Conversation

Replying to and
The thing is, FUD created by a bad actor goes away when the bad actor leaves the scene. But FUD created by technology agency expansion is a cry wolf story with no specific untrustworthy shepherd boy for the villagers to tag. So behaviors shift.
1
1
Replying to and
Older generations circle wagons around their ingroup epistemes. Younger ones adopt new mitigating behaviors that are a mix of more conservatism (default skeptics, checking up on snopes) and operating off a smaller knowledge base (Talebian strategies).
1
2
Replying to and
I don’t even think there is a real epistemic crisis yet. We’re learning that we need consensus reality only in a few critical cases like vaccination where there are material consequences (loss of herd immunity) to epistemic pluralism.
2
1
Replying to and
Most of the time, you don’t need a belief monopoly to act. Just enough relevant agency, and a sort of Straussian contempt for the outgroup. “I don’t have to persuade you I’m right, I just have to make sure you can’t stop me from acting or roll back my consequences”
2
2
Replying to and
I’m fascinated by the possibilities of fait accompli + irreversibility action orientation over deliberation and mutual persuasion before action. I think *this* will be biggest long-term effect. The role of mutual persuasion among adversaries in collective action will diminish.
1
2
Replying to and
We’ve already seen a big example. Trump doesn’t need to persuade opponents of anything, with or without deepfakes. Just roll back Obama programs and ensure his own are harder to undo. Future politicians will run this playbook better.
3
Replying to
I don’t disagree but merely point out that naked coercion follows as the inevitable defining feature of a post-persuasion, post-consensual order.
2
2
Replying to
My point is, it’s always been that way. Peter Thiel’s 1950s utopia for example seems like Organization Man idyll of consensus/harmony because main group inclined to systematically disagree that everything was fine, blacks, were systematically shut out of “debate” with coercion.
2
Replying to
You’re overstating my case. The glove unlike the pen is a metaphor for cosmetic roles. Just because a discourse is protected by guns/exclusion doesn’t mean it’s not generating useful knowledge and helping compound the power that sustains it. It just means it has blindspots.
Replying to and
The biggest blindspot being blindness to the ways the knowledge being discovered and deployed is contingent and context-situated. Which of course is the main criticism.
1
Replying to and
To the extent it is NOT contingent, guns can’t preserve exclusivity of discourse. If an experiment replicates and news leaks, your guns can’t stop me from talking differently about it and booting up an independent discourse protected by my own guns. Hence nuclear proliferation.
1
Show replies