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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   33459 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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Richard Hanania continues his criticism of Musk, as a guest author for UnHerd. (Sidenote: On his own website, he wrote "I never thought I would write an article for Sohrab Ahmari, as we disagree on a lot and I’ve regrettably insulted him a few times, but he reached out after my recent piece on Musk and asked if I would like to write something for UnHerd.") It's a combination of criticism of Musk as an intellectual, criticism of DOGE, and contrasting the intellectual traits adaptive for business and non-business success. The closing paragraphs are interesting:

To be sure, this analysis doesn’t explain everything about Musk’s recent behaviour. There may be other dimensions. I recently listened to a podcast he did in 2021 on the history of technology in warfare in which he seemed like a completely different man. He displayed not only knowledge in engineering, but history, including strategy and tactics in the Second World War. This supports the theory that something in this man’s brain broke around 2022, whether it was from drug use, social-media addiction, a combination of both, or something else. It’s possible that all his business ventures begin to fail from now, which would indicate a more general decline in his cognition and ability to regulate his emotions. Much reporting has been done on Musk’s drug use, which has been serious enough to worry many around him.

Yet if Musk continues to succeed as a businessman while being this dumb about everything related to public policy, he will end up having given us what was by far history’s greatest demonstration of the non-transferability of insight and skill across domains where wise leadership is necessary for human flourishing.

The parsimonious explanation is that Musk is using his voice to mold opinion, not to plainly tell the truth. This is “immoral” in the sense that punching someone is immoral, when they have been punching you for years. The news has been doing this forever. Everything else Hanania writes is not a full representation of facts, but a partisan slant to make you dislike Elon (eg, no proof that cutting Department of Ed employees will reduce the longterm collection of debt in any way that it deserves a moment’s thought; no entertaining the notion that he did not cut those specific employees; no entertaining the notion that “build fast and break things” may be the overall utilitarian strategy which simply looks worse when you write a slanted list of all the bad things; etc)

The parsimonious explanation is that Musk is using his voice to mold opinion, not to plainly tell the truth. This is “immoral” in the sense that punching someone is immoral, when they have been punching you for years.

Hard disagree. If your opponent burns down the epistemic commons, and you respond in kind, you have just ceded the moral high ground. See Scott Alexander's Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons:

Logical debate has one advantage over narrative, rhetoric, and violence: it’s an asymmetric weapon. That is, it’s a weapon which is stronger in the hands of the good guys than in the hands of the bad guys. In ideal conditions (which may or may not ever happen in real life) – the kind of conditions where everyone is charitable and intelligent and wise – the good guys will be able to present stronger evidence, cite more experts, and invoke more compelling moral principles.

If you abandon Simulacrum Level 1, you might win or lose, but to a proponent of the truth it will not matter more than it would matter to an atheist which religion won the memetic competition and established a theocracy.

Also, Hanania argues that Musk is worse than the liberals:

The worst offense here is the deboosting of links. Under the old regime, liberals wanted you to only rely on what they considered credible sources of information. Musk doesn’t want you to read anything at all that is not in meme or tweet form.

The woke left has obviously not been a steadfast ally of the Truth. They certainly pick the studies they cite as cannon fodder for their side, and this has skewed all of the social 'sciences'. The embrace blank-slatism to a degree that they are unable to even engage with HBD on its merits. But to their credit, they at least believe that their world view is correct. This opens up the -- theoretical -- possibility to engage with them over the factual state of the world and convert them.

By contrast, Trump (the guy who Musk is backing and sucking up to) has had a total disregard for Level 1 through his entire political career: birtherism, qanon, election denial to the migrants eating cats and dogs. He is not so much lying (which would mean knowing the object level truth, than subverting it) as much as bullshitting and presumably, the median Trump voter knows this.

If your opponent burns down the epistemic commons, and you respond in kind, you have just ceded the moral high ground.

It turns out the moral high ground is not useful.

The woke left has obviously not been a steadfast ally of the Truth. They certainly pick the studies they cite as cannon fodder for their side, and this has skewed all of the social 'sciences'.

And they've got something better than objective truth. They define the accepted truth. If you try to contradict them, they'll print a thousand authoritative studies that back up their work and prove you're not only an evil racist but an ignorant science denier too. THAT is useful. That means that whatever "objective criteria" you try to institute, they can define the truth so those criteria support whatever they want. You can't beat this with words; you can only beat this with an "objective truth" they can't mess with. Not one "so obvious" they can't mess with it, because there's nothing so obvious. One that is as futile to deny as an oncoming train.

