The Time for Choosing Approaches

About two weeks ago, I was skimming some material on cargo cult science to prepare a facetious argument on the appropriation of Western Culture, and came across one of those interesting footnotes of history: specifically, the Sokal Affair. This led to a spate of curious clicking, and led me to some interesting thoughts about the future of Leftism.

To summarize briefly for those too lazy to click the link, in 1996 Alan Sokal, an NYU physicist, submitted an outright silly paper to the journal Social Text, purporting that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. There are some allegations that this was not done in good faith (I should hope not!), but the fact that Social Text ran it was pretty alarming even so. Sokal contends that this an example of a larger trend in academia, particularly the liberal arts and humanities, to ignore the fundamental teachings of hard science in favor of their own pet navel gazing fantasies theories, postmodernism and the like being particularly problematic.

This raises larger questions about the Academic Left (their terms, not mine), particularly about their understanding of reality (or lack thereof). When the "intellectuals" who have significant influence in the formative years of a large segment of the electorate can't distinguish between fact and fantasy, it makes one sit up and notice. In particular, the left-leaning academics who can make the distinction (scientists in particular) were quite vocal in their concern.

On this issue, at least, I agree with them. At risk of sounding pedantic, there is a large segment of academia verily seeped in mysticism. Postmodernists, linguistic analysts, and whatever other groups advocating half-baked pseudo-theories are almost always quite literally beyond the reach reason. Their beliefs, based in feeling rather than fact, are almost religiously sacrosanct, and cannot be refuted by scientific or logical argument. Individually they are harmless, but the madness of the 1960s and 1970s suggests that together they have the potential to wreak incredible havoc.

I could argue that this is to be expected of leftism, and to an extent it is, but that overlooks the reasonable leftists, such as Sokal. While they are largely mistaken in their political beliefs, their implicit acceptance of reason means they are at least potentially salvageable. I think there is a major divide in leftist thought, soothed over but still there, between the thinking leftists and the feeling ones. And I think this divide is eventually going to break.

Ultimately, the thinking leftists are going to have to make a choice: do they accept the facts (that socialism has proven itself a failure, that free markets work better than mixed markets, that personal freedom also requires personal responsibility) or follow others' feelings, back into the world of violent revolution, pseudoscientific mysticism, and the eventual collapse into looting thuggery? Which is it going to be? We'll have to wait to find out.

Technocracy

In a convoluted turn of events which began with the politics of Germany (specifically the Christian Democratic Union) with a major stop at political color, I ended up reading about the technocracy movement. Now I've been interested in the idea of technocracy for a long time, particularly because I advocated a similar program long before I ever read the word. By the time I encountered the idea, though, I'd largely abandoned that program in favor of liberal capitalism.

After my first dip into the technocratic pond, I considered the idea of combining the better aspects of technocracy with capitalism, which I termed capital technocracy. Though I didn't get very far along articulating my ideas at the time, I'd now describe the idea of capital technocracy as using the opposing forces of self-interest and competition exemplified in capitalism to achieve technocratic ends. In English, that means that forward-thinking entrepreneurs end up making the best decisions in their pursuit of profit, leading to optimal outcomes. At that time, my understanding of capitalism was primarily based on competition, rather than understanding markets as a whole.

I re-approached the idea of technocracy from a market capitalist perspective, and realized that the idea of integrating capitalism and technocracy is still essentially valid, but requires a different tack. Markets are essential giant organizers, which aggregate the value decisions of millions of actors to result in a price. The technocrats rejected the price system because of the bust in 1929, but I think that central banking deserves more blame than prices (?!) for starting the Great Depression. The technocrats thought that central planners could make economic decisions better than millions of people could for themselves, and that is the fatal conceit, isn't it? In 1935 I can understand that position; having seen the abject failure of the Soviet Union compared to market economies, I can not.

Ultimately, though, I'd say that the market performs the technocratic function far better than socialism ever could, and for that reason I may start advocating for the free market under the label market technocracy. My main reason is simply that the term "capitalism" comes with so terribly much baggage that using it often does more harm than good. I've thought about using other terms, but only liberalism seemed to fit, and that would only serve to confuse.

In addition, technocracy can be marketed with social reform towards a rational society. Capitalism is usually linked, both when it is and isn't warranted, to the various forms of conservatism, particularly social conservatism and traditionalism in general. I find many traditional ways of doing things (the English system of measurement, the Gregorian Calendar, contemporary public education) quite abhorrent for various reasons. Integrating reforms away from those into my political platform wouldn't be exactly distasteful.

Last thing tonight: would ordoliberalism be considered comparable to market technocracy?

Not buying it

I was arguing with a communist today (a terrible waste of time, I might add), and after making an outright stupid assumption, making death threats, and stating that issue wasn't up for discussion, he goes on to claim he used to be a minarchist.

I'm not buying it.

This person flatly refuses to listen to libertarian arguments, and hates me because I came to similar conclusions from a different path. This person certainly isn't rational, and quite possibly not sane. At best, in their younger, more rational days, they were a "left" libertarian. They certainly weren't a minarchists capitalist.

I'm just astonished by some of these people. If we can't discuss things, how are we supposed to come to the conclusions in the first place?

Off Hiatus

I think I'm going to come off hiatus here.

