5 ms·

I agree but the danger of this is being too dismissive of actual threats. I don't know how to draw that line.

ethbr0 5y ago
Fair! Imho, there's two classes of actual threats. (1) A sudden, well-prepared realignment of the status quo, enforced afterwards on an ongoing basis. (2) The slow realignment of expectations (aka boiling the frog slowly). It seems like people often see (2), when in reality few groups are farsighted and patient enough to successfully carry that off. In reality what they're seeing is the normal sausage-making of a democracy groping towards a compromise over a point of disagreement, which has always happened. As for (1), it's the scarier but less common class. Aka the January attacks on the Capitol, if they'd been better orchestrated and had a post-attack plan. To me, weighing the severity of both is a question of "If this is successful, what will change?" As I told my conservative friends when they harp on an issue du jour: if one school district in New York state is mandating critical race theory education, what will that actually change about our country? In a democracy, people are doing ignorant / crazy / inept things somewhere constantly. But there's an important distinction to be made between "somewhere" and "sufficiently large or important places."
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  I don't know why you think (2) relies on groups being farsighted and patient. The frog boiling that happens today is almost always a result of chaotic incentivization. Politics is very different today than maybe 20 years ago. No conspiracy needed for that. Yet these unintentional or perhaps even well-intentioned changes to the status quo can be worth observing and reasoning about. A single district mandating critical race theory education won't by itself change a lot, but it's part of a broader shift in the zeitgeist's heresies. Does there need to be a shadowy cabal of progressives saying "yes, just as planned" for this to be true and noteworthy? The things you can't say today are different from the things you couldn't say 20 years ago. You don't need to breathlessly follow the news to know this, but you would be a fool to ignore it entirely. Regardless of whether you think these heresies are morally/politically good, every citizen needs to keep up to date on the latest heresies lest they run afoul of those heresies themselves. Noting that slow shifts in the status quo are rare is rather unhelpful. Of course they're rare. But being familiar with the forest will help you find the right tree. The idea that the truth is a needle in the haystack is just as easily a prescription for consuming more news, not less. That's not to say that you should. Perhaps your life is such that you've decided you don't need any of this or you don't need to find the true danger in every corner. Even dedicated experts find it hard to find true danger before it arrives knocking at the door. The value of finding true danger before it arrives is also debatable. Vast knowledge and the effort needed to acquire it is not an unalloyed good, it's a cost/benefit trade-off like everything else in life.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    As to the slow shifts, I said they were the opposite of rare, and indeed constantly happening as consensus shifts and is rebrokered. Which was a response to the comment I was replying to, regarding distinguishing actual danger from everything else. Danger, to me, means subversion of democracy and/or individual freedoms. Which means either a minority wilfully shifting the zeitgeist out of proportion with their strength of support or taking away people's freedom to participate in democracy. It does not include everyone deciding to gradually change their ideals. If the country as a whole is becoming more racist (to create an example), in terms of population percentage, then that's a structural social issue that needs to be addressed as such. Awareness of current news isn't going to enable one to address or change that.
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      Awareness of current news allows you to see that a shift is happening at all.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        Does it? It feels like current news would be a poor method for tracking multi-year cultural changes.
        themacguffinman 5y ago
        Yes I think so. Current news gives you a sense of what mainstream culture considers important this year, then you compare it with what you observed in previous years. It's common for there to be a common cultural trend or debate that is hammered non-stop in mainstream media, you won't have to breathlessly follow news (ie. you just don't have to quit the news entirely, casual check-ins are fine) because it'll be breathlessly reported. That's what you watch for and you watch the conversation change from year to year. More importantly, news gives you a mainstream perspective beyond typically dry work conversation or your highly selective filter bubble of personal relationships. What's acceptable to say amongst friends is not necessarily the same as what's acceptable in the mainstream. You don't want to be the CEO who lost his job in the span of a couple of days because he didn't realize that anti-abortion stances are no longer publicly acceptable in the creative mainstream [1]. Poor guy probably had friends and family who didn't have any problems with his views. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/gaming-ceo-ousted-after-tweeting-hes-proud-to-support-texas-abortion-ban/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/gaming-ceo-ousted-aft...

