it's more performant to believe — or at least say — that you never incur collateral damage in pursuit of your righteous cause. so people do! the falsity doesn't negate the advantage https://twitter.com/rfitz77/status/1280540611318370305

if there's an advantage to belief X or rhetoric Y, the truth value will be treated as irrelevant instrumentally — but all the while paid lip service with apparently earnest fury

I suspect that "social epistemology" or whatever you wanna call it is the default, and it's v. weird and aberrant to internalize the scientific method, or, like, *reasoning* for its own sake. we hacked through this by proceduralizing Science™ as a high-status thing

every time that I rejoice having broken through the typical-mind fallacy, relieved that this time I really do *get* other people... I'm wrong

we are *incredible* imitators, incredible actors. a semblance of true understanding can be flexibly, expertly deployed. I've been duped

science becoming Science™ as a means of scaling inadvertently changed the systemic incentives (lol) and now the academy is fully captured. welp, science will persist, but Science™ has better marketing for the moment https://twitter.com/sonyasupposedly/status/1280559325291753473

what I'm saying is, for a long time the trick pulled with Science™ worked. furthermore many devotees of Science™ successfully came across — to me personally — as actually espousing the scientific method. but no https://twitter.com/sonyasupposedly/status/1280559835679870978

I will never forget trying to get through to Kelsey Piper about masks. someone like that is able to parrot the words about (for example) "statistical significance" being a construct that we created to aid decision-making — an objective but *arbitrary* benchmark. nonetheless

such a person is not able to actually use data, to make decisions in the messy, risky real world, outside of the contrived environment of the academy

what's terrifying about this is that Kelsey Piper and her ilk are legitimately smart. and yet still they cannot *think*

so anyway, what's been utterly horrifying about this year is that many, many more normies than I realized are functionally p-zombies. even the ones with a fair bit of processing power!

*literally* p-zombies? no, duh. institutionally programmed? well... yes

this realization crystallized in existential fear — if it came to that, no, people would NOT think through, "hmm these commands sound an awful lot like what tyrants did." it became visceral that instead they'd just kill me https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/survivalist-epistemology/

the truth will save us in the sense that predictive material analysis is critical in order to position oneself for survival, and likewise critical in order to compete effectively (absent savant-level instincts). the truth will *not* save us in the sense that it'll convince people

what convinces people? IMO, a twist on my universalization of Sailer's Law. people are convinced by the following subconscious realization: "if we all coordinate on this cultural narrative [if we all buy into this memeplex; become part of this egregore], my status will go up"

"if we all coordinate on this cultural narrative, my status will go up"

thing is, the only narrative(s) for which this is actually true *materially* not merely socially is one that grows the material pie; that generates surplus

my analysis is by no means novel, but I think the deal really is, society will let techie entrepreneur types do whatever they want as long as surplus is sufficiently redistributed, with sufficiency being "enough for ~everyone to believe their kids will have a better life."

but that runs counter to modernity's assortive matching go brrrr tendency; it runs counter to the legibilizing power law machine that is the internet

musing here, don't quite have a conclusion, still missing a puzzle piece or three...

makes me think of this passage from Andrew Yang's book (quoted here: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-problem-isnt-merit-its-ocracy.html)

"Their ties to the greater national fabric will be minimal. Their empathy and desire to subsidize and address the distress of the general public will likely be lower and lower."

the natural incentive of people who orchestrate the production of surplus is to subsidize those who don't *only* to the minimum extent that will prevent them from rising up with the guillotine and the gulag

this explains much about politics and ~society~ writ large

> *only* to the minimum extent that will prevent them from rising up with the guillotine and the gulag

neoliberalism tries to push the minimum down to reduce drag — incentivize pie growth by allocating as much of its fruits back to the growers as possible. but then

populist uprising (both left and right, resulting in different kinds of success) says "not that fucking low you don't" and demands material appeasement

hmm, hmm