This is good news, I think? Thiel has some extremish views, but I generally regard him as intelligent and thoughtful. And he's in close contact with other smart, influential people (e.g. Musk, Sam Altman, etc.), which gives them some indirect influence.
Not that this makes things substantially better. But maybe a little bit? Hopefully?
How about "not afraid to make reasonable insights that run the risk of being misinterpreted as politically incorrect"? I watched his RNC speech for the first time today (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTJB8AkT1dk). I couldn't fault it. Maybe if we could park our bourgeois principles for a moment and listen to the voices of the economically depressed regions in the country that voted for Trump, we could unite and find a common solution? It seems to me this is what Thiel stands for. Half the country has been suffering at the hands of technological progress, environmental regulation and globalization for almost three decades, while the Bay Area has thrived in its economic bubble. What is progress for if it doesn't help people?
Income was pretty strongly positively correlated with voting for Trump over Clinton. The 'white working class revolt' narrative is only a small part of what happened on Tuesday.
Yes this is what everyone missed. If you watched South Park over the past 3 seasons, or watched Milo Yiannopolous' videos on YouTube, there is a battle going on against the progressive movement. Its about freedom of speech. But the liberals failed to see this, because they were too busy labelling everyone misogynist and racist.
Sure there are these guys, they are online in reddit's /r/pussypassdenied, they might froth at the mouth when they say 'lock her up'. These guys have always been easy to hear, those voices are still coming from inside the bubble of firstworldproblems. This is not what Thiel seems to be talking about, or what Trump has put up on his website. Perhaps Trump's personality faults are being used to keep us on this narrative that the modern economic progressive movement is working for all of us, and anyone who says differently is intellectually or morally flawed? This might explain why we have managed to leave half the population in our economic trail dust for 25 odd years.
His head-over-heels support for a decidedly anti-libertarian candidate like Trump is in itself quite extremist. This has always been one of the standard tools for (crypto-)fascists and closet authoritarians of all ilks to get into positions of influence -- by using people of nominally "opposing" viewpoints as, in effect, wedge instruments to disrupt the system as violently as possible -- and then step into the emergent vacuum.
And somewhat secondarily, there are the antics of his pals at the Seasteading Institute in blatantly courting partnership with the government in Honduras (basically the most murderous government left in the hemisphere) in order to set up a libertarian microstate in the heart of certain piece of "jungle" that just so happens to also be claimed by one of the region's poorest and most ill-treated ethnic groups.
Thiel's own role in this venture (if any) is unclear -- but his association with the SSI (and the principle actors in this "venture") is well-established.
> His head-over-heels support for a decidedly anti-libertarian candidate like Trump
Is Trump anti-libertarian? His policies seem fairly libertarian to me. I suppose being anti-abortion could be considered anti-libertarian, and maybe you could frame his immigration stance as non-libertarian? But i'm not sure. Libertarians don't necessarily extend their liberty to non-citizens.
Are you thinking of some others? I'm perfectly willing to be wrong about this. I just can't think of any major instances where he deviates from what i'd consider to be a libertarian agenda.
His numerous sexual assaults on women (and indisputable, caught-on-tape remarks on the subject) are as diametrically opposed to the libertarian "non-coercion" principle" as one can get, I'd say.
1) Seems a bit strong to tell someone what they can and can't say.
2) He didn't get half the country to vote for him. It looks like around 55-60% of voters turned out this year (the whole tally isn't calculated yet). Of those, he got less than 50% (as Clinton got more votes than him). So at best he seems to have gotten around 30% of the voters to vote for him. Not everyone is a voter (age, other disqualifying factors). So even if he had somehow gotten 50% of voters (which, again, he didn't), he'd still have less than half the country voting for him.
I agree with gnarbarian. Being an extremist is defined as being far outside the norm. Even with a low voter count, it seems irrational to suggest that the majority of the people who voted in this election are people with views far outside the norm in America and the majority with ordinary views just didn't go to the polls. If someone can convince the large majority of voters in a country to pick them, I think it's a strong suggestion that their views are well within the norm for that country.
Trump could never be elected into office here in Canada, even with a low voter count because his views are far outside of the norm of how many Canadians think. America is different with a different culture, and the only evidence we have (polling data) suggests that the views of a great many Americans in 2016 line up pretty closely with the views of Mr. Trump.
I'm saying that "extreme" and "extremist" are not things with an objective reality, but rather things defined with reference to an existing group. What is extreme for one group may not be extreme for another group.
An election is basically a poll of whose views the population supports. So any person elected by that population must be a person with views that said population does not find extreme.
I think this is a problem with modern liberalism in that "extreme" has become synonymous with "people who disagree with me" or "people who don't share my right kind of opinions"
a person who holds extreme or fanatical political or
religious views, especially one who resorts to or advocates
extreme action.
Nothing about this requires they not be the majority or even a very significant minority. It just requires they hold extreme views.
Nothing about this requires viewing them only through a local and not a global lens, either.
And just because people voted for Trump doesn't mean they agree with all or even any of his positions. (Anecdata) I've spent the last several days speaking with numerous people who voted for him despite disagreement on many of his policy positions, strictly because they were voting against Clinton.
But how do you define extreme? Consider this, believing non-whites are morally and intellectually inferior would be considered an extreme and fanatical position.
