Ran Prieur

February 8.

2021-02-08T20:00:34Z

February 8. Stray links, starting with two Reddit threads. From Ask Old People, What is the weirdest experience you've had in your life? And lots of theological discussion in this thread, What if God is actually the devil?

Two medical links. How to make your own vaccine (thanks Ted), and The Doctor Will Sniff You Now, about the promise of using high-tech molecule detectors to diagnose illness.

And two explanations of the recent stock market drama. Posted to Weird Collapse, WallStreetBets and Cryptocurrency: Symptoms of the same societal problem, that problem being too many people whose lives have no meaning.

And a cynical Reddit comment: Wall Street Bets veterans know they're making a suicide charge for the memes, but "they have brought thousands of naive new investors with them - who think that they're going to somehow come out on top, not realizing that they're cannon fodder for the more savvy WSB users to exit with gains."

I can remember when buying stocks was something only rich people did. Middle class people might do it if they had a year's salary sitting in their savings account doing nothing. Now it seems like anyone with an extra thousand dollars is supposed to throw it in the stock market, a giant legal gambling racket where other gamblers are more skilled than you, and the "house" is whoever already has the most money.

February 5.

2021-02-05T17:30:39Z

February 5. I was planning to take today off, but I just got two consecutive emails about Cory Doctorow, so I'm going to follow that synchronicity. Alex sends this new blog post by Doctorow, Organic fascism, about the overlap between back-to-the-landers and far-right crazies. I think what's going on here is that people like to tell simple and beautiful stories about the world they live in. And once you get in that box, it's hard to get out, because it's painful to accept perspectives that make your mental models complicated and ugly.

It's funny that right wingers hate Hollywood, because no one has done more than Hollywood to feed the good vs evil bullshit that they've bought into. I saw a video of that horned hat guy from the Capitol riots (who went on a hunger strike in jail because they wouldn't give him organic food) shouting "freeeedooommm" in a clear imitation of the movie Braveheart.

I admit that I'm a little envious. Everyone is making fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene for saying that California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers. But it would be more fun to live in that world than this one, where wildfires are caused by climate change, the bureaucratic difficulty of controlled burns, and decaying electrical infrastructure.

Doctorow 2: Matt sends a quote from his novel Walkaway:

You weren't supposed to need to be a special snowflake, because the objective reality was that, important as you were to yourself and the people immediately around you, it was unlikely that anything you did was irreplaceable. As soon as you classed yourself as a special snowflake, you headed for the self-delusional belief that you should have more than everyone else, because your snowflakiness demanded it.

I've always liked the snowflake metaphor. To me it means that every person, like every snowflake, is unique and special in their own way. Think of Mr. Rogers. He would say that each person is special, but he would never say that that means you should have more than other people. You could argue that if everyone is special then no one is, but I would say, because everyone is special, being special doesn't make anyone better.

I think that fallacious flip, from unique to better, comes from our quantitative culture. In a qualitative culture no one would even think of it. Matt comments: "There's a vertical idea of special and a horizontal idea of special, and they don't jive with each other."

It also occurs to me that being replaceable is something that happens in the workplaces of a machine-like economy, after we've passed through an education system designed to turn us into replaceable cogs. But if you're doing creative work, you don't have to go far in any direction before you're doing something that no one else has done.

Some creative work for the weekend, a nice ambient album, imbolc by emily.

February 4.

2021-02-04T16:20:55Z

February 4. Off the usual subjects, today I want to write about role models. With the Superbowl coming up, I really don't like Tom Brady. And when another person bothers you that much, it's usually because they're reflecting something inside you that you need to come to terms with. Brady always says that he couldn't have done it without his coaches and teammates. But the myth of Tom Brady is the legendary individual, not a cooperator but a competitor, whose will to win is so intense that he can carry any team of losers on his back to a championship.

My counterpoint to Tom Brady is a 90's NBA player named Derrick McKey. Supremely talented, on the court he appeared to be lazy, and he never put up big numbers. But his teammates loved him. They said he took care of the little things that made the whole team better. His lack of quantifiable production eventually led the Sonics to trade him to the Pacers. Immediately, the Pacers won twelve straight games, including a playoff sweep on the way to the eastern conference finals. Meanwhile the Sonics lost in the first round for two straight years.

So I can't defeat Tom Brady, but I can defeat my inner Tom Brady, by aiming for subtle helpful actions instead of obvious personal achievements.

Another example. I love the Great British Baking Show, and in one early season (spoilers follow) the three finalists were Brendan, James, and John. Brendan was like the Dalai Lama meets Hannibal Lecter: serene, precise, deliberate, and extremely competent. James was the opposite: wild and sunny, a master improviser who would always try crazy stuff and still bring in a good result.

The third finalist, John, was an average baker who could only motivate himself through mopey self-criticism. Week after week, he barely squeaked by, and even in the final, he was no better than Brendan. But the judges, like the writers of the disastrous Game of Thrones finale, admired his story and declared him the winner. (Years later, he would admit that he regretted winning because it derailed his life.)

Again, this bothers me because I still have an inner John, who I can eliminate by not doing what he would do, and instead doing what either Brendan or James would do.

Personality is made of actions, and small actions are more important than big actions, because there are more of them. If you want to be a different kind of person, just do what that person would do, in the smallest way, right now.

February 1.

2021-02-01T13:50:08Z

February 1. I got a lot of feedback from the last post, but all my ideas for a follow-up are half-baked. So today, some negative links.

The Paradox of Abundance is that abundance is only good for a small number of people who know how to manage it. The author starts with the example of food, where health-conscious people pick out the best food, while most people are drawn to the cheapest and best tasting food, which is bad for them. And the same kind of thing is happening with information.

The downside of clean: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts. I read somewhere that when kids in the slums of India got polio, it was only a mild sickness, because their immune systems were so strong from exposure to other microbes. Personally, I eat food off the floor, and walk barefoot outside whenever I can.

Moving on to mental health, a good thread on the psychonaut subreddit, There's a parasite inside of you feeding off negative thoughts and emotions.

And a smart article, The Seductive Appeal of Urban Catastrophe. It's mostly about the iconic ruined city of Angkor. We used to think that when the city was sacked in 1431, everyone suddenly left. Newer archaeology suggests that it was mainly the royal family who left, while nonroyals "continued to live at Angkor, repaired its ailing water infrastructure, recycled stones from temples into new structures, and planted farms where high-density housing once was."

The actual decline had already started, and would continue for a long time. The cause was that "leaders bungled maintenance of the city's water system in response to climate threats." Applying this to our own time, I continue to think that collapse will be highly local. The places that do the best job maintaining and retrofitting their infrastructure will thrive, and the places that do the worst job will be abandoned.