Our goal, no easy one, is to figure the trajectory of the Expertocracy. Their goal we know. Complete total full control of every aspect of all life under the guidance, all-seeing, and humorless rule of Experts. But forecasting the shape this will take, and at what rate it all happens, is difficult.
Arrgh. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to post the same article twice. I changed the title, and thought that's all I did, but somehow it duplicated itself.
Surely my mistake, but I have no idea how I did it.
Yeah this was a confusing morning. I thought you wrote two different articles based on the titles and wondered if you were making some sort of point? Then I opened the second one and saw it was the exact same thing.
The imperative to problematize the unproblematic is one of the most counterproductively annoying tendencies of the expert class. Take literacy education. Literacy is as old as civilization. We've been teaching people to read for a very long time, and over the millennia have figured out what works, and what doesn't. There's essentially nothing that can be done to improve literacy education, meaning that any innovations are likely to worsen it. Yet we have legions of education doctorates who need a thesis project, and afterwards need a sinecure at the board, ministry, or department of education, where they must make a name for themselves by 'improving' the curriculum. The result is a constantly shifting set of techniques, most of which don't work, yielding students that can't read.
We see a similar dynamic in nutrition.
If we've been doing something for a long time and getting good results, we shouldn't be trying to change it. We should just be teaching people to do it correctly. But this would not allow Experts to LARP as scientists.
💬 we shouldn't be trying to change it <-- def not what the blind idiot idol aka everlasting march of progress prescribes 😏
Experts™ are proud foot soldiers(* of what Jacques Ellul called technique 🙂
🗨 The one option that is never considered is to dismantle portions of the system.[...T]he system grows increasingly more complex, its good and bad effects continue to multiply, and it becomes increasingly more susceptible to failure. Inefficiency makes the system more robust and better able to handle shocks. This is the difference between that old truck you have that has been running for 25 years and a Formula 1 race car.
🗨 It is why no reform of any government program ever works. You may solve one problem, but this will bring a multiplicity of new problems.
🗨 The one thing we seem incapable of doing is to say “no.”
Compare this perversity with the old guild system, where apprentices were taught how to do things correctly, and to an extremely high standard, with no expectation that they would do anything particularly *original* until they had fully mastered the depth of their chosen vocation.
But then the guilds were oriented around practical concerns, not theory wholly detached from reality.
I think the biggest problem with technocracy is the necessary element of pride. The types who rise to the top in the technocracy do not do so based on merit so much as political skill and preoccupation with self and self-image. These are Fauci types. And their pride renders them blind and stupid. It results in them starting from the position of self-congratulatory correctness and only seeing the world in a way that makes them right and thus blind to all contrary facts. In other words, they are immune to evidence and correction, so errors perpetuate.
CS Lewis nails the spiritual and psychological errors with the technocrats in his prophetic books "That Hideous Strength" and "The Abolition of Man."
Tyranny certainly shows its ugly face, and the executive branch posing as legislative has become far too common during the plandemic, when even unelected and semi-private agencies ruled over the land.
Assisted suicide allows for too much foul play, which is why it's impossible to support it even outside the Roman Catholic Church.
In my book, "sustainability" in history had only one meaning: legal and executive powers united against the have-nots, secure the rulers' power and assets, and maintain a caste system with next-to-no social mobility in order to maintain social stability.
Arrgh. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to post the same article twice. I changed the title, and thought that's all I did, but somehow it duplicated itself.
Surely my mistake, but I have no idea how I did it.
Apologies.
Yeah this was a confusing morning. I thought you wrote two different articles based on the titles and wondered if you were making some sort of point? Then I opened the second one and saw it was the exact same thing.
I think we'll live.
Where's the fun, then? 😭
The imperative to problematize the unproblematic is one of the most counterproductively annoying tendencies of the expert class. Take literacy education. Literacy is as old as civilization. We've been teaching people to read for a very long time, and over the millennia have figured out what works, and what doesn't. There's essentially nothing that can be done to improve literacy education, meaning that any innovations are likely to worsen it. Yet we have legions of education doctorates who need a thesis project, and afterwards need a sinecure at the board, ministry, or department of education, where they must make a name for themselves by 'improving' the curriculum. The result is a constantly shifting set of techniques, most of which don't work, yielding students that can't read.
We see a similar dynamic in nutrition.
If we've been doing something for a long time and getting good results, we shouldn't be trying to change it. We should just be teaching people to do it correctly. But this would not allow Experts to LARP as scientists.
💬 we shouldn't be trying to change it <-- def not what the blind idiot idol aka everlasting march of progress prescribes 😏
Experts™ are proud foot soldiers(* of what Jacques Ellul called technique 🙂
🗨 The one option that is never considered is to dismantle portions of the system.[...T]he system grows increasingly more complex, its good and bad effects continue to multiply, and it becomes increasingly more susceptible to failure. Inefficiency makes the system more robust and better able to handle shocks. This is the difference between that old truck you have that has been running for 25 years and a Formula 1 race car.
🗨 It is why no reform of any government program ever works. You may solve one problem, but this will bring a multiplicity of new problems.
🗨 The one thing we seem incapable of doing is to say “no.”
apokekrummenain.substack.com/i/52967912/can-the-system-be-reformed
--
(* plus, now irredeemably perverted—as if their systemic role weren’t enough
Compare this perversity with the old guild system, where apprentices were taught how to do things correctly, and to an extremely high standard, with no expectation that they would do anything particularly *original* until they had fully mastered the depth of their chosen vocation.
But then the guilds were oriented around practical concerns, not theory wholly detached from reality.
Michael McConkey nods approvingly 😉
I think the biggest problem with technocracy is the necessary element of pride. The types who rise to the top in the technocracy do not do so based on merit so much as political skill and preoccupation with self and self-image. These are Fauci types. And their pride renders them blind and stupid. It results in them starting from the position of self-congratulatory correctness and only seeing the world in a way that makes them right and thus blind to all contrary facts. In other words, they are immune to evidence and correction, so errors perpetuate.
CS Lewis nails the spiritual and psychological errors with the technocrats in his prophetic books "That Hideous Strength" and "The Abolition of Man."
I disagree, I think this was a hell of a post. I got to spent 10 enjoyable minutes trolling the shit out of Rohde.
Tyranny certainly shows its ugly face, and the executive branch posing as legislative has become far too common during the plandemic, when even unelected and semi-private agencies ruled over the land.
Assisted suicide allows for too much foul play, which is why it's impossible to support it even outside the Roman Catholic Church.
In my book, "sustainability" in history had only one meaning: legal and executive powers united against the have-nots, secure the rulers' power and assets, and maintain a caste system with next-to-no social mobility in order to maintain social stability.
Why the double delivery, with the why in the title and without? Lemme venture a guess: kinda (un)scientific experiment to validate some shady model? 😇
I have no idea why it posted twice.
I have a notion: smth to do with pinning at the top of wmbriggs.substack.com 🙂