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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32148 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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TikTok is a Chinese Superweapon

Basic argument of the article is simple:

  1. Social media addiction has clear psychological and societal downsides. It can shrink and monopolize our attention, make us more anxious and lead to damaging fads like stupid "challenges" that kids do.

  2. TikTok is very good at this due to its ability to adapt to the user and the short attention span videos require.

  3. China is aware of this and has demanded that Bytedance moderate TikTok moderate TikTok for China (so as to encourage people to wish to be things like engineers instead of influencers) and banning it for Chinese kids, while allowing it to run rampant in the West.

  4. This is sort of a practical proof of the degeneracy and internal contradictions of Western capitalism and a deliberate attack.

An interesting look at how the Chinese view the West through the eyes of a powerful Chinese policy-maker:

Wang writes:

“Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification… Commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems. These problems, in turn, can increase the pressure on the political and administrative system.”

Thus, by turning everything into a product, Western capitalism devours every aspect of American culture, including the traditions that bind it together as a nation, leading to atomization and polarization. The commodification also devours meaning and purpose, and to plug the expanding spiritual hole that this leaves, Americans turn to momentary pleasures—drugs, fast food, and amusements—driving the nation further into decadence and decay.

For Wang, then, the US’s unprecedented technological progress is leading it into a chasm. Every new microchip, TV, and automobile only distracts and sedates Americans further. As Wang writes in his book, “it is not the people who master the technology, but the technology that masters the people.” Though these words are 30 years old, they could easily have been talking about social media addiction.

Wang theorized that the conflict between the US’s economic system and its value system made it fundamentally unstable and destined for ever more commodification, nihilism, and decadence, until it finally collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. To prevent China’s own technological advancement leading it down the same perilous path, Wang proposed an extreme solution: neo-authoritarianism. In his 1988 essay, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture,” Wang wrote that the only way a nation can avoid the US’s problems is by instilling “core values”—a national consensus of beliefs and principles rooted in the traditions of the past and directed toward a clear goal in the future

The bolded is especially relevant to the final solution to what the author (speculatively) considers an attack by a civilizational competitor:

That leaves only one solution: the democratic one. In a democracy responsibility is also democratized, so parents must look out for their own kids. There’s a market for this, too: various brands of parental controls can be set on devices to limit kids’ access (though many of these, including TikTok’s own controls, can be easily bypassed.)

The article first concedes that China is right that the market will drive us to the bottom of short-attention-span content and degeneracy, but then its solution is the platitude of "parental responsibility" in the face of an unprecedented technological challenge.

We've never dealt with this problem before. The idea that individual parents are going to figure this out when they're in competition with some of the most sophisticated companies in the world who've totally saturated the web with their influence seems patently absurd to me.

Especially in a system where the state is usurping more and more responsibility for child welfare. But, when it comes time to regulate tech companies, the state is powerless?

This sort of learned helplessness is common in the West, even when China is providing a counter-example of what can be done (i.e. regulation, which the author writes off because people will just make a new site*). But the argument is: in an ideologically fractured world the state has no right to impose its preferences in terms of the good life on citizens who may disagree. Now, it may be that the West is too far down the anomie and moral anarchy road to change course. But then the question is whether this is palatable to anyone else who is shopping for a civilizational model?

Especially since there's a strong argument that it is precisely this sort of liberal-influenced learned helplessness that leads to the very fracture of core values that could help mitigate such crises. I would bet that a 1950s America would have more social cohesion to push back against some of these things, but that's due to a shared culture that has been destroyed by...well, take your pick: neoliberalism, secularization, individualism, mass immigration, therapy and the breakdown of homogeneity, racial animus.

So it may be true that liberals - once their culture has become sufficiently fractured - cannot solve this problem (due to the ideology's resistance to compelling certain choices). But that may be an argument to never become liberal in the first place.

* If only someone had applied this insight to the drug war.

Social media addiction has clear psychological and societal downsides. It can shrink and monopolize our attention, make us more anxious and lead to damaging fads like stupid "challenges" that kids do.

I guess the whole argument fell flat for me because I am wholly unconvinced by this main premise, that tiktok is definitely bad for people.

First and most ridiculously, we can't seriously believe that 'damaging fads' like tiktok challenges are a serious source of concern. Kids filming themselves doing something silly hardly seems like a phenomenon that will lead to the breakdown of American society. At worst some of the most dangerous fads kill a particularly stupid kid or two on average every year, maybe. So the Chinese have created a superweapon that works by... exerting an extremely slight eugenic effect on the american population? Lol. Is the idea that kids should be studying instead of doing tiktok challenges?? Baffled by this point.

More reasonably, there is the claim that social media might make us more anxious. I was under the impression that sites like facebook and instagram might do this, because people compare themselves unfairly to the 'highlights' of other people's lives which make up the typical facebook feed, and thus feel anxious that they are not having as successful, exciting, etc. lives as their friends. I was not aware that tiktok had this effect. However, if I was to give the original argument the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that tiktok use indeed could play a part in causing anxiety, I'm still not convinced of this in itself as a deleterious effect. What actual downsides (in the sense of, geopolitically measurable downsides, if the assertion is that tiktok is a 'chinese superweapon' the intention or effect of which is presumably to influence geopolitics) is anxiety actually associated with? Anxiety is a potentially less-enjoyable subjective state experienced by an individual. But are individuals with anxiety for example measurably less productive citizens? Why isn't it plausible that they could be more productive citizens? Because it certainly seems that way to me. My intuitive perception is that hippies are the type of person you get when you lower the anxiety in the equation, and people who are struggling harder to get ahead in the rat race are the type you get when you turn the dial up a bit. Either way, I'd like to see an explanation or some data that would suggest societies with greater proportions of 'anxious' individuals are actually meaningfully less geopolitically competitive than less anxious societies.

Finally, there is the assertion that social media can both 'shrink' and 'monopolize' our attention. I'll admit I have no rebuttal for the claim that any sufficiently entertaining product could be a superweapon in the sense that it could 'monopolize' our attention, making people want to use it so much that they forsake other productive things they would have done otherwise. It is entirely possibly that tiktok is this sort of entertainment product. However, I suppose I ultimately doubt that tiktok will really cause people to use it instead of i.e. going to work. As to whether or not tiktok will 'shrink' our attention, I'm not skeptical of this but rather of how bad it is. I'm sure tiktok could cause attention spans to go down. But again, could someone point me to what actual geopolitically measurable loss will be incurred from this? Perhaps attention spans could shrink so small that people will no longer be able to appreciate instances of long-form of high culture such as historically important novels. Will this help China win the new cold war? Is the idea that maybe fewer people will become geopolitically important human resources like i.e. engineers, because they won't have the attention span to study the required material? Attention spans have already been declining for decades, over this timespan has the US produced fewer engineers per capita?

The point that China themselves is demanding domestic censorship of tiktok, or that we should generally appreciate their understanding of which social ills to prioritize ameliorating, is wholly unconvincing as well. Aside from the fact that china is already known for seeking complete control of the online information to which their citizens have access, they are also known for their leadership buying the claims of moral panics. A few months ago they passed a law highly restricting video game time for children under 18, and a few months before that they banned effeminate-seeming men from appearing on TV or being featured on other forms of popular media. Rather than smart, agile avoidance of new potential vectors of social decline, these seem more to me like the laws your asian friend's grandpa might pass if he was the dictator of a large country, i.e. motivated by the vague sentiment that these things are bad rather than an actual analysis that video game addiction or the feminizing of your nations men are serious social problems. Plenty of studies show that playing video games more than the average person is even associated with higher IQ or other benefits, but of course the most visible effects of gaming to an elderly asian man are probably that he thinks his grandson plays too much instead of studying, and that a small portion of people get addicted to the point of actual productivity loss.

Overall I guess I just think the whole 'social media bad' thing might be a moral panic itself. There are plenty of ways to easily criticize of social media use right now by pointing to things like declining attention spans. But honestly I bet there are also plenty of unexamined upsides, too. Reading books for pleasure was once widely regarded as a waste of time (before other forms of media were created to take its place as the 'time-waster' scapegoat). Now reading books is widely regarded as one of the best ways to become smarter. Who's to say social media use won't eventually be this in time? It almost seems to me intuitive that things that shower you with cognitive stimulus like the constant stream of information through a tiktok feed could be an intelligence-increasing activity. To me the jury's still out.