However this was not considered an extreme position in the 1800s because, unforutnately, it was the majority position.
The problem you are having is you are defining extreme with reference to what you and the people around you believe to be extreme and fanatical rather than defining it based on what the majority consider extreme and fanatical, and the best evidence we have for the majority view in America is a very recent poll.
Most extremists do not consider their views extreme. It largely requires an outside view (literally as in another time or place, or figuratively as in the non-extremists colocated with them).
In particular, though, that view is demonstrably false. Anyone holding it can be considered an "extremist" just on the grounds of holding onto false beliefs (though falsification still has to occur).
A modern example is (not a majority view) the anti-vaxxer crowd.
Another one which is closer to a majority view (certainly a significant minority), is the anti-climate change crowd.
How about the anti-evolution crowd (which has a lot of overlap with the above two), a significant minority in the US as evidenced by our K-12 biology textbooks.
All you are saying here is "people who disagree with me about vaccination and climate change are extreme because they are blind to evidence"
Obviously these people have a very different interpretation of the evidence and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. To suggest they are crazy because they disagree with you or find your evidence unconvincing is the same kind of smugness that cost Ms. Clinton and the democratic party this election.
I'm not running for office any time soon, so my smugness will cost me nothing but karma here. I'm not suggesting they're crazy, I'm suggesting they're holding views which, by all reasonable evidence, appear to be false. These are not "opinion" views. You can't opinion your way into autism from vaccines. You can't opinion your way out of climate change.
People who believe vaccines cause autism (today) are fanatics.
People who deny climate change is happening (today) are fanatics.
I think you can with regard to climate change - no one is saying that the termpreature isn't getting warmer, what they are arguing is whether human released CO2 is the cause. It's probably not going to be a popular opinion on this website but there are some holes in climate science that points to humans as the major contributor. For example:
1 The climate record started in 1800 which was one of the coldest periods in history - 1816 is popularly called the year without a summer and there had been a little ice age that started in the 1600s and ended during the 1800s (of course it's been rapidly warming since then)
2. Recent NASA observations show glacial retreat and warming on Mars that happened exactly at the same time as global warming on earth suggesting possible solar origion of climate change rather than human caused.
3. I have yet to see a single piece of evidence that conclusively links a warming climate with human released CO2. All we are told is that CO2 makes things warmer and that humans are releasing more CO2 than before. That's not enough, for climate change to be plausable they have to show that human released CO2 is enough to make a meaningful impact on atmospheric composition such that it makes the earth warmer. I don't think we have enough understanding of how atmosphere behaves or even of how much gases we are releasing to make those kinds of conclusions.
now my purpose isn't to get into a debate on climate change here, all I want to demonstrate is that the people who deny man made climate change aren't crazy or fanatical, they are ordinary rational people that for whatever reason have reached a different conclusion and we should not be so quick to dismiss them. The hallmark of rationality is willing to inquire and debate for the validity of opinions, not dismiss opinions outright as fanatical or crazy without at least looking at the other side's evidence.
> no one is saying that the termpreature isn't getting warmer
Many are, until recently the most common talking point was "it's cooled since 1998".
1. We have temperature data going back lot further than that, just not direct measurements.
2. Mars has an extremely different atmosphere than ours, Our only commonality is the sun which is actually in a cool period.
3. Can you propose a better explanation for the observed warming? It's a massive amount of energy that has to come from somewhere. When there is a theory that fits the data and you want to challenge that then you need a better theory. Galileo faced the same problem.
> 3. I have yet to see a single piece of evidence that conclusively links a warming climate with human released CO2.
Now, I don't know much about climate change either, so I googled it. The IPCC 2007 report outlined how the last 20,000 years of glacial record show a warm period very similar to the four warm periods in the 600,000 years prior. However, the CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O levels in the last 250 years have continued to rise beyond the normal peak, currently exceeding previous records by over a full range. So it's evident that something has been releasing unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases in the remarkably short time since the industrial revolution.
As for CO₂ in particular, it's merely the most direct byproduct of burning wood, coal, and oil. It's not the strongest greenhouse gas, it is the simplest causal link between the massive sustained burning of carbon and vast quantities of CO₂ spontaneously appearing. If you want to know more about how CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, I'll be happy to google that, too.
> currently exceeding previous records by over a full range.
What is a full range? does that have a number, is it a million kg per year? 5 million? And how does that compare to the actual atmosphere composition given that the atmosphere forms a 300 mile thick radius around the entire planet. Is the amount of greenhouse gases released by humans enough to make a dent in something large enough to form a 300 mile thick layer around the planet? Lets face it - you and climate science doesn't have the answers to these questions and until it does it will remain a hypothesis.
A full range is max-min. In the case of CO₂, the usual level is 200-250 ppm, with warm periods reaching as high as 300 ppm, giving a range of 100. The recent warm period of 10,000 years had it up to 280, and it reached 300 around 1900. The current level is 400 ppm.
The six gases in the atmosphere that appear above 60 ppm have a combined mass of about 14.85 g/mol. Removing 100 ppm of CO₂ would reduce the mass of the atmosphere by 1.23 g/mol, or 8%. To convert that to kg/year, we have to take 8% of the mass of the atmosphere, roughly 5.14E18 kg, and divide by 100 years.
