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Overton window fragmented such that it is currently non-overlapping. Some fragments consider the behaviors that Snowden reported on abhorrent; others consider

Overton window fragmented such that it is currently non-overlapping. Some fragments consider the behaviors that Snowden reported on abhorrent; others consider them fine; still others think it's a moot point because they are powerless and can't do anything about it anyway; and others think it's a moot point because they're going to overthrow the government and remake it in their image anyway. We're in the phase where the factions are geographically sorting, identifying allies, and arming. Then we fight it out. Each faction thinks their particular Overton window will win and become dominant afterwards, but likely we'll just end up back in the Stone Age and there won't be much of a society left to have a mainstream.

djhn 11d ago
Your comment started out well within the Overton window, but in the second paragraph it jumped out. Can we call that Overton window defenestration?
- nostrademons 11d ago
  I like that terminology. I'll explain, though, because I know the idea that we're all gonna kill each other is currently outside of the Overton Window. There's a fairly well-known (within the field) concept in history & international relations that wars start when the balance of power is ambiguous. Each side thinks that their in-group is more numerous, more powerful, and more righteous than the other. When groups have an accurate self-assessment of their relative power, the more powerful one gets its way and the less powerful one swallows its pride and does what it's told. But when both groups believe they are the more powerful one, they press their advantage and come into conflict. Rather than backing down, they keep pushing for concessions and escalating, believing that if it comes to a fight, they'll win. Since both groups have the misapprehension that they will be the winner, it actually does come to a fight, even though fighting is not strictly rational for either one. It gets even more ambiguous when the conflict is multi-sided, since the uncertainty in power relations is greater relative to their actual power, and the groups often don't know which way potential allies will break or to what extent an adversary's attention will be taken up by others. History is full of examples where the news articles were crowing that war was impossible right up until it broke out, usually because it would be irrational. People are not always rational, particularly when they have a false perception of the world.
  - ai_critic 11d ago
    The current success of red team and Trump in the US is an excellent example of this from the last decade--one can make the argument that blue team failed to recognize the actual pecking order, and pushed too far and too hard, and now have gotten their teeth kicked in as a result. (Which is bad, because red team under Trump has no actual talent for boring, effective governance at a time when it is sorely needed. Near inarguably, they're actively bad at it.)
    - nostrademons 11d ago
      I was certainly think of U.S. red vs. blue politics. I think it's bidirectional though: blue team doesn't realize how unpopular some of their key policy agendas are with red-team America, which is why they keep getting their teeth kicked in during elections. But red team doesn't realize the extent to which urban America has moved on from the cultural values of the 1980s, and both how numerous and how devoted their opposition is to their ideals. In reality, the teams are fairly evenly matched in both numbers and strength of conviction. But neither team will admit that, thinking that it's just a few errant radicals that are being manipulated by shadowy forces (Bill Gates, George Soros, and the NYTimes are the bogeyman for the reds; Trump, Miller, Bannon, and Fox News are the bogeyman for the blues). It seems inconceivable to each side that tens of millions of Americans might have sincere beliefs that differ from their own. The mismatch between perception and reality makes me quite worried for the future of the country. There are plenty of global examples as well, eg. everybody thought Russia would absolutely steamroll Ukraine and that hasn't happened, both Iran and the US think they have the upper hand and just need to mop up in the Persian Gulf. That's why those conflicts are still going on.
      - ai_critic 11d ago
        Perhaps a bit ahistorical, but I'm put in mind of the quote "Not even Masada began as a suicide attempt." Interesting times indeed.
      - SamInTheShell 11d ago
        You can probably div up some factions just based off voting data. Red team made it in with just about 1/3rd of the voting population. About 1/3rd of the voting population didn't vote. Just if we're trying to put some numbers to something, those should be verifiable at least. Doesn't say why 1/3rd didn't vote, so it's just 1/3rd unknown faction.
ricksunny 11d ago
>We're in the phase where the factions are geographically sorting, identifying allies, and arming. In this framing what are the factions? What does geographically sorting mean - are the factions moving themselves from place to place?
- Zigurd 11d ago
  Idaho has had an in-migration of retired cops and neonazis (insert Venn diagram here). There are other places in the country that have a reputation for being hostile to non-white, non-straight, non-authoritarians. Some of them like to larp as revolutionaries, and some notable tech billionaires and VCs post sympathetic screeds about these people, but would never deign to live among them. But this doesn't add up to Civil War anytime soon.
seer 11d ago
Why do we need to go to the Stone Age, maybe we go to Pre-cold war diversity of said windows? Or to Cold War stalemate with just a lot more actors? I think the cheapening of labour that AI is doing globally will be much more impactful on culture, economy and life in general. Our whole world order was _built_ on the Black Death making labour expensive which lead to the Industrial Revolution (among other factors, but this was an important one). If we get to cheap labour - then we go to where South Asia is today - low education (why invest when you have ai?) big stratification of society, populist politics, etc. India is portraying to its people how it’s racing to overtake the west and China … I think the other way around is more likely, with AI you get everyone closer to India’s case. Prepare for ultra-ultra-ultra rich - like you have in India - honestly the gap between the wealthy and the poor there is astronomically higher than anything you’ve seen in the west. Silver lining is though - societies like this end up “high Kinship” and more “stable” - maybe even lower large scale conflict?
flir 11d ago
That's still a single window. Otherwise what are the radical, unthinkable positions between abhorrent, fine and moot? (TL;DR: It's just a metaphor).
pjc50 11d ago
You can see this in the framing over ICE, and before that the response to BLM: a lot of Americans want an unaccountable paramilitary police force. You're not going to get serious opposition to mass surveillance until you kill the desire of curtain twitchers to report their neighbors to the Gestapo. People will even install their own mass surveillance cameras linked to the police! (Ring etc)
- neffy 11d ago
  Historically, one of the biggest issues that the Gestapo (and I would imagine any other such organisation) had to deal with was all the false neighbour and similar complaints from the "curtain twitchers" getting in the way of the actual surveillance and persecution work.