This all has been discussed before. In short, conservatives are projecting their geopolitical worries and ambitions, but TikTok is a big deal and could be used geopolitically, with some cleverness. Yours truly, July 2020:

[...] In other words, there's an inevitable churn of social networks, and a massive geopolitical incentive to insert your offer into the queue. We could call a shifting morphing system that defines a "generation" a Schelling space - a space where Shelling points for a demographic get discovered. And while crude, straightforward propaganda would probably not work well, the person who excises certain attractors from this space can effectively forge the generation as he sees fit. Sometimes it's segregated by language and locale, sometimes not. In Russia, it's Odnoklassniki (Classmates) for "boomers" (conservative, rah-rah patriotic, apprehensive of modern stuff) and Facebook-esque Vkontakte for millenials (apolitical to liberal, smug, educated). The space at the bleeding edge of global teenage hip-ness is Twitter-Discord-TikTok pipeline, if I know my zoomers well.

Americans know this - progressive businessmen and conservative think tank analytics alike. They have profited immensely off Silicon Valley's dominance in social networks market. So now that China is trying to do the same (and succeeding! In the most valuable cohort, no less!), they are rallying to the defense of their brainwashing monopoly in their characteristically, maddeningly un-self-aware manner. And the other prong of their culture-war machine (see the small script at the page's bottom) is concerned with cementing said monopoly over domestic networks which dominate in older cohorts. Facebook is, if I'm not mistaken, what Millenials are all about. Better purge the "hate" from there. Groypers, Pepes, "ackschually police shootings are not...", all that filth. Right, Zuck?

If TikTok is banned, I expect Zoomers to retreat to Discord, and the same ADL-coordinated censorship to reach them there. Maybe Kyle expects this too. A meager price for stopping 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波, I suppose.

Gurwinder is just a self-help guru, and the post is an agglomeration of unrelated, poorly-justified ideas towards a conclusion. Not that tiktok isn't bad.

Other platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, use recommendation algorithms as features to enhance the core product. With TikTok, the recommendation algorithm is the core product [...] Since the For You algorithm favors only the most instantly mesmerizing content, its constructive videos [...] tend to be relegated to the fringes in favor of tasty but malignant junk info.

Popular twitter, facebook, and instagram posts are just as much 'junk info', though. A MrBeast or Ryan Trahan video are just as 'mesmerizing' and non-'constructive' as big tiktoks. Instagram or twitter photos of hot girls aren't any better than lipsyncing. And if the content isn't observably worse, that a 'recommendation algorithm is the core product' probably doesn't matter.

This allows it to feed your obsessions, showing you hypnotic content again and again, reinforcing its imprint on your brain. This content can include promotion of self-harm and eating disorders, and uncritical encouragement of sex-reassignment surgery [...] can cause mass psychogenic illness: [...] otherwise healthy young girls who watched clips of Tourette’s sufferers developed Tourette’s-like tics.

'hypnotic'? 'imprint on your brain'? Something neurological or manipulative is implied, but it doesn't seem to mean anything. And 'self-harm and eating disorders, sex reassignment surgery, and tourettes' are both very small parts of tiktok, and also present on twitter, reddit, and facebook, with no evidence provided tiktok is any better at promoting them than other platforms.

A more common way TikTok promotes irrational behavior is with viral trends and “challenges,” where people engage in a specific act of idiocy in the hope it’ll make them TikTok-famous. [...] One challenge, known as “devious licks”, encourages kids to vandalize property, while the “blackout challenge,” in which kids purposefully choke themselves with household items, has even led to several deaths, including a little girl a few days ago.

Again, the idea that 'dangerous challenges' happened on other social media platforms was big long before tiktok. random example. No evidence provided tiktok is worse. The simplest explanation is - people have been doing stupid things since before social media, and continued doing them on social media.

There’s a substantial body of research showing a strong association between smartphone addiction, shrinkage of the brain’s gray matter, and “digital dementia,” an umbrella term for the onset of anxiety and depression and the deterioration of memory, attention span, self-esteem, and impulse control (the last of which increases the addiction).

I'm pretty sure this research should've been swept away by the replication crisis, but addressing that would make this post way too long. I'll just note that the study linked doesn't mention tiktok, and is about general smartphone use. Gurwinder then idly speculates about why tiktok would be worse about other apps:

In order to develop and maintain mental faculties like memory and attention span, one needs to practice using them. TikTok, more than any other app, is designed to give you what you want while requiring you to do as little as possible. It cares little who you follow or what buttons you click; its main consideration is how long you spend watching. Its reliance on machine learning rather than user input, combined with the fact that TikTok clips are so short they require minimal memory and attention span, makes browsing TikTok the most passive, uninteractive experience of all major platforms.

Tiktok clips are shorter than youtube videos, but longer in 'time spent per thing' than tweets, many facebook posts, or instagram or snapchat images, so the attention span argument doesn't really hold. The 'reliance on machine learning rather than user input' is just confused - machine learning operates on user input, of which 'watch time' is one, and machine learning based on 'like' counts isn't obviously better than based on watch time.

If it’s the passive nature of online content consumption that causes atrophy of mental faculties, then TikTok, as the most passively used platform, will naturally cause the most atrophy. Indeed many habitual TikTokers can already be found complaining on websites like Reddit about their loss of mental ability, a phenomenon that’s come to be known as “TikTok brain.”

"Social media makes you stupid" is a widespread belief on many social media platforms, and vaguely connecting an intuition about "atrophy of mental faculties" to a study just doesn't work.

So, all of his arguments for why tiktok is worse than other social media platforms are just wrong. This makes 'china is subverting us with tiktok' hollow. More briefly on the china side - china's tiktok-for-adults is, as of a week ago, just as degenerate as US tiktok, with lots of fake stories and sexy girls. China's regulation for chinese, but not american, minors is very simply explained by a conflict between a growth/profit-seeking business and regulators - chinese regulators aren't even considering american kids, and american regulators aren't interested. I'll stop there because this is already annoyingly long.

Thanks for summarizing the article for me. I tried reading it, but it was just so Godawful long that I couldn't get through it once he started lionizing the little known foreign thinker, while criticizing the well known Anglophone for taking drugs, while engaging in endless low-grade sneering about people dancing or committing minor crimes for fun. Sometimes I get halfway through a new substack, and I just want to know the time and circumstances of the writer's last orgasm with another person.

For a while circa late 2019 to early 2020 the astrology app The Pattern was a fad among my friends. You punched in your data and it gave you a daily horoscope. Nothing deep, just a little fortune-cookie wisdom every day. I joked that this was an untapped market for Mike Bloomberg to purchase ads in! What if, close to primary days in key states, he paid The Pattern to just tell people in that state to vote for him. Or maybe more subtle, "The position of Uranus relative to Mercury indicates that you will fair better over the next four years under political leaders with real world business experience, and should avoid leaders who got where they are through political game-playing." Not too subtle, these are astrology fans we're talking to.

I think the far more dangerous use of TikTok would be similar. Think of The Mule, the greatest threat that the Foundation ever faced. His psychic powers didn't kill, they didn't cripple, they simply demoralized. They slightly depressed the enemy fighters, they took away that last 5% that wins or loses games.

Can TikTok do the same? Can it just turn down the dials on a soldier, make him less effective? I don't know. But I'm sure people are trying to figure that out right now, and I doubt any of them have my best interests at heart. Can we pitch people's moods up or down by throwing them certain pieces of content and avoiding others? It seems plausible. I can be put in a better mood by one piece of media, and in a worse mood by another. People seem to get implausibly angry and frustrated by certain meme arguments online about politics and culture war shit; could TikTok just turn all that up to 11 and cause chaos?