So a range is 4 thousand million million kg per year, or 4000 short scale gigatons per year, and is absolutely able to make a bulge in the atmosphere.
edit: I re-calculated the mass of the atmosphere. assuming that CO₂=C+O₂. This time I got 14.3790 g/mol, where replacing 100 PPM of CO₂ with O₂ reduces the mass by 0.0012 g/mol or 0.008%. That would correspond to 4 gigatons per year, whereas current estimates are 40 gigatons per year.
I calculated the mass a third time, this time assuming nitrogen was molecular. This yields an atmospheric mass of 29.1 g/mol, of which CO₂ represents 604 ppm by mass, squaring with existing estimates. Then replacing 100 ppm of CO₂ with O₂ lowers the atmospheric mass by 1.2 mg/mol, or 4.1E-5, corresponding to a yearly added mass of 2.1 Gt.
You know, not that I think about it, I should probably just look things up on my own. I don't get the feeling that you are particularly inquisitive or willing to discuss the topic.
It would be a significant mischaracterization of the state of the evidence on both those issues to say there is all that much room for interpretation.
A more likely reason for holding the extremist position of an anti-vaxxer or climate change denier is the usual cognitive biases against incorporating new information inconsistent with one's current mental model.
> So at best he seems to have gotten around 30% of the voters to vote for him.
What do you mean by this exactly? Trump lost the popular election with 47.5% support to Clinton's 47.7%. How did you come up with the "around 30%" figure?
I just grabbed the first website in the search results that had numbers, which are based on projections. I'm not standing behind their accuracy (I don't even recognize the site), but I have no reason to suspect they'd be purposefully wrong. And we're talking ballpark figures anyway.
Assuming 60% voter turnout (55-60% based on tallies at the time I wrote that, so 60% is the most optimistic/generous view). With 47.5% of that 60%, that puts him at around 28.5% of all potential voters voting for him. Near enough to 30% for my back of the envelope calculations. I did neglect the third-party candidates' percentages when I made that estimate, though.
EDIT: Out of curiosity I looked some numbers up, going just by the ones that did turn out to vote, she has 47.52% of the cast votes, he has 47.19%. The difference in votes is around 400k.
Well, you wrote, 'he got less than 50% (as Clinton got more votes than him),' which means that the reason Mr. Trump received less than half the votes is that Mrs. Clinton received more than half the votes, which isn't true: both of them received less than half the votes because some voters voted for neither.
It's interesting that I'm being downvoted because folks think I'm a Trump partisan (I'm not!) I'm just pointing out facts, not opinion.
I was responding to someone claiming that a majority voted for Trump, which is a falsifiable statement. My response was to use the quickest, factual statement to counter it (Clinton had the largest block of the popular vote, therefore Trump must be under 50%). Perhaps I should have responded with the actual percentages (which showed they were both under the 50% mark), but there's no need to read into my writing statements that I did not make.
His phrase, 'he got less than 50% (as Clinton got more votes than him),' implies that Mr. Trump received less than 50% because Mrs. Clinton received more votes than him, which is not true: they both received less than 50% because a significant portion of voters chose not to vote for either.
If there are at least two candidates in an election, and one has more votes than all the others, none of the others can have over 50%.
This does not, strictly speaking, imply that the winning (by plurality rules, not majority rules) candidate has over 50%, it merely sets the bounds on what all other candidates can have.
Clinton has more votes (popular vote) than Trump, ergo, he cannot have had 50% of the vote. That was my statement, and it's a factual statement. You interpreted it to imply that she, then, must have had over 50% of the vote. That was not my statement nor my intended implication.
Yes, you can. Your rebuttal doesn't even hold together logically. Extremism isn't defined by lack of popular support. Our entire system of government was designed in part out of a fear of the extremism of the massed public.
The most clear statement from him I'm aware of is "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
1:15 PM - 6 Nov 2012.
This comes from his philosophy BA at Stanford, which is a department largely of the analytic school. He is, broadly speaking, positivist. The idea of science we have is closer to the German Wissenschaft which has a more encyclopedic meaning, more about the organization of knowledge, and less strict in it epistemology which in the analytic school is very narrow and in its crude expression simply empiricist.
Sounds nice, but if you listen to what he actually said in that video it's pretty darn loopy and contorted thinking, no matter how you slice it. And when directly asked, he does say that he thinks climate science is "more pseudo-science" than a real science.
Hmm so in that case, "political science", "materials science", "veterinary science", "biomedical science", "actuarial science", etc. etc. are all not "real" science. Very convincing argument, I have to say.
He says that "it's often a tell that they're bluffing," which is a far cry from the universal condemnation of anything with 'science' in the name that you seem to be assuming. Please make an attempt to understand, then argue.
His whole reasoning in that section in the video is just stilly. The reason some subjects have "science" in them and others don't is usually just a matter of convention or linguistic accident -- it really doesn't have that much import (and in any case, no bearing at all on the substantive issues behind climate change). And yet, he's trying to draw the conclusion that there's some kind of a deep, revealing "tell" behind it.
Pseudo-intellectual tripe which we're supposed to take seriously (because he's a billionaire, I guess).
