"Woke" thinking seems to assume reality is what you want it to be. But reality exists, whether you believe it does or not, whether you approve of it or not. This as the logical outcome of non-STEM academic thinking in which feeling and belief dominate, and virtual reality becomes the basis of what passes for thought. The resulting decisions create the otherwise inexplicably incompetent decisions of our major institutions. Our political class believes that if they wish hard enough (like passing more ethanol mandates), the reality of energy supply and CO2 will go away.
Sorry, thermodynamics, physics, chemistry and mathematics are actually real, and a woke imagination is just that: "imagination".
This is related to my comment below about covid dealing a significant blow to the IDW. While I agree it was an important factor, I am cautious about inferring that someone "went nuts" in some total or irredeemable way based on tweets or other decontextualized statements from that moment in time.
In a radically uncertain environment, people who may not have started that far apart naturally diverge, and even former friends may accuse each other of going crazy. As things cool down and stabilize, it becomes easier to make sense of what's happening and build back understanding. Hence Sam Harris being able to have a completely reasonable conversation with Peterson on his podcast recently and link to it on his platform.
My view is that we should all adopt wider confidence intervals and allow for more disagreement during times of radical uncertainty. But most people narrow them and that naturally resulted in the IDW losing some of their reach.
The forceful, wholesale rejection of Covid "therapeutics" by the establishment is damning evidence against the establishment. What other life threatening illness is there where the government certified medical advice is to do nothing until you can't breathe?
In the case of Covid the evidence points to the jack boot thuggery of the government in shutting down open discourse on Covid. The government joined the mob in controlling the narrative. Without the government's coercion I expect corporate media would have been much more liberal in discussing Covid treatments.
That said, it is appalling to see media executives and high profile media personalities endorse controls on speech. It is one thing to say "I can't discuss that without getting fired" and another thing to defend the people assaulting you!
I considered the ivermectin question an open one until I read that post. I think a positive view of ivermectin as an acute therapeutic is somewhat unreasonable but not beyond the pale; Bret's arguments against the vaccines and his belief that ivermectin is an effective prophylactic are what's completely batshit
What is undisputable is physicians have made public their Covid therapies and made public claims of their efficacy. These are not quack doctors! These are medical practitioners who somewhat independently pursued treatments for their Covid patients and who observed beneficial outcomes when certain protocols were used. Yet the government and the establishment have ignored them and spurned any treatment that was not Fauci approved.
If these treatments were risky or costly or if they prevented a government endorsed treatment one might see the government's position. But no. These treatments are low cost and low risk. But if they worked that might nullify the emergency authorization for government approved Covid mitigations.
In other words, the government is acting to protect its monopoly over what are approved Covid treatments. They are willing to have people die in order for them to retain control over the pandemic narrative.
I agree that wider confidence intervals are warranted in strange times, and it might be right that Peterson isn't beyond the pale, but Bret Weinstein has proven himself to be a grifter, and a sickeningly stupid one.
Ivermectin is a subtopic of therapeutic/prophylactic, which is a subtopic of corona, which is a subtopic of public health. Disagreeing with someone on so narrow of a niche doesn’t deserve castigating their entire output as grift, especially when they stood up to Youtube on principle and lost half their family income. I don’t really see him shilling for anyone. He has brought light to the bigger picture though, and was quite early. Tell me, do you think the data supports a 4th shot EUA for 18-year-olds? Even pro-vaccine officials have resigned from WH and CDC interference in the FDA. I see people saying and writing uncritically that the vaccine and masks reduce transmission, when I live in Japan with excellent mask adherence and higher vaccine status than USA, and we are at 2-year peaks right now.
And a lot of people irrationally believe in things which aren’t effective, just look at dieting, or to some people, praying. Over 100 congressmen took Ivermectin, after listening to experts eminent in their fields.
Eric Weinstein has 3.4 million followers on Clubhouse. A lot of very IDW type conversation happens there and to a lesser extent on Callin, where you will find prolific people who are nowhere else., although these platforms are also losing momentum.