I'm not so sure, I kind of doubt Social Media's broader impact on the conversation, because the testimony to it always seems one sided. "Your opinions are impacted in ways you barely understand, His opinions are entirely astroturfed; come read my substack to get the real dope." Rarely have I ever seen anyone say "ACAB, but the George Floyd riots were driven by a social media mind virus." It's always the bad things that other people want that are fake and gay hailcorporate astroturf; your own causes are pure, you arrived at them through the application of pure reason in a vacuum under a Bodhi tree. The instant writer has no doubt that only a degeneracy-inducing Chinese superweapon could get people to enjoy dancing or watching pretty girls make funny drinks. Yet he doesn't stop to wonder why he is the 10 millionth fucking guy this week {including most of my own TikTok feed} to give an introductory lecture on Stoicism.

Can TikTok do the same? Can it just turn down the dials on a soldier, make him less effective? I don't know.

According to a Canadian army officer I know, yes. He took a course during the post-Afghanistan years that was supposed to teach “strategic thinking”. One of their case studies was a problem that the US military faced: amid high unemployment in places like Karachi, Pakistani youths with nothing better to do were being recruited by the Taliban and crossing the mountainous border regions to kill American soldiers. How to solve this?

The obvious and favored course of action was to apply airpower and bomb the heck out of suspected tunnel areas and waypoints in the mountains with B52s. Cost: on the order of $100m - $1b. However, an alternative course of action that was considered took a PSYOPS angle: buy a few hundred generators and a few thousand Xboxes and set up free gaming centers around Karachi. The theory being, by distracting the youth with video games, they would be less likely to seek adventure and meaning by joining up with the Taliban. Cost: on the order of $1m - $10m.

The leadership at the time chose the former course of action. But several years later, the latter course of action is being studied by aspiring senior officers as a brilliant example of innovative and strategic thinking that could have saved a portion of the trouble of fighting a war.

His psychic powers didn't kill, they didn't cripple, they simply demoralized. They slightly depressed the enemy fighters, they took away that last 5% that wins or loses games.

See also the Honored Matres in Frank Herbert's Dune series, who "won half the battle" of their conflicts by promising supreme ecstasy to those who pleased them. Or Aristophanes's Lysistrata, where women bring a war to an end by refusing to put out.

I suspect that a similar dynamic is one of the West's weapons against Islamists, though the classic suicidal Muslim terrorist is apparently a young Muslim man who is ashamed of his sinning and who wants to buy a way into paradise at the cost of his (and others') lives.

but then its solution is the platitude of "parental responsibility"

I'm not sure how its really a platitude. Culture is a far more effective weapon against many civilizational threats than state policy making. The state forcing policy from the top has significant costs and limited effectiveness. (See covid) People deciding on their own that something is taboo and shunning it is effective in a way the state just isn't. If you're saying organizing bottom up cultural changes is hard, that's true, but that's kind of why they work. They're not "organized" in any real sense. They just happen so long as the state gets out of the way. Not always, and not necessarily in ideal ways, but that's true of any other method as well.

Edit:And just as a note, calling tiktok a civilizational threat is pretty absurd anyways.

Material conditions of Americans require them to outsource most of the parenting to the State. They are in organized education for all of their high alertness daylight hours Monday through Friday outside of breaks. Mothers who were the primary moral pedagogues of the young in history (see Augustine) are pressured to work stressful jobs and were themselves raised by stressed overtaxed mothers. It’s not feasible for parents and communities to instill real morality in a young who are forced into bureaucratic education and then need to spend the remaining hours studying and checking off college app boxes to obtain a high-status profession. What’s left is the Asian mode of punishing bad results, which is useful for creating fearful and dedicated workers, but will create an essentially immoral population.

Material conditions of Americans require them to outsource most of the parenting to the State.

Considering how little effect what school you go to has on you and how big of an effect the makeup of your family has on you (how your parents interact with you, divorce, single motherhood, etc) I think this statement is a probably just outright wrong. In terms of time commitment it might be true that the state/schools are a bigger factor (although considering school holidays I'm not sure its actually true) but in terms of effect I don't think the evidence suggests anything like that.

Also, I suspect much less individual care from parents was given to children on average in the past. I actually remember a study that suggested this (IIRC mothers spend about as much time on a child as they did in the past but fathers spend far more) Of course, I didnt save the link.

Really, I don't think there's any evidence for most of your claims. If it is true that children are mainly raised (in terms of effect) by the state, its probably mainly true in cases where social institutions fail (again, mainly divorce and single motherhood)

Edit:also, the claim that mothers work stressful jobs, relative to the past, seems almost entirely the opposite of reality. Almost all women through history worked on small farms toiling at housework day to night. Hunger gatherers societies were ultra violent and incredibly unstable. The current era is by far the lowest stress for anyone, mothers included, excluding the sort of kazcynskian over socialized sense of stress.

I think it depends on what kinds of things you’re insisting are a culture. Most people, being essentially raised in those institutions from infancy have more time being taught the values, attitudes, and beliefs of their institutions and their cohort of similarly raised peers than their families of origin (although there are exceptions, most of which come from either purposely dropping out, or very strong and active counter programming). In that sense, despite democratic dressing, we essentially live in the thought experiments of Plato’s Republic or Brave New World. The average non-fundamentalist of any religion has essentially the same secular humanist, post enlightenment, consumerist world view. They all essentially believe in the same things, democracy (particularly liberal democracy), human rights, secularism, sexual liberation, and capitalism.

This is historically pretty weird. In times past, you could and often would find tribes just a few miles apart believing wildly different things, practicing wildly different religions based on wildly different assumptions. You’d also find it very difficult to force ideology and conformity on large populations. A Greek once tried to force the Jews to be polytheists. It didn’t work. Modern child warehousing has done wonders to de-Christianize the West, because it takes kids out of the home and spends hours teaching them that their parents are backwards and wrong.

You massively over estimate the uniformity of American beliefs. If you travel from NYC, to Salt Lake, to Phoenix, the rural Midwest, the values indeed differ massively and always have. The only reason it might seem otherwise is because people self segregate. Most people succeed in seeking out their ingroup where ever they go. If they can't succeed (Like culturally black people in Salt Lake) they generally avoid those spaces.

There is an underpinning of enlightenment (far more than "post enlightenment") values among most of the non hyper urban settings, but I don't think that is built all that much by the schools, but by basic American tradition. Myths are powerful, and the American myth is an exceptionally powerful myth, up there with the Christian and Muslim myths. The American mythos leaves a lot of space for disagreement though.

You seem to believe institutions like schools are far more effective than I do. They're very effective for a certain type of person--mainly the quiet kids who get good grades and follow orders. Those kids are basically selected for by their predecessors in government backed institution. After they are selected they have an outsized voice, but probably not an outsized functional impact. If they had an outsized impact the leftist institutions would likely not have to rely on immigrant votes to eek out a 50% win rate in elections.

China is the new red scare, replacing the USSR. Every generation has one it seems. Before that it was ever-present threat of Islamic terrorism, which unlike the threat of China was not entirely unfounded. Remember all that hype about Huawei spying electronics a couple years ago, which vanished from the headlines after Covid came. Or about Trump wanting to ban TikTok, which predictably went nowhere . Whenever politicians want to boost sagging approval numbers or project decisiveness , pointing fingers at China is a surefire bet.

Before that it was ever-present threat of Islamic terrorism, which unlike the threat of China was not entirely unfounded

?

China is far stronger than Islamic terrorists. They probably have enough deliverable nuclear weapons to cripple the US. Huge economy, huge scientific potential, huge military, poised to take the island our high-tech industry depends upon... What could be more threatening than China? The Soviets never had an economy like China's, never had a functional ideology or numerical superiority.

Islamic terrorism is a real thing. China is mostly sable rattling. It can do more, but chooses not to.

But we're talking about 'threat' here. I can be threatened by someone doing nothing. The US is threatened by China doing its 'sabre rattling' when that sabre rattling is building a giant fleet and powerful military. Hitler didn't do anything substantive in foreign policy but what could loosely and broadly be described as 'sabre rattling' from 33 to Anschluss but he threatened a lot of people in that time by making Germany much stronger.