The claim is not "climate science isn't (real because it has science in the name)", but "(climate science isn't real) (because it has science in the name)". That is, the name is being used as a reason to discount it.
That's not really a science either. While there are things like experiments and the scientific method, most of computer science is a confluence of mathematics and engineering.
I looked at your article and it seems he's just saying that when women were enfranchised, the type of democracy we had became less supportive of libertarianism.
I have no idea whether that's true or not, but misquoting him is not contributing to an intelligent dialogue.
That quote follows Thiel around on here. Someone always brings it up as damning, even though Thiel's statement is a bit vague and likely exactly what you stated.
I didn't quote him, I made an assumption about the quote. He said the country was better before women got the vote. He doesn't say that libertarians should try to figure out how to earn women's vote, but rather that women don't vote for libertarian policies/candidates and that is in his view the problem. Its a very short logical jump to infer that he thinks women shouldn't vote. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not sure he's ever corrected this misunderstanding, if it is in fact a misrepresentation of his true opinion.
Would it be fair to compare this to saying "I think architecture was better in the ancient times, when low-paid craftmen fashioned each stone by hand"? If I said this, I don't think it should be assumed that I'm in favour of eliminating living wages for laborers.
I agree with you on your last point. I don't think Thiel is too concerned with people misunderstanding him, and he certainly could be more specific.
He said that women are a tough constituency for libertarianism and capitalism, but that "It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away." How on earth are you getting "women shouldn't be allowed to vote" from that?
Well, for one, that he chose to say "will be taken away" when responding to this criticism, instead of "should be taken away," implying that he thinks they ought to be taken away (because it would allow for his libertarian utopia) but that it won't happen for other reasons.
That's not quite accurate. What he did say was bad enough without exaggeration for effect. He said women voting led to less libertarianism, and he regards less libertarianism as a tragedy. He claims that he supports women voting.
He also said that 'democracy and freedom are incompatible' because the masses don't vote for his libertarian paradise.
He may get a pass for not (directly) advocating that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. But what he did say is sufficiently stomach-turning that one has to question the judgement of any tech company that would want to maintain associations with such a person, in any capacity.
In any case there's also this precious quote
Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.
Which, if read properly, is very revealing about the vision he has in mind for society.
When you see comments like this, it's little wonder Thiel has gotten interested in Seasteading. Perhaps he thinks it's the only way to escape from this most virulent strain of stupid.
If we're going to debug what's wrong with America, this comment is like ground zero. Start here, and work backwards.
"Peter Thiel wrote a book called The Diversity Myth where he said that race mixing would destroy white culture"
This is a lie, and it's exactly the kind of lie that Thiel is trying to call out as insufferable oppression on campus and in intellectual discussion.
Having lived in very 'multicultural' places, and fairly homogeneous places, it's clear to me that there are both advantages and disadvantages to each - and to quash all discussion in one direction is totalitarian and oppressive.
Japan is the most orderly and civilized place on planet earth and it has a lot to do with the homogenous nature of their culture. Nordic countries, though they are 'intellectually liberal' - are culturally extremely conservative and traditional and 'homogenous' in culture and thinking, and this is one of the key ingredients to their social successes, and why simple socialist policies will not reproduce what they have. Sweden has a very popular Monarchy, and official religion (Christianity), a state Church into which 1% of tax revenues goes. Of course they are not very religious at all, but can you imagine a 'state religion' in America? And 1% of taxes going to it? That would be considered 'extreme, extreme right wing' - and yet it is a very real fact in Sweden. It's one piece of the 'underlying base social fabric' there.
I'm not arguing for or against multiculturalism, other than to say there are many drawbacks of multiculturalism, and that in North America especially there is a vicious oppression of ideas and debate in this area, fostered by comments such as the one you made. The issue obviously can be commandeered by populists racists (which is scary), but it never gets that far because someone yells 'racist' and shuts down all intelligent thinking.
I grew up in very Multicultural Toronto and thought it was superior. After living around the world I now live in a very 'Quebecois' part of Montreal that is nearly homogenous - and though I'm definitely a 'minority' and not part of that culture, I like it much better. People here are happy, civil, and there is a sense of community that absolutely does not exist in Toronto or Vancouver (or San Francisco, for that matter).
So enough with the knee-jerk reactionary hyperbole, try to allow for a little more nuance in issues like this.
You're entitled to your personal preferences in where/how you like to live, but none of that changes the facts that:
1. Peter Thiel indeed wrote a book called 'the Diversity Myth'
and
2. that book claims that multiculturalism exists to destroy white culture
If you're going to argue that the above claim is a "lie", you are obliged to show where that lie is.
Your only plausible avenue (as I can see it) is to somehow object that 'multiculturalism' is not essentially the same thing as meant by the term 'race-mixing', but your response here only convinces me that you agree that in this context the two terms mean effectively the same thing .
> 2. that book claims that multiculturalism exists to destroy white culture
> If you're going to argue that the above claim is a "lie", you are obliged to show where that lie is.
If you're going to claim that Thiel's book states that multiculturalism exists to destroy white culture, then aren't you obliged by your own logic to show proof of your claim?
I don't have a horse in this race, but it's irritating to see you make a claim and then say that any contradictor is required to show proof when you haven't actually done so yourself.
