This is not your revolutionary war. It’s the end-of-history war among rotting dinosaur carcasses between mad max tribes. Terminus Hobbes. At best we can hope to starve the war machine of meaning by reading it as spectacle rather than consequential political struggle.
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You can’t really hide from it or ignore it. There’s too much societal energy invested in it (that’s the point of a war, to burn societal energy through futility). But by seeing it differently, you can fall out of love with the big idea of warring and look for better life loves
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
I just used the phrase “a crowd rubbernecking at itself” If it’s also angry, that’s the culture war. Like hate-watching people...people hate-watching?https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1134924490197143552?s=20 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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It also occurred to me that driving was the original social medium. A networked public space created by technology for impoverished interactions among reductive personas. Honk = like, communicate through cut-offs, merges, tailgating, giving the finger.
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The difference is, when you drive for fun, you pick pleasant, scenic, easy-driving routes. You don’t head for the snarly gridlock of honks and flip-offs for “fun”. You only do it if you have to get somewhere. The culture war is a bit like going for a “fun” drive in a traffic jam.
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Tldr of my GUT of the culture war: it’s an end-of-history Hobbesian conflict, 100% governed by the beef-only sheep-logic of “last men”, whose idea of fun is going for a drive in a traffic jam because car-makers and oil companies have convinced them history depends on it.
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
The sheep-logic reference if you can’t parse that.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1134921580927115264?s=21 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
Venkatesh Rao @vgrIf you’re careless Twitter can turn into 100% sheep-logic headspace. “Sheeple” is a good insult because a mind consumed by other-regarding cognitions is subhuman. Use Twitter as interest graph not social. Ideas front-and-center, people in peripheral vision https://www.epsilontheory.com/sheep-logic/ pic.twitter.com/08gssckIjN2 replies 0 retweets 5 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @vgr
Does this imply that any next Big Idea can come only after something like an outside context problem?
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Replying to @hondanhon
Possibly. Might be why Musk and crypto capture imagination. They inject outside interestingness into sheep-logic compute matrix.
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Replying to @vgr
Something entirely outside and interesting would need to come along, orthogonal to the culture war, and smother it, make it irrelevant. Unanticipated side-channel attack on sheep-logic. Probe culture war for vulnerabilities?
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With what? You need that external idea to probe *with*
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