Conspiracy culture gets the facts wrong, but the feeling is right

 --- Naomi Klein, in a July 2024 New Scientist interview about her latest book, Doppelganger: A trip into the mirror world.

In context

I call them conspiracy influencers because there really isn’t a theory. The theory moves around depending on where you’re going to get the traction. One minute they are railing against masks because covid-19 is just a cold, and the next minute, covid-19 is a bioweapon. People turn to these influencers because they are trying to make sense of the world.

And that’s where things get complicated, because they are tapping into a real feeling that something isn’t right. Conspiracy culture gets the facts wrong, but the feeling is right.

We live in a time of huge wealth creation, a time when we will probably see our first trillionaire soon. And yet everything that supports people’s well-being seems to be eroding. There’s a feeling that the system is rigged.

Conspiracy culture takes the sense that the system is rigged against you and says, well, it’s just those five people over there. It’s Bill Gates, and Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum and maybe some lizard people.

I wonder if one couldn't say that a lot of science and management experts get the facts right, but the feeling wrong. 

Science is always good for books. And adventure is good.

 --- Ruth Krauss, "How to write a book," How to make an earthquake, 1954, pp. 27-28

Text:

You can write books about anything. For instance, fruits. The first page could be a banana and the second page could be an orange and the third could be cherries, and like that. If you can't write yet, you could just draw. Then the book could be especially for someone who can't read yet.

Or, you could write a book for someone who can read only one word. You could draw a horse on the first page and write HELLO, and the second page could be a bear and write HELLO, and the third page could be a kitten and write HELLO, and the fourth could be a monkey and write HELLO, until as many as you want. At the end maybe you could write GOODBYE, just for fun.

If you can write well enough, you can tell a whole story and you could draw pictures with it too. One good story is about the table that wanted a chair, and then it got the chair and was happy and never lonely ever after. Or if you can't draw well, you could just write, if you can write.

Science is always good for books. And adventure is good.

I think this bit from Amy Timberlake's wonderful Skunk and Badger (Algonquin Young Readers, 2020, Ch. 6, p. 70) is a tribute to Ruth Kraus. This is at the end of the story Skunk told about Chicken Little the Mighty:

Skunk closed the book with a thump. “THE END.” 

The chickens broke into squawks. “Bock!” “Bock-bock!”

The tiny orange hen in Badger's arms tapped him with her beak. Badger nodded at her. 

That was a good story, he thought, sighing. Adventure and science made the best stories.

Tell me what you pay attention to, and I will tell you who you are

--- attrib. to José Ortega y Gasset (Man and Crisis, 1964), in Cindy Engel, Another Self: How Your Body Helps You Understand Others (2024:147)

Engle writes on p. 56

I  open this chapter with a quote from philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset: “Tell me what you pay attention to, and I will tell you who you are.” I would add, “Tell me to whom you pay attention, and I will tell you how you are feeling.”

Myths represent another way of understanding history, beyond the simply rational

 Anselm Kiefer, 1991(?), from an excerpt in the Wim Wender documentary Anselm: Das Rauschen der Zeit (2023).

In audio over what seems to be a 3rd party documentary about the Kiefer show at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1991, the voice-over (in German, English subtitles provided by Wenders; time codes of the Wenders documentary)

[1:00:12] The world Kiefer shows isn't perfect with its morbid landscapes and environments. A master of subtle irritation. He produces large format myths. 

The 3rd party documentary then shifts to a recording of an interview or press conference with Kiefer in a gallery. An interviewer asks: 

[1:00:27] You were accused of your way of dealing with history, now you are accused of escaping into myth. How do you feel about this contradiction?

Kiefer replies:

[1:00:36] There is no such thing as 'escaping into the myth'. Because the myth is present. Myths represent another way of understanding history, beyond the simply rational. 

for God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun

 --- R Buckminster Fuller, in "No More Secondhand God," collected in No More Secondhand God and Other Writings By R. Buckminster Fuller 1971:22 (pdf) 

Excerpt

Here is true world democracy in the swift making;

a democracy which socializes all plenty

as that plenty is wrested from scarcity

by world-widening co-operative industry;

a democracy which, scientifically

seeking categorical validity for all the motivations,

taxes only inertia

and awards copiously its individuals

who radiantly expand the commonwealth;

awarding them out of the newly integrated wealth

captured from the unseen fresh fruits

of the limitless environment—

and not by the slightest impoverishment

of commonwealth,

either by mortgage

or individual indebtedness.