I didn't actually claim that Thiels book states the line in question, the claim was actually made by an earlier commenter, presumably based either (a) directly from the book itself or (b) from the phrase in this bloomberg article [1] that is indicated to as a direct quote from the book in question.
My point was, edblarey objecting "that is a lie!" and then decrying that multiculturalism is bad is nonsensical.
Is the lie that Thiel wrote the book? Its existence is a matter of public record. Does he instead mean that it is a lie that the book makes the claim that "multiculturalism exists to destroy western culture"? Did Bloomberg fabricate the quote? Or does the quote exist but when considered in context mean something different than Bloomberg claims?
All of these are certainly possibilities, but we can't hope to divine which one edblarney means because he spent his comment defending the multiculturalism-is-bad angle (irrelevant to whether Thiel made the claim in question) rather than point out how Thiels claim either does not exist, or does exist but has a different meaning in context.
The book is not arguing against multiculturalism or diversity but rather it is arguing that multiculturalism and diversity are being used as an excuse to stifle free speech and silence dissenting opinions in institutions of higher learning. You are misrepresenting what the book is about.
Your statement referred to 'race mixing' which is quite another thing altogether.
It's entirely possible to be 'offended' by the total destruction of one's culture and not so much by any inherent 'race mixing' that may be the result of that.
But yes - multiculturalism will definitely 'destroy' any culture wherein it is implemented - white/black/red or brown. That's a simple fact.
'Diversity' in the world is destroyed with multiculturalism. You get a 'rainbow of skin colours and last names' - sure - but you get a narrowing of culture and ideals. You get the lowest common denominator - not 'multiple viewpoints'.
You don't get 'more ideas' - you get 'officially sanctioned ideals'.
'Cultures' need 'critical mass' to exist, and they cannot be defined by GDP or social policy. Once there are too many cultures, or culturally secular ideals - the 'local culture' is completely abolished.
When you have 'diversity' in a locale - you break down cultural bonds - and replace them with material products - like Starbucks and McDonald's - and culturally secular values.
Example: I was in Tunisia recently, I drank a 'Tunisian tea' (what I called it). It was dirt cheap. The Coca-Cola was 2x more expensive. Paradox: selling 'coca cola' is essentially better for the GDP - 2x more dollars changing hands. Culturally secular politicians and economists will see this 'GDP growth' and push hard on it across all consumer and business sectors. New shopping malls with H&M, Zara, Starbucks, Monoprix, Carrefour etc. etc. - are literally up-ending all of the unique culture of some parts of that country.
After a while, 'Tunis', 'Toronto' and 'Singapore' will be the same place: same secular laws, same products, same services, same clothes, possibly speaking English, working in cubicles, driving the same cars back and forth.
All unique cultural artifacts - and there are many of them - abolished.
Tunisia is a very strange place to me - and that's what makes it great. I'm not looking forward to going back in 25 years when it's all been wiped out by globalism.
'Multiculturalism' is really just a very short transition period between 'culture' (i.e. diversity in the world) and 'globalized, culturally secular nation states'.
America (and Canada) are obviously special places where multicultural identity means something different than say Germany or Tunisia, nevertheless, the conversation should be allowed to had.
We already have a great deal of 'diversity' on planet earth, just get on an airplane! Most attempts to create 'more diversity' in a specific local (usually with the benign objective of wanting people to 'get along better') , actually reduces the 'net diversity' of the world, ironically.
Your example of Sweden having an official religion is no longer current.
The Church of Sweden is since 2000 no longer a state church. That said, it's been possible to opt-out since 1868, and since 1996 membership is opt-in (upon baptizing) and not inherited based on the membership of the parents. Slightly less than two thirds of the population are still members, and it is losing members far faster than simple attrition would have it (about one percentage point per year).
If you are a member of the Church of Sweden (or any other registered religion), the state will help collect membership taxes for it, but that should be taken more as a measure of Nordic efficiency than as a tacit endorsement of any particular belief.
" the state will help collect membership taxes for it, but that should be taken more as a measure of Nordic efficiency than as a tacit endorsement of any particular belief."
I take it as neither.
I take it that the 'Church' is a cultural epitaph, not even so much a religious one.
It doesn't matter 'what one believes'. It matters a little bit that colocated people share some common faith, and the rituals, prayers, holidays, sense of spirit, goodwill - are synchronous in some way.
When those are torn apart - and there is no 'common culture' - some of which is based on 'religion' - then there literally is no ethnicity, and arguably no nation.
You mention 'Nordic efficiency'. It's true, Nordic countries are somewhat 'efficient'.
But will Sweden be a 'Nordic' country when it's 20% ethnically Swedish, 10% German, 8% American, 5% Norwgian, 5% Somali, 5% Russian etc. etc.?
What will make Sweden any different from Norway, which has almost the same ethnic composition, the same rules?
The only difference between Norway and Sweden in 100 years might be the colour of your flags. English will be the dominant language, and ethnically, everyone will be 'from somewhere else'.
Anyhow - thanks for your correction, but I don't think it changes the nature of my point.
Multiculturalism has consequences, and it should be a choice, not something that is foisted upon people as a moral position.
As you rightly point out, my reply was not meant as more than a factual rebuttal - which of course is valuable in and of itself if you want to make a coherent and sound argument.
