OK but airport bookstores are usually really small, I assumed only the best material made the cut.
Fuck Israel
limited shelf space + high footfall = only the biggest and most grabbable turds.
it's surprising you haven't heard about movements like 'rationalism' or 'effective altruism'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community
a convenient blindspot considering all they boil down to, essentially, is that tech bros and STEM types really haven't the foggiest when it comes to what they're doing in a wider moral-ethical framework. they'll robe themselves in any passing and flattering fad while busily making AI-guided drone assassins or poison gas or whatever.
you've got the same class of people being 'proud to announce' on their linkedin that they've just accepted a trainee role at palantir, helping to construct the surveillance-capitalist state, then flattering themselves that they're part of some philosophical vanguard of 'rationalists'.
it's surprising you haven't heard about movements like 'rationalism' or 'effective altruism'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community
a convenient blindspot considering all they boil down to, essentially, is that tech bros and STEM types really haven't the foggiest when it comes to what they're doing in a wider moral-ethical framework. they'll robe themselves in any passing and flattering fad while busily making AI-guided drone assassins or poison gas or whatever.
you've got the same class of people being 'proud to announce' on their linkedin that they've just accepted a trainee role at palantir, helping to construct the surveillance-capitalist state, then flattering themselves that they're part of some philosophical vanguard of 'rationalists'.
Last edited by uziq (2025-04-28 05:41:56)
I'm sure you'll understand just as there's a difference between actual Oxford lecturers and sell-outs who confer PPE degrees on mindless slugs tech-bros and actual techies aren't really the same.
Generally speaking actual STEM people want to make the world a better place, the whole thing has been hijacked by creeps who saw that getting into Goldman Sachs was hard and it was easier to come up with an evil product with potential and do a rug-pull IPO (or just go directly to jail via crypto)
Generally speaking actual STEM people want to make the world a better place, the whole thing has been hijacked by creeps who saw that getting into Goldman Sachs was hard and it was easier to come up with an evil product with potential and do a rug-pull IPO (or just go directly to jail via crypto)
Fuck Israel
well, yes, i can appreciate that as i've worked with actual career scientists and researchers for a good chunk of the last decade. they're humble and curious, for one thing, which is a quality in short supply in this lot.
turning science or your identity as a STEM graduate or professional scientist into a world outlook is what i would call scientism. that -ism denotes a whole nexus of toxic ideology, lazy thinking, and social posturing and attitudinising. bad, actually!
ironically the agitating on behalf of people like richard dawkins for 'atheist' and 'rationalist' communities opened the door wide open to these types. that is, people basically adopting the same worshipful and ultimately chauvinistic attitudes towards science in the space vacated by religion. the scientific method or your electrical engineering nous isn't a sound basis for a personal identity.
unfortunately the penny that hasn't dropped with you, when you continually push for 'government ran by engineers', is that the only people who would put themselves forward for such positions of power, the only people who would aggrandise, who are arrogant enough to... are pretty much the types we have seen throughout history up until now. very identifiable psychological types. 'well-meaning' experts are in their walled gardens doing research.
turning science or your identity as a STEM graduate or professional scientist into a world outlook is what i would call scientism. that -ism denotes a whole nexus of toxic ideology, lazy thinking, and social posturing and attitudinising. bad, actually!
ironically the agitating on behalf of people like richard dawkins for 'atheist' and 'rationalist' communities opened the door wide open to these types. that is, people basically adopting the same worshipful and ultimately chauvinistic attitudes towards science in the space vacated by religion. the scientific method or your electrical engineering nous isn't a sound basis for a personal identity.
unfortunately the penny that hasn't dropped with you, when you continually push for 'government ran by engineers', is that the only people who would put themselves forward for such positions of power, the only people who would aggrandise, who are arrogant enough to... are pretty much the types we have seen throughout history up until now. very identifiable psychological types. 'well-meaning' experts are in their walled gardens doing research.
Last edited by uziq (2025-04-28 05:51:44)
Great, so we're back to Starship Troopers or Douglas Adams' man with a cat to run the world.
Fuck Israel
scientific expertise has its place, and it's a very central and important one, but most political and social questions are not really scientific in nature and do not have 'solutions' that can be rationally planned or controlled for. the efforts to introduce metrics and statistics into every aspect of political life - healthcare, for instance - have mostly been disastrous. the NHS has been well and truly KPI-tized since the blair years, and we don't really have a healthier or happier society to show for it. quite the obverse – and an exodus of trained medical staff to australia and new zealand, just to round it off.
letting self-appointed 'rationalists' try to run society according to their highly technocratic vision of society is not going to work because so much of sociey is not rational. human agents are not rational. markets are not rational. political sentiment and voting behavior is seldom based in a rational outlook on the world or assessment of facts. the people who consider themselves the 'effective altruists' at the top of this seething mass of irrationality are full of blindspots.
their main idea that you can run all of society based on bayesian analysis is just laughably risible stuff, really. these people do not have a well-rounded sense of what they're dealing with, let alone what constitutes the good and desirable, etc. you made a joke allusion to the 'trolley problem', but it's like these people think entirely in these kinds of terms. they are only of limited utility.
letting self-appointed 'rationalists' try to run society according to their highly technocratic vision of society is not going to work because so much of sociey is not rational. human agents are not rational. markets are not rational. political sentiment and voting behavior is seldom based in a rational outlook on the world or assessment of facts. the people who consider themselves the 'effective altruists' at the top of this seething mass of irrationality are full of blindspots.
their main idea that you can run all of society based on bayesian analysis is just laughably risible stuff, really. these people do not have a well-rounded sense of what they're dealing with, let alone what constitutes the good and desirable, etc. you made a joke allusion to the 'trolley problem', but it's like these people think entirely in these kinds of terms. they are only of limited utility.
Last edited by uziq (2025-04-28 07:43:37)