"Even after we get to Communism there will be a revolution. It seems to me that there will always be revolution, even ten thousand years from now. Otherwise what will people like us do? We’ll be unemployed.” - Mao
Doge is merely the changing of the guard. The same elites still pull the strings in all the corpos on Wall Street. You're delusional if you think anything has changed.
Erik, a very interesting article coming at this time. Today, I decided to watch the congressional hearings on nominee Pete Hegseth answer senatorial questions. It was interesting to hear him bring up the “woke” issue. I swear I still struggle when woke is discussed on so many varied and different subjects . I love your pieces, Erik.
I suspect pg picks on the style of communication used by the woke is that it's easier to see, compared to their fundamental goals.
Also, I disagree with your definition of "equality of opportunity", and I bet pg does too. I'd call all of: blind audition for a music ensemble, "max( GPA * 400 + SAT) gets admitted", and "if you pass a coding interview, you're in" equal opportunity, and I'd say that is roughly universal usage until maybe 10 years ago. Perhaps you've imbibed enough woke that you think opportunity includes your circumstances outside the testing arena? =p
More directly, I have seen no evidence that pg thinks that group differences in outcomes are directly a problem, and I think the fact that YC hunts for underpriced founders and didn't, in his tenure, do much to go after URMs is probably pretty strong circumstantial evidence that he _doesn't_ think they are a problem.
Hi Erik! As with many things, there is no neat black and white here. People are born into this world under wildly different circumstances. I believe it is the moral duty of those in the upper echelons of society to support the children born into disadvantage, to enable flourishing wherever possible. But I also strongly believe that equality of outcome is an extremely dangerous temptation. We should not clip the wings of those who excel, but focus our energy on elevating as many as we can. It's not about eradicating inequality but increasing total capacity within a society. How exactly we get there will always be a point of discussion, but I believe good trade-offs can be found. Sadly, this is the type of boring political process that people rarely have the patience for.
The point of the quality of opportunity is not to get to eventually equal outcomes. The idea is for there to be a perception of fairness. Anybody who wants to can try out for the team, only the most athletic people will make it. Not sure how you go from this to the idea that the mission will only be complete once everybody makes the team.
You are doing what you accuse your opponents of doing, eliding equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. A world of inequality pairs very well with equality of opportunity, which is why the woke hate it.
In Republic, Plato wants to sort all residents of his ideal city into three separate classes based on their ability, but he knows that sometimes smart parents will produce a dull child. As a result, everyone is sorted according to their own natural abilities and then does the task that they are best suited for. Here we have equality of opportunity as the core premise of a society that is predicated on inequality and separation of classes.
1: I think you are in error conflating equality of opportunity with equality of outcomes. The fault in the woke left is that they want equality of outcomes (as you correctly point out) but measure equality of opportunity by how equal the outcomes are. They don't accept that given the same opportunities people will make different choices and wind up in different places. As a result they expand the necessary conditions of equal opportunity from a sensible "equal under the law" to nonsense like aid to balance parents' lack of wealth. Equality of opportunity isn't enough because it isn't what they care about, merely a precondition; what they care about is outcomes alone. Everything, from equality of opportunity to liberty itself is measured by that twisted stick.
2: I wouldn't define equality under the law as liberty. If a relatively free society and a totalitarian slave state can both be described as having high liberty because the laws apply equally to everyone there is a problem with the definition.
People who are seriously concerned about "wokeness" while billionaires openly control the world perplex me. Maybe that's its purpose in the grand scheme of things: rile people up against it so they don't notice the real threat
woke is what happens when winning genes give rise to losing memes that replicate thanks to the prosocial good intentions of the many and the sociopathic manipulation of centralized by the few. woke is the memeplex sponsored by unaccountable bureaucratic power and incepted via hoaxes and propaganda into passive and conformist-inclined minds. woke, like communism, cannot survive rational scrutiny and so can only spread where free speech, ie error detection and correction, is censored. woke is ultimately downstream of crashing testosterone levels in men-- a failure of healthy reactive aggression to the transgression of boundaries.
"Wokeness prioritizing the reduction of outcome-disparities (i.e. equity) ahead of equal treatment under the law (i.e. liberty)"
Hannah Arendt points this out as the different animating philosophies of the French vs. American revolution + the success of one (the American) and the failure of the other (giving way to Napoleon).
Ofc, this leaves out the Civil War but she didn't comment on it.
"Even after we get to Communism there will be a revolution. It seems to me that there will always be revolution, even ten thousand years from now. Otherwise what will people like us do? We’ll be unemployed.” - Mao
You make solid points on when wokeness is over. Personnel is policy, so hopefully DOGE will remove all DEI commissars from the government. PG should read The Man Who Stayed Behind: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sidney-rittenberg-the-man-who-stayed-behind
Doge is merely the changing of the guard. The same elites still pull the strings in all the corpos on Wall Street. You're delusional if you think anything has changed.
