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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2743 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 6, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Herzog's Citizen Knowledge. I haven't read far enough to say much, but some opposing intuitions have started to surface. How she deals with the independence of expertise will make or break the argument.

Her overall approach is insightful, so this may be a good read regardless.

The Expert System’s Brother by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s good fantasy/sci-fi that somehow avoids feeling like it was written in $current_year.

I finished Half a King today. One of the best books I've read in a long time.

Have you read Abercrombie’s main series?

No, what is it?

Nine novels and a short story collection, starting with The Blade Itself. They don’t start as polished as Half a King, but the first five are much better overall (and the rest are at least comparable).

Almost finished Eisel Mazard's No More Manifestos. The last few chapters have been criticising the American constitution for falling into tyranny (by the definitions provided by the founders) almost immediately, and asserting that people like John Adams quoted ancient republican/democratic sources selectively to bolster their image of being learned men. For example providing an almost totally different definition of "separation of powers" than was praised by Machiavelli or Polybius (Machiavelli's "separation of powers" was basically a non-Marxist version of class conflict where the poor, middle and rich are vying against each other for political power). Apparently even the beheaded King Charles claimed to be emulating Rome's mixed government so the bar for being a faithful inheritor of Rome was not very high.

I'm not sure how new that would be to anyone here, but I'm very interested in his discussion on what the Founding Fathers could have taken inspiration from and chose not to. Apparently Pasquale Paoli of the Corsican Republic was very popular in America at the time with a number of towns being named after him, and (before the French invaded) it was an example of a healthy republic springing seemingly out of nowhere in an area with no democratic tradition (earlier in the book the author cites the Mongolian revolution of 1990 as another example of this). The contention is that the American republic would become very unexceptional if it were admitted that a bunch of illiterate Corsicans could achieve the same thing. The mythology of true geniuses deeply learned in ancient political thought creating the American republic might have served the interests of the founders, but it misleadingly makes imitation of their achievement in areas of the world not gifted with a generation of geniuses seem like a near insurmountable hurdle, and makes writing a better constitution unthinkable for Americans today (unlike say the Swiss constitution which makes provisions for its own obsolescence).

King Charles

In his defense, he was engaging in a proud Roman tradition. Just not the one he thought he was!

The American decision to LARP as Romans is not even close to unique. I suppose this book probably goes after plenty of others, too. But criticism of the hegemon is what gets top billing.

For that matter, how different are the Swiss revision process and the American? Popular initiative vs. 2/3 of Congress. I don’t think that’s actually a big gap, and it would be even less if the US had adopted proportional representation. We’ve even ended up with similar amendments, such as vice bans, at similar times!

The Swiss were less likely to use constitutional revision on explicit powers of the government. Presumably, this follows from the very different dynamic between canton and federal. Instead, they’ve enshrined various left/labor causes. That reminds me more of California’s proposition system, which has its own drawbacks. I suspect this works for the Swiss because they have such a homogenous society and environment. If everyone is under relatively similar conditions, agreement is more likely. I would be curious to see how many of the Swiss amendments would also have passed under the US 2/3 scheme.

Just tried to read some newer Orson Scott Card stuff with Wakers and The Last Shadow. The Ender's Game series was great, but both of those books were pretty mediocre. Wakers starts with about 100 pages of nothing happening, followed by another few hundred of exploring a somewhat interesting set of powers in the most boring and inconsistent way possible. Not a great book. After that, I was less charitable towards The Last Shadow, and when it got boring I gave up immediately.

Just started Joe Abercrombie's Half a King which is much better so far.

It's a shame because I liked both Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game, I remember reading when I was younger -- too young, I think, to understand much of it. I believe I gave up on the Ender series after Xenocide.

As for the sequel to Ender's Shadow, called Shadow of the Hegemon, I was hopeless to comprehend it. I remember it being nearly entirely about the various machinations of warring states, masses of soldiers led from here to there, what this genius kid might be thinking at this time, etc.. It lacked so much of the human drama which made the initial novels good.

I know a guy who was absolutely obsessed with OSC’s Pathfinder series. I never did get around to trying it, though.

I definitely enjoyed that series. Wakers is pretty much just a much worse version of it.

I'm reading Time On The Cross. It's supposed to be a statistical economic analysis of the US Slavery system. It could probably be considered at least weak slavery apologism, in the vein of "it wasn't really all that bad". Not that I'm super into defending slavery, but the anti-slavery line has been so overdone by the modern Blue Team that I think it's in need of some defenders.

This seems to be a pattern in a number of historical subjects. Many things in the past were pretty bad, but if criticism of the bad things goes unchecked, then exactly how bad it actually is can get overstated and ridiculous exaggerations get spread by unethical grifters. You need at least some apologists or things get out of hand.

Just finished Lewis's The Great Divorce. It was a short read.

Before that I read Violence Unveiled, and I have to recommend it strongly to anyone interested in Girard's theories, or any Christians looking for a detailed explanation of the anthropological ramifications of the Crucifixion. Truly a masterpiece.

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