Here is God’s purpose—

for God, to me, it seems,

is a verb

not a noun,

proper or improper;

is the articulation

not the art, objective or subjective;

is loving,

not the abstraction “love” commanded or entreated;

is knowledge dynamic,

not legislative code,

not proclamation law,

not academic dogma, nor ecclesiastic canon.

Yes, God is a verb,

the most active,

connoting the vast harmonic

reordering of the universe

from unleashed chaos of energy.

And there is born unheralded

a great natural peace,

not out of exclusive

pseudo-static security

but out of including, refining, dynamic balancing.

Naught is lost.

Only the false and nonexistent are dispelled.

‘kind and ordered’ is a better goal [than justice]

The robot valet Uncharles, on the last page of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model (2024), “Epilogue,” p. 373.

Excerpt

“Justice is a human-made thing that means what humans wish it to mean and does not exist at all if humans do not make it,” Uncharles said. “I suggest that ‘kind and ordered’ is a better goal. It is possible that the world was once both kind and ordered. It is possible that it may be so again.”

It’s telling, I think, that Tchaikovsky practiced law before becoming a sci-fi author. Justice plays a significant role towards the end of the novel.

I have no duties and in their absence the world creeps in

The robot valet Uncharles, in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model (2024), “Interconnection IV,” p. 251.

Uncharles has been told that he’s been infected with the "Protagonist Virus" which supposedly gives him free will and agency. An excerpt of Uncharles’ thoughts, italicized in the original:

There is no evidence of any such thing as the Protagonist Virus, especially in relation to my personal history.

If there is no such thing, why am I a mere service model, trying so hard to construct an argument against it?

These things should not matter to me. Only my duties should matter.

 And yet I have no duties and in their absence the world creeps in . . . 

I live every day like it's my last: with a lot of yelling, screaming, and gnashing of teeth

 --- Weird Al Yankovic, interviewed in the documentary Weird Al: Never Off Beat (2023), around time code 31:12

It’s done in seconds and 34 years

 --- Designer Paula Scher quoted by Rei Inamoto in To Rebrand or Not To Rebrand?, Nov 2024

From Inamoto's post:

According to legend, in the first meeting in 2007, Paula Scher, an iconic designer and partner at Pentagram, sketched on a napkin.

Image posted in The $1.5m napkin: Paula Scher’s 5 minute logo, Ned Dwyer, Mar 2017

A Citi executive asked, “How can it be done in a few seconds?” Paul Scher replied:

“It’s done in seconds and 34 years.”

This reminds me of the joke of the retired old hand brought in to fix a machine at the plant, drawing an X on a part and saying, "Replace that." He sent a bill for A Lot Of Money. When the bean counters insisted on an itemized bill, the invoice read, "Chalk: 10 pence. Knowing where to put the mark: A Lot Of Money - 10 pence." 

Technology . . . the knack of so arranging the world so that we need not experience it (and Christine Rosen's gloss on Frisch)

 --- Max Frisch, Homo Faber (1957), epigraph to the Introduction of Christine Rosen's The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (2023)

On p. 2, Rosen writes

By “technology” I mean the devices such as computers, smartphones, smart speakers wearable sensors, and, in our likely future, implantable objects, as well as the software, algorithms, and Internet platforms we rely on to translate the data these devices assemble about us. Technology also includes the virtual realities and augmented realities we experience through our use of these tools. Our integration of these tools into our daily lives has blurred the boundary between “virtual” things—things not grounded in physical reality that we encounter while online or via mediating technologies—and “real” things embedded in physical space.

And Rosen on p. 10 

Behind the power we wield with our technologies is a timidity and aversion to risk. It's much easier to go with what Yelp or Google or Amazon suggest “other customers like you” might like than to squander your time money on a guess. But does this timidity lead to a quote withering of experience, quote as Theodor Adorno suggested in his analysis of the modern persons mechanized and homogenized approach to culture and leisure? In a world of digital experiences, do we any longer recognize any of them as ersatz?

Page 20

These platforms and tools have become our new character forming institutions. They have invaded the private world of existing institutions such as the family and become indispensable in the public world of work and leisure. Isn't something wrong when 53 per cent of sixteen-to twenty-two-year-olds around the world say they would rather lose their sense of smell than their favorite personal technology? (Cite Chris Gayomali, “Study: 53% of Youngsters Would Choose Technology over Sense of Smell,” Time, May 27, 2011, which cites a "McCann study surveyed a group of 7,000 young individuals ages 16 to 30 across several countries to gauge their interests in different categories (friends, celebrity culture, etc. etc.) to see what actually motivates them to, you know, do things.') 

