Good article. Though I don’t see anything wrong with that poor womans meltdown really, and have only ever seen her brought up by people who think “triggering the libs” is an important political goal.
P.S.
I think you’re missing the word “wrong”, here?
“ I don’t think there’s anything with nutpicking, so long as you recognize that you are nutpicking, rather than acting like the mainstream media reporting on the nuts is indicative of secret sympathy, “
Being outraged by people on the internet is an easy trap to fall into.
I've set up a policy for myself: I only post anti-woke stuff if I am defending a specific person in my community being attacked by an internet mob. No proactive posting about it.
I always enjoy your commentary on current events, epistemology and rationality, and this is no exception. I honestly haven't heard of anyone in real life engaging in the 4B movement, and I've been pretty vocal about campus comrades--it seems to be one of those online things that people inflate far beyond a realistic degree.
I think political coverage can be described as people wanting to LARP as Roman Emperors and Handmaiden's Tale characters :D
Edit: Was going to nitpick the use of the word "nutpick", but apparently that's a real thing!
"Wokeness" is an incoherent category— it conflates a whole range of beliefs, behaviours, policies, that have emerged for different reasons and which have varying levels of reasonableness or justifiability. Action to ameliorate climate change, poorly thought out student politics, female volcels, trans rights, movements against use of racial slurs, disability accessibility, have all variously been described as "woke". It's not any different to other dismissive catchalls like "do-gooder", "politically correct", "Right On" etc.
If they have nothing in common, why do they correlate so highly, such that a person who expresses one of these beliefs is notably more likely to subscribe to many if not all of them?
I suspect it is because conservatives grouped these disparate things into a catchall "woke" category. After that, holders of these disparate beliefs adopt each other's belief systems to form an overarching catechism defining group membership, as an expression of the Simmel-Coser effect, or "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
You see the same thing on the Right. MAGA is a coalition of working-class employees and business owners/capitalists. The former has a beef about their inability to keep up with rising living standards as manifested by the rising costs of healthcare, education, and above all housing (and recently groceries). Business executives choose to direct the proceeds of economic growth, not to workers (who generate sales), but to shareholders who play no role at all.
Economically, workers and owners/managers are on opposing sides, one's gain is the other's loss, yet they are unified as an in-group. The reason is the same, my enemy (woke) is also their enemy, plus the Simmel-Coser effect.
It could be as simple as people gathering together all the things their team doesn't like into a single category and placing a label on it. I haven't really looked how that label., which originally meant something very different came to be used as a category name.
A lot of what gets called woke comes out of left-wing positions— valuing equality, being against oppression etc. So yes, there is some commonality there. However, when people use "woke" pejoratively, they're often conflating a lot of opposing things. Here are some examples:
- Gender critical feminists vs intersectional feminists
- Indigenous knowledge vs "believe the science"
- HR top-down training vs peer-to-peer radicalisation
- 4-B vs body positivity anti-slut-shaming
- Communism vs anarchism vs liberalism
- Anti-work vs girlboss feminism
You'll notice that in this article and the one comparing wokeness to climate change, other than the 4-B stuff, BB avoids giving any real examples of wokeness. It's a fuzzy moving target.
While the 4B thing might be fringe, the basic sentiments behind it are not. Liberal women who are mad about Trump mostly all feel and believe some degree of the same things that are motivating 4B feminists. The ones crazy enough to publicly declare themselves 4B are thus merely an avatar that we focus on as representative of a broader mindset.
I do think wokeshit is probably the single biggest threat to human flourishing in existence, although I might make it broader than just "woke" and say leftism in general, so this would include things like communism. Why shouldn't people be fanatical and zealous in their opposition to such a thing? I think it's not an exaggeration to say that leftism is almost synonymous with evil itself. I agree that some critics of woke go crazy and suffer politics-brain and become stupid, but that's bad mainly because it makes them less effective critics of woke.
Wokeness is worse than tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a constant cost, but wokeness slows down the rate of human progress, making it much worse in the long run.
Its effect on the rate of progress is tiny. Tuberculosis mostly kills the least skilled people. Wokeness disproportionately affects the highest skilled, most productive people.
I would note that the rise in regulations that strangled nuclear power in the 1970's and 1980's occurred during a time when Republicans controlled the government 83% of the time. And the one Democratic administration was noteworthy for its pursuit of deregulation.
Well done Bentham, immaculately grounded in reality and perspective. Keep up the good work.
Thanks!
I wish I'd written this piece. Missed a trick there. Very VERY good.
Thanks!
Good article. Though I don’t see anything wrong with that poor womans meltdown really, and have only ever seen her brought up by people who think “triggering the libs” is an important political goal.
P.S.
I think you’re missing the word “wrong”, here?
