https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-dangerous-populist-science-of-yuval-noah-harari
For how popular and questionable Yuval Noah Harari’s writing has been, it has barely seen any scrutiny. This critique by Darshana Narayanan is on point and most of the things in it were—I hate to say it—glaringly obvious from the get-go.
‘Whomsoever is possessed of magisterial strength is courted; while whomsoever has inferior strength pays court to others. It is for this reason that the shrewd ruler strives for might.’
We improve at this process by becoming more creative, having more slack, being more equanimous, and pruning more efficiently.
Drastically lowering the voting age as Germany is considering here would solve a huge amount of problems (which is why it will of course not happen).
David Runciman has argued along similar lines that rejuvenating democracy usually happens by expanding the franchise, in this case to children.
An excellent overview of the issues around Slate Star Codex without having to read a single word of the blog yourself. That’s an excellent service.
“This gets at the heart of what’s deeply wrong with this perspective: it prioritizes currently non-existent, possibly never-existent, hypothetical future possible people over living, breathing people today, because the former could possibly, maybe, perhaps far outnumber the latter.”
An argument by Phil Torres of how the Effective Altruism movement is an ideological front for white supremacy and eventual genocide.
This summary of Robert Kegan is more than a bit illuminating. And maybe I’m only aspiring when I say this, but come join me at Stage 5. It’s nice here.