Fair! Imho, there's two classes of actual threats. (1) A sudden, well-prepared realignment of the status quo, enforced afterwards on an ongoing basis. (2) The slow realignment of expectations (aka boiling the frog slowly). It seems like people often see (2), when in reality few groups are farsighted and patient enough to successfully carry that off. In reality what they're seeing is the normal sausage-making of a democracy groping towards a compromise over a point of disagreement, which has always happened. As for (1), it's the scarier but less common class. Aka the January attacks on the Capitol, if they'd been better orchestrated and had a post-attack plan. To me, weighing the severity of both is a question of "If this is successful, what will change?" As I told my conservative friends when they harp on an issue du jour: if one school district in New York state is mandating critical race theory education, what will that actually change about our country? In a democracy, people are doing ignorant / crazy / inept things somewhere constantly. But there's an important distinction to be made between "somewhere" and "sufficiently large or important places."

themacguffinman 5y ago
I don't know why you think (2) relies on groups being farsighted and patient. The frog boiling that happens today is almost always a result of chaotic incentivization. Politics is very different today than maybe 20 years ago. No conspiracy needed for that. Yet these unintentional or perhaps even well-intentioned changes to the status quo can be worth observing and reasoning about. A single district mandating critical race theory education won't by itself change a lot, but it's part of a broader shift in the zeitgeist's heresies. Does there need to be a shadowy cabal of progressives saying "yes, just as planned" for this to be true and noteworthy? The things you can't say today are different from the things you couldn't say 20 years ago. You don't need to breathlessly follow the news to know this, but you would be a fool to ignore it entirely. Regardless of whether you think these heresies are morally/politically good, every citizen needs to keep up to date on the latest heresies lest they run afoul of those heresies themselves. Noting that slow shifts in the status quo are rare is rather unhelpful. Of course they're rare. But being familiar with the forest will help you find the right tree. The idea that the truth is a needle in the haystack is just as easily a prescription for consuming more news, not less. That's not to say that you should. Perhaps your life is such that you've decided you don't need any of this or you don't need to find the true danger in every corner. Even dedicated experts find it hard to find true danger before it arrives knocking at the door. The value of finding true danger before it arrives is also debatable. Vast knowledge and the effort needed to acquire it is not an unalloyed good, it's a cost/benefit trade-off like everything else in life.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  As to the slow shifts, I said they were the opposite of rare, and indeed constantly happening as consensus shifts and is rebrokered. Which was a response to the comment I was replying to, regarding distinguishing actual danger from everything else. Danger, to me, means subversion of democracy and/or individual freedoms. Which means either a minority wilfully shifting the zeitgeist out of proportion with their strength of support or taking away people's freedom to participate in democracy. It does not include everyone deciding to gradually change their ideals. If the country as a whole is becoming more racist (to create an example), in terms of population percentage, then that's a structural social issue that needs to be addressed as such. Awareness of current news isn't going to enable one to address or change that.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    Awareness of current news allows you to see that a shift is happening at all.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Does it? It feels like current news would be a poor method for tracking multi-year cultural changes.
      - themacguffinman 5y ago
        Yes I think so. Current news gives you a sense of what mainstream culture considers important this year, then you compare it with what you observed in previous years. It's common for there to be a common cultural trend or debate that is hammered non-stop in mainstream media, you won't have to breathlessly follow news (ie. you just don't have to quit the news entirely, casual check-ins are fine) because it'll be breathlessly reported. That's what you watch for and you watch the conversation change from year to year. More importantly, news gives you a mainstream perspective beyond typically dry work conversation or your highly selective filter bubble of personal relationships. What's acceptable to say amongst friends is not necessarily the same as what's acceptable in the mainstream. You don't want to be the CEO who lost his job in the span of a couple of days because he didn't realize that anti-abortion stances are no longer publicly acceptable in the creative mainstream [1]. Poor guy probably had friends and family who didn't have any problems with his views. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/gaming-ceo-ousted-after-tweeting-hes-proud-to-support-texas-abortion-ban/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/gaming-ceo-ousted-aft...