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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      You know what this feels like? It's a "Wall" except with "Science Scare" rather than "Brown Immigrants" as the rallying flag. To the extent the "Science Scare" is real, it's not meaningfully acted upon. To the extent it's an expedient scare, it's a means to other ends :(

      1 reply 9 retweets 52 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      If this is the best democracy can do in a world based on really complex technologies and global intertwingling, then I see why many see democracy (and more broadly, the nation state as a problem solving unit) as the problem. Still there's a bit of hope.

      2 replies 5 retweets 23 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      First there is hope that it is possible to make the *processes* of democracy more scientifically literate somehow, in ways that are not quite as anemic as having toothless scientific committees "advising" politicians. Can we add more teeth to scientific influence over policy?

      5 replies 5 retweets 21 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      Maybe. After all, we ended up in a place where corporations are people, and can influence politics in a very toothy way with money, directly (a condition I am broadly in favor of btw, even if the specific mechanics leave much to be desired...). Perhaps ideas can be people too?

      3 replies 2 retweets 17 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      Second, the practice of lumping together popular and unpopular policy pieces was expedient pragmatism in a low-tech world, but in a complex tech world, is suicidal. I don't think there's anything necessarily either "democratic" there or psychologically fundamental.

      2 replies 1 retweet 15 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      Not quite sure how you retain a democratic spirit in political processes, but I have a few at least theoretical, spherical-cow ideas. For example, I proposed somewhere once that everybody on the planet should have at least a small fractional vote in all elections.

      2 replies 2 retweets 13 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      What is clear is that we're still running political infrastructure based on politicians' ideas of mass psychology that haven't evolved in 200 years, coupled with a technological imagination that hasn't moved an inch since Apollo. We're being governed by 1761 minds living in 1961.

      3 replies 10 retweets 46 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      I don't know what *is* the right action plan here. All I have an idea about is what science+tech+policy experiments are at least worth trying. The problem with GND is that it corners attention/agency in a way that makes those experiments harder.

      3 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      Final point, a few are reading this thread like vindication of a Trump-equivalence on @AOC. I don't endorse that. There is no comparison between the two. She's just a regular human politician, perhaps more charismatic and principled than average. Trump is a class IV void demon.

      6 replies 4 retweets 38 likes
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    10. ^‏ @BigLambda 10 Feb 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @AOC

      Venkatesh, no @AOC is just as racist as Trump is, openly so. She also ignores the death and imprisonment of a 100 million people who lived under Marxist regimes all over the world. All of the ideas that created those outcomes are present in her rhetoric.

      2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 10 Feb 2019
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      Replying to @BigLambda

      You're doing the usual reduction-to-Stalin alt-right derp, sorry.

      10:59 AM - 10 Feb 2019
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      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        1. ^‏ @BigLambda 10 Feb 2019
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          Replying to @vgr

          Go read the stated goals of her party and compare them to Chavismo or any other marxist charter. They dress it up to make it palatable to other Democrats but there is no substantive difference. Derp yourself.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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