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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. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 28 Aug 2019
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      A friendly review of ⁦@BCAppelbaum⁩ & ⁦@BrankoMilan⁩ but with this unfortunate line: “China is essentially going through a hugely accelerated version of the industrial revolution & the Gilded Age rolled into one.” #ModernizationTheoryNeverDies https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/02/the-rich-cant-get-richer-forever-can-they …

      1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 28 Aug 2019
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      Replying to @nils_gilman @BCAppelbaum @BrankoMilan

      Not sure I understand what's unfortunate about it?

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
    3. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 28 Aug 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @BCAppelbaum @BrankoMilan

      Remember how Gilded Age America was run by a ruthlessly authoritarian one party state that had all the tycoons under its thumb, controlled internal movement of its people, and for decades enforced an anti-natalist policy that produced the mother of all demographic dividends?

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 28 Aug 2019
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      Replying to @nils_gilman @BCAppelbaum @BrankoMilan

      Man you historians never let one slip past you huh

      2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 28 Aug 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @nils_gilman and

      otoh... corrupt city machines did kinda run a ransomware level control on tycoons, and slavery was a similar kind of demographic dividend... I think the rhyme holds in the bass notes if you squint a bit at the lyrics

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
    6. Nils Gilman‏ @nils_gilman 28 Aug 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @BCAppelbaum @BrankoMilan

      “Stylized facts” vs, uh, real facts — this is one of the main contributions historians make: calling bullshit on facile Whig historiography. I’ve been beating this particular drum for 15 years, though by now am grimly resigned that I will die before modernization theory does.

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 28 Aug 2019
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      Replying to @nils_gilman @BCAppelbaum @BrankoMilan

      Maybe we can just fork it off as a different discipline we call Mannerist History, a sort of literary genre more than a kind of history :D I find I learn as much from such "stylized facts" narrativization. Just different things.

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 28 Aug 2019
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      Replying to @vgr @nils_gilman and

      In fact, mannerist history is, in large part, my main schtick. I'm increasingly doing that very deliberately, introducing outright fictional elements and notional made-up data (like via liberally careless use of the 80-20 principle for instance)

      4:00 PM - 28 Aug 2019
      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 28 Aug 2019
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          Replying to @vgr @nils_gilman and

          Interestingly, I'm currently finishing up Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, where the premise is that the Auditors of Reality (the main antagonists of Death) issue a hit contract on the Hogfather (= Santa Claus) precisely for the sin of personifying "wishful facts" against "reality"

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 28 Aug 2019
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          Replying to @vgr @nils_gilman and

          The Auditors are a sort of extreme caricature of "just the facts" stances where they are constantly waging war on the messy half-fictionalized ongoing self-narrativization tendencies of humanity :D

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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