Painting is more important than art

--- Wayne Thibaud, quoted by Adam Gopnik in “An American Painter,” in Wayne Thiebaud: A Paintings Retrospective, Steven A. Nash, Thames & Hudson, 2000, p. 40

Excerpt

“Painting is more important than art,” he has been known to announce with only a hint of deadpan humour. “Art—art we don't know what the hell it is—though we think we do, or try to do. Whenever one of my students says he's off to do his art, I say not so fast.”

90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited. Indeed, as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors.

 --- Lokman I Meho in The rise and rise of citation analysis (2007) Phys. World 20 (1) 32, 

Abstract

It is a sobering fact that some 90% of papers that have been published in academic journals are never cited. Indeed, as many as 50% of papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, referees and journal editors. We know this thanks to citation analysis, a branch of information science in which researchers study the way articles in a scholarly field are accessed and referenced by others.

Via Marc Abrahams in New Scientist's Feedback column, 20 March 2024, which also notes

The second question got a good going-over by Martin Paul Eve at Birkbeck, University of London. His new study (which also hasn’t yet disappeared) is called “Digital scholarly journals are poorly preserved: A study of 7 million articles”. The study did an “appraisal” of 7,438,037 scholarly citations that have unique identification codes called DOIs. Well, the study attempted to do an appraisal. Eve reports that 2,056,492 (27.64 per cent) of those items appear to be missing.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions

 --- Martha Graham, quoted in Agnes de Mille,  Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991), cited in Maria Popova, Martha Graham on the Life-Force of Creativity and the Divine Dissatisfaction of Being an Artist, themarginalian

From themarginalian piece

In 1943, De Mille was hired to choreograph the musical Oklahoma!, which became an overnight sensation and ran for a record-setting 2,212 performances. Feeling that critics and the public had long ignored work into which she had poured her heart and soul, De Mille found herself dispirited by the sense that something she considered “only fairly good” was suddenly hailed as a “flamboyant success.” Shortly after the premiere, she met Graham “in a Schrafft’s restaurant over a soda” for a conversation that put into perspective her gnawing grievance and offered what De Mille considered the greatest thing ever said to her. She recounts the exchange:

I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be.

Martha said to me, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have so far used about one-third of your talent.”

“But,” I said, “when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.”

“No artist is pleased.”

“But then there is no satisfaction?”

“No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried out passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

when evaluating [conspiracy] theories, one should focus on the most plausible versions

 --- Kurtis Hagen, Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style: Do Conspiracy Theories Posit Implausibly Vast and Evil Conspiracies?, Social Epistemology, 2018

Abstract

In the social science literature, conspiracy theories are commonly characterized as theories positing a vast network of evil and preternaturally effective conspirators, and they are often treated, either explicitly or implicitly, as dubious on this basis. This characterization is based on Richard Hofstadter’s famous account of ‘the paranoid style’. However, many significant conspiracy theories do not have any of the relevant qualities. Thus, the social science literature provides a distorted account of the general category ‘conspiracy theory’, conflating it with a subset of that category that encourages unfairly negative evaluations of conspiracy theories. Generally, when evaluating theories, one should focus on the most plausible versions; the merit of a theory is independent of the existence of less plausible versions of it. By ignoring this and glossing over important distinctions, many academics, especially in the social sciences, have misclassified many conspiracy theories and in doing so have contributed to an epistemically unfair depiction of them. Further, even theories that genuinely fit the description of ‘the paranoid style’ cannot be completely dismissed on that basis. All conspiracy theories ought to be judged on the totality of their individual merits.

Agency is a really core property of living things that we almost take for granted, it’s so basic

 --- Kevin Mitchell, geneticist and neuroscientist, quoted in Clare Wilson, Free will: Can neuroscience reveal if your choices are yours to make?, New Scientist, 30 September 2023

Excerpt

And neuroscience isn’t the only branch of biology that has something to say about free will, says Mitchell. “If we want to understand how human beings do things – that is, where causal power [for our actions] comes from – then that question extends back to say: ‘Well, how does any organism do something?'” The answer, says Mitchell, lies in the evolution of biological agency, or the ability to act with intention or purpose, an argument he makes in his new book Free Agents: How evolution gave us free will.