I spent the summer and autumn thus far blunting my ignorance on Tumblr, but I'm thinking this could be a good intermediate staging ground for my thoughts. It'd be nice to appear to jump right from gathering data to articulating the decisive counter-argument.

However, I'm probably going to still do some of the intermediate stuff over there, because I can get more input.

Finals Week

A week from now I'll be vegging out at home, but for now, I'm trying to force myself to study for finals week. I've got a practice test in 40 minutes. I guess I should eat before then.

At this point, after months of feeling burnt-out, it's reached the point, the accumulation of apathy, that making myself study feels like pushing a rope made of water uphill.

I am overjoyed with the thought of being done with this semester. Unfortunately, I need to get good grades or else I'll loose my scholarship, so I can't do the minimum to get by. I feel annoyance in the extreme.

In general, a few things I'm happy about with regards to going home:

• No more dealing with my stupid dorm-mates. Their irrational, Dionysian culture is disgusting. Their antics really do make we question the hypothesis that we're all of the Homo sapiens sapiens subspecies. Surely their must be some biological explanation for this insanity ... ?
• Sleeping reasonably. I don't even know how to describe my sleep schedule. I plan on sleeping 10:30 a night for a week after I'm home.
• Sane meal times. The dining courts here run on a schedule completely divorced from human beings, let alone college students. Having a degree of control would be lovely.
• My room. My roommate here is probably the best I could have asked for, given the other loons on my floor, but after 8 months, I grow weary of shared space. I want to shower without the possibility of a conversation, and the option of changing whenever I'd like.
• And hugs. I miss physical contact with human beings I like. (Hint: I don't like people here.)

And just maybe, I can accomplish something this summer. My brain has completely atrophied at school, so we'll see if I can get it functional again.

Motivation and Weekends

I've noticed recently that my motivation level on the weekends is darn near zero. I have a couple of hypotheses on why this is the case:

First, obviously, is that my assignments are pointless. This is a given. At this point some of my courses are literally spiraling into gibberish that bears only superficial resemblance to human language.

Second, as an introvert, I need the weekend to recover from 5 days of being confined with other human beings. I need two or three days to get to the point where I don't want to squirrel away in a corner, after which point I can reasonably start the assignments that they expect done at this point (though that would require superhuman skill). Essentially, the dice are loaded against introverts.

Third, I'm bored. Really, really, really bored. There are no goals here, just an endless string of progressively more difficult assignments and progressively less useful lectures. None of this has anything to do with getting me into space, it seems, and moreover, all seems complicit in holding me back. The rampant anti-conceptualism of these rather conceptual classes is destroying my drive, and will likely do the same thing to my GPA.

Life has no purpose when you submit it to the review of others.

Integrated Approach

Most efforts to combat irrationality are unsystematic, incomplete, and one-sided. That is, they focus on one specific cause or effect of irrationality, usually the latter. They do not integrate that specific irrationality into a coherent framework. But most importantly, they attack from only one side, combating the cause without attacking the effect, or vice versa.

I propose to change that.

My idea is simple: chart out all the major effects of irrationality and the forces that contribute to existing irrationality. From this, determine the main factors that propagate irrationality and its effects. Then attack both the causes and effects of irrationality, in an integrated sweep.

Confession

I probably shouldn't let stupid people on the internet get me this worked up. I need to focus on confronting stupidity in "the real world" and actually confronting the problem.

On the plus side, I think this should count as cardio.

Exception to the Rule

The is only one group that I make unqualified, collective generalizations of.

And that group would be collectivists.

I'm currently thinking about how to attack cultural collectivism as a mean of achieving freedom and promoting rationality. This will probably have to be a major tactic.

Some Sleep Addled Thoughts on the Culture War

I wasn't exactly self-aware when it was going on, but in retrospect, the "culture war" that the conservatives made some effort to wage in the early nineties was rather silly. A "culture war" requires separate subcultures (which there were) and separate cultural drivers (which there weren't). Essentially, the so-called culture war was, fundamentally, a political exercise, and did not accurately reflect on the subcultures of the United States.

Personally, I find the left- and right-wing "cultures" fairly irrational. Neither side really represents an integrated philosophy. The left advocates control over ones economic decisions, and freedom over ones body (except for a list a longer than the Appalachian Trail). The right claims to be all about economic freedom, but does love its cronyism, and is completely inconsistent about personal freedoms.

Really, I think the only "culture war" in this country, and in the whole of the western world, is reason versus feeling. The left and right both use different forms of feeling, and direct it at different things. But really they're the same.

Now there's probably someone out there who reads this an immediately thinks I'm some unemotional monster. You're funny. It's a typical argument: if you don't recognize the absolute supremacy of unintegrated feelings you're evil. That's insane. There's nothing wrong with rational emotions, that is, emotional states that do not conflict with reason. And it's exceedingly easy to live entirely with rational emotions. It just requires knowing oneself.

To return to my theme, though, we've got two cultures in America. There's the rational culture, focused on science, productivity, rational dialogue. That's the minority. The vast majority is the emotional culture, which doesn't worry about the sanity of what it's feeling. The feeling is more important than the cause of that feeling.

Emotionalism is impotent in the face of reality, but the emotionalists command such numbers they have political power. Wrestle politics away from them, and they'll be able to see the error of their ways soon enough.

That's the culture war in America.