We talk a lot about polarization as if it were a disease that infected society, but we're missing a key data point: polarization is a growth hack, and it works. It delivers results. When you pick a side and commit to it wholly and without reservation, you get things that moderate positions cannot provide. You get certainty in an uncertain world. You get a community that will defend you. You get a simple heuristic for navigating complex issues.
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You end up in a world where changing your mind becomes impossible because you've built your entire identity around being right. Where admitting uncertainty is social suicide. Where every conversation is a performance for your tribe rather than an actual exchange of ideas.
The author doesn't mention how this is all being hyper-charged by social media and the money magnet of Silicon Valley. A key comment from the Hacker News thread: "I found it weird that this person has multiple friends that were able to 'make bank' by having polarizing opinions. I know a ton of folks with polarizing opinions and none of them are monetizing it. What kind of world is this author living in where their social circle includes so many influencers that are cashing in on social media?"
From the post: "The writer who says 'this issue has nuance and I can see valid concerns on multiple sides' gets a pat on the head and zero retweets." You know how else you can get zero retweets? Stay off of fucking Twitter. But I'll admit, I went down this road myself back in the days of web 1.0, writing essays with the goal of being inspiring and slaying dragons. I got hundreds of dollars in donations, and there were two or three different online communities based on my writing, that all became toxic. People got mad at me for not being the person in their head, and at some point I decided to start filtering my audience, intentionally writing stuff that's less inspiring and harder to think about. This decision was easier because I have a psychological aversion to being fawned on and sucked up to. It makes me feel dirty, otherwise I might have become a cult leader. But here's my advice: Practice being less of a warrior and more of a scout. Instead of trying to beat the enemy, try to actually figure stuff out.
]]>Long gone are the days when the Internet was a fun novelty that we could choose to use or not. We don't experience childlike joy each morning when we see it up and running, but we certainly panic if it's down. That's because the Internet has sunk into the foundations of our life as infrastructure, without which we are now disabled. It doesn't guarantee security, or - in itself - make any of us joyful or empowered. Having the Internet, or electricity, or a smartphone, simply means each of us gets to fight another day, and to not be left behind by all the others trying to claw their way to illusory security in an ever-changing market.
Loosely related: Seattle, like NYC, has just elected a young progressive mayor. Her name is Katie Wilson, and the weirdest thing about the campaign was that the incumbent made an issue of Wilson's mother paying for daycare for Wilson's daughter. It's weird because under what value system is this bad? Not conservatism. Conservatives love the family and are all about family members helping each other out, so that the government doesn't have to. Meanwhile liberals want the government to help people out so that we're not dependent on family.
What value system is opposed to both government, and the family, helping people out? Capitalism, because if we're all atomized individuals, we all have to work in the Amazon warehouse in the holy project of sucking all the money to the top of the pyramid and calling it growth.
What was new, Weber thought, was the moral stance: that working hard, living frugally and accumulating wealth weren't just practical skills for succeeding, but inherently virtuous forms of behaviour.... Over time, these behaviours detached from their religious roots. You didn't need to believe in predestination to feel the drive to work endlessly, or to prove your value through success. The idea of a "calling" lingered on, but hollowed out. Eventually, it looked less like a vocation than an obligation.... Weber's point was that the moral energy that once drove the Protestant ethic has drained away. What remains are mere behavioural patterns, which have become reflexes. People still work obsessively; they still chase success as if it had ultimate meaning. The difference is that now they're unsure why.
Two more stray links. This strange phenomenon could unlock the secrets of the mind. It's about feeling a sense of awareness "without thoughts, images or even a sense of self." You can find it in ancient philosophy, and now researchers are finding it in sleep studies.
And a cool thread from the Ask Historians subreddit, about Ninjas and what they were really like. "Ninja to samurai are what Special Forces units are to the regular infantry today." Only low-level ninjas were assassins. Mostly they were spies and scouts. There's also some stuff about Kunoichi, or female ninjas.