Hitler was way worse , and this is not just based on hindsight but the ideology he espoused. he wanted a 4th Reich that would last 1000 years. this was in 1934. He knew what he wanted and wasted little time to try to achieve it. china has not done much in almost half a century. China is mostly a technocratic state that wants to realize some ill-defined Marxist utopia in some perpetually indefinite future, not a militaristic one like Nazi Germany. Realizing this goal means China cannot act too rash. One of the fundamental assumptions of Marxism is that capitalistic states will collapse due to contractions inherent in capitalism, so there is no need to invade or conquer them.

contractions inherent in capitalism

I think that's a radical feminist argument, actually.

I mostly agree with you, although I am not sure how many CCP people even believe in the Marxist millennium. Their Marxism seems largely in service of their technocracy: non-communist societies are full of contradictions, but these can be resolved through giving power enlightened and benevolent experts. German social democracy without the "democracy" part. Fundamentally, it's actually a very similar ideology to many Western politicians, except that the latter at least officially believe that competitive democracy is an essential form of accountability, whereas the CCP believes in internal party and heavily pre-selected democracy.

That China hasn't done much yet could be either due to their desires or their capabilities. If it's desires we have no problem, they're pacific. But if it's capabilities, then we have a threat. Once they feel like a campaign is winnable, then they'll launch it.

If you build a powerful military, you presumably have some reason to use it. The US does feel threatened by China doing that, that's what the whole pivot to Asia was about, that's why they're scrambling to build up the navy again, develop high-end firepower. The Pentagon describes China as the 'pacing threat' they need to keep ahead of. It very much seems to be a question of capabilities. Fifty years ago, China was willing and capable to push back the US from its immediate land neighbors in Korea and Vietnam. Why would they not want to push the US further back now that they're stronger? They find the US threatening, partially from an ideological/political perspective (since the US harasses and sabotages non-democracies routinely) and they want Taiwan deeply.

In addition to Taiwan and various small islands, China has many strategic interests all around the world. They're now a very large economy, they have interests everywhere, citizens they want to protect, resources they want to secure, markets they want to dominate. The US has a bunch of naval bases everywhere for similar reasons, as did the British. China is building bases where they can for those reasons.

This seems to be a version of this fallacy: "Previously we defeated a threat, therefore it wasn't a true threat, otherwise we couldn't have defeated it."

There were very legitimate reasons for the Red Scare. Communism had just conquered half the world and was influential among Western elites as well. It was a good thing that people worked hard to contain it.

Likewise, there are legitimate reasons to be afraid of China. And yes, there are bad reasons as well. These bad reasons should be attacked on their own merits, rather than a blanket dismissal of the impossibility of threats because earlier threats were defeated.

There were very legitimate reasons for the Red Scare. Communism had just conquered half the world and was influential among Western elites as well. It was a good thing that people worked hard to contain it.

I dunno if the same thing as being conquered. In 1939 Eastern Bloc was formed during the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. This possibly saved those countries from a worse fate. Also, those counties more or less governed as demonstrative entities. It was far from ideal but not like being conquered. Also, the USSR and the USA were allied against the axis powers, so even wit hthe benefit of hindsight I don't think Russia would want to just forfeit this goodwill that had otherwise been created.

In 1939 Eastern Bloc was formed during the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. This possibly saved those countries from a worse fate.

As long as you weren't a Jew but an ethnic Pole, being invaded by USSR was the worse fate, both in 1939 (Katyń, to name one thing) and in the last phase of the war when the "liberating" red army was marching westward, raping and pillaging to its heart's content (estimating the number of rapes during that time in hundreds of thousands is possibly lowballing it, about 9% of the Polish population had syphilis after the war).

Do you think it would have been a good idea to let the USSR own enough major US broadcasting networks in the 1980s that they could control the media that an entire generation sees? Because that seems to be more or less the position that China is in right now with Tiktok, whether or not we can prove that they are abusing their control.

Tiktok is one of the top five social media platforms in the US, not the only one. China isn't, even if tiktok was used for such, in a position to control the media an entire generation sees.

And - is there any evidence China is doing anything, at all, with tiktok to influence the US population, politically or otherwise? The only political content I'm aware of on tiktok is exactly the same as content on other social media platforms - lots of center-left stuff, lots of center-right stuff, some far-left stuff, a bit of far-right stuff but it's mostly censored.

Tiktok is one of the top five social media platforms in the US, not the only one. China isn't, even if tiktok was used for such, in a position to control the media an entire generation sees.

Those top five platforms break unevenly across generations. Kids by and large aren't using Facebook proper. And of the remainder, several (WhatsApp, facebook messenger, imessage) mainly offer communication rather than content. I think Gen Z spends more time on Tiktok than any other single media source.

And - is there any evidence China is doing anything, at all, with tiktok to influence the US population, politically or otherwise?

No. The questions are, one, would you even know if they were, and two, should you really wait for them to start before you make a move?

Suppose the USSR in the 1980s offered a broadcast TV network whose content seemed superficially indistinguishable from the other major networks -- no obvious evidence (as far as we know! yet!) that they were using their lever for propaganda. Do you think it would have been a good idea to let them expand their stake until they could control the media that an entire generation sees?

Here's data on gen z social media platform use from June 2022 - youtube is the biggest, and tiktok is tied with instagram for second, with snapchat (and facebook!) close behind. If we do 'minutes spent' for all ages, youtube and tiktok are tied for first in april 2022, with twitter, snap, fb, and insta each at >2/3 of YT and tiktok's minutes. Or another 'minutes spent' for gen z specifically in aug 2022 has youtube at 2x tiktok. I'm sure there's lots of sources of variation here, but this doesn't look at all like a monopoly to me. Note that some of these may show as 'exclusive premium statistic' when you click on them - that's just their paywall on free statistics, it shows up after you click a few. Statistia isn't the best datasource, but it's certainly the easiest to use.

Suppose the USSR in the 1980s offered a broadcast TV network [...] until they could control the media that an entire generation sees

We let Russia Today get 3M twitter followers, and it's much more like a 'broadcast TV network' than tiktok. But it isn't growing that quickly. If tiktok was going to become a >50% media source for a generation, that would be a problem - but I don't think that'll happen. Note that youtube made an almost exact clone of tiktok as YouTube Shorts that's now very popular. Also, 'broadcast TV networks' tend to have more editorial control over content than tiktok does, and have much more of an emphasis on news and politics. All together, tiktok manipulating the US conversation doesn't seem like a big risk.

As discussed down-thread, tiktok is not much different from what other companies, social networks do. I have a tiktok account admittedly and have not seen anything that can even remotely be considered CCP propaganda (or maybe that means it's working...hmm).

So you'd be okay with the USSR owning major US broadcasting networks in the 1980s that they could control the media that an entire generation sees, as long as their content so far seemed superficially similar to American-owned broadcasting networks?

I mean... do you not see the strategic threat? Or do you just trust that China won't make use of it?

If it could be demonstrated TikTok poses a threat to national security, not just suspicions but actual evidence of harvesting intelligence info, then I could see the justification for censoring it. But merely for being addicting, no. All social networks gather user information, which is sent to a central server. This is necessary for a social network to function, so I don't see how this can be avoided. Banning a site which is as popular as TikTok introduces externalities , especially for a country as large as the US. People are going to be wondering what happened to it, such censorship may discourage entrepreneurship and VC activity. It sets a precedent that I don't think anyone wants to embark on.

I didn't say anything about harvesting intelligence info. The threat is in controlling the programming of the media that an entire generation sees. It's a vector through which they can influence America.

again, there is no evidence that TikTok as a vector is worse than competing sites. it's mostly people dancing and doing stuff like that.

I didn't say anything about harvesting intelligence info

You said "do you not see the strategic threat?" That can mean many things. I cannot read your mind. working on that.

You said "do you not see the strategic threat?" That can mean many things. I cannot read your mind. working on that.

I ask only that you read my comments. Specifically here's what I included in my first comment (emphasis added): "Do you think it would have been a good idea to let the USSR own enough major US broadcasting networks in the 1980s that they could control the media that an entire generation sees?" I don't know how you go from "control the media that an entire generation sees" to "they're trying to steal our personal data." The connection just doesn't make sense to me.

again, there is no evidence that TikTok as a vector is worse than competing sites.

