TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
User ID: 103
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
Very kind of you—I appreciate it.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
It's more personal here, because this place used to mean a lot to me and it's tough to come to terms with it now being the only place on the internet I interact regularly with people who hold long-standing, deep grudges against me and want me to remember that every time I post. I'm not interested in shaking it off or in displaying a thick skin here. Anyone who nods along with their behavior here is not someone I want to share a community with, and I am more interested in loudly signalling that than in presenting in a stoic way.
As far as insecurity and things following me—look, I participate in a lot of online communities, and only one has a large sub-population of bitter grudge-holders who want to drag their conflicts with me into every interaction. Yes, that group has successfully ruined my perception of this community, but that has happened while I've been in the most successful part of my online career by far. You're not seeing insecurity here, you're seeing frustration at what's become of a place I once loved.
From behind a screen, I have plenty of time to consider my words and my self-presentation. When I want to be calm, I am, and my online history backs that up. What I wanted there was, for once in my time on the Motte, to tell the people who have delighted in making it a petty, vindictive space that clings to grudges to go screw themselves for contributing to the destruction of something beautiful.
The Motte that I loved is dead, and although good people still continue to interact atop its corpse, I would like those good people to know in no uncertain terms that the people who killed that Motte remain, while the posters they loved have mostly moved on to greener pastures. I've been returning here to maintain a point of contact with those who have not yet joined the motte diaspora, but now I want those people to understand that as far as I'm concerned, this community is no longer worth coming to and they should work alongside me to build elsewhere.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
2yr ago
New from me: In Defense of the New College Takeover, also published with my bosses' permission over at Blocked & Reported. In light of the recent news that Ron DeSantis appointed Chris Rufo and a number of other conservatives to the board of hyper-progressive New College of Florida, I felt compelled to write a response to criticisms of the move from a number of people in the "heterodox" sphere, including my own bosses. The full piece is quite long, so I'll quote the third section below (with some edits for brevity), in which I make the case for serious diversity of thought not only within institutions, but between them:
Many people I respect worry about the idea of one institutional bias being replaced by another sort of institutional bias in universities, and embrace the idea that every university should be a joyous hodgepodge of intellectual curiosity with no loyalty, implicit or explicit, to any one creed. This stance, more or less, is held by all those I cite in my intro as critics of this move: my employers, Young, Pinker, Haidt, and other principled and careful thinkers whose stances I take seriously.
I like and respect their position. Is it too impertinent, though, to say they might be wrong?
Before you crucify me, allow me to introduce another set of thinkers I respect: [Bryan Caplan, Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok, and Robin Hanson].
Those of you who have heard of these men before already likely know what they have in common: they are all professors of economics at George Mason University. This is not a coincidence. Rather, it is the direct result of a conscious choice by George Mason, more than 50 years ago, to zig where other universities zagged, snapping up brilliant free-market economists while their ideas were unpopular in the broader academic market. Fittingly for an economics department, they found and exploited an niche that was undervalued by academia writ large, and were rewarded with a string of brilliant economists, including Nobel Prize winners, and a culture of contrarianism and intellectual curiosity that persists to the present.
The existence of the GMU economics department is a boon to academic and intellectual culture, and has provided serious benefits to me personally, even though I have never attended and most likely will never attend George Mason University, even though I stubbornly and resolutely reject many tenets of the libertarianism of so many of its finest thinkers. It did not spring up by chance. It sprang up out of a conscious, ideologically influenced decision to provide an alternative to the culture embraced by the great majority of universities around it.
In short, universities do not exist in isolation. Jonathan Haidt is absolutely correct about the value of viewpoint diversity in academia. Nobody, sincere or not, well-meaning or not, is free of bias. Nor should people be free of bias—or, in other words, they ought to have clear values. Much more important is to be aware of and explicit about their biases, and to open their work to examination by those with contrary biases. I’ve written before about the value of wrong opinions. If you more-or-less agree with something, it’s easy to brush over shared assumptions and nod along without close examination. Only those motivated to disagree are likely to put in the time and effort to give any intellectual work the serious critique it deserves.
