Links to Consider, 11/22/2024

Brian Chau on the state of exception; Peter Thiel on populism; Tove K on personality disorders; Noah Smith despairs for liberalism

Brian Chau writes,

Where a naive reading of procedural law would suggest that anyone who complies with “the process” gets equal treatment, Schmitt is far more skeptical. In his view, there are always areas of exception where the law suspends itself. By suspending itself, the law creates invisible conventions that become far more important to determining the outcome of an administrative action than the nominal, written law. That invisible law becomes the most consequential, and therefore most powerful form of law.

He refers to notorious German legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. Schmitt argued that real political power consists of the ability to break the rules, declaring a “state of exception.” Chau claims that officials in regulatory agencies exercise power in exactly this way.

the nominal process is meant to be dysfunctional, highly costly, and function as de-facto bans, while anything intended to get done receives a specially designated parallel process. It is in the administrative branch, not the judicial branch, where Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty is most vindicated. Emergency approvals and exclusions are functionally the sovereign determinant of regulation. In other words, the declaration of exceptions is the act that most affects a difference in outcome in administrative law. 

…what the combination of dysfunctional procedural rule and rule by exception has done to executive agencies is to make them completely unresponsive to people attempting to use the regular process and solely responsive to those who wield it as a form of reactive power towards some outside exception.

The normal process blocks activity. Something can get done only when an official declares a state of exception.

It would be crass for the head of the local zoning agency to design a process in which the rules make it impossible to get a building permit without pleading with the agency head to make an exception. But it is not hard to imagine the process evolving in this direction, with the agency head not minding.

In an interview with Bari Weiss, Peter Thiel says,

Maybe that’s what you need to have in a technologically advanced society: You need experts; you need a Central Intelligence Agency; you need to have secrets about nuclear weapons, secrets about other things. And so there are all kinds of ways that an advanced technological society—by its very nature—is far less populist or democratic than the U.S. was even in its eighteenth-century conception.

Tove K writes,

the male brain is much more schizoid than autistic. Men are not intrinsically bad at understanding people. Male psychologists are not known to be worse than female psychologists. It largely is a question of mindset. Men are less interested in the dynamics of their romantic relationship. No less capable of understanding it, when they make a try. It is a question of focus and interest, not of capability.

This is not the main point of her post. Her main point is that personality psychology has lost a lot of nuance in recent decades. One result is that people get “dumped” into the autism diagnosis, when other descriptions are warranted.

Noah Smith writes,

Social media preferentially elevates the worst people in the nation — a small fringe of politically active shouters — to positions of status and intellectual influence. This is mostly just a feature of the technology itself, not a choice of the platform owners.

Ironically, Noah would not have a platform were it not for social media. Later on, he writes,

due to an unlucky combination of human nature, the nature of social media technology, and economic incentives, the petty Vladimir Lenins of our society — like the conquering Shing in Ursula K. LeGuin’s stories — have suddenly become our ruling class. Liberal societies are paralyzed with division and hatred, because they spend all day mainlining the output of the petty Lenins, and believing that the petty Lenins represent their neighbors, coworkers, and countrymen. All of the radical online movements of the last decade — MAGA, wokeness, the alt-right, and leftism — are all to some degree outgrowths of this. This is why we have Trump as President instead of someone like Jeb Bush.

Before you sneer, I have to tell you that about 25 years ago I was at an informal event where Jeb Bush appeared. It was people standing up drinking, and there were only about a hundred of us. I marveled then, and ever since, that he could pass the Turing test. A politician who comes across as a genuine human being.

Anyway, regardless of what you think of Jeb Bush, the point that the Internet has spawned a group of petty Lenins resonates with me. I recommend Noah’s post, to which I can only add Have a Nice Day.

substacks referenced above: @

Liberalism is the rebellion now

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The Anti-Autism Manifesto

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Peter Thiel and the Triumph of the Counter-Elites

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How a German Philosopher Predicted the War for D.O.G.E.