So is your answer yes, it would be fine for the US to have allowed the USSR to own enough major US broadcasting networks in the 1980s that they could control the media that an entire generation sees, as long as their content so far seemed superficially similar to American-owned broadcasting networks? You allow the geopolitical adversary to insinuate themselves into your nation's information infrastructure until and unless you actually catch them using it to run an info op?

The concern isn't that tiktok is spreading pro-CCP or even anti-western propoganda. The concern is that it is addictive and stealing our youth's attention. Yes, other social media do this too, but tiktok is particularly good at stealing attention and time.

The chinese aspect comes into play when you realize that tiktok in china is a different app. If China thinks this attention-stealing is bad, they're going to fix their app rather than the international version. Also, tiktok allows them to China on international users (this isn't the article's point, but it is the main concern you hear about in mainstream media)

Yes, other social media do this too, but tiktok is particularly good at stealing attention and time.

the data shows tiktok is not worse than YouTube in this regard

https://www.oberlo.com/media/1659521248-average-time-spent-on-social-media-in-2022-by-platform.png?fit=max&fm=jpg&w=1800

I just find it funny that voices are now being raised about "protecting our culture" solely against a Chinese tech firm. If you take this argument to its logical conclusion, you'd start censoring films, banning pornography etc. But of course this moral crusade is conveniently deployed against a single firm and the argument that TikTok is somehow uniquely bad compared to other social vices is unpersuasive to the point of being laughable. Either be consistent with the principle or admit the hypocrisy.

Agree. Facebook + Instagram are equally bad in this regard as far of teenage anxiety and other social ills..

Hell, Xanga and Myspace were destroying friendships and lives back when I was in high school in the early oughts.

It is fundamentally incorrect reasoning to conclude that a person ought not criticize a bad thing because lesser bad things in the same category occurred before. “All these people caring about the Iroquois Theatre fire didn’t care when houses burnt the year before!” But an especially bad event can prove to us the true risk of a thing. In the case of Tik Tok it is worse for obvious reasons: the format is worse than its predecessors, its popularity is greater than its predecessors, and it can plausibly be weaponized by a geopolitical enemy whose ascent has only recently started to be dealt with. It is clearly worse for a vice to be weaponized by an adversary you are in competition with than not. Because geopolitical dominance is zero-sun.

That’s the logical reason, and here’s the pragmatic: the China element of the story reminds the Public that our everyday habits have maximal consequences, including the risk of geopolitical ruin and worsening quality of life. It reminds them that dominance whether socially or geopolitically is zero-sum. At the same time, it shows the Public that there are alternatives with clearly better results in the young (China’s policies). Lastly, human males have a built-in instinct to fight against an enemy intentionally harming us.

start censoring films and banning pornography

We already do this for the young, let’s hope we expand it.

Bingo.

IF the argument is solely about deleterious psychological/cultural effects it should not matter whether the app is Chinese, European, or simply homegrown American. The platform is designed for maximum addiction, this isn't something that is specific to Chinese design.

If it were an American app the Chinese would restrict it because of these effects anyway.

For my part, I think the problems about it being a Chinese app are more along the lines of it opening important institutions up to hacking, social engineering, and other more direct attacks on American interests by China.

One could model it as a disease which infects massive amounts of the population and lies dormant except under certain conditions which can target 'vulnerable' individuals. The mass infection is the vector which enables it to ensure it penetrates the valuable targets, but focusing on the symptoms/methods of spread is kind of missing that point.

IF the argument is solely about deleterious psychological/cultural effects

Who said it was? Who said it ever was?

Debates about TikTok have always involved fear of China's role AFAIK.

That's what the OP is saying the "Chinese Superweapon" is.

Killing people's attention spans and otherwise causes mental degradation.

Rather than, say, giving China access to persons who have influential positions or access to sensitive information.

That's what the OP is saying the "Chinese Superweapon" is.

Killing people's attention spans and otherwise causes mental degradation.

No, it's a Chinese superweapon because it's doing that selectively to the West while trying to push the exact opposite stuff to its own public. That's why it's a weapon and not just a creator of externalities.

MacDonald's may or may not be more damaging but it's not a weapon in the sense of being a tool to harm foreign consumers specifically while making US consumers eat healthy food.

Rather than, say, giving China access to persons who have influential positions or access to sensitive information.

Except even the article points out that this is likely why TikTok is/will be banned in a way that the other sites (including hypothetical clones) that also harm us won't be because of the China factor.

Personally, when I first started hearing concerns about TikTok, it was almost always about China's possibly-not-passive role and its spying on you. The attention span stuff is relatively recent.

If China were doing this to their own population as well would it not be considered a super weapon against the US?

No, it's a Chinese superweapon because it's doing that selectively to the West while trying to push the exact opposite stuff to its own public. That's why it's a weapon and not just a creator of externalities.

Would the situation be different in the slightest if it were an American company?

Would China permit said app to operate in their country? Would the content it presents in the West be any different?

Because Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, at least, all pretty much mimic Tiktok in multiple ways.

I'm failing to see why the alleged damage being done is specific to the "Chinese Superweapon."

@MelodicBerries is making the broader point that if we are worried about the impact Tiktok is having our our psyches, then banning TikTok solves nothing. We'd have to ban most internet porn, heavily regulate social media, and try to restrict various other superstimuli that the modern world presents. Tiktok isn't the root cause here.

If the complaint is that China is somehow causing massive psychic damage to the West, then one notices that we're also causing a lot of the damage TO OURSELVES.

Would the situation be different in the slightest if it were an American company?

If the American company is showing the same general material to all parties (at least where it's allowed) then yes, obviously. It would not be asymmetrical where one group of people are apparently being made marginally worse as a matter of government policy in a way that demonstrates that they know this harm is being done and they can apparently easily avoid doing said harm (i.e. they don't do it to their own people)

It would also mean that the company is - like TikTok is in China - more likely to be subject to the pressure of the American government, which gives Americans some leverage (well...insofar as you think Americans determine government policy).

If the complaint is that China is somehow causing massive psychic damage to the West, then one notices that we're also causing a lot of the damage TO OURSELVES.

This doesn't seem to challenge the original point. The bone of contention that kicked off this thread was:

IF the argument is solely about deleterious psychological/cultural effects

There's no reason to grant this; IME the concern about TikTok has never, ever been solely about psychological effects so the argument falls flat.

This also presumes that I'm not worried about things like porn. I'm not sure why: my criticism of liberal learned helplessness applies even more to US-produced porn and social media sites (since I've already argued that the US has more agency there)

So I'm unmoved that US media is bad too (I simply bite the bullet on that)

So it seems like we're agreeing that Tiktok poses more danger than just being psychologically poisonous.

I'm just not sure that banning Tiktok is an 'antidote,' especially with the difficulty inherent in enforcing a ban/preventing some CCP-controlled replacements from arising.

To be clear, my position is basically that it's way easier to justify a ban on Tiktok if it is based on the concept of removing an attack surface that is controlled by a (potentially) hostile party.

It's about who controls it. American elites know the shenanigans they've been pulling with their social media, and are afraid a foreign power can do the same to their citizens.

It's a completely valid fear, to it cannot be stated so bluntly.

People have been claiming that Western liberal democracy will inevitably lad to degeneracy and collapse for more than a century. It never happened. So we are supposed to think this time will be different because of Tiktok?

People have been claiming that Western liberal democracy will inevitably lad to degeneracy and collapse for more than a century. It never happened.

If Bill the Butcher were alive today, he would almost certainly say that it DID happen, and that America is now a corpse being animated to do the bidding of the Catholics, Jews, and Europeans who infest it.

Historical American reactionaries have been more or less vindicated, and it’s hard to imagine Poole or his contemporaries being impressed by your stock portfolio or the advances of modern medicine when the culture is so unrecognizable. The only thing separating them from the reactionaries of the 1950s is that Woodrow Wilson and Adolf Hitler poisoned the Overton window badly enough that you can no longer join the American military without pledging to “defend democracy around the world.”

If history repeats itself, it’s reasonable to conclude that America as we know it will be more or less “dead” and replaced by something else in 200 years. Even if the new owners keep the old place’s name to save money on a new sign.

