Society is not one thing and does not speak with one voice. The people who are achieving excellence are by and large not lying about it being good. Eg, Elon Musk is not out there saying billionaires shouldn't exist while simultaneously spending money building rockets.
The compromise of liberalism is not to lie; it is to allow people to claim things about what's good or bad while not enforcing that everyone adhere to a single group's claims. This seems pretty okay. Scott's endorsement of the "lying" framing is troubling if taken literally, but it reads a bit like the kind of thing you'd say to to your buddies between laughs over a beer, trying to prove yourself technically correct--the best kind of correct.
On that note--the originator of simulacra stuff is Baudrillard, and I think Ben Hoffman introduced it to LessWrong types, not Zvi.
Not just you, this is a recurring thing with Scott's writing, too, he likes to personify distributed not-entities. On the one hand, this gave us Meditations on Moloch! On the other, we got "motte and bailey fallacy", which IRL usually (though definitely not always) involves totally separate individuals defending the motte vs the bailey. Win some, confuse some.
I mostly agree with Thomas’s point, but given this part-
> I want to be left alone and be free to do important things just as much as the next guy! And if there’s one thing I learned in my teens, it’s that you can easily accomplish this by putting on a mask of full agreement, capitulate to everything with your words, and completely ignore what you said. I understand the value of doing this in an environment that otherwise makes action impossible.
-I would also like to note society’s tendency to be that kind of environment. Constantly, in some cases.
Scott's post seemed more like an explanation for behavior than an endorsement.
And re: Freddy's post about why he thinks people aren't dumb of advocating dumb solutions: It's okay to demand a solution even if you don't understand the best way to have it fixed. Saying that a solution should be higher priority is a reasonable thing to say. And the whole reason we have a representative democracy is because not everyone can be an expert. Advocating a bad solution that you think is good is normal, because not everyone is an expert. But advocating for a solution that you know is bad because of social pressure? That seems gross to me. Why are these people your friends\allies\whatever in that case? And the thing where you pressure others to accept a solution you think is bad? Well. That seems like fear and bullying to me, rather than just wanting to be taken 'seriously but not literally'. If all the politics you have are vibes, I don't like those vibes at all.
There's even a sense in which I think y'all poppies are bad. In a sense where 'maybe Jeff Bezos shouldn't be allowed to have a monopoly and destroy lots of small businesses'. But things like that are hard political problems where a minority of powerful people get enough power to curtail the freedom of the majority. It seems pretty separate from the issue where dishonesty is so prevalent in politics. And I feel like dishonesty is prevalent where the actual small poppies are worried about being crushed. Politics has gotten real vicious for regular people.
Society is not one thing and does not speak with one voice. The people who are achieving excellence are by and large not lying about it being good. Eg, Elon Musk is not out there saying billionaires shouldn't exist while simultaneously spending money building rockets.
The compromise of liberalism is not to lie; it is to allow people to claim things about what's good or bad while not enforcing that everyone adhere to a single group's claims. This seems pretty okay. Scott's endorsement of the "lying" framing is troubling if taken literally, but it reads a bit like the kind of thing you'd say to to your buddies between laughs over a beer, trying to prove yourself technically correct--the best kind of correct.
On that note--the originator of simulacra stuff is Baudrillard, and I think Ben Hoffman introduced it to LessWrong types, not Zvi.
TIL! I've updated the post, thank you
And yeah, I sometimes take things too literally
Not just you, this is a recurring thing with Scott's writing, too, he likes to personify distributed not-entities. On the one hand, this gave us Meditations on Moloch! On the other, we got "motte and bailey fallacy", which IRL usually (though definitely not always) involves totally separate individuals defending the motte vs the bailey. Win some, confuse some.
I thought that quote sounded too coherent to be Baudrillard.
I mostly agree with Thomas’s point, but given this part-
> I want to be left alone and be free to do important things just as much as the next guy! And if there’s one thing I learned in my teens, it’s that you can easily accomplish this by putting on a mask of full agreement, capitulate to everything with your words, and completely ignore what you said. I understand the value of doing this in an environment that otherwise makes action impossible.
-I would also like to note society’s tendency to be that kind of environment. Constantly, in some cases.
Scott's post seemed more like an explanation for behavior than an endorsement.
And re: Freddy's post about why he thinks people aren't dumb of advocating dumb solutions: It's okay to demand a solution even if you don't understand the best way to have it fixed. Saying that a solution should be higher priority is a reasonable thing to say. And the whole reason we have a representative democracy is because not everyone can be an expert. Advocating a bad solution that you think is good is normal, because not everyone is an expert. But advocating for a solution that you know is bad because of social pressure? That seems gross to me. Why are these people your friends\allies\whatever in that case? And the thing where you pressure others to accept a solution you think is bad? Well. That seems like fear and bullying to me, rather than just wanting to be taken 'seriously but not literally'. If all the politics you have are vibes, I don't like those vibes at all.
There's even a sense in which I think y'all poppies are bad. In a sense where 'maybe Jeff Bezos shouldn't be allowed to have a monopoly and destroy lots of small businesses'. But things like that are hard political problems where a minority of powerful people get enough power to curtail the freedom of the majority. It seems pretty separate from the issue where dishonesty is so prevalent in politics. And I feel like dishonesty is prevalent where the actual small poppies are worried about being crushed. Politics has gotten real vicious for regular people.
AI narration:
https://open.substack.com/pub/askwhocastsai/p/lies-arent-compromise-by-eneasz-brodski?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I agree with Greg.
I didn't read Scott as fully endorsing it. He's just describing what he sees as the current liberal compromise.