The first step towards any tangible progress in the future is to get rid of demagogues who repackage progressiveness with verbal constructions of grandeur
Society is behaving as if drowning. We need to mindfully implement the fractal geometry of logistics into the scaffolding of hierarchical federated learning. As Gemini put it:
This is an excellent analysis. It provides a powerful "why" for a symptom I've been observing: the "drowning" sensation in modern society.
It feels like we're "rushing pell-mell" toward a chaotic future, and in their panic, people are grabbing for any "flotsam" that floats—solid, old identities, which is why we see so much agitation to "refight old wars."
Your essay clarifies the nature of this "drowning." It's not the speed of progress that's the problem; it's the sclerosis. We're drowning in stagnation. The "romantic backlash" and "obstructionist vetocracy" you describe have essentially stopped the "flywheel of progress." When a society can no longer build and move forward, its energy turns inward and backward. It becomes a zero-sum fight for what's left, and the old wars become the most convenient frames for that fight.
Your "progress agenda" is the antidote. But as your examples show, this is a fractal problem of execution. The solution requires right-sizing the steps to be taken. Every bit of progress consists of integrating logistics—all the way from the micro-level of "registering photons or twitching muscle fibers" to the macro-level of "building communities."
The "sclerosis" we face is a logistical failure. Our processes (like NEPA) are deliberately mis-sized to be infinitely complex, preventing those "muscle fibers" from ever twitching. Creating tangible, "right-sized" logistical steps is what stops the "drowning" sensation. People stop panicking when they can see the work being done and the next solid "step" in front of them.
The Scottish Enlightenment is not a bad place to look for inspiration in terms of specific policy decisions and cultural transformation. What did they do right there and can it be replicated?
Crawford and other students of progress should probably look into the role of America's ignorant folk Christianity from the 1970's in demoralizing American culture about progress, with its preaching about how we are living in some kind of spooky "end times" prophesied in the Bible, where the true believers are going to be teleported live into heaven any moment now in an event called the rapture. Hilariously the main advocates of this nonsense, namely, Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye and the Christian tract publisher Jack Chick, all died in the last few years like everyone else, and without getting raptured.
It's weird that the billionaire Peter Thiel seems to have fallen for this delusion himself lately, with his speculations that Greta Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky could both be the main supervillain in this end-times fantasy called the Antichrist.
>“Society’s course will be changed only by a change in ideas,” Hayek is reported to have said. “First you must reach the intellectuals, the teachers and writers, with reasoned argument. It will be their influence on society which will prevail, and the politicians will follow.”
Uh, I thought that the Hayekian view is that society is a product of human action, but not of human design. Hayek here sounds like he's advocating some kind of central planning over the thinking of intellectuals to bring about a designed change in society.
As Crawford points out, John Maynard Keynes advocated a similar view. It's interesting that Keynes was a successful businessman and investor, while Hayek was dirt-poor. When it came to results, Keynes showed that he understood how capitalism works on the ground, contrasted with Hayek's armchair theorizing about it.
I might check into Newsom's motives before quoting him. He's just looking to develop Tahoe as though it's a sprawling suburb, or rather to profit from his friendships with developers who wish to do so. His actual track record in producing housing is abysmal from a citizen outcome perspective, and kickback-stuffed.
I'm saying that whatever the details of his proposal are, are likely to be feel-good wrappers around exploitable weak spots specifically added by the proposal.
Of course he likes abundance. He can't deprive himself for a moment, everyone knows that since '20.
(Not that his directives were intelligent, he just couldn't exert self control.)
The love of abundance doesn't automatically lead to good law or policy; it can easily lead to giveaways of the commons.
Sure, I mean, I'm not saying this to praise him and I don't necessarily trust him to be true to the idea. On the other hand, he did sign dozens of YIMBY bills recently, that's something
YES to everything in this!!!!!! Let's go!!!!!!!
A brilliant manifesto for the future!
The first step towards any tangible progress in the future is to get rid of demagogues who repackage progressiveness with verbal constructions of grandeur
The way the last paragraphs are written makes me think the author was a rather popular kid. Has a way of eliciting emotion despite being a data nerd .