But I think they lost the battle when major media didn’t wholeheartedly defend Brett Weinstein from 2017 when he predicted jt would get much worse. Trump was loathed so much that we have a bit more wokeness now as a knee jerk reaction, but that may revert to the mean.
Just to name a few others who add to the conversation, you have James Lindsay and Peter Boghosian, Helen Pluckrose. Glen Greenwald, Andy Ngo, Jimmy Dore, Tim Pool. Then youtuber channels like Breaking Points, Triggernometry, FAIR for All. I was essentially a know-nothing before finding these people about 2 years ago. Eric got me to Tyler where I found you, Arnold.
The IDW had way too much talk. At some point you either act effectively or you're just bitching about the same old stuff.
Let's list some of the things Youngkin achieved in Virginia so far:
1) Passed legislation guaranteeing parents the ability to not have their kids were masks in perpetuity, taking it away from public health authorities (he had to get a couple of Dem votes to get this past the Virginia Senate).
2) Disbanded civil rights division on first day in office.
3) Appointed tough on crime DA that went after crime.
4) Passed anti-CRT order and added CRT hotline to report CRT bullshit in schools.
5) Called out BLM as a con scam he found repugnant even during the campaign.
6) Has the DA investigation the Loudoun County School board and has introduced legislation to make all nine board seats go up for election this November.
I can't imagine an IDW person actually accomplishing any of that. They would just write some articles complaining. Certainly they would never use such harsh language about their enemies or enthusiastically accept Trumps endorsement.
Trump doesn't alienate the masses; the media personalities who lie about him do. But the bulk of those lies have now been publicly debunked and most people have accepted the fact. I expect him to win if he runs in 2024. Beyond that year he is likely too old and can be expected to step aside.
The lessons we should learn from Trump's persecution is to break up, or at least discredit, the Big Media machine at every opportunity. They will never be our friends.
Youngkin won by two points in an election where his stale opponent ran probably the most incompetent campaign I've ever seen in my lifetime.
The simple point is that Yougnkins campaign and governance style are unabashedly partisan and based. That isn't the IDW style. They would wax poetically about free speech rather than trying to imprison groomers.
Christopher Rufo's idle is Lenin. His vision for the right is one of a pragmatic pursuit of total power. It's not the sort of thing IDW college dorm bullshit sessions go for.
What do you think the result would be if he ran for an election next month (or whatever short period is reasonable for a campaign) against a "stale" or against a competent opponent?
The veto power of leadership creates a formidable barrier to intellectual reform. Specifically, no matter the intensity of the "mob" the leaders of institutions have the capacity to stand on principle and say "no" to extremism. But if the leadership doesn't make the argument, then no one in the institution will be successful going against the mob.
So, while the power of the mob is real, it could be neutralized by principled leadership. Except leadership is cowardice and unwilling to take a stand, except for DeSantis. With leadership either silent or openly supportive of extremism, opposition to the "mob" is politically and organizationally neutered.
The mob's freakout over Musk pursuing ownership of Twitter is revealing of the mob's vulnerability. Open debate would crush wokeness. If discourse on social media reflected the balance of views held by Americans, the minority position of the mob would be apparent. It is only through censorship and coercion and banning of unwelcome viewpoints they appear to be the dominant force.
Until leadership takes a stand against the undemocratic and dishonest methods of the mob, the mob will control the rules of game on the popular platforms, and the independent thinkers will be relegated to the fringe no matter the reasonableness of their opinion.
Yeah, of the original core you mentioned, only Rogan remains in the zeitgeist. Peterson doesn't have the impact he did pre-illness. Eric Weinstein had an interesting podcast, but it's been dark of late as he's been very below the radar. His brother went down the Ivermectin anti-vax path on Covid and I think it's hurt his credibility. Does Rubin even do interesting, long form interviews any longer? He started losing me once he came out and supported Trump publicly for the '20 election. He's slipped into Shapiro territory and has become too partisan for my tastes.