What applies to individuals applies to institutions. Every institution has values: some implicit, some explicit. Every university department, and every university, evolves an overarching culture. When I dream of diversity in academia, I do not dream of a diversity that sees every university aiming to achieve a perfect 50/50 balance of people who fall on the left or the right of the American political spectrum. I do not dream of a diversity in which every economics department offers the same mix of Keynsian, Chicago, and Austrian economics. I dream of diversity between institutions: one in which George Mason economists argue with Harvard critical race theorists, where Chicago Law and Berkeley Law hash out serious disagreements, where to attend one university means to be immersed in its particular culture, with a range of cultures on offer between different universities that is as wide as productively possible.
This feels obvious and pressing in education, the domain I feel strongest about. It’s not as simple as progressive versus conservative in that domain—it rarely is. But schools of education are subject to a range of fads, struggling to adopt the lessons of cognitive science. The most well-publicized example recently has been the question of “The Reading Wars,” a fierce dispute between phonics and whole-language approaches. Other debates and forgotten episodes include “discovery learning” versus direct instruction, the spread of “learning styles” even as its evidence base crumbled, and the school district that threw unimaginable money at education problems with minimal effect. To dive into all of these properly would deserve an article of its own, but each question interacts with ideology in sometimes subtle ways, and our best instincts can lead us astray in a domain where what works is often, maddeningly, what feels worst. The field has been dominated like few others by progressives with progressive instincts, and many of its missteps are in precisely the places where those instincts lead intuition astray.
Right now, the most serious shortage I see in the broader culture of academia is that of serious traditionalist conservative intellectuals and universities. Liberals are well-represented. Libertarians make their showing, and not a half-bad one at that. Heaven knows there are plenty of Marxists. But conservatives have fled the Academy and the Academy has fled conservatives. In the social sciences and humanities—the domains I find most compelling—serious conservative thought is almost wholly absent, and with that absence comes real loss, especially for those who disagree with conservatism. Hiring conservative professors in overwhelmingly liberal humanities departments is part of the solution, but another serious part—and a responsibility that can only fall on conservatives themselves—is the cultivation of more intellectually serious humanities and social sciences departments, alongside liberal arts colleges, with sincere commitments to presenting conservative thought. [...]
Bluntly, I cannot picture a world where New College shifts to being dominated by conservatives. What I can picture, and what I hope for, is a world where it shifts to being open to conservatives, where young people eager to study the great works of history and to embrace a liberal arts education can do so in an environment that does not demand rigid adherence to progressive tenets. Perhaps that 12 to one ratio among faculty can shrink to, say, four to one. Stranger things have happened.
The answer to bias isn’t only a different kind of bias. But in an ecosystem where virtually every liberal arts college is overwhelmingly biased in much the same way, having a few to sing the counter-melody can help.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
Yeah, for me this is very much an "I against my brother; I and my brother against my cousin; I, my brother, and my cousin against the world" situation. I have my differences with the Lightcone guys, but the article was atrocious, and Oliver and I chatted a bit about it after its release.
Mind, I have a personal stake in this, since I was invited to present at Manifest and loved every second of it. I met a startling amount of old-school Motte users there as well. While the conference was ostensibly about prediction markets, in many ways it felt like keeping that spirit alive and bringing it into in-person spaces. Lighthaven is beautiful, Manifest rocked, and the Guardian can shove off.
One author is the same person who fruitlessly doxxed dissident right figure L0m3z the other week, while perennial anti-rationalist obsessive David Gerard bragged about giving background info. It's the sort of article that's much less interested in any real journalism and much more interested in creating a paper trail to establish the spookiness of everyone involved.