That is a claim that Western liberal democracy has led to "degeneracy." And if you define "degeneracy" as "change in moral values," I guess that is true. But what about the collapse part? That is the dubious part of the original claim.

you can no longer join the American military without pledging to “defend democracy around the world.”

So, the US asks its soldiers to defend their principles, not merely their self-interest? A very strange thing to complain about from someone who is ostensibly is worried about moral degeneracy; that seems like a moral step forward to me.

People have been claiming that Western liberal democracy will inevitably lad to degeneracy and collapse for more than a century. It never happened. So we are supposed to think this time will be different because of Tiktok?

Agree. These pundits have been crying wolf forever. Everything is threat to democracy.

From important metrics we are already degenerated in physical health, mental health, and cultural taste. The cultural promotion of twerking women and naked homosexual men dancing is, for all intents and purposes, the clearest sign of degeneration. The only thing I can imagine worse than that would be if large record companies were signing artists who extolled the value of doing opiates and fentanyl, but luckily Lil Peep is already dead.

metal health

This is, itself, a modern measure. Psychologists would judge ancient men to be extremely mentally unhealthy, suppressing their emotions, prone to outbursts of rage, not tolerant of others, etc.

The broader point is that the naked homosexual men dancing aren't stopping TSMC from making 3nm chips or amazon from delivering you shit.

Exactly. The pundits were right. When they were worried about "degeneracy" 100 years ago, the current state of affairs is exactly what they worried about: the breakdown of the family, dependence on drugs, violence, atheism, celebration of homosexuality. It all happened.

Likewise, the people who worry about future degeneracy will also be correct. Except that, in the future, the degenerates will not see it that way. They will see it as the true and natural way of being.

Artists extolling the value of using marijuana(which is probably bad for heavy users, at least), however, is common as dirt.

And songs about drinking. I heard a song by Metallica recently called Whiskey in the Jar and I thought how such a celebration of alcohol consumption/violence would never be found in earlier, more civilized periods of Western culture.

Songs about drinking go way, way back. Classic country is mostly about alcoholism, although often not positively, for example.

Martin Luther wrote a hymn thanking God for wine. So this isn't new.

Clearly, the age of degeneracy of Western civilization goes back much further than we thought.

I also just learned that Plato's Symposium features a drunken party and homosexuals, so it goes further back than Plato too.

I mean, degeneracy and collapse is a common feature of almost every empire for which we have historical records.

Presumably there's many more that experienced the same decline yet didn't leave a record.

Why do we suppose ourselves to be the exception?

Every past civilization has by definition collapsed, but what is "degeneracy" and what does it have to do with those collapses? Major civilizational collapses have been caused, at least in part, by at least the following set of different factors: Foreign invasion, climate change, natural disaster, disease, religious conflict, over-spending on public works, failure to maintain physical infrastructure, rebellion, civil war and other internal power struggles, changes in technology, changes to the surrounding economic situation, and resource depletion. And these causes may overlap, or cause one another. So, what counts as degeneracy and what is the evidence that it's related to collapse?

So, what counts as degeneracy and what is the evidence that it's related to collapse?

If I were to be broad, it's basically the social/material weaknesses that are exploited by or vulnerable to outside forces and hollow out the wealth and power of the nation if they are not repaired/corrected.

That is, the features and factors that allowed a civilization to rise to prominence can be acknowledged as a core part of that civilization's success. "Degeneration" occurs when those features or factors are allowed to slip away without efforts to preserve them. And if a civilization depended on those factors to maintain their success, then seems almost definitional that losing them will lead to some sort of collapse.

Lot of arguments to be had about what the features/factors of civilizational success are, but it's probably possible to measure the factors and determine if they are degenerating relative to the past.

Take a simple example: what do you think would happen to Saudi Arabia if it lost it's ability to extract and process crude oil?

Would you say that the availability of crude oil within it's borders is a big reason for Saudi Arabia's success in the last hundred years?

If so, would it be fair to say, then, that if Saudi Arabia were to allow it's oil reserves to be depleted without investing in some other means of supporting it's economy, it would be 'degenerating?' It would certainly be 'degeneracy' if Saudi Arabia started setting it's oil fields and extraction equipment on fire for no good reason, no? Or, at least, they would call it such.

I like them as an example since quite a many civilizations have risen and fallen in that general geographical area. No reason to think they'll escape it.

That all seems reasonable, but it sounds then like "degeneracy" is simply any cause of a collapse, or perhaps just a description of collapse/decline. So what's special about TikTok, or any of the other things that are normally referred to as "degeneracy"? How do we use this concept? Is there a prediction beyond "if a civilization loses the things that made it successful, it will no longer be successful?" Is that even true, or do the needs of a civilization change as it develops?

To give an example in a different direction, consider the Bagan Empire of the 9th to 12th century in what is now Myanmar (formerly Burma). This society had a system of state-supported religion, where kings built temples and supported monks working in them with land and precious metal. They derived their public legitimacy from this support, as well as it providing widespread employment. But over time, since the Buddhist monks were immune to taxes, they accumulated more and more of the wealth of the country. Adhering to their ancient traditions contributed to their downfall!

edit: there's a choice quote to this extent around 1:29:50 into the linked episode.

I didn't say otherwise. The initial claim was not, "like all societies, the West will someday collapse." The claim was that said collapse is relatively imminent, specifically because the basic premise of liberal democracy renders it vulnerable thereto. That is the claim that has been made repeatedly.

The problem with the collapse debate is it inevitably involves moving goalposts as to what is defined as collapse. It's hard to agree on what is means for a society to have collapsed. Is it conquered, split, dissolved, or morph into something unrecognizable from its original state?

At a bare minimum, the birthrates have collapsed... indeed to below replacement. A naive projection of this trend would mean some kind of decline is inevitable because of this, alone.

It's entirely possible to chalk a lot of this up to liberal democracy, or, perhaps, the wealth and freedom this brings to the average citizen.

Material conditions have improved, but a lot of basic stats regarding human happiness have declined, and unless people start having more kids or we crack the aging problem, in 50 years we aren't going to have the manpower needed to maintain the services we depend on.

I wouldn't go so far as to say Tiktok is a source of this issue but more like a warning sign. Such an app wouldn't, one would argue, be able to take such strong root in a healthy culture.

It's entirely possible to chalk a lot of this up to liberal democracy, or, perhaps, the wealth and freedom this brings to the average citizen.

But wealth and freedom are distinct from liberal democracy. India was a liberal democracy in the 1950s, despite being dirt-poor. Hong Kong and Singapore have a lot of wealth and freedom (and the concomitant shortage of children) today, without being liberal democracies (especially HK). China is heading in the same direction, despite the end of the One Child Policy.

in 50 years we aren't going to have the manpower needed to maintain the services we depend on.

50 years? Probably optimistic. The problem is pressing now with Boomers - the largest generation - retiring. The amount of healthcare money eaten up by the old is disproportionate and there isn't an equally large generation behind them to balance them out.

Canada already has a healthcare crunch and privatization or not is the topic of the day. It's probably only going to get worse from here. I heard some alarming population estimates for Japan in 2050, let alone 2070.

There's some hope that robotics and automation are going to stave off the impact. Life extension/anti-aging tech will probably be too late for the most part.

If we get AGI then no point in trying to predict the world after that.

But more to the point, Gen Z is the smallest generation (in the west) yet. Even if they started popping out kids like particularly horny rabbits there will be a protracted squeeze waiting on those kids to become productive citizens. And they don't seem to be having kids. So that's whence my 'fifty years' vague estimate comes from.

Will we even have enough people with the capacity to keep an increasingly advanced civilization functional?

It's entirely possible to chalk a lot of this up to liberal democracy, or, perhaps, the wealth and freedom this brings to the average citizen.

How does this square with the fact that China's TFR is only ~80% of the Untied States' TFR? If birth rate collapse = national collapse seems authoritarian China is ahead of liberal democratic United States on that front.

How does this square with the fact that China's TFR is only ~80% of the Untied States' TFR?

One-Child-Policy compounded with rapid urbanization?

