I actually land almost exactly opposite to Dave. Descent into authoritarianism
is *caused* by reading and the lack of reading facilitates egalitarianism.
That's an overstatement, of course. But Dave did it first. 8^D
As Marcus (unintentionally?) implies, inductive learning relies fundamentally
on this sequential beatdown ... a firehose (or maddening drip, drip, drip) of
entrainment. What saves us from the entrainment is parallelism (?) ...
parallelity (?) ... interruptibility (?). When/if I do read books, I read them
in parallel. It used to be a steady stream of 1 fiction and 1 non-fiction,
where fiction was reserved for evening when my mind goes numb and it doesn't
matter that much if I habitually read entire pages without comprehending them.
Non-fiction in taxis, on planes, at lunch, focused efforts, etc. And I simply
can't overemphasize the fecundity of doing that. In every case, the 2 books fed
on each other, cross-pollinated.
The same is now true with my not-reading reading. I'll stop in the middle of an
essay on anarchism to dig back through a podcast on a Q anon meme. Or stop in a
neuroscience article and go look up some Jungian archetype I thought I smelled
from some sci-fi show. Etc.
This world-integrating task switching inoculates (I claim) against both lefty
and righty authoritarianism. Whereas the more time you spend consuming 1
narrative (e.g. all the Curtis Yarvin material or whatever), you begin to think
in terms of that 1 narrative. True, for voracious readers who can consume
Ulysses in an evening, there's little risk of entrainment. But for us rabble
with low cognitive power, task-switching is better than the sequential beatdown.
On 11/7/24 09:00, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Gemini, Copilot, and Chatgpt all give responses like this:
< It’s hard to pinpoint an exact number, but the data likely encompasses the
equivalent of hundreds of thousands to millions of books' worth of text. This figure
includes a mixture of genres, lengths, and types of writing, from novels and
technical manuals to academic articles and historical documents. The aim was to
capture a broad and varied perspective, rather than comprehensive coverage of any
single source type or genre. >
*From: *Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West
<profw...@fastmail.fm>
*Date: *Thursday, November 7, 2024 at 7:55 AM
*To: *friam@redfish.com <friam@redfish.com>
*Subject: *[FRIAM] Reading
several people made comments about people not reading much and glen mentioned
he has read maybe 2 books this year. This triggered me, a lifelong addicted
bibliophile.
I started reading (comic books with/Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land/ and heroes like Lex Luthor) a couple of hears before starting school. I maxed out my Weekly Reader Book Club order every week during grade school. Weekly trips to neighborhood book store for 20-25 cent paperbacks (mostly science fiction, but a hell of a lot of non-fiction popular science books as well). A simple mention in a TV show, /Outer Limit/s, prompted a library trip to check out and read Kant's /Critique of Pure Reason/, My freshman year at Macalester required buying and reading over forty books—mostly monographs, not textbooks. I have read just over 10,000 books in my lifetime (a significant percentage being fiction—mysteries and science fiction). Until the past decade, I had subscribed to at least two local papers and one national paper. Before they descended to junk, read Newsweek and Time every week and subscribed to at least six-seven different periodicals (a lot of them computer journals). When I
encountered a mention of Graeber, I bought and read one, then all, of his books (/Dawn of Everything /is, IMO, a really important book with insights that could inform much of the socio-political discussion on this list). Whenever anyone on this list mentions a book, I am on Amazon with seconds ordering it. When I attended FRIAM at St. John's, I visited the bookstore's new books table and always left with 3-8 books; every week.
When speaking at professional conferences I always ask how many people have
read 1-2 computer books this year. and most of the audience raises their hand.
How many have read one book other than a computer book this year—less than half
the audience. How many a fiction book—four or five people.
Alan Kay once said, /"If you do not read for pleasure, you cannot read for
purpose."/ An exaggeration perhaps, but a valid observation.
My last three or four years teaching, I was not allowed to mandate any books
for any class. I could recommend one text book.
The year i spent teaching high school in Las Vegas, NV; not one student,
outside of 'honors/AP' courses had read even one book in their entire 4-year
high school career.
Books are not the only medium of course, but I am deeply suspicious of the
value of much of what is consumed from on-line and mass media sources.
I would attribute any descent into authoritarianism, any demise of social
order, and any succumbing to existential threats on humanity to nothing more
than the massive ignorance of the vast majority of people who do not read.
davew
On Thu, Nov 7, 2024, at 8:29 AM, glen wrote:
I would guess the majority of those who voted for Harris also don't
read. Or, maybe it's better to say they don't read the same way we used
to read: https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/the-future-of-reading
<https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/the-future-of-reading>
I'll admit that I rarely read books anymore. I think I've read 2 this
year. The overwhelming majority of my reading is journal, magazine, and
news articles. And I spend a LOT of time listening to podcasts and
video essays. Granted, my only social media is Mastodon. Though I do
try to post to Instagram sporadically. I just have no idea why serious
people still use eX-Twitter. I mean, WTF?
All this stuff plays an important role in "how democracies die". And my
guess is we'll learn less from the deep thinking book writers or
essayists and more from attempts at network analysis across media like
TikTok, Telegram, Signal, Discord, & SimpleX. There was this (good)
article on Graeber in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit
<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/07/david-graeber-optimistic-anarchist-rebecca-solnit>.
And despite it tweaking my old philia, it just reads so empty to me
now. A stroll through .5TB of leaked chat logs is much more exciting
these days
(https://ddosecrets.com/article/paramilitary-election-interference
<https://ddosecrets.com/article/paramilitary-election-interference>).
On 11/7/24 02:16, Sarbajit Roy wrote:
"> ..,The people who voted for him probably do not read Paxton, Arendt or Levitsky
and Ziblat ..."
The people who voted for him don't read...
We have a similar problem in India, the great semi-literate masses have been
handed cheap smartp[hiones with cheap data plans so they are connected 24x7 to
the Matrix.
On Wed, Nov 6, 2024 at 2:04 PM Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net <mailto:j...@cas-group.net>
<mailto:j...@cas-group.net <mailto:j...@cas-group.net>>> wrote:
I woke up today and saw the horrific news on TV that Trump has won again.
It is incredibly bad on many levels. It is bad for the environment. The world
will not be able to stop global warming without the U.S. It is bad for Ukraine
as well. To me it feels like the end of civilization and democracy. The people
who voted for him probably do not read Paxton, Arendt or Levitsky and Ziblatt.
Or do not care.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/
<https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/>
<https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/
<https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/>>
I was wondering how this is possible. If we define populism as an ideology that presents
"the people" as a morally good force and contrasts them against "the elite",
who are portrayed as corrupt and self-serving then this could be a reason why Trump is so
successful. He is good at populism because he is corrupt and self-serving himself, and uses
projection to accuse others.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378
<https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378>
<https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378
<https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308163/what-is-populism-by-muller-jan-werner/9780141987378>>
What do you think? Why have people voted for him although they know what
kind of person he his? Are we doomed now?
--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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--- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
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