A useful perspective that I'm going to be thinking about and trying to incorporate into my own perspective. There are two things you wrote that I am struggling with, one, that Musk is a man of good judgement, and two, that the techies are the rightful leaders. On one, there is evidence for and against. On two, I'm one of those techies who went to engineering school and good God you would not like living in a country run by us.
I'd say rule by the technically competent offers the opportunity to get good things done if directed by leaders like Vance who understand what good things must be done. And to root out the Left permanently, a lot of good things must be done at scale in the current political window.
Is that really the goal, to root out the Left? I'm all on board Train Conservative, but back in the day the Left was the ying to the Right's yang. We need that.
"Engineers and similar personalities in particular value truth above all, and are both bad at and uncomfortable with lying as a way of life, the key skill for any successful bureaucrat."
As an engineer, I like this observation that engineers value truth, and have finely honed truth detectors because of the nature of our work. The things we design and build don't operate if we don't understand certain truths. What is the debug process but a hunt for the truth?
But, I have observed a problem. I know Catholics who treat their politics as a higher level truth than their religion. My church is full of them. I know engineers, good ones, who treat their politics as a higher level truth than whatever their engineering sense might tell them. My general experience is that politics is almost impervious to truth. I think this is because entire classes of people, maybe majorities, consciously choose politics over truth. And, in doing so, they (we?) break their internal truth detectors. These observations don't leave me very optimistic about fixing our politics.
"If the average voter is an idiot, how can the aggregate of idiots be much better?"
(Only milieu in which aggregates cancel out idiocy is competition in free markets. Which is why those don’t exist: too many idiots. And why power-idiots like the PayPal mafia bros are bounded in straightjacket determination that it should never exist. As Milch put it, that would “queer their hustles.”)
The lowest common utilitarian ends/means krav maga-pragmatic thought-denominator: “average” … is/in every cohort-convenience/mnemonic device-thing, &/is idiot/ic.
Politics?
Continuation of offensive/trespassive war ~ crime ~ by other means has never been legit & never will be … organized crime dons the camo-appearances of legitimacy ~ spiffy uniforms, $3k bespoke suits for the guidos ~ never the reality.
“Clothes do not make the man” - or the mannequin a man. But this war/drobe junk is indeed the average.
Liars lie & pump the gaslight that chiaroscuro-splashes cave walls with shadows. Everyone involved with this is average & idiot.
What you write “engineers know” sounds like what “salewswo/men know.”
“Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”
(Burn those push-button buyers at the stake.)
Rotten Roma tomato oh-so-philosophical sauce (what sales-engineers know) drunkens the date to facilitate the rape (but behind every good man is, should be, a good woman, as was case here):
“Social” engineering: How To Win Friends & Influence People.
And if that doesn’t work, kill ‘em. What’s the use of all this military, all this “intelligence” apparatus, all this tech, if we can’t use it?
Well, there ain’t sizzle, or steak, in planned obsolescence. That’s fraud. And that’s a good example of average idiocy. And engineering.
I want 100 watt incandescent lightbulbs that last indefinitely.
Phoebus cartel (again to remind: organized criminality) from within a dark, smoky room (or maybe a second floor conclave to “amend the articles of confederation”) emerges to say, “Here, take these gaslight bulbs - you have no choice…a republic, if you can keep it <smirk>.”
Iain McGilchrist, above average among others perhaps, writes & talks about Left Hemisphere Right Hemisphere & that never, mostly, among the enormous average, the twain shall meet - would it were otherwise (but it ain’t) …
… Which continuously manifests in that scene from Braveheart where elite Wallace tells elite Wallace-others to divide force, take out their archers, & “I’ll meet you in the /corpus collosum/ middle” … & which, of course, is merely prelude set-up telegraph for when elite Wallace-others “agree” to meet in the middle & then don’t.
Liars are the average. And its a very thick, dense, low integrity quotient average, extending clear out to the outliers beyond that bloody bleeding Claymore edge.
RH scorpion Stevie Ray Vaughan joins LH frog helo pilot to make the swan song fade to black happen sooner than any would prefer. But neither/nobody can help themselves.
Pure/r, too thick, RH is a clusterfricktion.
But to screw things up maximally, with utmost efficiency, is a job for that old time sinister LH.
(Too much Leutinizing Hormone, not enough Leutinizing Hormone & three balls pawn shops everywhere pumping out juice boxes, wine-in-boxes, for all the “market” segmented kids.)
Munchausen tragedy of evil to the left of me, Proxy comedy of evil to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with, & hoping you’re not another of those banal-retentives, too. ~ Stealers (yep) Wheel
Whatever designed this mess was definitely … ambidextrous.
And schizophrenic.
Fight Club.