Erik, a very interesting article coming at this time. Today, I decided to watch the congressional hearings on nominee Pete Hegseth answer senatorial questions. It was interesting to hear him bring up the “woke” issue. I swear I still struggle when woke is discussed on so many varied and different subjects . I love your pieces, Erik.
Straw man - you build your woke definition and then attack and destroy it. Not really useful.
There are different questions about different marginalized groups in different contexts - not everything can be labeled as woke and dismissed.
In some instances there is a good reason to increase intervention and make progressive rules . In some not so much.
I suspect pg picks on the style of communication used by the woke is that it's easier to see, compared to their fundamental goals.
Also, I disagree with your definition of "equality of opportunity", and I bet pg does too. I'd call all of: blind audition for a music ensemble, "max( GPA * 400 + SAT) gets admitted", and "if you pass a coding interview, you're in" equal opportunity, and I'd say that is roughly universal usage until maybe 10 years ago. Perhaps you've imbibed enough woke that you think opportunity includes your circumstances outside the testing arena? =p
More directly, I have seen no evidence that pg thinks that group differences in outcomes are directly a problem, and I think the fact that YC hunts for underpriced founders and didn't, in his tenure, do much to go after URMs is probably pretty strong circumstantial evidence that he _doesn't_ think they are a problem.
Hi Erik! As with many things, there is no neat black and white here. People are born into this world under wildly different circumstances. I believe it is the moral duty of those in the upper echelons of society to support the children born into disadvantage, to enable flourishing wherever possible. But I also strongly believe that equality of outcome is an extremely dangerous temptation. We should not clip the wings of those who excel, but focus our energy on elevating as many as we can. It's not about eradicating inequality but increasing total capacity within a society. How exactly we get there will always be a point of discussion, but I believe good trade-offs can be found. Sadly, this is the type of boring political process that people rarely have the patience for.
The point of the quality of opportunity is not to get to eventually equal outcomes. The idea is for there to be a perception of fairness. Anybody who wants to can try out for the team, only the most athletic people will make it. Not sure how you go from this to the idea that the mission will only be complete once everybody makes the team.
You are doing what you accuse your opponents of doing, eliding equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. A world of inequality pairs very well with equality of opportunity, which is why the woke hate it.
In Republic, Plato wants to sort all residents of his ideal city into three separate classes based on their ability, but he knows that sometimes smart parents will produce a dull child. As a result, everyone is sorted according to their own natural abilities and then does the task that they are best suited for. Here we have equality of opportunity as the core premise of a society that is predicated on inequality and separation of classes.
Two points:
1: I think you are in error conflating equality of opportunity with equality of outcomes. The fault in the woke left is that they want equality of outcomes (as you correctly point out) but measure equality of opportunity by how equal the outcomes are. They don't accept that given the same opportunities people will make different choices and wind up in different places. As a result they expand the necessary conditions of equal opportunity from a sensible "equal under the law" to nonsense like aid to balance parents' lack of wealth. Equality of opportunity isn't enough because it isn't what they care about, merely a precondition; what they care about is outcomes alone. Everything, from equality of opportunity to liberty itself is measured by that twisted stick.
2: I wouldn't define equality under the law as liberty. If a relatively free society and a totalitarian slave state can both be described as having high liberty because the laws apply equally to everyone there is a problem with the definition.
People who are seriously concerned about "wokeness" while billionaires openly control the world perplex me. Maybe that's its purpose in the grand scheme of things: rile people up against it so they don't notice the real threat
woke is what happens when winning genes give rise to losing memes that replicate thanks to the prosocial good intentions of the many and the sociopathic manipulation of centralized by the few. woke is the memeplex sponsored by unaccountable bureaucratic power and incepted via hoaxes and propaganda into passive and conformist-inclined minds. woke, like communism, cannot survive rational scrutiny and so can only spread where free speech, ie error detection and correction, is censored. woke is ultimately downstream of crashing testosterone levels in men-- a failure of healthy reactive aggression to the transgression of boundaries.
"woke" is meaningless. The billionaires rule with or without it.
"Wokeness prioritizing the reduction of outcome-disparities (i.e. equity) ahead of equal treatment under the law (i.e. liberty)"
Hannah Arendt points this out as the different animating philosophies of the French vs. American revolution + the success of one (the American) and the failure of the other (giving way to Napoleon).
Ofc, this leaves out the Civil War but she didn't comment on it.
“Think about it. At what point would people say "we accomplished our goal, we don’t need more progress?””
No society is ever going to get consensus on that. But I am curious - do you think that no more progress around economic and social is required?