The problem for me is the idea of "overthrow" rather than reform. There are plenty of scary possibilities (January 6, for example) of just being "anti-woke."
If you actually believe Jan 6 was a real insurrection rather than a false-flag op by the FBI designed to discredit the right just like "Unite the Right" was, you have been duped.
Good point. Destructive ideologies are lies built on truths, which gives them their power. The anti-woke need to be *for* something specific in a highly principled way to avoid rejecting the truths along with the lies.
Should I assume that your reference to scary possibilities implies that you support strengthening barbarians' reliance on "poison pills" to control people's thoughts, words, and deeds?
You end your post with the assertion that the prospects for recovering a culture of liberal values and merit are not good (I ignore your references to IDW as irrelevant to your assertion). You are right but your post doesn’t explain why and how that liberal culture is being destroyed. More importantly, you ignore that it’s also being destroyed in other countries. You have been ignoring the barbarians in your country and elsewhere.
Thought of your suggestion that Glenn Loury is part of the new IDW during his conversation just out with Peterson. Gets interesting around 18 minutes in and they make a great combo IMO, lots of steel man and devil's advocate on sex differences, IQ, racial justice, and inequality.
I think Covid was a significant blow to the IDW. The ambition of the core group was to bridge political divides, and I think they did maintain a significant foothold on the left before events greatly amplified the pressure to pick a side.
Like the smearing of Trump, the smearing of Covid truth-tellers has shown the people who our friends are. I expect that to help us more than them once the truth has time to spread.
"Woke" thinking seems to assume reality is what you want it to be. But reality exists, whether you believe it does or not, whether you approve of it or not. This as the logical outcome of non-STEM academic thinking in which feeling and belief dominate, and virtual reality becomes the basis of what passes for thought. The resulting decisions create the otherwise inexplicably incompetent decisions of our major institutions. Our political class believes that if they wish hard enough (like passing more ethanol mandates), the reality of energy supply and CO2 will go away.
Sorry, thermodynamics, physics, chemistry and mathematics are actually real, and a woke imagination is just that: "imagination".
I feel like it's pretty odd to talk about the question of what happened to the IDW without mentioning the word ivermectin.
James Lindsay, Peterson and the Weinsteins went nuts and the reasonable members like Sam Harris backed away. That's a big part of the story.
This is related to my comment below about covid dealing a significant blow to the IDW. While I agree it was an important factor, I am cautious about inferring that someone "went nuts" in some total or irredeemable way based on tweets or other decontextualized statements from that moment in time.
In a radically uncertain environment, people who may not have started that far apart naturally diverge, and even former friends may accuse each other of going crazy. As things cool down and stabilize, it becomes easier to make sense of what's happening and build back understanding. Hence Sam Harris being able to have a completely reasonable conversation with Peterson on his podcast recently and link to it on his platform.
My view is that we should all adopt wider confidence intervals and allow for more disagreement during times of radical uncertainty. But most people narrow them and that naturally resulted in the IDW losing some of their reach.
The forceful, wholesale rejection of Covid "therapeutics" by the establishment is damning evidence against the establishment. What other life threatening illness is there where the government certified medical advice is to do nothing until you can't breathe?
In the case of Covid the evidence points to the jack boot thuggery of the government in shutting down open discourse on Covid. The government joined the mob in controlling the narrative. Without the government's coercion I expect corporate media would have been much more liberal in discussing Covid treatments.
That said, it is appalling to see media executives and high profile media personalities endorse controls on speech. It is one thing to say "I can't discuss that without getting fired" and another thing to defend the people assaulting you!