The Chinese made policy choices that cratered their birthrates before they began to crater globally.

national collapse seems authoritarian China is ahead of liberal democratic United States on that front.

Yes?

One nation being on course for collapse doesn't preclude it happening to others. The argument is that this is a general trend of all nations, and that empires are not excluded from this.

Indeed, if the West is still overly dependent on Chinese labor when that happens, the ripple effect will accelerate issues over here.

(This is basically Peter Zeihan's thesis, incidentally)

in 50 years we aren't going to have the manpower needed to maintain the services we depend on.

That's why God created immigration

Is this intended as satire or did you just admit that the GOP's "uncharitable strawman" of people like you is actually 100% accurate?

I'm not sure what you mean by "people like you," unless you mean people who occasionally pick up a book or a newspaper, and so are aware that a common response to demographic concerns is to increase immigration, as Canada is doing, and are aware that immigration is why the long term outlook for the US re geopolitical power is much rosier than that of most peer countries. Because that was what I was referring to.

And, I fear it is you who is confirming the "uncharitable strawman" of "people like you", because we are talking about the future of liberal democracy, or of the United States, not the future of the white race, which I take it is what you are referring to. Here is a new flash for you: People who are obsessed with declining white population numbers and the like imagine that people who support immigration are equally obsessed with the fate of the white race, but the truth is that most people don't care. They don't care what race their coworker is, or what race the person in the voting booth next to them is. Let's suppose that 300 years from now, due to immigration, the US is only ten percent white. Or five percent. Or one percent. Who cares?

What will that imply for the countries that the immigrants are drawn from?

Given the higher productivity levels in the west, they can just pay the poorer countries a fee for every immigrant the West takes, and still leave everyone better off.

The west's ideology got to you. I know with all the controversies around your comments people where telling you to come back to your country. I say better stay with us, and don't ruin it.

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Brain drain that further reduces them relative to the US.

The loss of the most successful and mobile members of their middle class.

But I doubt it poses a great internal political impediment to the host nation; in Canada this is seen as a virtuous act and, tbh, I can see why the importing of a few hundred thousand Indians every couple of years (iirc they make up around 20% of migrants) doesn't rank highly in the Canadian mind as a moral outrage.

There are many reasons why the US may be an exception to this trend of empires rising and falling.

The US is much more dominant, head and shoulders above the rest relative to past empires. The closest competitor to the US is China, which does not really have imperialistic ambitions. What could conceivably replace the US? Nothing. Supposed degeneracy may mean loss of economic growth, but not being displaced or conquered.

which does not really have imperialistic ambitions

There was a time when the US didn't either. Some Americans must be rolling in their grave at the postwar empire subsidizing Europe for 80 years.

China does seem like a downgrade from the USSR in terms of imperialism. So this would require for China to create a bloc , which it has slightly hinted at and has been much less successful compared to the USSR. Ironically, China being a communist country probably works to the US advantage. Historically, conflicts have always arose from imperialism, the takeover of land for economic reason. The US acting as a 'world police' does not even meet this criteria.

China does seem like a downgrade from the USSR in terms of imperialism

Partly it's due to old conceptions of what China is and specific Russian geographic weaknesses driving incentives. But part of it is that the US bribed China into the global trade system precisely to weaken the USSR and communism. Why would it need to fight when it can get everything it needs to industrialize without that? Especially when surrounded by US allies... This also calmed other previously martial powers like Japan (who were also isolationist and showed no signs of wanting an empire...until they did)

However, the situation is changing: the US is being more hostile to China specifically and, arguably, the global trade system in general and China imports huge amounts of food and fuel from very far away in order to maintain its newfound wealth. It's no longer the Middle Ages; technologically advanced nations require way more inputs and thus economic interconnections to compete.

These are the pressures that create navies and imperial incentives. I don't think it'll be some mass annexation of another nation into a formal empire nowadays but more than one way to skin a cat.

For a small-scale example: arguably China claiming the South China Sea and building artificial islands is a prelude.

What could conceivably replace the US?

Barbarism?

Or more likely whatever successor entity(s) coalesce in the aftermath... which is pretty much how it went with Rome.

Imagine the collapse looks a lot less like the world stage completely upending, and more likely that the U.S. fractures into a handful of entities composed of various states who have similar interests and maybe they do some warring against each other or politely agree to leave each other's interests alone and dealing with the rest of the world on their own terms.

At which point the American continent is probably still secure from invasion and takeover by a hostile power, but can't project force around the globe.

The US is much more dominant, head and shoulders above the rest relative to past empires.

And this is why Afghanistan is now being ruled as a distant colony of the empire after successful subjugation of the native population.

It seems facially evident that the U.S. empire isn't going to be able to maintain an ongoing presence around the globe capable of suppressing every regional dispute through military superiority if only because of our disfavorable demographics.

I'm going to read a book on the topic and see if I find this version convincing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_Is_Just_the_Beginning

Or more likely whatever successor entity(s) coalesce in the aftermath... which is pretty much how it went with Rome.

But Rome was literally surrounded by hostile entitles, like the Goths. Rome's demise was hastened by competing groups. Rome was also fractured by the rise of Christianity, but the US does not have such a similar schism. The left-right divide is not like this.

Imagine the collapse looks a lot less like the world stage completely upending, and more likely that the U.S. fractures into a handful of entities composed of various states who have similar interests and maybe they do some warring against each other or politely agree to leave each other's interests alone and dealing with the rest of the world on their own terms.

I think a breakup is more plausible, but though still unlikely

Rome was also fractured by the rise of Christianity, but the US does not have such a similar schism. The left-right divide is not like this.

In that there is not literal inquisitions going on to root out ideological heretics, perhaps not.

Do you think that the mental firmware that most people in the population are running is substantially different from that which was in play during the decline of Rome?

I think a breakup is more plausible, but though still unlikely

And a breakup would almost certainly mean the collapse of the 'empire,' is my point.

It's the inverse of your point about Rome being surrounded by enemies. The U.S. can easily afford to defend it's own borders... but it remains exceedingly expensive for it to project power overseas far from it's population centers if the host country doesn't welcome them.

The '50s specifically cited as a time when degeneracy could have been resisted were themselves criticized as being degenerate by conservative observers at the time including the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood iirc.

Sayyid Qutb visited the US in the 1950s. You'd think he visited Sodom and Gomorrah the way he wrote about it.

Church youth dances were full of "seductive passion" in his view. And sometimes he would look at an American woman and she would smile at him. That struck him as deserving of condemnation.

How is either of your or Gdanning's comments proving that we haven't, in fact, degenerated since then?

The irony of using Qutb and his problem with promiscuity is that America could be argued to have degenerated below its usual critics' expectations; who probably at least thought liberal society would be numbing everyone from the problems they thought they perceived with increasing amounts of "free love".

People are apparently having less sex now.

If this wasn't likely due to rising anxiety, obesity, shrinking real life friend groups and/or pornography it might actually be a good counterpoint to the degeneracy thesis.

The point is that we were apparently already degenerate then, in the 50s, so already degenerat-ing before then, which suggests we've always been degenerate and degenerating, which takes away the notion's give-a-shit power.

The point is that we were apparently already degenerate then, in the 50s, so already degenerat-ing before then

This is actually an argument used by critics of the West : liberalism is always "degenerating" because you're consuming stocks of social resources (e.g. the Church, hegemonic social mores) that it doesn't replenish.

So the argument would be that "every man does what was right in his own eyes" was inherently degeneracy-facilitating back then too - but there were countervailing social and material forces.

It's possible for 50s people to be degenerates to Qutb especially and for modern society to have degenerated well past that.

I would argue there are places where the degeneration has been clear and undeniable; most obviously obesity. We're not just more degenerate than the people in the 50s, we may be so degenerate in comparison that we might have been dismissed as pushing a slippery slope fallacy and fear-mongering if we talked about it back then.

More obesity but on the other hand bodybuilders today put bodybuilders of the past to shame. Certainly the average has gotten worse.

No one says you have to give a shit, I just find it odd to deny it given the assurances about slippery slopes I heard even just within my lifetime.

Well, I think critics were wrong about the 50s being degenerate but they're not that wrong now.