“ I don’t think there’s anything with nutpicking, so long as you recognize that you are nutpicking, rather than acting like the mainstream media reporting on the nuts is indicative of secret sympathy, “
This is wonderfully expressed. Very grounded in nuance, truth and consideration.
Being outraged by people on the internet is an easy trap to fall into.
I've set up a policy for myself: I only post anti-woke stuff if I am defending a specific person in my community being attacked by an internet mob. No proactive posting about it.
I always enjoy your commentary on current events, epistemology and rationality, and this is no exception. I honestly haven't heard of anyone in real life engaging in the 4B movement, and I've been pretty vocal about campus comrades--it seems to be one of those online things that people inflate far beyond a realistic degree.
I think political coverage can be described as people wanting to LARP as Roman Emperors and Handmaiden's Tale characters :D
Edit: Was going to nitpick the use of the word "nutpick", but apparently that's a real thing!
"Wokeness" is an incoherent category— it conflates a whole range of beliefs, behaviours, policies, that have emerged for different reasons and which have varying levels of reasonableness or justifiability. Action to ameliorate climate change, poorly thought out student politics, female volcels, trans rights, movements against use of racial slurs, disability accessibility, have all variously been described as "woke". It's not any different to other dismissive catchalls like "do-gooder", "politically correct", "Right On" etc.
If they have nothing in common, why do they correlate so highly, such that a person who expresses one of these beliefs is notably more likely to subscribe to many if not all of them?
I suspect it is because conservatives grouped these disparate things into a catchall "woke" category. After that, holders of these disparate beliefs adopt each other's belief systems to form an overarching catechism defining group membership, as an expression of the Simmel-Coser effect, or "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
You see the same thing on the Right. MAGA is a coalition of working-class employees and business owners/capitalists. The former has a beef about their inability to keep up with rising living standards as manifested by the rising costs of healthcare, education, and above all housing (and recently groceries). Business executives choose to direct the proceeds of economic growth, not to workers (who generate sales), but to shareholders who play no role at all.
Economically, workers and owners/managers are on opposing sides, one's gain is the other's loss, yet they are unified as an in-group. The reason is the same, my enemy (woke) is also their enemy, plus the Simmel-Coser effect.
Why would conservatives group them all together if they have nothing in common?
I don't know. But they do.
Ah, so it's a total mystery. No one knows why! Scientists are still trying to figure it out to this day.
It could be as simple as people gathering together all the things their team doesn't like into a single category and placing a label on it. I haven't really looked how that label., which originally meant something very different came to be used as a category name.
A lot of what gets called woke comes out of left-wing positions— valuing equality, being against oppression etc. So yes, there is some commonality there. However, when people use "woke" pejoratively, they're often conflating a lot of opposing things. Here are some examples:
- Gender critical feminists vs intersectional feminists
- Indigenous knowledge vs "believe the science"
- HR top-down training vs peer-to-peer radicalisation
- 4-B vs body positivity anti-slut-shaming
- Communism vs anarchism vs liberalism
- Anti-work vs girlboss feminism
You'll notice that in this article and the one comparing wokeness to climate change, other than the 4-B stuff, BB avoids giving any real examples of wokeness. It's a fuzzy moving target.
While the 4B thing might be fringe, the basic sentiments behind it are not. Liberal women who are mad about Trump mostly all feel and believe some degree of the same things that are motivating 4B feminists. The ones crazy enough to publicly declare themselves 4B are thus merely an avatar that we focus on as representative of a broader mindset.
I do think wokeshit is probably the single biggest threat to human flourishing in existence, although I might make it broader than just "woke" and say leftism in general, so this would include things like communism. Why shouldn't people be fanatical and zealous in their opposition to such a thing? I think it's not an exaggeration to say that leftism is almost synonymous with evil itself. I agree that some critics of woke go crazy and suffer politics-brain and become stupid, but that's bad mainly because it makes them less effective critics of woke.
Wokeness is worse than tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a constant cost, but wokeness slows down the rate of human progress, making it much worse in the long run.
Tuberculosis also slows down progress and kills over 2 million people a year.
Its effect on the rate of progress is tiny. Tuberculosis mostly kills the least skilled people. Wokeness disproportionately affects the highest skilled, most productive people.
Or rather - it affects the people who *would* be most productive if they were not followers of wokeness.
Conservative economics (specially shareholder primacy as practiced in the US) plays a much large in the slowing of productivity growth and progress.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/what-is-neoliberalism-an-empirical
I would note that the rise in regulations that strangled nuclear power in the 1970's and 1980's occurred during a time when Republicans controlled the government 83% of the time. And the one Democratic administration was noteworthy for its pursuit of deregulation.
Your views are to economics as creationism is to biology.