The EA forum has a couple of posts on the matter that I've been commenting in. It's an interesting environment, torn between social justice progressivism and rationalist instincts, but I usually get a more-or-less fair hearing over there. The posts in question:
Anyway, the most serious implication is a potential closing of Lighthaven, which would be a major blow for the Bay Area rationalists and for adjacent spheres, since it really is an incredible venue. That would happen with or without the article, though, and depends on a lot of funding questions. Manifest itself is unlikely to be moved by the article—the organizers and attendees know what they want, and the Guardian's irritation is only so much noise. Time will tell, though.
People often defend surrogacy with the idea that people have the right to do what they want with their bodies. I appreciate and respect those willing to stand in a libertarian defense of something I value, but for my part, I strongly prefer a more affirmative case.
For context, my husband and I are currently talking with a potential surrogate and working out some of the many, many logistical challenges on the road to parenthood. We're in early stages, and there is a great deal to be worked out, but we fully intend on becoming parents as soon as realistically possible. Given that, none of this debate is abstract for me, and I am as far from a neutral party as one can get.
While there are cases in which I respect the value of libertarian frameworks legally and I lean far towards "live and let live" from a metacultural standpoint, there is nothing libertarian about my moral approach to life. I do not believe all choices are equally valid or that there is nothing wrong with hedonism. I do not see things like parenthood as neutral choices that people can take or leave. Rather, what is perhaps my most fundamental philosophical conviction is this: life is Good, human life especially so. The most natural things in the universe are death, decay, and emptiness. Growth, life, and creation are fragile anomalies. We belong to an eons-long heritage of those who have committed to building and maintaining life in the face of inevitable decay. Our duty is to do the same.
Becoming a parent and raising children well is, put simply, the most good almost anyone in the world can do. It is a force multiplier: the good an individual can do is necessarily constrained compared to what their descendants can accomplish. People try to dodge around this, and even longtermists like Will MacAskill who intellectually understand the value of parenthood make excuses for it in their own lives. But it seems incontrovertibly true to me. People, particularly if they are in a position to provide well for children, should become parents. It is not a neutral action among many neutral actions. It is a moral ideal that people should pursue.
All of this takes us to adoption and surrogacy. I accept as a given that the ideal situation for a child is to be raised by their biological parents in a stable home. Inasmuch as social science is worthwhile to note, it has mostly backed this idea up. But for the most part, when people pursue other outcomes, the choice is not between "have biological parents raise a given child in a stable home" and "pursue other family structures for that child". For adoption, the value is obvious and non-controversial given the choice: "bring a child into a loving, stable home without its biological parents" or "send the child to an orphanage, toss it to the wolves, or pursue one of many other tragic outcomes for unwanted children". For most cases of surrogacy, the choice is a bit different: "create a child that will be raised by one or both biological parents in a stable home, but whose birth mother is not their genetic mother or caretaker" or "create no child".
Some people's moral intuitions are that nonexistence is preferable to, or not obviously worse than, existence in a less-than-ideal setting. I wholly reject this intuition, and looking at the record of the persistence of life in the face of adversity, belong to a heritage of those who have, time and time again, rejected it. Life is Good.
As for surrogate mothers? There is nobility, dignity, and grace in parenthood. Bringing a child into the world is an act of hope. To do so on behalf of another, even when provided financial compensation, is not a neutral or profit-focused choice. It's certainly not something that could or should ever be demanded of someone. It's a selfless choice both on behalf of the child who would otherwise not be born and the prospective parents who would otherwise have no children. The woman I've been talking a bit about it with is a young mother who feels she is not in a spot to responsibly raise more children of her own, but strongly wants to keep having children on behalf of others. That's a standard profile for a surrogate, and it's one I see as deeply admirable.
On my own behalf, I claim no fundamental right to have children, because I claim no rights that require others to act. But I absolutely claim that a society in which those who are equipped to raise children, and want to do so, can work alongside those who want to give birth to others' children is in a better spot than one that keeps children with potential to lead meaningful lives from being born. For my own part, while I won't claim to any extraordinary personal ability in terms of parenting, I have no doubt whatsoever that my husband is someone who should be a father, and I am grateful to live in a world where that's a possibility.