As Mitchell sees it, when the first simple life forms appeared on Earth about 3.7 billion years ago, one of their most interesting essential qualities was that they did stuff. Before that, things happened: grains of sand tumbled around, chemicals reacted and volcanoes spewed out lava. But those were inert physical processes. The first life forms, however, used energy to work against the second law of thermodynamics – the principle that everything tends to become more disorganised over time – and hence stay alive. “Agency is a really core property of living things that we almost take for granted, it’s so basic,” says Mitchell.

Your characters are defined by their stories, and your story consists in nothing other than the actions of its characters

 --- Steven Koch (this guy, I think), quoted by InCinematic (Luke Custer) in When the "parody" surpasses the original (time code 3:11), YouTube,  2024

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away

 --- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Airman's Odyssey per Goodreads

h/t redditor u/Simply-Serendipitous for posting this in the thread Evolution of SpaceX' Raptor rocket engine in r/Damnthatsinteresting, Aug 2024

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison

 --- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

I think that in general, apart from expert opinion, there is too much respect paid to the opinions of others, both in great matters and in small ones. One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways. Take, for example, the matter of expenditure. Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because they feel that the respect of their neighbours depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travel or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else. There is, of course, no point in deliberately flouting public opinion; this is still to be under its domination, though in a topsy-turvy way. But to be genuinely indifferent to it is both a strength and a source of happiness. And a society composed of men and women who do not bow too much to the conventions is a far more interesting society than one in which all behave alike. 

the basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people

 --- Marilynne Robinson, quoted on Our Favorite Quotes from the President's Conversation with Marilynne Robinson, Obama White House, Oct 2015, cited in Mark Sappenfield, America’s political crisis and the war in Gaza are more intertwined than you might think, CS Monitor, Jul 2024

Excerpt from President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation in Iowa, The New York Review of Books, Nov 2015 (WaybackMachine)

The President: ... Why did you decide to write this book of essays? And why was fear an important topic, and how does it connect to some of the other work that you’ve been doing?

Robinson: Well, the essays are actually lectures. I give lectures at a fair rate, and then when I’ve given enough of them to make a book, I make a book.

The President: So you just kind of mash them all together?

Robinson: I do. That’s what I do. But it rationalizes my lecturing, too. But fear was very much—is on my mind, because I think that the basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.

You have to assume that basically people want to do the right thing. I think that you can look around society and see that basically people do the right thing. But when people begin to make these conspiracy theories and so on, that make it seem as if what is apparently good is in fact sinister, they never accept the argument that is made for a position that they don’t agree with—you know?

The myth, a set of mental representations that integrate a particular worldview

--- Sergio Rodríguez-Blanco, "Introduction, Photography and Time Eternal," in Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks Rituals, Radius Books/D.A.P.; Bilingual edition (2019 : 11) 

Excerpt

The myth, a set of mental representations that integrate a particular worldview, inhabits the space of the imaginary. Material products of culture such as masks, costumes, musical instruments, food, beverages, or words pronounced as mantras, are a few of the ritualistic elements which go inextricably hand in hand with corporeal expression—dance, gesture, movement— actions without which the rite couldn't be carried out. According to Mircea Eliade, in his book The Sacred and The Profane (Lo sagrado y lo profano), and to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the rite is myth in action, and it constitutes the origin of music, poetry, dance, theatre, and painting. In other words, the rite places the myth on the scene; it materializes what the myth imagines. 

Biographical subjects are like snakes; they are best handled dead

 --- Joseph Epstein, quoted by Jonathan Fig, Biographers Owe Their Readers the Full Truth, WSJ, July 12, 2024

Excerpt

Biographical subjects are like snakes; they are best handled dead.

This cautionary advice comes from the essayist Joseph Epstein, my friend and former professor. I thought of his words this week as I read the news concerning the late Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, whose daughter published an essay saying that she had been sexually assaulted beginning at the age of nine by her stepfather and that her mother, upon learning of the abuse, chose to stay with her husband.

There is no such thing as society

 --- Margaret Thatcher, recorded by the New Statesman, "Margaret Thatcher in quotes," 8 april 2013, archived by the WayBackMachine

New Statesman:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.

A.I.’s new mastery of language means it can now hack and manipulate the operating system of civilization

 --- Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills, New York Times, March 2023

Excerpt

In the beginning was the word. Language is the operating system of human culture. From language emerges myth and law, gods and money, art and science, friendships and nations and computer code. A.I.’s new mastery of language means it can now hack and manipulate the operating system of civilization. By gaining mastery of language, A.I. is seizing the master key to civilization, from bank vaults to holy sepulchers.

