I’m in favor of good leftist criticism and there isn’t any arch subtext here:
I’m a little worried that left criticism is going to just wander into a few stale patterns:
“Big giant revolution” whose effects rely on mass coordination.
Activists are correct, in the sense that society can shift, if a lot of people get behind it
But I’m skeptical of how often it actually happens
In addition to how often, I suspect the real reasons it does can be really different and unexpected from common narrative
If it doesn’t happen, it might rationalize decades of work, noise and burn out, and crowd out real work
The practices/actualization often seem poorly defined or unrealized
Defund the police, that came out of odious police abuse — did this go anywhere— was the particular asks viable in the first place?
I expect that if you looked at MLK and the patterns that caused his success, many people would be very surprised
A reasonable explanation is that the “founder effects”, or “seating” of the causes/asks are defective—if so, it seems like they are defective because of these very essays or activists in some way
This strategy rationalizes a lot of bad behavior and combined with poor institutions, structures and norms, you tend to see colonization/inveiglement by predators/”narcissists” and “cluster B” personality types.
There’s just bad governance in general and it leads to trashiness and repellence
I point out this same thought is behind a lot of movements (e.g. libertarianism), as well as apps and businesses, and other things.
Since this “giant movement/revolution” can achieve literally any outcome, shouldn’t we be suspicious of those who rely on it, versus using other strategies that require resources, institutional competence and relationship building?
“Value statements”, equity or fairness
This just is a value thing
There’s not much to be done here, if you value people on your street or country being equal or not suffering, even if they are objectively better off than the poorest people in the world
Because there’s not much to be done, a lot of arguments might boil down to using rhetoric/devices or otherwise smuggling in things, instead of being substantive
It would be very interesting to see a highly sophisticated (on multiple levels) leftist criticism EA.
I think there are very deep pools of thought or counter thought that could be brought out that isn’t being used
I’m in favor of good leftist criticism and there isn’t any arch subtext here:
I’m a little worried that left criticism is going to just wander into a few stale patterns:
“Big giant revolution” whose effects rely on mass coordination.
Activists are correct, in the sense that society can shift, if a lot of people get behind it
But I’m skeptical of how often it actually happens
In addition to how often, I suspect the real reasons it does can be really different and unexpected from common narrative
If it doesn’t happen, it might rationalize decades of work, noise and burn out, and crowd out real work
The practices/actualization often seem poorly defined or unrealized
Defund the police, that came out of odious police abuse — did this go anywhere— was the particular asks viable in the first place?
I expect that if you looked at MLK and the patterns that caused his success, many people would be very surprised
A reasonable explanation is that the “founder effects”, or “seating” of the causes/asks are defective—if so, it seems like they are defective because of these very essays or activists in some way
This strategy rationalizes a lot of bad behavior and combined with poor institutions, structures and norms, you tend to see colonization/inveiglement by predators/”narcissists” and “cluster B” personality types.
There’s just bad governance in general and it leads to trashiness and repellence
I point out this same thought is behind a lot of movements (e.g. libertarianism), as well as apps and businesses, and other things.
Since this “giant movement/revolution” can achieve literally any outcome, shouldn’t we be suspicious of those who rely on it, versus using other strategies that require resources, institutional competence and relationship building?
“Value statements”, equity or fairness
This just is a value thing
There’s not much to be done here, if you value people on your street or country being equal or not suffering, even if they are objectively better off than the poorest people in the world
Because there’s not much to be done, a lot of arguments might boil down to using rhetoric/devices or otherwise smuggling in things, instead of being substantive
It would be very interesting to see a highly sophisticated (on multiple levels) leftist criticism EA.
I think there are very deep pools of thought or counter thought that could be brought out that isn’t being used