Go Teem(ing) mass with all those distinguishing/differentiating/individuating tattoos & piercings & flags, & party-gang signs ….
That there is nothing to be done about all this ‘best of all possible worlds’ doesn’t mean describing & characterizing it anew isn’t worthwhile.
Or worth my while, at least.
Socrates counting coup on the omnipresent murder-suicide pact was delightful right up until he folded, took the koolaid end.
Wonder if pre-suicide Soc touched as many people as Jim Jones did.
Two different history book accounts, conclusions. The commonality was audience.
One gets the Audie/ce (the n, of way more than 1, is silent …continuing “education”) Murphy treatment.
(Congressional, ffs, medal of honor.)
The other gets the Arthur Rimbaud/ience treatment.
(Surreality relocates to South America, but wherever it goes, there it is, & at the end of all its travels it arrives where it started & knows the place for the first time - not.)
Remember when Jack climbed on the back with those other two who went looking for America but then he got beaten to death before they - shotgunned at the end - never found it?
Remember when Jack mastered the art of writing “All work & no play makes Jack a dull boy”?
“Sell crazy someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.”
There are no trustworthy, praiseworthy, billionaires. None. Behind every such accumulated pile is Balzac’s characterization-fact: great crime.
Agreed (except):
“Social” situations as defined by who? By self-evidently antisocial majority-“definers” is who. Those averagers.
“The ability to manipulate other humans…” is what those call “social.” And that doesn’t alchemize to gold if/when an engineer learns to do it.
The job has never been the purpose of anywhere I have ever worked. The “social” stuff comes first & not by a nose, either - it laps the field several times over.
“Technocracy” does not mean techs are in charge - & almost certainly never will mean that. From whom the techs collect checks is who is in charge.
Papal paypal bros ascendency will be again one of those hubristic Daedalus-Icarus deals. That Art of the Deal … is a squirming Pollock terminal velocity splatter-canvas, in a frame.
There’s only 52 cards in the bounded function deck. Palming extras in sleeves soon or late ends badly for the cheats, which is good for the good … but only oh so temporarily.
I like your stuff, Tom. Not because we have too much in common. Maybe because I'm something of a CC Rider. (I couldn't see anything useful in the lyrics of that old Ray Charles tune, so ... that's what symbols are for, what music is.)
A useful perspective that I'm going to be thinking about and trying to incorporate into my own perspective. There are two things you wrote that I am struggling with, one, that Musk is a man of good judgement, and two, that the techies are the rightful leaders. On one, there is evidence for and against. On two, I'm one of those techies who went to engineering school and good God you would not like living in a country run by us.
I'd say rule by the technically competent offers the opportunity to get good things done if directed by leaders like Vance who understand what good things must be done. And to root out the Left permanently, a lot of good things must be done at scale in the current political window.
Is that really the goal, to root out the Left? I'm all on board Train Conservative, but back in the day the Left was the ying to the Right's yang. We need that.
"Engineers and similar personalities in particular value truth above all, and are both bad at and uncomfortable with lying as a way of life, the key skill for any successful bureaucrat."
As an engineer, I like this observation that engineers value truth, and have finely honed truth detectors because of the nature of our work. The things we design and build don't operate if we don't understand certain truths. What is the debug process but a hunt for the truth?
But, I have observed a problem. I know Catholics who treat their politics as a higher level truth than their religion. My church is full of them. I know engineers, good ones, who treat their politics as a higher level truth than whatever their engineering sense might tell them. My general experience is that politics is almost impervious to truth. I think this is because entire classes of people, maybe majorities, consciously choose politics over truth. And, in doing so, they (we?) break their internal truth detectors. These observations don't leave me very optimistic about fixing our politics.
"If the average voter is an idiot, how can the aggregate of idiots be much better?"
(Only milieu in which aggregates cancel out idiocy is competition in free markets. Which is why those don’t exist: too many idiots. And why power-idiots like the PayPal mafia bros are bounded in straightjacket determination that it should never exist. As Milch put it, that would “queer their hustles.”)
The lowest common utilitarian ends/means krav maga-pragmatic thought-denominator: “average” … is/in every cohort-convenience/mnemonic device-thing, &/is idiot/ic.
Politics?
Continuation of offensive/trespassive war ~ crime ~ by other means has never been legit & never will be … organized crime dons the camo-appearances of legitimacy ~ spiffy uniforms, $3k bespoke suits for the guidos ~ never the reality.
“Clothes do not make the man” - or the mannequin a man. But this war/drobe junk is indeed the average.
Liars lie & pump the gaslight that chiaroscuro-splashes cave walls with shadows. Everyone involved with this is average & idiot.
What you write “engineers know” sounds like what “salewswo/men know.”
“Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”
(Burn those push-button buyers at the stake.)
Rotten Roma tomato oh-so-philosophical sauce (what sales-engineers know) drunkens the date to facilitate the rape (but behind every good man is, should be, a good woman, as was case here):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDre1MOah0c
“Social” engineering: How To Win Friends & Influence People.
And if that doesn’t work, kill ‘em. What’s the use of all this military, all this “intelligence” apparatus, all this tech, if we can’t use it?
Well, there ain’t sizzle, or steak, in planned obsolescence. That’s fraud. And that’s a good example of average idiocy. And engineering.
I want 100 watt incandescent lightbulbs that last indefinitely.
Phoebus cartel (again to remind: organized criminality) from within a dark, smoky room (or maybe a second floor conclave to “amend the articles of confederation”) emerges to say, “Here, take these gaslight bulbs - you have no choice…a republic, if you can keep it <smirk>.”
Iain McGilchrist, above average among others perhaps, writes & talks about Left Hemisphere Right Hemisphere & that never, mostly, among the enormous average, the twain shall meet - would it were otherwise (but it ain’t) …
… Which continuously manifests in that scene from Braveheart where elite Wallace tells elite Wallace-others to divide force, take out their archers, & “I’ll meet you in the /corpus collosum/ middle” … & which, of course, is merely prelude set-up telegraph for when elite Wallace-others “agree” to meet in the middle & then don’t.
Liars are the average. And its a very thick, dense, low integrity quotient average, extending clear out to the outliers beyond that bloody bleeding Claymore edge.
RH scorpion Stevie Ray Vaughan joins LH frog helo pilot to make the swan song fade to black happen sooner than any would prefer. But neither/nobody can help themselves.
Pure/r, too thick, RH is a clusterfricktion.
But to screw things up maximally, with utmost efficiency, is a job for that old time sinister LH.
(Too much Leutinizing Hormone, not enough Leutinizing Hormone & three balls pawn shops everywhere pumping out juice boxes, wine-in-boxes, for all the “market” segmented kids.)
Munchausen tragedy of evil to the left of me, Proxy comedy of evil to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with, & hoping you’re not another of those banal-retentives, too. ~ Stealers (yep) Wheel
Whatever designed this mess was definitely … ambidextrous.
And schizophrenic.
Fight Club.
Go Teem(ing) mass with all those distinguishing/differentiating/individuating tattoos & piercings & flags, & party-gang signs ….
That there is nothing to be done about all this ‘best of all possible worlds’ doesn’t mean describing & characterizing it anew isn’t worthwhile.
Or worth my while, at least.
Socrates counting coup on the omnipresent murder-suicide pact was delightful right up until he folded, took the koolaid end.
Wonder if pre-suicide Soc touched as many people as Jim Jones did.
Two different history book accounts, conclusions. The commonality was audience.
One gets the Audie/ce (the n, of way more than 1, is silent …continuing “education”) Murphy treatment.
(Congressional, ffs, medal of honor.)
The other gets the Arthur Rimbaud/ience treatment.
(Surreality relocates to South America, but wherever it goes, there it is, & at the end of all its travels it arrives where it started & knows the place for the first time - not.)
Remember when Jack climbed on the back with those other two who went looking for America but then he got beaten to death before they - shotgunned at the end - never found it?
Remember when Jack mastered the art of writing “All work & no play makes Jack a dull boy”?
“Sell crazy someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbI6qTih2TI
Maybe karma does work. Like in the movies.
SRV’s best version of Life Without You:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7PQNvRZ10w
Sprinkle-bits:
There are no trustworthy, praiseworthy, billionaires. None. Behind every such accumulated pile is Balzac’s characterization-fact: great crime.
Agreed (except):
“Social” situations as defined by who? By self-evidently antisocial majority-“definers” is who. Those averagers.
“The ability to manipulate other humans…” is what those call “social.” And that doesn’t alchemize to gold if/when an engineer learns to do it.
The job has never been the purpose of anywhere I have ever worked. The “social” stuff comes first & not by a nose, either - it laps the field several times over.
“Technocracy” does not mean techs are in charge - & almost certainly never will mean that. From whom the techs collect checks is who is in charge.
Papal paypal bros ascendency will be again one of those hubristic Daedalus-Icarus deals. That Art of the Deal … is a squirming Pollock terminal velocity splatter-canvas, in a frame.
There’s only 52 cards in the bounded function deck. Palming extras in sleeves soon or late ends badly for the cheats, which is good for the good … but only oh so temporarily.
I like your stuff, Tom. Not because we have too much in common. Maybe because I'm something of a CC Rider. (I couldn't see anything useful in the lyrics of that old Ray Charles tune, so ... that's what symbols are for, what music is.)