...

The time to reckon with A.I. is before our politics, our economy and our daily life become dependent on it. Democracy is a conversation, conversation relies on language, and when language itself is hacked, the conversation breaks down, and democracy becomes untenable. If we wait for the chaos to ensue, it will be too late to remedy it. 

But what is "A.I."? What is the "it" that can hack and manipulate? The language presumes agency, and it's not clear that "A.I." has agency. If it's a dataset and algorithm, it doesn't have a clear boundary, and depends on a corporation to provide infrastructure to run on. Seems like an anthropomorphic fallacy to me.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has

 --- attrib. to Margaret Mead. See QuoteInvestigator discussion, which concludes: "Donald Keys appears to be the crucial initial propagator of the quotation although it remains unclear how he learned about the statement. The precise phrasing and the ascription to Margaret Mead hinge on his veracity. There is no substantive support for competing ascriptions, and QI would tentatively assign the saying to Mead."

the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment

--- Ben Franklin, speech to the Federal Convention, 17 Sept. 1787 (The Founders' Constitution, Volume 4, Article 7, Document 3)

Excerpt

I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.

Via A.J. Jacobs, in conversation with Russ Roberts, EconTalk podcast 6 May 2024, Living with the Constitution (with A.J. Jacobs)

literature as a playground on which to confront ambiguity and paradox

--- Anja Lange, undated CU Boulder profile page (accessed 8 Jun 2024)

Excerpt

Anja joined the Herbst Program in the fall of 2001.  Since then, she has been teaching literature not only for its own merit but also as a vehicle for gaining insight into engineering and other fields.  The problems in professional engineering will never be as clear-cut as those in the classroom, so Anja offers her engineering students literature as a playground on which to confront ambiguity and paradox.  It might seem counter-intuitive, but Plato, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Melville, and T.S. Eliot can help Herbst students become better engineers by helping them engage in self-learning and interactive problem-solving.  Anja believes that the synergy found in an interdisciplinary study helps one fully understand our civic responsibilities; these responsibilities are even greater for the engineer.

The worst thing to happen to climate scientists on Twitter was climate scientists on Twitter

--- Matthew Burgess, quoted in Stephanie Hanes, "A climate scientist questioned his findings. It didn’t go well.", CS Monitor, Jun 2024

Excerpt

Matthew Burgess, a self-proclaimed “moderate Canadian” and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, says the politics he noticed within academia prompted him to study polarization around climate change – and to look for common ground.

“It felt like the conversations in the hallways were about how we need to change all of society over decades. But the only ones who were trusted or who could do anything about it were the left-most third of the Democratic Party,” he says. “That’s a dumb theory of change.”

He decided to do outreach on college campuses about polarized climate discussions. He says he spoke with conservatives and progressives and everyone in between, finding eager audiences among each and a willingness to be open – that is, to trust.

“Scientists sometimes overcomplicate the problem of being trusted,” he says. “The best way of gaining trust is to be trustworthy.”

That means acknowledging the downsides of climate action, he says. It means acknowledging where scientific expertise ends and personal, subjective opinion begins. It means acknowledging the big, ethical questions that come along with it. For instance, is it fair to prevent lower-income countries from developing the same fossil fuel-based energy systems that helped make the U.S. and Europe rich?

It also means keeping partisanship and incivility off social media. “The worst thing to happen to climate scientists on Twitter was climate scientists on Twitter,” he says.

And it means better explaining how science actually works.

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "Thank You," that would suffice.

 --- attrib to Meister Eckhardt; disputed, see Wikiquote

Nothing of what I do makes sense for a cheap food system, but ... as food security, then I start to make sense

--- Farmer Heinz Thomet, quoted in Sophie Hill, "In Maryland, just two farmers grow rice. Here’s why." CS Monitor, Oct 2023

A nice example of the trade-off between efficiency and resilience.

Excerpt

“Nothing of what I do makes sense for a cheap food system, but if you recognize a decentralized food system as food security, then I start to make sense,” says Mr. Thomet. “If you look at diversified farms as part of the resilience towards a global weather pattern change, then I start to make change.”

the law less as strategic or rule-based and more as a muddled, dangerous beast

--- Vajra Chandraskera, The Saint of Bright Doors, p. 165 

Excerpt

[Caduv:] "Keep the boundaries of allowed speech vague, and you can claim that your enemies have crossed them whenever you need to suppress them. The Ministry of Information and Mass Media is nothing more than a blacklist-in-waiting."

