This was interesting, thank you for writing. In particular this is v well put and took me back to Strauss (gasp!!):
“Indirect communication becomes necessary when the threats of censure, civil liability, professional and social ostracism, and even criminal culpability disincentivize honest and direct communication.”
Hannaia doesn’t strike me as a Burke reader so refit him by the philosophy prof was weird. What am I missing?
I have one progressive friend that I occasionally get into it with, and it's been clear for some time that nothing you could call a debate is allowed to exist between whatever I am and whatever he is. I'll post two examples:
1. He started rattling off talking points about the rich (specifically Peter Thiel) not paying their" fair share." I've been a practicing tax attorney for the better part of a decade and explained that there are many different taxes that he would have no reason to know about (e.g. 940/941 taxes) that nonetheless get paid by the wealthy, and that the top x percent pay the majority of all tax receipts etc. He simply said "I forgot that this is your area of expertise," and dropped the topic. I know for a fact I didn't change his outlook; he simply knows not to bring up the subject with me because I can intelligently disagree with him.
2. He casually mentioned recently that IQ is not heritable, full stop. I asked why the Ashkenazi community is so over represented in hard sciences, innovation, etc. and he simply said "because they value education more than other cultures," to which I asked "why don't other cultures adopt this attitude?" If they haven't, it would seem cultures are for all intents and purposes coterminous with genetics, meaning we're right back where we started. Again, we just moved on to other topics. I chalk up his fogginess on this matter to his living among the creme de la creme of Americans of all races in Palo Alto, and the fact that when pressed he had to admit he doesn't know a *single person* without at least bachelors' degree.
Note here that I'm not saying that I "OWNED THE LIBS" in the examples above, it's just that I think people are largely determined by their media diets to such an extent that meaningful debate isn't possible. It's like asking a computer to do something outside its programming. Reactionaries have an inherent advantage in these encounters only because they generally come from at most the center toward the right, but often from the left to the right. So, while I could discuss the merits of "systemic racism," a prog is actually incapable of having an adult conversation about e.g. the Civil War. Related to the above, the only reason this guy knows about HBD is because he works with a lot of Asians and subcontinentals that above all fear black people and embrace an IQ-centric vision of the world that places them at the top and what they see as the scary people firmly at the bottom, forever.
As someone firmly on the Right, I tried to question my own blind spots using the framing you’re applying here for Leftist blind spots- so that is usually a sign of great piece of writing, bravo.
I would be curious if you could develop some of the ideas you hinted at here on “Expertism” - we might call it - as the religion of the modern academic progressive (even more than Wokeism... e.g. COVID, anti-free speechism, etc.)
I believe this article shows how the modern academic progressive (MAP instead of BAP? 😂) cannot see the world through any lens except “who the experts are, what are their credentials, and how loyal are they to The Party - i.e. once Hanania got the NYT and Ivy credentials, he’s supposed to play insider baseball with them (No Voldemort talk).
Those of us who are self-identified dissidents have no allegiance to credentials... so I’m easily able to ignore Hanania at a certain juncture.
This is due to the fact that once he is in “troll” category (I would call him a scholastic pyromaniac who just “wants to see the world burn”), he is intellectually useless to me.
He’s had maybe 3-4 super good articles (his Psychological Map of the Culture War and his Conservatives Win Everything were bangers) but everything else has been disorganized noise machine... and increasingly self-referential. Me, I, how I succeed, etc. 😴
Anyway, more 2CB analysis on the Religion of Experts would be greatly welcomed.
This was interesting, thank you for writing. In particular this is v well put and took me back to Strauss (gasp!!):
“Indirect communication becomes necessary when the threats of censure, civil liability, professional and social ostracism, and even criminal culpability disincentivize honest and direct communication.”
Hannaia doesn’t strike me as a Burke reader so refit him by the philosophy prof was weird. What am I missing?
But it’s been 570 years, Rum and the Ottomans are dust and we still don’t know the gender of angels!
Wondering if Intellectuals are worth all this trouble and expense?
🤔
I have one progressive friend that I occasionally get into it with, and it's been clear for some time that nothing you could call a debate is allowed to exist between whatever I am and whatever he is. I'll post two examples:
1. He started rattling off talking points about the rich (specifically Peter Thiel) not paying their" fair share." I've been a practicing tax attorney for the better part of a decade and explained that there are many different taxes that he would have no reason to know about (e.g. 940/941 taxes) that nonetheless get paid by the wealthy, and that the top x percent pay the majority of all tax receipts etc. He simply said "I forgot that this is your area of expertise," and dropped the topic. I know for a fact I didn't change his outlook; he simply knows not to bring up the subject with me because I can intelligently disagree with him.
2. He casually mentioned recently that IQ is not heritable, full stop. I asked why the Ashkenazi community is so over represented in hard sciences, innovation, etc. and he simply said "because they value education more than other cultures," to which I asked "why don't other cultures adopt this attitude?" If they haven't, it would seem cultures are for all intents and purposes coterminous with genetics, meaning we're right back where we started. Again, we just moved on to other topics. I chalk up his fogginess on this matter to his living among the creme de la creme of Americans of all races in Palo Alto, and the fact that when pressed he had to admit he doesn't know a *single person* without at least bachelors' degree.
Note here that I'm not saying that I "OWNED THE LIBS" in the examples above, it's just that I think people are largely determined by their media diets to such an extent that meaningful debate isn't possible. It's like asking a computer to do something outside its programming. Reactionaries have an inherent advantage in these encounters only because they generally come from at most the center toward the right, but often from the left to the right. So, while I could discuss the merits of "systemic racism," a prog is actually incapable of having an adult conversation about e.g. the Civil War. Related to the above, the only reason this guy knows about HBD is because he works with a lot of Asians and subcontinentals that above all fear black people and embrace an IQ-centric vision of the world that places them at the top and what they see as the scary people firmly at the bottom, forever.
This was a good article.
As someone firmly on the Right, I tried to question my own blind spots using the framing you’re applying here for Leftist blind spots- so that is usually a sign of great piece of writing, bravo.
I would be curious if you could develop some of the ideas you hinted at here on “Expertism” - we might call it - as the religion of the modern academic progressive (even more than Wokeism... e.g. COVID, anti-free speechism, etc.)
I believe this article shows how the modern academic progressive (MAP instead of BAP? 😂) cannot see the world through any lens except “who the experts are, what are their credentials, and how loyal are they to The Party - i.e. once Hanania got the NYT and Ivy credentials, he’s supposed to play insider baseball with them (No Voldemort talk).
Those of us who are self-identified dissidents have no allegiance to credentials... so I’m easily able to ignore Hanania at a certain juncture.
This is due to the fact that once he is in “troll” category (I would call him a scholastic pyromaniac who just “wants to see the world burn”), he is intellectually useless to me.
He’s had maybe 3-4 super good articles (his Psychological Map of the Culture War and his Conservatives Win Everything were bangers) but everything else has been disorganized noise machine... and increasingly self-referential. Me, I, how I succeed, etc. 😴
Anyway, more 2CB analysis on the Religion of Experts would be greatly welcomed.
Stalin was right.
This is too much.
So was mustache man ...he just had a temper problem.
Yer late
SCB done messin
https://youtu.be/_0dySkmFpVA