BRIEFLY NOTED: FOR 2022-08-19 Fr
A read-around...
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Very Briefly Noted:
Ktima vs. agonisma: Hunter R. Rawlings: Ktema te es Aiei . . . Akouein <https://www-jstor-org.libproxy.berkeley.edu/stable/pdf/26543677.pdf>
Ian King: The Chip Shortage Isn't Over Quite Yet <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-19/the-chip-shortage-isn-t-over-quite-yet>
Jennifer Taub & Matthew Cooper: Trump "Will Be Indicted” <https://washingtonmonthly.com/2022/08/19/trump-will-be-indicted/>: ‘As the former president faces legal investigations, the author and white-collar-crime scholar Jennifer Taub identifies the probe that’s furthest along, what January 6 Committee graphic was key…
Ben Jacobs: The Never Trump Wing of the GOP Never Had a Chance <https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/8/19/23311901/liz-cheney-never-trump-republicans>: 'Liz Cheney’s loss made clear Trump’s GOP detractors have little electoral sway...
Twitter & ‘Stack:
Stephen Beschloss: Visions of America
Timothy Burke: The Read: Past Presentism: 'Friday's Child Is Still Thinking About James Sweet's AHA Address…
¶s:
Will MacAskill is having one hell of a book launch for his What We Owe the Future <https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/william-macaskill/what-we-owe-the-future/9781541618633/>:
Conor James @utopiannotions: ‘It's official. Will MacAskill has been a guest on Every Podcast in the World. Every single podcast, he's been on. All of them. He is everywhere. You cannot hide from Will MacAskill. He is inevitable. Every podcast episode, every word spoken. He's in your house.,,
Vlad @vladtheengineer: ‘I was assembling a new bed frame, Will MacAskill was in the box. I get home from work, “did you hear the new Will MacAskill on Sam Harris?” I brush my teeth, what comes out of the toothpaste tube? MacAskill. I am forced to brush my teeth using Will MacAskill…
Conor James @utopiannotions: ‘I go to bed. Will MacAskill is my pillow. I turn off the light and fall asleep to the sound of Will MacAskill breathing in the darkness…
Fawwaz ꩜ @fawwazanvilen: ‘william mcaskill is the living breathing manifestation of the library of babel confirmed…
Noël Michel @VertLepere: ‘I put out a microphone in my living room when talking to friends, and Will came out of the bathroom to join us…
Randy Hagerman @EQandIQ: ‘This is hilarious. I really wish they had staggered the appearances/release dates. I was scrolling new episodes of different podcasts for a while before I could find one that wasn’t WillMacAskill!
JoyOptimizer @JoyOptimizer: ‘MacAskill has to be invited to enter your house…
LINK:
So the question is: how close can I come to duplicating this launch?
It helps a lot that it is quite a good book. But it is not a perfect book. So would I be mean, jealous, and envious to think that it is punching above its weight?
The book is a combination of history, politics, a primer on Derrick Parfit, and a great deal of wise things said about how to effectively do good. It consists 3/4 of very good and clever observations.
It has some claims I find strange: principally that the future of the world is “causally thin” in our generation—that whatever patterns we impose on human society cannot or will not be undone by the many trillions of us who will live in the future—and that moral philosophy and moral philosophers are particularly key (as moral philosophy is likely to be the most fixed). Hence not only are we special people with unique powers and influence, but among us moral philosophers are very special people with immense powers and influence never to be matched in all of future history. This seems grandiose, and if it diverts resources from the bottom billion to exploring outer space I wouls be worried. But worry about, and action to benefit, the future does not crowd out, much, action to benefit the present.
Plus there are excursions into Rapture of the Nerds and Roko’s Basilisk thought: arguments that I have never been able to understand as anything.
As I said, I do think Matt Yglesias has it right here: there is certainly a book to be written about AI-threat. There is certainly a book to be written about Longtermism. They are not the same book—save for the fact that Longtermists, like all other people, think that the extinction of the human species within our own expected natural lifetimes is something we should take substantial care to avoid. Yet the Longtermist book, and the AI-threat book, and several other books are mashed together in a short book. And that means that each piece of it leaves me unsatisfied, and wanting more.
Because it seems to me that it is more sketches of five books bound together than a single book, it does seem to me that its launch is punching above its weight.