Fetter nods tiredly. It's the same attitude Mother-of-Glory has to the law. Fetter himself thinks of the law less as strategic or rule-based and more as a muddled, dangerous beast. A rabid leopard, like Caduv's character in the play. None of the others understand that the law might do anything, at any time, to anyone, and justify itself any way it likes—it is feral, like the invisible laws and powers of the world of which it is a pale imitation. It's because none of them can see the devils, he thinks.

Reading makes a full man; Conference a ready man; and Writing an exact man

--- Francis Bacon, "Of Studies"

Excerpt

And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.

For discussion, see enotes, 'What does Francis Bacon mean by "writing makes an exact man" in his essay "Of Studies"?' This Samuel Johnson quote cited there by William Delaney resonated with me:

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Tech is ... full of people lying to themselves.

 --- Christopher Mims, in What I Got Wrong in a Decade of Predicting the Future of Tech, (unlocked article) WSJ, May 16, 2024 

Excerpt

Kara Swisher, whose Boomtown column at the Journal was in many ways the precursor of this one, once said on a podcast that when she interviews a person in tech who is hyping their company or product, rather than asking herself how they’re lying to her, she asks “how are they lying to themselves?”

Tech is, to put it bluntly, full of people lying to themselves. As countless cult leaders, multilevel marketing recruits, and CrossFit coaches know, one powerful way to convince people that following you will change their life is to first convince yourself.

It’s usually not malicious. Given the rate at which startups fail, to be a founder of one is to engage in a level of magical thinking that in another age would qualify a person for the sanatorium. 

‘Art’ stands in symbolically for the parts of cognition that do not seem machine-like

--- Ben Davis, in Art in the After-Culture, quoted by Shanti Escalante-De Mattei in Stephen Thaler’s Quest to Get His  ‘Autonomous’ AI Legally Recognized Could Upend Copyright Law Forever, Art in America, Jan 8, 2024

Excerpt

In his 2022 book, Art in the After-Culture, art critic Ben Davis writes, “‘Art’ stands in symbolically for the parts of cognition that do not seem machine-like.” Accordingly, the loose definition of art has changed to keep pace with the advancement of machines. Craft is not really art because machines can make tables and sweaters. The advent of cameras, which made rendering a realistic image as simple as pressing a shutter button, initiated Impressionism, Cubism, and the long arc of conceptual art. In contemporary art, the institutions, galleries, and other gatekeepers have increasingly clustered around the figure of the artist and the individual life story, and run away from the material object, which can always be replicated anyway. We are left clutching that indefinable spark as some final differentiator between humans and machines.

this is not my new forever

--- via Paul S on Substack, in Trying to see a bigger picture, 4 May 2024

Excerpt

However, I have been told multiple times that recovery is not a straight-line process, and that I must not let a few bad days distract from a long-term upward trend. Or as one of my oldest friends said to me last summer when he visited me from Houston, a good mantra to repeat at times like these is “this is not my new forever”. And he learned that from his wife. And she learned it from NASA. Because that's what she's taught in astronaut training. Yeah, seriously. Anyway, the point being: if that's what they teach the best people in the world, someone of her calibre, then it is clearly good enough for me. In which spirit, I will try to concentrate here on positives, rather than wallowing in self-pity.

Weaknesses, limits and costs are more interesting than powers

--- Brandon Sanderson, #2 of Sanderson's Laws of Magic (Wikipedia).

From Wikipedia (references removed):

Sanderson's three laws of magic are creative writing guidelines that can be used to create magic systems for fantasy stories:

1. An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.
2. Weaknesses, limits and costs are more interesting than powers.
3. The author should expand on what is already a part of the magic system before something entirely new is added, as this may otherwise entirely change how the magic system fits into the fictional world.

Additionally, there is a zeroth law:

0. Always err on the side of what's awesome.

Politeness ... is a technique. It’s etiquette. ... Civility, by contrast, is a disposition of the heart, a way of seeing others as our moral equals

--- Alexandra Hudson, in CS Monitor interview about her book, “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves,” Oct 2023

Excerpt

Clarity came when I understood there was a difference between civility and politeness. That politeness, I argue in my book, is a technique. It’s etiquette. Manners is the superficial stuff. Civility, by contrast, is a disposition of the heart, a way of seeing others as our moral equals and worthy of respect because of our shared dignity as human beings. 