There are margins at which some of these arguments shift. There are absolutely exploitative and tragic environments that should be understood and called out. There are settings into which it's not appropriate to bring a child, and edge cases to analyze and discuss. My aim here is not to address all edge cases, but to examine the central case, and in particular, the case for an educated, well-off prospective parent in a society with lower-than-replacement fertility and increasing dismissiveness towards the value of parenthood. Life is worth pursuing and preserving to such a degree that you can get very far from the true ideal case before nonexistence is better than existence, or choosing not to become a parent is better than choosing to become one.
Is this all a foot in the door for transhumanism? I won't speak for others, but on my own behalf I eagerly answer: yes. In a universe where the most natural things are death, decay, and emptiness and all of life is in rebellion against that natural state, it is not just acceptable to prioritize what is Good over what is natural, it is correct. While we all must come to peace with limitations we cannot change, the high points of human history have been our collective work to push back against that creeping entropy and the arbitrary, often cruel limits it imposes. We have already become much more than we once were, and we can and should become much more than we are now.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
Than virtue ethics, deontology, or contractualism? Yes. I am not claiming they are more likely than people who do not actively aim towards upholding high, clearly articulated ethical standards, but yes, I assert that moral systems have measurable impacts on people’s behavior in important ways, and the safeguards against cheating within utilitarianism—and particularly, by Singer’s own explicit admission, in his brand of it—are straightforwardly less than those in other ethical systems.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
2yr ago
These - look, I don't want to be insulting about Mormons, but good Lord is it very, very hard to resist dropping one of the "m"s there - blond denizens of the Mountain West have not got one scrap of imagination above the banal.
...yeah, I'm going to have to second @RaiderOfALostTusken here. There are many things Mormons can be accused of, but having no sci-fi/fantasy chops just isn't one of them. Orson Scott Card is one of the sci-fi greats; Brandon Sanderson is one of the most successful and imaginative fantasy writers around. Twilight has a bad reputation, but I'll cop to thoroughly enjoying Stephanie Meyer's The Host. I've never paid much attention to Battlestar Galactica, but it seems close to the core of space-faring sci-fi classics. The list of successful, popular LDS sci-fi/fantasy writers drags on: Tracy Hickman, Shannon Hale, Brandon Mull, James Dashner, so forth. None of these rely on tired American political slogans to define their work.
I have no interest in or particular knowledge of Rings of Power, but I see very little to suggest Mormonism is the cause of its triteness. You'll have to look elsewhere for that.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
Why would I? That tension between his present and his past, and my conflicted thoughts about it, is core to the reason we thought it would be interesting to do a podcast in the first place. We chatted in advance as well and covered some of the same ground; he came in fully aware that it could get combative and was not just amenable to that approach but actively interested in it. Masking my own sentiment towards the alt-right would be a disservice both to him and to listeners. When we moved past that part, I went back to engaging in a milder, more deliberate way, but both have their place.
Walt doesn't praise Hitler, but analogies are just that: analogies. I absolutely would push soft democratic socialists who had histories full of guillotine memes and so forth on those topics in very much the same tone I was pushing Walt. In his own writing, he makes the explicit comparison between himself and liberals who had communist phases, so it's worth exploring that comparison on its own terms.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
I have no idea who Walter Block is without looking him up. Singer is one of a small handful of living philosophers to make it into standard intro to philosophy courses. He is the only living person in the lede of Wikipedia’s article on utilitarianism and is, I would guess, virtually universally considered the greatest living utilitarian. He’s made Time top 100 lists and received a long list of public honors.
By any measure, he is one of the most influential ethicists of all time, certainly one of the most influential living ones. Few people’s ideas have shaped and shifted the public idea of morality as his have. He is almost singularly influential in his field.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
Very well put, and neatly in line (down to mentioning Jane Street) with a recent thought of mine:
smart, rational, capable, serious people shuffle into Jane Street and Silicon Valley and rationally, sensibly make millions of dollars. But they abdicate the role of culture-shaping to teenagers on Tumblr and TikTok. Many sane individuals exist in an insane culture, but deep-lying incentives point them away from building culture—and then they find themselves tossed about by the cultural and political forces they neglect.