It turns out the moral high ground is not useful.

I, as a person who hates and argues against the act of doxxing--regardless of who is involved, have just met an argument I can't defeat.

"Moral High Ground?" Fuggedabout it.

If that's a veiled threat, don't bother; I've already been doxxed.

If not, the point of the term "moral high ground" is that "high ground" is in some way a superior tactical position. If it is not, the term is misleading. Without that implication, complaining that someone should not respond because they will lose the "moral high ground" is basically saying they should follow your (not their!) principles and lose rather than violate them and stand a chance. If you want to say that, say that; using the analogy of a "moral high ground" implies otherwise.

I was absolutely sincere, very confused why you thought it was threat. I think Doxxing is about the most evil and dishonorable thing you can do with the Internet. I consider Swatting a form of doxxing.

What other argument--aside from "moral high ground" is there to not dox people?

It turns out the moral high ground is not useful.

And they've got something better than objective truth. They define the accepted truth. If you try to contradict them, they'll print a thousand authoritative studies that back up their work and prove you're not only an evil racist but an ignorant science denier too. THAT is useful. That means that whatever "objective criteria" you try to institute, they can define the truth so those criteria support whatever they want. You can't beat this with words; you can only beat this with an "objective truth" they can't mess with. Not one "so obvious" they can't mess with it, because there's nothing so obvious. One that is as futile to deny as an oncoming train.

they they they

The claim was that team Musk+Trump have left the level 1 reality + destroying regular people's opportunity to seriously discuss level 1 reality on social media. Instead of employing " "objective truth" " in quotes, they employ bullshit. As far as I understand, you argue it is good and necessary because you will lose to "they" (Team Blue) otherwise?

Consider the downside of this policy: There are several examples modern and past what happens to a country when its governance is based on bullshit. Requiring your underlings and associates to repeat your bullshit back to you leads to success of people who are good at bullshitting or stupid enough not to know the difference. When ideological vibes and feels become more important than material reality, being knowledgeable about material reality becomes a hindrance in a smart person's career. Venezuela and South Africa are prime examples of such countries. If you try to build a dystopia of lies out of Ayn Rand novel except nominal political valence switched, more likely you are going to get more of Trumpzuela where big corp CEOs continue to get fat government contracts to build things that don't work as long they fat flatter Trump's ego. It is unlikely to be a cathartic step in a heroic journey where you win the fight and get to start building country you like after you win. The bullshit apparatus will say that fight is still going on no matter what it achieves. It was built for having power and repeating bullshit and after it has been built, its prime objective is to perpetuate itself.

This dovetails to a more important complaint. If the politician supposedly representing my tribe is running on vibes and bullshit, I can't trust them to do anything long-term useful. Musk claims that DOGE has achieved an amount-you-can't-keep-track-of in saving government expenses and exposing fraud but it has not. Instead, the claim is that Musk does his best to foster an information environment where it is difficult to find out what they really achieved and how they could achieve what they set out to do.

Let me extrapolate: Team Red says they will do something about gender ideology in schools, do something about the border and the illegals, do something about China, do something about economy and trade. Do I really want to hear about Team Red's performance concerning these issues by the way of DOGEfied information environment? Truth-seeker is always in danger of learning something new, followers of philosophical system of abandon-reality get to bullshit everyone, including their voters.

The claim was that team Musk+Trump have left the level 1 reality + destroying regular people's opportunity to seriously discuss level 1 reality on social media. Instead of employing " "objective truth" " in quotes, they employ bullshit. As far as I understand, you argue it is good and necessary because you will lose to "they" (Team Blue) otherwise?

I am saying that most of social media was never really discussing "objective truth". Instead, they were discussing accepted truth, as defined by the institutions. Trying to hew to THAT means you lose, because the institutions are controlled by Team Blue.

Bullshit, of course, has been a staple of political discourse forever. It's just that Team Blue has been able to pass their bullshit off as objective truth for a long time.

Consider the downside of this policy: There are several examples modern and past what happens to a country when its governance is based on bullshit. Requiring your underlings and associates to repeat your bullshit back to you leads to success of people who are good at bullshitting or stupid enough not to know the difference.

This is where Team Blue was taking us.

Musk claims that DOGE has achieved an amount-you-can't-keep-track-of in saving government expenses and exposing fraud but it has not. Instead, the claim is that Musk does his best to foster an information environment where it is difficult to find out what they really achieved and how they could achieve what they set out to do.

One cannot expect Musk, as a principal of DOGE, to give objectively true facts about it. He will boost it and should be expected to do so.

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