And I want my book <bit.ly/3pP3Krk> to punch above its weight too.
Here we have a justifiably arrogant author placing his chips:
Thoukydides the Athenian: The Peloponnesian War: ‘The absence of the fabulous in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.
In sum, I have written my work, not as a ticket-punch or to win transitory applause in the moment, but as a treasure for all time.
καὶ ἐς μὲν ἀκρόασιν ἴσως τὸ μὴ μυθῶδες αὐτῶν ἀτερπέστερον φανεῖται: ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι, ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει.
κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν ξύγκειται
LINK: <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D22%3Asection%3D4> I.22.4
Still musing over that AHA Presidential Column…
James Sweet: Is History History?: Identity Politics and Teleologies of the Present <https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2022/is-history-history-identity-politics-and-teleologies-of-the-present>: ‘[In a Ghana hotel,] African Americans began trickling into the breakfast bar… more than a dozen members of the same family—three generations deep…. In front of one of the elders was a dog-eared copy of The 1619 Project…. My family and I toured Elmina Castle alongside several Ghanaians, a Dane, and a Jamaican family. Our guide gave a well-rehearsed tour geared toward African Americans…. I am troubled…. Less than one percent of the Africans passing through Elmina arrived in North America…. Should the guide’s story differ for a tour with no African Americans? Likewise, would The 1619 Project tell a different history if it took into consideration that the shipboard kin of Jamestown’s “20. and odd” Africans also went to Mexico, Jamaica, and Bermuda?… Do efforts to claim a usable African American past reify elements of American hegemony and exceptionalism such narratives aim to dismantle?…
At least as I see it, James Sweet appears to have three complaints here:
The 1619 Project should have been a general history of Atlantic slavery and its ramifications, rather than focused on America and the experience of African-Americans under the harrow.
Ghanaian tour guides should tune their presentations to the concerns of their actual audiences, rather than have one—African-American-oriented—presentation chosen because that is what the bulk of those who come to Elmina Castle with the bulk of the money are eager to learn about.
In coming to Elmina castle with money, wanting to learn about their ancestors, African-Americans are engaged in acts of imperialism and domination.
To which my reaction is: Is this for reals? I guess I need to pay more attention to Bari Weiss than I had thought. African-Americans trying to connect with the truly horrific heritage of their ancestors and Ghanian tour guides—that is really what we call “punching up”, James.
And I have already dealt with the “we should not be ‘presentist’” claim. As I said yesterday:
If they are so alien to us that their mental universe has so little overlap with ours that we cannot enter it and judge, then they are useless to us, and boring: it is more fun to go watch Tik-Tok videos, and we should do so.
If they are not so alien, then claims that we should overlook or minimize nasty things they did have a very peculiar vision of what history ought to be behind them. Let me try to lay out what I think it is:
For most of recorded human history, humanity was desperately poor. The level of technology, the size of the population, and the available natural resources meant that it was impossible for everyone to have enough. Indeed, the only way that even some people could have enough was via their becoming part of an élite, and constructing, operating, and maintaining an exploitation-and-domination machine that, by force and fraud, took a great deal of what other people made, and grabbed it for themselves and their allies in the élite.
Now, most of recorded human history as written by historians who are not archæologists is history that listens to the voices of the members of this élite, for they were the literate ones, or ones whose deeds were of interest and immediate concern to the literate: the thugs-with-spears, and their tame bureaucrats, accountants, and propagandists, as they came into conflict and worked in cooperation with each other to acquire, distribute, and utilize the extracted surplus. It is a history that is primarily of those who benefited from the operation of the exploitation-and-domination machine.
In this context, cries “the mores of those in the past were different from ours!” and that we should not judge them are mostly demands that we not focus too much on the exploitation and domination machine and its operation and justification, but rather look at high cultural productions and political maneuverings as the proper domain of history. But I see no justification for that other than: “I am in a position of authority, and that is how it is convenient for me for things to be.”
I'd be interested in why you would focus on "Gutenberg Galaxy vs Social Media", rather than "Gutenberg Galaxy vs Fox News", or even television in general?
Minor Typo, maybe? Did you intend the first sentence of final paragraph to be something like "In this context, *cries that the mores* of those in the past were different from ours, and that we should not judge them, *are* mostly demands that we not focus. . . "