You also conveniently cut out the point that the state will collect membership taxes for the Church of Sweden, just as happily as it will for the local catholic branch or one of two registered islamic congregations.
I'm not sure what the rest of your post has to do with mine.
Can I encourage you to get in the habit of phrasing this in terms of "many (but by no means all) Japanese people", "many Japanese institutions", "many Japanese people in positions of authority", or similar? I think we probably see eye to eye on the scope of the problem, but it is unfortunate to turn it into Japan's problem, because it is very, very important that folks are not presented with the choice "You can either be authentically Japanese or reject racism _but not both_." There are a number of people who believe and instruct that that is a choice; people of good will should give them no aid or comfort.
We should see perfectly eye to eye on this, because you're who I learned this from. At any rate: that's what I meant by the word "society".
When someone composes an appeal to the tranquil monoculturalism of Japan, the thing they should be immediately confronted with is the fierce racism that makes up the core of that culture. Cultures change; Japan's inevitably will get to where ours is today (hopefully we'll keep making it hard for them to completely catch up).
If you would (sensibly) like to dispute Japan's tranquil monoculturalism on a message board thread or elsewhere, a better approach to take is "Japan is often described as a monocultural country but it is not." This is true, novel, and gives you the opportunity to drop e.g. a citation for Sugitomo's An Introduction to Japanese Society, which is a really excellent academic text, or Making Common Sense of Japan, which is sadly out of print but a fantastic book qua book. (30 second example: Japan has large ethnic minorities like e.g. Koreans whose experience is often materially different than that of people who are ethnically Japanese; the discourse of Japanese monoculturalism margainalizes their experience and, for bonus points, makes their lives materially worse. Japan has religious minorities; you might sensibly predict life is difficult for them; you might sensibly predict this implies that e.g. no Japanese PMs come from religious minorities; you got one of those two predictions correct.)
I'd politely double down on encouraging you to not attempt to win this argument by saying "Japan actually is a monoculture and that culture's core is racism." People will believe you. This is materially less true than the not-a-monoculture argument and, separate from the truth of it, it is internally and externally a dangerous thing to have be believed.
I literally don't understand what you are trying to say. Again: you are the person who informed me of this --- in fact, almost the exact words I used in my earlier comment have come out of your mouth, multiple times.
Can you give me a single sentence that you think is closer to the truth, without examples or citations to books?
Would the sentence "Japan is way way more racist than America" work? If not, I'm going to express further surprise, because that is a sentence you have used before.
I'm splitting hairs, perhaps unnecessarily so, about exact word choice used to communicate the ground facts. We agree about the ground facts.
>> Would the sentence "Japan is way way more racist than America" work? If not, I'm going to express further surprise, because that is a sentence you have used before.
Is this a quote or a paraphrase? I'd be mildly surprised if I said those exact words and did not do an immediate verbal retraction. I have recollection of writing e.g. "[I]s racism a bigger problem in Japan than e.g. in the United States? Yes."
Consider it from the perspective of a government bureaucrat who has the brief Protect Japan From Threats. In the formulation "Japan is a fiercely racist society", and his goal is to protect Japan from threats, anyone opposing racism is a threat. In the formulation "Racism is a big problem in Japan", his goal can plausibly be "Reduce racism in Japan", much like it could be "Reduce poverty in Japan" or "Reduce unemployment in Japan." I like making/keeping space available for people to embrace that second interpretation.
You said those exact words, laughing, walking on Wells Street in Chicago.
I take your meaning about being careful not to lock in an unsatisfactory status quo with rhetoric. I think you know that's not what I'm trying to do.
Here, the connection between the comment I was replying to and my summary about Japanese society is particularly powerful. That commenter is selecting an attribute of Japanese society for praise that you and I know is deeply problematic. I know you agree with me: importing the cultural attribute that commenter is referring to would be a tragedy.
I apologize and retract any comments made on Wells Street or elsewhere that were carelessly drafted.
I know you're not trying to lock in the status quo. If I had a guess, you're trying to win a message board debate? Which is something I'm sort of onboard with. So, just as a tactical discussion between two message board debaters who are approximately on the same side here, you've got tactical option #1 "Grant the untrue premise of an argument which you believe is damaging and then attempt to litigate an implication of it in a fashion which, if your opponent was savvier, he'd be saying feeds the Thiel narrative and which, independently of message board debates, is a net negative thing to have believed in the world" or tactical option #2 "Counter the untrue premise by destroying it in detail with actual facts; score lots of easy Internet debate points with specificity and style."
I've read this three times now and I'm still not clear what you're trying to say.
Since you're retracting your Wells Street comment, could you add some additional value and maybe explain to people not privy to our conversations why I might believe that Japan is far more racist than the US?
> Japan has religious minorities; you might sensibly predict life is difficult for them; you might sensibly predict this implies that e.g. no Japanese PMs come from religious minorities; you got one of those two predictions correct.
Being a religious minority in Japan can be challenging in a variety of ways; at least 3 Japanese PMs have been Christian (Catholic x2 Baptist X1 off top of head). This is a deep topic of narrow interest; ask me over drinks sometime if you want the full geekiness about it.
You'll note that I did not dispute whether Japan was intolerant of other religions. How many PMs of Japan have been anything other than ethnic Japanese?