It's cope and seethe, but it's beautiful cope and seethe that comes from a place of love, and that's noble in its own right. Forums like this are the same as Discord servers. Ones that build healthy local cultures retain people, ones that build unhealthy local cultures slowly drive people away. So it has ever been. Hugboxes are fine and good. People should be coordinating with others who share their interests and their goals. You can build beautiful things alongside your friends, and people should. Spaces with disagreement are great, too, when they can manage it in constructive ways (rdrama, oddly enough, does a healthy job at that), but everyone should have a couple of nice fenced-off hugboxes alongside their PvP zones. I just met up with a dozen people from one of my hugboxes and spent the better part of a week hanging out with a handful of motte lads from another. That is well and good. People should pursue that sort of community.
As for bile and rabble, I spend most of my public online time these days on places famous for bile-filled rabble. I was attracted to Twitter in specific because I noticed that the rationalist-adjacent culture there is healthy. They have leftists, they have right-wing dadposters who would be at home in themotte. People interact with the slice of the community they can handle, and the whole community remains cohesive enough to have meetups and build alongside each other and do beautiful things. By posting there, I increase my incidental exposure to people who really, truly disagree with me from all angles, because each post there might break containment and reveal me to people who share none of my background and none of my ideals. Every day, I engage with more people who truly disagree with me than I ever could here, and watch some of them call me a fascist, others a degen furfag, and still others listen. All of that is well and good.
The above post is an example! I penned a harsh criticism of one of my local sphere's longest-standing malicious critics. He and his friends are discussing it and digging up dirt on me, people in my Twitter circles are discussing it, I'm bantering and bickering back-and-forth with Eliezer Yudkowsky about it. People stay in places that fulfill needs for them and leave places that don't. For people who lack a crowd who want to turn every conversation into a referendum with their past grievances that I've acquired, and who broadly align with the local ideological frame, the Motte remains a pleasant enough place, and they're welcome to keep enjoying it. But I have a whole internet to engage with people who disagree with me, and no reason to share a community with those who live for dredging up historic grievances and others who shrug and make their excuses for others who do so, when I can't give that course of action the response it deserves.
You're right, though. Leaving is part of the problem, and that's why I've clung on for years here after falling out of love with this space. But the pastures really are greener elsewhere these days, in a way they were not in the past, and parts of that "elsewhere" remain very much part of the same meta-community as this.
I've given my advice on finding decent communities in this culture. The Twitter postrat scene is a dozen times healthier than the Motte at this point, and much more rewarding for high-quality posters. Substack as well. People can and do participate both here and there. Quality rises over there, and the upside there is tremendous. It's a place where you talk to public figures and not just about them, a place where you wind up chatting with and following as many people who disagree with you as you and they can handle, a place where usually you chat peacefully with your friends and occasionally the world gazes on. It's not for everyone, but they succeeded at culture-building in a way that matters. And it's more the commons than this place! It's a commons that is actually common.
I appreciate your thoughts and your passion here, and those who don't have my idiosyncratic reasons to leave have plenty of cause to stay and try to build in this place. Your sense of duty towards community speaks well of you.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
Thanks! I’ll see what I wind up doing—I don’t think taking time off school is necessary, but I was definitely more than a little distracted in class today. I figure I’ll see who reaches out to me about what, if anything.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
There’s no evidence either way about an arrangement except the accuser’s claim that he lied about having one.
If you do not consider breaking monogamous relationships up and giving career benefits to affair partners in a domain where he holds immense power to be evidence of wrongdoing, I will not be able to convince you otherwise, but my impression is that most people (correctly, in my estimation) disapprove of both.