The establishment hasn't rejected the therapeutics that work: monoclonal ABs, paxlovid and fluvoxamine
I considered the ivermectin question an open one until I read that post. I think a positive view of ivermectin as an acute therapeutic is somewhat unreasonable but not beyond the pale; Bret's arguments against the vaccines and his belief that ivermectin is an effective prophylactic are what's completely batshit
What is undisputable is physicians have made public their Covid therapies and made public claims of their efficacy. These are not quack doctors! These are medical practitioners who somewhat independently pursued treatments for their Covid patients and who observed beneficial outcomes when certain protocols were used. Yet the government and the establishment have ignored them and spurned any treatment that was not Fauci approved.
If these treatments were risky or costly or if they prevented a government endorsed treatment one might see the government's position. But no. These treatments are low cost and low risk. But if they worked that might nullify the emergency authorization for government approved Covid mitigations.
In other words, the government is acting to protect its monopoly over what are approved Covid treatments. They are willing to have people die in order for them to retain control over the pandemic narrative.
I agree that wider confidence intervals are warranted in strange times, and it might be right that Peterson isn't beyond the pale, but Bret Weinstein has proven himself to be a grifter, and a sickeningly stupid one.
Ivermectin is a subtopic of therapeutic/prophylactic, which is a subtopic of corona, which is a subtopic of public health. Disagreeing with someone on so narrow of a niche doesn’t deserve castigating their entire output as grift, especially when they stood up to Youtube on principle and lost half their family income. I don’t really see him shilling for anyone. He has brought light to the bigger picture though, and was quite early. Tell me, do you think the data supports a 4th shot EUA for 18-year-olds? Even pro-vaccine officials have resigned from WH and CDC interference in the FDA. I see people saying and writing uncritically that the vaccine and masks reduce transmission, when I live in Japan with excellent mask adherence and higher vaccine status than USA, and we are at 2-year peaks right now.
And a lot of people irrationally believe in things which aren’t effective, just look at dieting, or to some people, praying. Over 100 congressmen took Ivermectin, after listening to experts eminent in their fields.
Eric Weinstein has 3.4 million followers on Clubhouse. A lot of very IDW type conversation happens there and to a lesser extent on Callin, where you will find prolific people who are nowhere else., although these platforms are also losing momentum.
But I think they lost the battle when major media didn’t wholeheartedly defend Brett Weinstein from 2017 when he predicted jt would get much worse. Trump was loathed so much that we have a bit more wokeness now as a knee jerk reaction, but that may revert to the mean.
Just to name a few others who add to the conversation, you have James Lindsay and Peter Boghosian, Helen Pluckrose. Glen Greenwald, Andy Ngo, Jimmy Dore, Tim Pool. Then youtuber channels like Breaking Points, Triggernometry, FAIR for All. I was essentially a know-nothing before finding these people about 2 years ago. Eric got me to Tyler where I found you, Arnold.
The IDW had way too much talk. At some point you either act effectively or you're just bitching about the same old stuff.
Let's list some of the things Youngkin achieved in Virginia so far:
1) Passed legislation guaranteeing parents the ability to not have their kids were masks in perpetuity, taking it away from public health authorities (he had to get a couple of Dem votes to get this past the Virginia Senate).
2) Disbanded civil rights division on first day in office.
3) Appointed tough on crime DA that went after crime.
4) Passed anti-CRT order and added CRT hotline to report CRT bullshit in schools.
5) Called out BLM as a con scam he found repugnant even during the campaign.
6) Has the DA investigation the Loudoun County School board and has introduced legislation to make all nine board seats go up for election this November.
I can't imagine an IDW person actually accomplishing any of that. They would just write some articles complaining. Certainly they would never use such harsh language about their enemies or enthusiastically accept Trumps endorsement.
You start accomplishing things or you don't.
Trump doesn't alienate the masses; the media personalities who lie about him do. But the bulk of those lies have now been publicly debunked and most people have accepted the fact. I expect him to win if he runs in 2024. Beyond that year he is likely too old and can be expected to step aside.
The lessons we should learn from Trump's persecution is to break up, or at least discredit, the Big Media machine at every opportunity. They will never be our friends.
