Links to Consider, 2/3
Nellie Bowles discovers "food neutrality"; Rob Henderson on another Jordan Peterson episode; Noah Smith on the Internet and communities; Matt Taibbi on a media hoax
Nellie Bowles find a nutritionist who writes,
Food neutrality is the understanding that no single food holds superior nutritional or moral value over another.
Banning sugary drinks? I guess that’s last year’s progressivism.
Taking notes on another Jordan Peterson podcast, Rob Henderson writes,
When human systems degenerate and are no longer based on actual competence and respect, they devolve into power games. This is true not only for political institutions and business organizations, but for individuals as well; romantic relationships, relationships between parents and children, and so on.
Translating the first sentence into Henrich terms, when prestige hierarchies break down, they turn into dominance hierarchies. As Fauci loses respect, he becomes more domineering (“I am the science”).
What if we talk and socialize and cooperate and fall in love with the people from our online crowds, and grow terminally apart from the people next door? What if we begin to feel our primary allegiance is toward people who share our race or our religion or our interests, rather than toward the people who share our country and our city? What if we go to the PTA or the planning board meeting and discover a bunch of strangers we despise and disdain?
In such a world, how will government get anything done? How will we decide what roads to build, what housing to allow, what universities to fund, or how to reform the police? How can we build a country together with neighbors with whom we no longer share any sort of common bond?
The accounts Hamilton 68 claimed were linked to “Russian influence activities online” were not only overwhelmingly English-language (86%), but mostly “legitimate people,” largely in the U.S., Canada, and Britain. Grasping right away that Twitter might be implicated in a moral outrage, they wrote that these account-holders “need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.”
See also this follow-up post. It is difficult to explain this out of context. My main concern is that the mainstream media took false claims about “Russian influence activities online” at face value and have not recanted. One can trust an organization that makes a mistake and apologizes. One cannot trust an organization that makes a mistake and gives itself a pass.
See also Jacob Siegel and Sean Cooper on the scathing analysis that appears in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Substacks referenced above (and I recommend reading them in their entirety):
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RE: Building a country together:
I rather suspect you don't. There is no reason to think one can build a country out of disparate people who want different things, who despise each other's behavior, at least not without killing most of them. The more we want government to do, to rule more facets of our lives, the more real diversity of opinion and preferences will cause discord and tend to tear things apart.
"In such a world, how will government get anything done?"
Simple. The "permanent government" (in Charles Peters' words) will decide and do it. After all, they're the ones who have the knowledge and tell the politicians what the possibilities are, and the costs and benefits of each. Of course, most possibilities are excluded and the predicted costs and benefits do not have a one-to-one connection with reality.