art” is just modeled on socialist & communist parties. Predictably, actual leftists are going to be better at that than other ideologies, because they’ve been at it longer. Predictably, most coalitions who oppose leftists are going to be using tactics other than ideology. (Fascists are an exception, they really are using similar means to their opponents on the left.)
Which means it’s not ever going to be a *fair* fight. Scott and Cathy are never going to meet on the same playing field and use the same methods against each other and see who is the stronger. I’m trying to imagine how someone *would* set up such an equal contest, because that would seem a lot more aesthetic, but I’m failing to visualize it.
If you are capable of seeing two levels, the social and the intellectual, then this is annoying, because one side has totally ceded the social realm and the other has totally ceded the intellectual realm, so you never actually get critique happening.
A “fair” fight might be possible if insiders bothered to argue “here is why I think this system is a good way to organize things and processing the most relevant bits of information, and why I feel OK accepting this huge endowment of structural power” instead of taking their methods as a background fact in no need of justification. Maybe it wouldn’t persuade the Cathys O’Neil of the world, but I’d bet it would attract better critics.
GiveWell made a decent attempt at times, and did in fact get some good critics eventually.
So, if Cathy O’Neil is writing posts about futurism-the-social-phenomenon from a leftist and mostly negative point of view, and Scott is writing pleas for there to be discussion of futurism-as-in-the-actual-future, then where are the people who are writing about futurism-the-social-phenomenon from a positive point of view? Where are the people who are forming coalitions on the other side from O’Neil? Where are the ideologues she’s afraid of? Can I join them?
Well, upon actually reading the article, it seems that many of the people she’s scared of aren’t ideological in the way I’d normally think of the word. The “prophets of capitalism” she mentions are Sheryl Sandberg, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and John Mackey—extremely rich, politically moderate, and hardly anybody I could go to a party with. Ray Kurzweil doesn’t produce a lot of content; the Seasteaders have been quiet for years. I’m used to “ideologies” or “movements” having, y’know, a vanguard—a population of young readers and writers producing endless discussion and propaganda. Techno-optimists don’t, it seems. That doesn’t mean they don’t have power, of course, but it’s mostly practical power (money, technology) and implicit power (framing, marketing) rather than mindshare.
With the exception of the EA/X-risk people, who are more conventionally “ideological” in the sense of being big talkers. But, again, those people are mostly like Scott, at least claiming to be interested in the actual future rather than the “future” as a lens upon the present.
It’s just weird to me. The O’Neils of the world don’t have an equal-and-opposite opposition. They have “opponents” who are doing very different things than them. It’s almost an asymmetric warfare situation.
It is! It is definitely analogous to an asymmetric warfare situation, and like many asymmetric warfare situations, the entrenched side’s narrative is that it’s just trying to run things sensibly, not aggress on anyone or self-aggrandize.
I think this is related to our culture’s aestheticization of revolutionaries somehow, but am not sure exactly how.
Ok, so I suspect “ideology” in the sense of “production of lots of identity-flavored text and protests and sometimes art” is just modeled on socialist & communist parties. Predictably, actual leftists are going to be better at that than other ideologies, because they’ve been at it longer. Predictably, most coalitions who oppose leftists are going to be using tactics other than ideology. (Fascists are an exception, they really are using similar means to their opponents on the left.)
Which means it’s not ever going to be a *fair* fight. Scott and Cathy are never going to meet on the same playing field and use the same methods against each other and see who is the stronger. I’m trying to imagine how someone *would* set up such an equal contest, because that would seem a lot more aesthetic, but I’m failing to visualize it.
If you are capable of seeing two levels, the social and the intellectual, then this is annoying, because one side has totally ceded the social realm and the other has totally ceded the intellectual realm, so you never actually get critique happening.
A “fair” fight might be possible if insiders bothered to argue “here is why I think this system is a good way to organize things and processing the most relevant bits of information, and why I feel OK accepting this huge endowment of structural power” instead of taking their methods as a background fact in no need of justification. Maybe it wouldn’t persuade the Cathys O’Neil of the world, but I’d bet it would attract better critics.
GiveWell made a decent attempt at times, and did in fact get some good critics eventually.