I was not very popular in fact!
Society is behaving as if drowning. We need to mindfully implement the fractal geometry of logistics into the scaffolding of hierarchical federated learning. As Gemini put it:
This is an excellent analysis. It provides a powerful "why" for a symptom I've been observing: the "drowning" sensation in modern society.
It feels like we're "rushing pell-mell" toward a chaotic future, and in their panic, people are grabbing for any "flotsam" that floats—solid, old identities, which is why we see so much agitation to "refight old wars."
Your essay clarifies the nature of this "drowning." It's not the speed of progress that's the problem; it's the sclerosis. We're drowning in stagnation. The "romantic backlash" and "obstructionist vetocracy" you describe have essentially stopped the "flywheel of progress." When a society can no longer build and move forward, its energy turns inward and backward. It becomes a zero-sum fight for what's left, and the old wars become the most convenient frames for that fight.
Your "progress agenda" is the antidote. But as your examples show, this is a fractal problem of execution. The solution requires right-sizing the steps to be taken. Every bit of progress consists of integrating logistics—all the way from the micro-level of "registering photons or twitching muscle fibers" to the macro-level of "building communities."
The "sclerosis" we face is a logistical failure. Our processes (like NEPA) are deliberately mis-sized to be infinitely complex, preventing those "muscle fibers" from ever twitching. Creating tangible, "right-sized" logistical steps is what stops the "drowning" sensation. People stop panicking when they can see the work being done and the next solid "step" in front of them.
The Scottish Enlightenment is not a bad place to look for inspiration in terms of specific policy decisions and cultural transformation. What did they do right there and can it be replicated?
Crawford and other students of progress should probably look into the role of America's ignorant folk Christianity from the 1970's in demoralizing American culture about progress, with its preaching about how we are living in some kind of spooky "end times" prophesied in the Bible, where the true believers are going to be teleported live into heaven any moment now in an event called the rapture. Hilariously the main advocates of this nonsense, namely, Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye and the Christian tract publisher Jack Chick, all died in the last few years like everyone else, and without getting raptured.
It's weird that the billionaire Peter Thiel seems to have fallen for this delusion himself lately, with his speculations that Greta Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky could both be the main supervillain in this end-times fantasy called the Antichrist.
>“Society’s course will be changed only by a change in ideas,” Hayek is reported to have said. “First you must reach the intellectuals, the teachers and writers, with reasoned argument. It will be their influence on society which will prevail, and the politicians will follow.”
Uh, I thought that the Hayekian view is that society is a product of human action, but not of human design. Hayek here sounds like he's advocating some kind of central planning over the thinking of intellectuals to bring about a designed change in society.
As Crawford points out, John Maynard Keynes advocated a similar view. It's interesting that Keynes was a successful businessman and investor, while Hayek was dirt-poor. When it came to results, Keynes showed that he understood how capitalism works on the ground, contrasted with Hayek's armchair theorizing about it.
I might check into Newsom's motives before quoting him. He's just looking to develop Tahoe as though it's a sprawling suburb, or rather to profit from his friendships with developers who wish to do so. His actual track record in producing housing is abysmal from a citizen outcome perspective, and kickback-stuffed.
The point is that he now sees abundance as a winning issue. Whether he'll live up to it remains to be seen
Newsome may now claim to support abundance, but his record speaks otherwise.
I'm saying that whatever the details of his proposal are, are likely to be feel-good wrappers around exploitable weak spots specifically added by the proposal.
Of course he likes abundance. He can't deprive himself for a moment, everyone knows that since '20.
(Not that his directives were intelligent, he just couldn't exert self control.)
The love of abundance doesn't automatically lead to good law or policy; it can easily lead to giveaways of the commons.
Sure, I mean, I'm not saying this to praise him and I don't necessarily trust him to be true to the idea. On the other hand, he did sign dozens of YIMBY bills recently, that's something
The nimbyism has been a little twee and self-serving for rather too long, it's true.