Edit window has expired, I went to check, the few in particular were born and raised in japan. I'm debating whether or not to give these channels more exposure at the moment, they're not particularly large and won't be ready for what will happen.
No region of America reaches the level of racism that is acceptable and ingrained in Japanese society. Rural working class white towns don't have many minorities in them, but they have some, and their children aren't sent to separate schools.
I believe Trump to be deeply racist, and I recognize a fiercely racist strain of his followers. But those people also make great television. I think Trump's followers are willing to abide racism, because the alternative is a status quo that promises hopelessness for their children. I don't condone racism and I think the mainstream middle-aged Trump base will eventually be ashamed to tell their grandchildren they supported Trump --- but that's because they have a moral core that does not accept racism.
I do not believe you can make the same generalization about Japanese society --- or about many other societies in the world! It's a sign of the health of our culture that we so openly confront our racism.
> I generally regard him as intelligent and thoughtful
Based on a YouTube video mentioned in another comment thread (https://youtu.be/CoxxGhLFbw4?t=2m30s), I wouldn't regard him as intelligent by any means.
What's with mentioning that he went to Stanford law school? This is the second such comment (the other commenter deleted it for some reason). Is someone incapable of having illogical thoughts because they went to "Stanford law school"?
He says this in the video:
> Whenever you hear someone use the word science it's like a tell that they're bluffing
You said "I wouldn't regard him as intelligent by any means" (emphasis mine). If you don't want people to question your statements, try not to make them so sweeping.
Someone that graduated from Stanford twice is definitely intelligent by some means.
How about not putting words in my mouth? I never said I don't want people to question my statements. Do so all you want.
> Someone that graduated from Stanford twice is definitely intelligent by some means.
I just don't pay attention to his Stanford degrees as much as I do to his words. And they certainly don't impress me. Now, you may have a different opinion and you're free to do so. But I don't agree with it.
"The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics."
I wonder if he doesn't know or if he doesn't care how that might sound to people who were legally denied basic citizenship rights in the 1920s, or the descendants of those people. The 1920s were politically bleak for quite a few Americans.
It's understandable that people would like everything to be connotation managed so their sensibilities are never offended, but it's also a very valuable skill to be able to turn off the ability to be offended and just try to comprehend the intended meaning of something. It makes communication so much more viable.
Oddly, both the title and the article skip over the fact that Thiel was a founder of Palantir Technologies (which has plenty of government contracts). Conflicts of interest be damned
Most powerful, wealthy interests support both sides. The only thing truely frightening for the status quo is probably someone like Bernie Sanders being in the white house. Dow Jones would not be popping up if that was the case.
- Did a BA in philosophy at Stanford--an analytic department--in the late 80s.
- As Reaganism was reaching its apex, he became a libertarian.
- The 90s were a period of pessimism. As the Reagan revolution was in retreat, and as conservatives retreated with it, the "smartest" libertarians sought to move beyond it. So he registered the crisis of libertarianism acutely, and went looking for the solution outside politics altogether--hence the rhetoric from early Paypal about creating a "new world currency" that would bring about the "end of monetary sovereignty". The point was to create new forms of being which would be free simply by virtue of being new. (Nothing wrong with that, and Marxists have a term for it: reification.)
- While the crisis of 2009 further confirmed the bankruptcy of the political project of libertarianism, he thought its understanding of the world was still fundamentally true: "Exhibit A is a financial crisis caused by too much debt and leverage, facilitated by a government that insured against all sorts of moral hazards — and we know that the response to this crisis involves way more debt and leverage, and way more government." But here the answer is the same as it was in the 90s: retreat from politics and build "new worlds."
What's remarkable about Theil is that he fully grasps the crisis of bourgeois society, to the point where he says, "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron."
This was widely denounced as both misogynistic and racist, but it wasn't: he is saying that the 1920s was the last time the crisis of bourgeois democracy might be have been resolved. This is pure Reaganite ideology, but like all ideology has a measure of truth. (It's worth noting that the Left agrees in a sense, but sees the failure of the German revolution, which also meant the failure of the October revolution, as the decisive moment.)
He recognizes the fatal contradiction at the heart of bourgeois society. Clearly. For him libertarianism is the answer that bourgeois society forbids itself because it holds itself to the promise of democracy. Each time the capitalist crisis emerges, Theil becomes anti-political, looks for a "new space for freedom," new avenues for the accumulation of capital. Cyberspace, outerspace, seasteading.
Post-2009 we saw Theil flirt with the Reactionary- or Dark-enlightenment, which while more reactionary than he's ever been nonetheless suggested a renewed desire for politics in the depths of the recession.
Theil remains revolutionary in the sense that he can claim to be in the tradition of Rousseau in the same sense Lenin, for example, could. That may be hard to recognize but it's there.
What is most interesting about Theil and Trump is that if you think of Theil as expressing intellectually the bourgeois ideology of the Reagan period (and he's pure late-80s vintage, no doubt), he has just signed on to work in the administration of the man who single-handedly ended the Reagan Coalition.
Appreciate your analysis defgeneric, though we probably don't see eye to eye.
In my view what you're calling Thiel's anti-political phrases are important. I know you see them as the spread of virus-capitalism, but I think without that kind of frontier building the world would be a much more boring place. I take it you're familiar with Patri Friedman's thesis. What did you think then of Balaji Srinivasan's Exit Ycombinator talk?