The Latin root of politeness is polire, which means to smooth or to polish. And that’s what politeness does. It polishes over differences. ... Whereas civility comes from the Latin word civitas, which means city and citizenship. And that’s what civility is. It’s the habits and duties of citizenship that sometimes requires telling hard truths, sometimes requires protest and civil disobedience.  

not all of it can matter equally to you

 --- Meg Shields, in ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ And How to Survive Being Very Online, July 2022, pointing to (referencing?) a video essay by Thomas Flight

Excerpt

The internet is a place of endless curiosity and community. But it’s also overwhelming to be bombarded with a constant stream of information, political causes, and entertainment. The internet is silly, stupid, anarchic, tragic, and meaningful. And not all of it can matter equally to you. Our little monkey brains weren’t built for that. And part of what Daniels’ film is saying, as the video essay below underlines, is that determining what does and doesn’t matter to you in an attention economy is a life-saving step for surviving in the world post-Internet.

If you don't want to write propaganda, you write essays

--- psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips, in conversation with Hermione Lee, On Giving Up, The LRB Podcast, Wednesday, March 6, 2024, at time code 38:04

If ChatGPT can do it, and if the purpose is learning, it’s not worth doing

 --- John Warner, in On AI and ‘Meaningful’ Feedback, Inside Higher Ed, Feb 2024

... that great LEVIATHAN ... that Mortall God, to which wee owe ... our peace and defence

--- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) (on gutenberg.org), h/t David Runciman, The Handover (2023:34) for the reference.

Note the group agency implied by "or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will."

Excerpt

The Generation Of A Common-wealth

The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or Assembly of men, to beare their Person; and every one to owne, and acknowledge himselfe to be Author of whatsoever he that so beareth their Person, shall Act, or cause to be Acted, in those things which concerne the Common Peace and Safetie; and therein to submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgements, to his Judgment. This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, “I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner.” This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence. For by this Authoritie, given him by every particular man in the Common-Wealth, he hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutuall ayd against their enemies abroad.

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable

--- painter Robert Henri, quoted passim, couldn't find source

 “The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

we control nothing but we influence everything

--- Brian Klaas, political scientist, in conversation with Russ Roberts on the Econtalk podcast, episode If Life Is Random, Is It Meaningless? (with Brian Klaas), Jan 22, 2024, about his book Fluke.

From the transcript:

But it's also something where it's derived from a sense, for me at least, that, if the world is intertwined in this way and if our lives can be swayed by forces seen and unseen, sometimes random, sometimes small, we have a little bit less control than we think we do. Right? And, I think we're sold this world where, like, you are in control. Right? So, the self-help industry is basically an industry that tells you, 'It's your fault you're not happy, because here's the recipe to being happy and wealthy and so on.' And, the world just doesn't work that way.

And I think it lets us off the hook a little bit. I think that's the other aspect of this that I find helpful, is--I repeatedly use this quote, and it's sort of this idea that we control nothing but we influence everything. And, when you start to think about it that way, combined with the aspects of what you just read, I think it lets humanity sort of be a little bit messy and be a little bit imperfect. And it's okay.

[Better] to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a résumé, a commentary.

--- Jose Luis Borges, Prologue to The Garden of Forking Paths, in Ficciones, edited and with an introduction by Anthony Kerrigan, Grove Press (New York), (1941, 1962:15)

The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a résumé, a commentary.

 

What is presented as a list of unimpeachable virtues and laudable goals is in practice a web of contradictions

 --- A.O. Scott, in The Word That Undid Claudine Gay, New York Times, Jan 3, 2024

Excerpt

“These last weeks,” Dr. Gay writes, “have helped make clear the work we need to do to build that future — to combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.” This sentence echoes the Harvard Corporation’s gusty roster of commitments, improving the syntax and the prose rhythm. Those infinitives stack up nicely. It sounds like a lot of work, but how can anyone be against any of it?

The real question, though, is how one institution can be for all of it. Is this work the university is really equipped to do? Combating bias may involve constraining open inquiry; free expression is not always respectful or compassionate. The pursuit of truth may outrun everything else. This cascade of noble imperatives can be read descriptively, as a diagnosis of the causes of campus turmoil. What is presented as a list of unimpeachable virtues and laudable goals is in practice a web of contradictions.