Tangentially, I think San Francisco is outrageously degenerate. But it generates wealth and competence in a way you would never guess by just looking at what's going on on the street. I think America at large is similar. Wanting congruence between the kind of people who can pump out a vaccine in a year and heroin addicts is very compelling, but apparently society can live with a messier arrangement.

Does it actually generate wealth and competence or merely attract it? If you raise a middle class kid in San Francisco is he going to be better off than the same kid raised in San Diego or San Jose or San Houston? If you found Twitter in Miami, does it do better or worse than if it were founded in San Francisco?

It attracts talent and that talent generates wealth. If you found Twitter in Houston, it would absolutely do worse than Twitter founded in San Francisco (a la 2005 when San Francisco was liberal).

People who are natural out-of-the-box thinkers are going to gravitate to places where they're allowed to occasionally do out-of-the-box ("degenerate") things in public and private. And that nature is going create those economic powerhouses when they go to work.

That's an interesting question. For years conservatives have wondered why the economic powerhouses are not salt of the earth places like Iowa but degenerate coastal cities.

Question: If one of those people from a century ago who believed “Western liberal democracy will inevitably lad [sic] to degeneracy and collapse” were able to view our current society, do you believe that he or she would feel vindicated? (Gestures around, gesticulating wildly.)

I’m not asking whether you believe that we are in a state of degeneracy and collapse. I’m pointing out that any worthwhile theory that liberalism will lead to degeneracy and collapse would necessarily contain a sub-belief that the people living through that degeneracy and collapse are, by definition, unable to recognize it as such. Our standards for what counts as degeneracy and collapse have been so warped that, like fish in water, we cannot even conceptualize that there’s a problem. Surely you can recognize that the reactionaries of a century ago would identify our current society as suffering from precisely the sorts of problems their theory predicted we’d be suffering through, even if you think their standards are bad or useless.

Answers:

  1. Yes.

  2. As @Stefferi states, they would probably have predicted that society would collapse more or less instantly upon the achievement of several prior levels of degeneracy. If they're wrong on every sub prediction, it might be fair to ignore or soften their future predictions.

  3. Try to rank the Roman Emperors. The Biblical Jewish kings. Hell, American Presidents. All of them. The first few slots are bitterly contested, who was a better king Solomon or David? What order do Diocletian, Augustus, Hadrian go on the list? Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln are quite easily seen as GOAT or goat, depending on who is doing the rankings. Do leaders over bigger territories get extra credit over those who lead diminished geographies? But pretty quickly, you realize that none of those lists contains a preponderance of good leaders. Despite three very different polities, choosing their leaders by very different methods, the net result is similar: there are a handful of really great leaders, historically important geniuses who set their country's path for decades, sometimes centuries, to come; who are succeeded by mediocrities and losers, who fritter that momentum away over time. But it takes many mediocrities to lose the path, "There's a lot of ruin in a nation." Rome spent most of its history in "decline." The Old Testament is mostly just a series of kings turning away from the true faith, the modern Jews essentially are still running off the software created by a handful of great leaders between Moses and Solomon. This might just be a result of historiography, but it seems to me that decline and degeneracy are the normal state rather than an exceptional one; collapse comes much, much, much later than degeneracy can first be identified.

The colapse to which these people were referring, and to which the OP is referring, is far more literal than that.

You'd have to look at the culturally-invariant metrics like GDP, stock market performance, dominance of Silicon Valley, consumer spending, etc. Or the dominance of the US and “Western liberal democracy" to see that in spite of social norms changing, that the western democratic hegemony and America is still largely unchallenged and unassailed.

Surely we can distinguish technical developments from social developments. If there were no technical developments like computing, robotics, jet aircraft, standardized container shipping, then we would be in a much worse position economically and socially. Prosperity can paper over a lot of deeper issues.

Detroit used to be called the Paris of the West! It's now a byword for urban decline. It's only that advances in technology have been rapid enough to compensate for social decline. Maybe technology will save us from complete civilization collapse due to plummeting fertility. Medicine managed to suppress rising murder rates for example. In terms of purely social technology, we've declined massively.

I mean, I’d point out that the usual Rome comparison degeneracy and collapse narrative tends to lead out that the Romans themselves believed they were going through a collapse at the time it was happening.

They would probably have believed that current society has degenerated compared to theirs (which they'd already feel to be degenerate enough already), but they might be surprised that it hasn't collapsed. Indeed, if you were a reactionary in 1923, you might well believe that the entire Western civilization is going to destroyed inevitably by the onmarch of Jewish-Asiatic Bolshevism of the Soviet Union and generally the teeming hordes of Mongolic Asiatics breeding uncontrollably in China and such countries, and currently the Soviet Union is no more and, while China presents a challenge, it is certainly no longer due to uncontrollable breeding. Meanwhile, the Western liberalism chugs happily onwards.

Do you believe 17th century Puritans if shown Belle Epoque would believe that society had degenerated? My answer will mirror yours, turning on the fulcrum of whether technological progress can make up for a supposed societal malaise. The question is, do these social restrictions (since this is all historical social norms have ever been) exist as ends themselves, or solely due to their influence on the material basis of that polity? And if the former, how exactly IS the prognostic of degeneracy supposed to be declared if not from the factors that should be downstream of that taint?

If social norms can be essentially good in and of themselves then they must by worthwhile of themselves, and any supposed or perceived deficiencies of them must be either illusory or not of importance compared to the moral/eschatological rectitude of the principals. In which case it's as unfair to say that people in a degenerate society can't notice said degeneracy as to say that a morally assured people should be capable of seeing their own self-righteousness: they're right because they are, and they are because they're right. Anything beyond that doesn't have any verifiable basis in reality.

I personally think - if collapse happens* - there's more long-range factors like the exhaustion of any tradition that balances out liberalism (which Western liberal democracy has had for most of its existence) and the total failure to solve the fertility problem (another atypical situation) to blame. New territory.

But yeah, TikTok & social media in general add their own drag here.

Of course, a final argument - or rather question- can be raised: and? Yes, defying the naysayers for "more than a century" is good but we're not talking about Coptic Christians saying "this too shall pass" about the Muslim conquerors are we? The Soviet Union lasted from the 20s to the 90s while facing seriously challenges (to say the least) and the most powerful nation to ever exist.

* Clearly some forms of degeneracy (e.g. mass obesity) have proliferated.

Yes, defying the naysayers for "more than a century" is good

Flippantly, a civilisation that lasts forever preserves itself one century at a time.

More seriously, my social circle includes people involved with long-term planning at some of" the longest-lived Western institutions (the old universities), and 100 years is the longest timescale that they find useful to think about. I was just reading this Freddie de Boer comment thread where someone pointed out that Japanese companies that see themselves as perpetual also plan out to 100 years (but most of the long-term planning energy goes int 20, 30 or 50 year plans). The "Longtermist" movement within rationalism/EA are thinking about the far future, but their plans for getting there all play out in considerably less than 100 years.

Everything that can happen will happen eventually, and nothing lasts forever, so a prediction that something will eventually collapse is as valuable as predicting that the sun will rise tomorrow. Predictions have shelf-lives - if they expire unfulfilled then they are wrong, not just early. And 100 years is too long a shelf-life for a meaningful prediction. Saying that western civilisation is degenerate is a statement about something that is happening now. Saying that western civilisation is collapsing is a statement about something that is happening now with consequences that should be undeniable soon. Right now I see obvious downward trends (mostly high-IQ fertility) which are affecting all advanced human societies roughly equally badly. But if I look at the West vs the Rest at the highest levels of civilisational achievement, I see our weapons triumphant on the battlefield in Ukraine, I see the ARM/TSMC/ASML axis of semiconductor excellence consolidating its supremacy in a way which gives its customers in Silicon Valley and other Western countries a permanent edge over their Chinese competition, I see Gwynne Shotwell ignoring her boss's inane social media antics and building bigger, better rockets, and above all I see talent continuing to move west voluntarily.

Tiktok is bad, and a threat to corrupt our youth. But I don't see why it is scarier than the sort of challenge we eat for breakfast on every page of the history books.

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