When:
- someone is in a monogamous relationship, 2. Singer propositions her, 3. They have an affair, and 4. He publishes alongside her through the course and in the immediate aftermath of the affair…
I see very little left to demonstrate.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
I think his comment on sexual ethics provides a hint as to what his rationalization of having affairs would be: people get so caught up on sexual ethics when what really makes a difference in the world are things like donating to overseas charities and advocating for animal rights. Yes, his affairs were selfish, but they were a small selfishness as he was pushing large groups towards immense utilitarian good, so to focus on it is a mere distraction. Particularly if nobody finds out—as you say, what’s the harm?
Even in utilitarian terms, this is a rationalization. He knows the second-order effects of affairs and knows what society’s actual feelings on sexual ethics are. He knows, surely, that it is the stuff of scandals and cratered reputations, that it could bring immense harm not just to him but to the ideas he champions, to his philosophy as a whole.
And you can argue that in a utilitarian frame, but we are all at war with our own minds to one extent or another, and the possibility of rationalization depends on the strength of one’s safeguards. Singer’s brand of utilitarianism is unusually bad, I would argue (and I think his quote on sexual ethics supports my argument), at providing defenses against rationalizing sexual misconduct to oneself.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
They never promised $75k/year in compensation, $10k of which would be cash-based. This was the compensation package listed in their written, mutually agreed upon employment contract:
As compensation for the services provided, the Employee shall be paid $1,000 per month as well as accommodation, food, and travel expenses, subject to Employer's discretion.
They included another text in evidence where they restated part of it:
stipend and salary mean the same thing. in this instance, it's just $1000 a month in addition to covering travel, food, housing etc
The only apparent mention of $70000 as a number happened during a recorded interview (edited for clarity, meaning retained):
We're trying to think about what makes sense for compensation, because you're gonna be living with us, you're gonna be eating with us. How do you take into account the room and the board and stuff and the travel that's already covered? What we're thinking is a package where it's about the equivalent of being paid $70k a year in terms of the housing and the food, and you'll eat out every day and travel and do random fun stuff. And then on top of that, for the stuff that's not covered by room and board and travel is $1000 a month for basically anything else.
I would not personally take a job offering this compensation structure, but they were fully upfront about what the comp package was and it came pre-agreed as part of the deal. I see no grounds for complaints about dishonesty around it.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
Yes, that’s how every social group works, and there are consequences for every “not.”
Anyway, you’re one of the highest-volume, lowest-effort partisans here and you’ve been that way the entire time I’ve known you. If this forum hated Darwin for the reasons they said they did, you’d get at least as much criticism. I hope you enjoy the forum you’ve helped build. Take care.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
I feel like you’re eliding the point in arguing against my case that his behavior follows from his ethics by referring to the drowning child argument rather than the argument I linked, in which he states explicitly that sexual ethics is unimportant and sex raises no unique moral issues at all.
I’m not the one who tied them together—he is! “Why are you focusing on petty things like sex when there are kids starving in Africa?” is only the slightest rephrasing of his argument. I absolutely would expect someone who takes Singer’s explicitly stated attitude towards sexual ethics to have looser sexual ethics than someone who takes the mainstream societal view, and while it would be unfair to pre-judge him based on that, it is eminently reasonable to take it into account after the fact.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
2yr ago
Aye, that's the trouble with culture war spats, isn't it? None of them are abstract for everyone, and the culture war has real stakes. I want to live in a culture where my family and I can live according to our values and build alongside people who share those values. Emphasizing where surrogacy fits within that frame, and carving out space where people won't look at my family with the sort of suspicion and hissing condemnation @Catsnakes_ below illustrates is a real, important part of that.
To opponents of surrogacy, "literally purchasing another human being" and "providing compensation for the complex and demanding circumstances needed to create a human being" are a distinction without a difference; all I can say is that I see a crucial distinction, and see surrogacy as no more purchasing a human being than IVF or, more disputably, paying a hospital for childbirth. We live in a world where money is inextricably tied up in even intimate human interactions, but that doesn't strip them of their humanity or their worth.