I know presently the anti-Trumpists are getting a lot of airtime with their talk of secession, but to be honest there is something much deeper beyond the current election fallout which is worth looking at. From a right perspective I have been wondering for a long time whether Silicon Valley's interests are ultimately orthogonal to Washington but appear to be similar in the present because they're competing for the same thing.
This is a strand of Rene Girard's philosophy, which Thiel is a big fan of (he knew Rene at Stanford I think), many of his ideas revolve around ideas of mimesis and scapegoating. Interestingly; he had a Girardian rationale for investing in Facebook. Never say reading philosophy doesn't pay off! I would love to have a photo of his library.
John Strange is very wrong about Thiel's activities being random. I was asked to write essay on Medium which I called "Peter and the Wolfe", which was an attempt to explain the deeper undercurrents around some of his recent decisions.
The main content of it was written before Trump got into power, so it makes it more interesting retroactively. If you recall, many people on HN were calling him mad, stupid, trying to get him kicked out of Ycombinator and Facebook's board etc. Here is the original comment:
I don't really see the spread of capitalism as a virus, and indeed none of the founding Marxists did either. While capital's inherent drive to expand is the core of most imperialist theories (and therefore "bad"), the accompanying spread of bourgeois ideology to the entire globe--and with it the social integration of the whole of humanity on scale which was previously unimaginable--is unquestionably a good thing.
So Theil's anti-political phases are interesting to me as a demonstration of how ideology and capital condition each other.
On Silicon Valley, the anti-political technocratic ideology it seems to be producing is a minor phenomenon. There may be something to the notion of bits vs. atoms as the "stuff" of production, but what gets obscured is that capital and the law of value rules here nonetheless.
On Girard, Theil's affinity with those ideas seems to me to be bound up with his struggle to reconcile his libertarianism with Christianity. My guess is that if he dropped the Christianity, the Girardian thought would fall away.
My main point is that Theil is a particularly good "personification of capital" and that if you drop the stupid anti-capitalist politics and see capital as neither good nor bad but simply the ruling principle of the world, then it can explain a lot.
> I don't really see the spread of capitalism as a virus, and indeed none of the founding Marxists did either. While capital's inherent drive to expand is the core of most imperialist theories (and therefore "bad"), the accompanying spread of bourgeois ideology to the entire globe--and with it the social integration of the whole of humanity on scale which was previously unimaginable--is unquestionably a good thing.
Interesting. I wasn't expecting that. I'm sure you're familiar with self described communists who identify with Agent Smith's description of humankind in the Matrix, so you know where I got that impression from.
> On Silicon Valley, the anti-political technocratic ideology it seems to be producing is a minor phenomenon. There may be something to the notion of bits vs. atoms as the "stuff" of production, but what gets obscured is that capital and the law of value rules here nonetheless.
We may mean different things by anti-political. I didn't see Thiel's exploration of unusual fringe ideas as being the complete rejection of all politics, but an attempt at making a new kind of politics through technology. So here anti-political meant 'outside of the mainstream' for me. Out of the world of Washington, not out of the broader world of political philosophy.
Along the same lines I think SV ultimately is competing with Washington. An old form of politics vs a new form, similar to the competition of monarchy and democracy.
I think it is in a nascent stage yet, I just think we're being fed the idea their interests are parallel merely because they have converging interests, and I believe that to be a very big mistake because of Girard's ideas about mimesis, namely conflict is more likely, not less likely, because of similarity.
I agree with you though, the same economical laws are ruling still despite this talk of a new economical world order from Wired. It is remarkable as Thiel has been pointing out, just how few new forms of wealth have been created ex-computation in the past few decades. There is a terrific amount of talking but little impact and often the Ted-Talk-People portion of the middle class becomes intensely uncomfortable when this is pointed out to them.
> On Girard, Theil's affinity with those ideas seems to me to be bound up with his struggle to reconcile his libertarianism with Christianity. My guess is that if he dropped the Christianity, the Girardian thought would fall away.
I believe Thiel has noted of himself before, that he likes to have (and looks for in others) paradoxical or perhaps contradictory ideas. I think he believes there is some kind of gap between oppositional ideas that either spits off new thoughts or at least keeps you on your toes.
> My main point is that Theil is a particularly good "personification of capital" and that if you drop the stupid anti-capitalist politics and see capital as neither good nor bad but simply the ruling principle of the world, then it can explain a lot.
I think you overestimate the significance of random asshats with some 80s BA in philosophy from Stanford. He somehow came to decent amounts of money, that's about all there is to say about Thiel's intellectual achievements. Nothing against the fact that an ordinary businessman's can have various more or less well-argued world views, but comparing him to Rousseau or Lenin is, frankly speaking, ridiculous.
I agree he is of minor significance compared to Rousseau or Lenin. I mentioned those two in particular because it's not often recognized how Lenin consciously thought of himself as fulfilling the French Revolution as a Rousseauian. Theil's American libertarianism is also indebted to that tradition in a particular way. The ideological kinship is worth pointing out because it's somewhat provocative and unexpected.
Not that this makes things substantially better. But maybe a little bit? Hopefully?