Youngkin won by two points in an election where his stale opponent ran probably the most incompetent campaign I've ever seen in my lifetime.
The simple point is that Yougnkins campaign and governance style are unabashedly partisan and based. That isn't the IDW style. They would wax poetically about free speech rather than trying to imprison groomers.
Christopher Rufo's idle is Lenin. His vision for the right is one of a pragmatic pursuit of total power. It's not the sort of thing IDW college dorm bullshit sessions go for.
What do you think the result would be if he ran for an election next month (or whatever short period is reasonable for a campaign) against a "stale" or against a competent opponent?
Incumbency is a big advantage, especially for a Republican in a Democratic state.
I think Youngkin could beat a mediocre or worse Dem opponent. I think he would lose to a good one.
So far, the Democratic Party can't produce good opponents. We'll see if that changes.
The veto power of leadership creates a formidable barrier to intellectual reform. Specifically, no matter the intensity of the "mob" the leaders of institutions have the capacity to stand on principle and say "no" to extremism. But if the leadership doesn't make the argument, then no one in the institution will be successful going against the mob.
So, while the power of the mob is real, it could be neutralized by principled leadership. Except leadership is cowardice and unwilling to take a stand, except for DeSantis. With leadership either silent or openly supportive of extremism, opposition to the "mob" is politically and organizationally neutered.
The mob's freakout over Musk pursuing ownership of Twitter is revealing of the mob's vulnerability. Open debate would crush wokeness. If discourse on social media reflected the balance of views held by Americans, the minority position of the mob would be apparent. It is only through censorship and coercion and banning of unwelcome viewpoints they appear to be the dominant force.
Until leadership takes a stand against the undemocratic and dishonest methods of the mob, the mob will control the rules of game on the popular platforms, and the independent thinkers will be relegated to the fringe no matter the reasonableness of their opinion.
Yeah, of the original core you mentioned, only Rogan remains in the zeitgeist. Peterson doesn't have the impact he did pre-illness. Eric Weinstein had an interesting podcast, but it's been dark of late as he's been very below the radar. His brother went down the Ivermectin anti-vax path on Covid and I think it's hurt his credibility. Does Rubin even do interesting, long form interviews any longer? He started losing me once he came out and supported Trump publicly for the '20 election. He's slipped into Shapiro territory and has become too partisan for my tastes.
The problem for me is the idea of "overthrow" rather than reform. There are plenty of scary possibilities (January 6, for example) of just being "anti-woke."
If you actually believe Jan 6 was a real insurrection rather than a false-flag op by the FBI designed to discredit the right just like "Unite the Right" was, you have been duped.
That's what Occom and I think. :)
Good point. Destructive ideologies are lies built on truths, which gives them their power. The anti-woke need to be *for* something specific in a highly principled way to avoid rejecting the truths along with the lies.
Should I assume that your reference to scary possibilities implies that you support strengthening barbarians' reliance on "poison pills" to control people's thoughts, words, and deeds?
You end your post with the assertion that the prospects for recovering a culture of liberal values and merit are not good (I ignore your references to IDW as irrelevant to your assertion). You are right but your post doesn’t explain why and how that liberal culture is being destroyed. More importantly, you ignore that it’s also being destroyed in other countries. You have been ignoring the barbarians in your country and elsewhere.
Thought of your suggestion that Glenn Loury is part of the new IDW during his conversation just out with Peterson. Gets interesting around 18 minutes in and they make a great combo IMO, lots of steel man and devil's advocate on sex differences, IQ, racial justice, and inequality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRTU6IEepPM&t=1075s
I think Covid was a significant blow to the IDW. The ambition of the core group was to bridge political divides, and I think they did maintain a significant foothold on the left before events greatly amplified the pressure to pick a side.
Like the smearing of Trump, the smearing of Covid truth-tellers has shown the people who our friends are. I expect that to help us more than them once the truth has time to spread.