djhn 11d ago

Your comment started out well within the Overton window, but in the second paragraph it jumped out. Can we call that Overton window defenestration?

nostrademons 11d ago
I like that terminology. I'll explain, though, because I know the idea that we're all gonna kill each other is currently outside of the Overton Window. There's a fairly well-known (within the field) concept in history & international relations that wars start when the balance of power is ambiguous. Each side thinks that their in-group is more numerous, more powerful, and more righteous than the other. When groups have an accurate self-assessment of their relative power, the more powerful one gets its way and the less powerful one swallows its pride and does what it's told. But when both groups believe they are the more powerful one, they press their advantage and come into conflict. Rather than backing down, they keep pushing for concessions and escalating, believing that if it comes to a fight, they'll win. Since both groups have the misapprehension that they will be the winner, it actually does come to a fight, even though fighting is not strictly rational for either one. It gets even more ambiguous when the conflict is multi-sided, since the uncertainty in power relations is greater relative to their actual power, and the groups often don't know which way potential allies will break or to what extent an adversary's attention will be taken up by others. History is full of examples where the news articles were crowing that war was impossible right up until it broke out, usually because it would be irrational. People are not always rational, particularly when they have a false perception of the world.
- ai_critic 11d ago
  The current success of red team and Trump in the US is an excellent example of this from the last decade--one can make the argument that blue team failed to recognize the actual pecking order, and pushed too far and too hard, and now have gotten their teeth kicked in as a result. (Which is bad, because red team under Trump has no actual talent for boring, effective governance at a time when it is sorely needed. Near inarguably, they're actively bad at it.)
  - nostrademons 11d ago
    I was certainly think of U.S. red vs. blue politics. I think it's bidirectional though: blue team doesn't realize how unpopular some of their key policy agendas are with red-team America, which is why they keep getting their teeth kicked in during elections. But red team doesn't realize the extent to which urban America has moved on from the cultural values of the 1980s, and both how numerous and how devoted their opposition is to their ideals. In reality, the teams are fairly evenly matched in both numbers and strength of conviction. But neither team will admit that, thinking that it's just a few errant radicals that are being manipulated by shadowy forces (Bill Gates, George Soros, and the NYTimes are the bogeyman for the reds; Trump, Miller, Bannon, and Fox News are the bogeyman for the blues). It seems inconceivable to each side that tens of millions of Americans might have sincere beliefs that differ from their own. The mismatch between perception and reality makes me quite worried for the future of the country. There are plenty of global examples as well, eg. everybody thought Russia would absolutely steamroll Ukraine and that hasn't happened, both Iran and the US think they have the upper hand and just need to mop up in the Persian Gulf. That's why those conflicts are still going on.
    - ai_critic 11d ago
      Perhaps a bit ahistorical, but I'm put in mind of the quote "Not even Masada began as a suicide attempt." Interesting times indeed.
    - SamInTheShell 11d ago
      You can probably div up some factions just based off voting data. Red team made it in with just about 1/3rd of the voting population. About 1/3rd of the voting population didn't vote. Just if we're trying to put some numbers to something, those should be verifiable at least. Doesn't say why 1/3rd didn't vote, so it's just 1/3rd unknown faction.

ricksunny 11d ago

>We're in the phase where the factions are geographically sorting, identifying allies, and arming. In this framing what are the factions? What does geographically sorting mean - are the factions moving themselves from place to place?

Zigurd 11d ago
Idaho has had an in-migration of retired cops and neonazis (insert Venn diagram here). There are other places in the country that have a reputation for being hostile to non-white, non-straight, non-authoritarians. Some of them like to larp as revolutionaries, and some notable tech billionaires and VCs post sympathetic screeds about these people, but would never deign to live among them. But this doesn't add up to Civil War anytime soon.

seer 11d ago

Why do we need to go to the Stone Age, maybe we go to Pre-cold war diversity of said windows? Or to Cold War stalemate with just a lot more actors? I think the cheapening of labour that AI is doing globally will be much more impactful on culture, economy and life in general. Our whole world order was _built_ on the Black Death making labour expensive which lead to the Industrial Revolution (among other factors, but this was an important one). If we get to cheap labour - then we go to where South Asia is today - low education (why invest when you have ai?) big stratification of society, populist politics, etc. India is portraying to its people how it’s racing to overtake the west and China … I think the other way around is more likely, with AI you get everyone closer to India’s case. Prepare for ultra-ultra-ultra rich - like you have in India - honestly the gap between the wealthy and the poor there is astronomically higher than anything you’ve seen in the west. Silver lining is though - societies like this end up “high Kinship” and more “stable” - maybe even lower large scale conflict?

flir 11d ago

That's still a single window. Otherwise what are the radical, unthinkable positions between abhorrent, fine and moot? (TL;DR: It's just a metaphor).

pjc50 11d ago

You can see this in the framing over ICE, and before that the response to BLM: a lot of Americans want an unaccountable paramilitary police force. You're not going to get serious opposition to mass surveillance until you kill the desire of curtain twitchers to report their neighbors to the Gestapo. People will even install their own mass surveillance cameras linked to the police! (Ring etc)

neffy 11d ago
Historically, one of the biggest issues that the Gestapo (and I would imagine any other such organisation) had to deal with was all the false neighbour and similar complaints from the "curtain twitchers" getting in the way of the actual surveillance and persecution work.