As for changing my mind—look, obviously people stake a lot on major life decisions, and I can't pretend I expect my mind to change on this one. If it were to change, though, it would happen the same way it always does: either by convincing me that some of my values are poorly conceived, or working within the frame of my own values to convince me that my plans don't live up to them. That's why I don't really expect a change, of course—I've spent a long while considering my values and finding the right landing spot, and I suspect I'm mostly past the stage of serious, rather than marginal, adjustments. But the pathway to change is straightforward.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
I wouldn't call them all amazing scholars. As I mention in the post, Harvard hasn't selected primarily on intelligence for a long while. I would call the ones I met noticeably capable, well-adjusted, balanced people when compared to the median individual: smart, knowledgeable, conscientious, well-connected, well-off, and ambitious, the sort of people who stand out in any group they're in as being the ones who get things done. Not better than anyone else in the world, but noticeably highly selected in those domains.
This is a generalization, of course, not a rule, and reality is always less shiny than generalizations of this sort allow for, but I've been sincerely impressed by the Harvard (and Yale, and similar-school) graduates in my life.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
skillfully crafting the narrative such that if you're not paying attention you'll be led to the exact opposite of the correct conclusion, even with all of the relevant facts in hand. In the FAA case, one might conclude that the whole mess was just a bunch of innocent nonpartisan officials struggling to fulfill the law
I don't think this is fair to me at all. This is the final paragraph of my article.
I am confident that Buttigieg can see that just as well as the rest of us, that for many, it is simply the same neglect everybody else has shown towards the case that has led it to linger awkwardly unresolved for a decade. There is nothing to be gained from fighting the suit further. It is a black eye on the FAA, a black eye on the DOT, and a black eye on our public institutions as a whole. People have paid shockingly little attention to it as it's rolled through the courts, in part, no doubt, because anything touching on diversity is a hot topic that becomes a culture war football in a moment. My instinct, looking at the whole mess, is that the DOT and FAA should publicly apologize, settle, and do their best to begin making right what was so badly broken.
That's not a claim of struggling to fulfill the law--it's a claim that people did terrible things, got exposed as being terrible things, and have left a black eye on institutions that people have failed to pay attention to for partisan reasons.
I said, and will continue to say, that it is not fundamentally partisan. When I speak with partisans involved in it about the specific details, including ones with ties to the institutions in question, people are outraged. People certainly respond to it in partisan ways, but inflaming it as an issue where the people whose laps it got dumped in have no way to save face, where they're either conquered or they stick to their guns and win, does not actually help the issue get solved.
I will absolutely own up to framing my articles in ways that make people more likely to listen to them, but I think it's a grave misreading to take it as me absolving anyone of responsibility or treating it anything as other than a blatantly corrupt institutional failure on all levels.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
Have you yet been forced to perform a maoist style self-criticism session IRL where you admit to your sin of being white-ish and promise to do better ?
There is precisely one place where people have tried to force me to do something like that. It’s here, by posters like Coil but unfortunately also posters who are otherwise good, and I find that sadder than anything else about this place.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
11mo ago
Yeah, fair enough on that.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths remains the classic diagnosis of this.
TracingWoodgrains
the leaves that are green turn to brown
1yr ago
It’s not priced in, though, except perhaps to the extremely aware. Not a single article has been written about it, it gets not a single mention in his biographies, virtually nobody in the public knows any details of it. If it was an open secret, it certainly never escaped the circles closest to him, and while it’s possible and natural to assume he’d be the sort of person not to take serious issue with it, that doesn’t reveal much if anything about him actually doing it.
It makes sense, yes. But many things make sense without actually being part of people’s stories. He has been meticulous at keeping it out of the public eye.
Checking the timing on everything, his malicious edits started in earnest well before the ant farming really kicked off. He participated in the Gamergate nonsense, certainly, but I will firmly maintain my reading that his shift came before that point and Gamergate just solidified things.
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