Dr. Claudine Gay at a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony in Harvard Yard in December 2023.
Adam Glanzman for The New York Times

organizations [...] produce designs which are copies of [their] communication structures (Conway's Law)

--- Programmer Melvin Conway (1968), in How do Committees Invent?, Datamation 14 (5): 28–31 [pdf] (h/t John Helm, see also Wikipedia, Conway's law)

Conclusion of the Datamation article

The basic thesis of this article is that organizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. We have seen that this fact has important implications for the management of system design. Primarily, we have found a criterion for the structuring of design organizations: a design effort should be organized according to the need for communication.

This criterion creates problems because the need to communicate at any time depends on the system concept in effect at that time. Because the design which occurs first is almost never the best possible, the prevailing system concept may need to change. Therefore, flexibility of organization is important to effective design.

Ways must be found to reward design managers for keeping their organizations lean and flexible. There is need for a philosophy of system design management which is not based on the assumption that adding manpower simply adds to productivity. The development of such a philosophy promises to unearth basic questions about value of resources and techniques of communication which will need to be answered before our system-building technology . can proceed with confidence.

Conway's Law is sometimes invoked in the slogan, “Don’t ship the org chart” (see, e.g., Marcelo Calbucci post on LinkedIn).

 

Metaphysics is the art of bamboozling people methodically

 --- Physiologist A. V. Hill, quoted by his grandson Nicholas Humphrey, "How did consciousness evolve?," Royal Institution lecture, Sep 21, 2023, at 1:13

From the video

His field was biophysics. Mine is psychophysics, verging on metaphysics. Grandpa Hill was a down to earth a scientist as they come. He once gave me his definition of metaphysics. "Metaphysics," he said, "is the art of bamboozling people methodically."

Judging by the Wikipedia entry, Hill was amazing:

• He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge as third wrangler in the mathematics tripos.
• In his very first publication (1909), while still an undergraduate, he derived what became known as the Languir equation (1918).
• He was a crack shot.
• During a home leave in WW I in 1915, he proposed a two-mirror method to determine planes' heights and then assembled a team to calculate the required data tables.
• He shared the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• In 1935 he served with Patrick Blackett and Sir Henry Tizard on the committee that gave birth to radar. 

 

We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us

--- Winston Churchill, speech as Prime Minister to the House of Commons, October 1943, Hansard, HC Deb 28, volume 393, cc403-73 (accessed hansard.millbanksystems.com on December 7, 2023), cited by QuoteInvestigator, Quote Origin: We Shape Our Tools, and Thereafter Our Tools Shape Us, June 26, 2016 (accessed on December 7, 2023)

From Hansard

I beg to move, "That a Select Committee be appointed to consider and report upon plans for the rebuilding of the House of Commons and upon such alterations as may be considered desirable while preserving all its essential features." On the night of 10th May, 1941, with one of the last bombs of the last serious raid, our House of Commons was destroyed by the violence of the enemy, and we have now to consider whether we should build it up again, and how, and when. We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us. Having dwelt and served for more than 40 years in the late Chamber, and having derived fiery great pleasure and advantage therefrom, I, naturally, would like to see it restored in all essentials to its old form, convenience and dignity.

QuoteInvestigator goes on to describe related quotes:

• Henry David Thoreau, "But lo! men have become the tools of their tools ."
• John M. Culkin in “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan”, "We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us."
• William J. Mitchell, "Now we make our networks and our networks make us."

the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become

--- Bruno Latour, in Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies (1999: 304), cited in Blackboxing, Wikipedia, accessed 7 December 2023

Wikipedia cite:

[Blackboxing is] the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become.

Desire is the presence of absence

--- Alexandre Kojève, quoted by Samantha Rose Hill in "The scar of identity," Aeon, 21 March 2023

From Hill's piece:

Instead of Hegel’s roundabout of self-consciousness that exists in itself and for itself but always and only in relation to another, Kojève gives us: self-consciousness is the I that desires, and desire implies and presupposes a self-consciousness. Thinking about the relation between the finite mind and Absolute knowledge is opaque, but desire is human. People know what it feels like to desire, to want, to crave to be seen, to feel understood. Desire is the hunger one feels to fill the absence inside themselves. Or, as Kojève put it: ‘Desire is the presence of absence.’

 

The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind's worst disease

Sēngcàn (Seng-ts'an), quoted by Jonathan Haidt in The moral roots of liberals and conservatives, TED2008, 15:28 

From Haidt's talk

If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be 'for' or 'against.' The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind's worst disease.

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sengcan.jpg