April 2026
Complete authored posts and demonstrable self-threads.
The assumption in discussions about AI that humans somehow were thinking before AI came along, and now they’re not, is almost too funny. Humans mostly don’t think in a ‘cognitive’ way. They imitate one another, to belong in a particular social team, in battle with other social… https://t.co/4lOEQ5fxij
The assumption in discussions about AI that humans somehow were thinking before AI came along, and now they’re not, is almost too funny. Humans mostly don’t think in a ‘cognitive’ way. They imitate one another, to belong in a particular social team, in battle with other social… https://t.co/VV0adWrXlT
I don’t celebrate the widespread chaos and destruction. But I’ve posted for years here now about how this is the only way change was going to come. The human status quo never surrenders to change. It can only be replaced by its complete destruction. History shows this time and… https://t.co/LxX34sZCMh
I don’t celebrate the widespread chaos and destruction. But I’ve posted for years here now about how this is the only way change was going to come. The human status quo never surrenders to change. It can only be replaced by its complete destruction. History shows this time and… https://t.co/LxX34sZCMh
Keep calm and carry on was a phrase the Brits used in early WW2 to steel populations for the massive challenges ahead. It wasn’t urging them to fight the war on behalf of government. Pleading with them to do the right thing. The right thing was already being done, was being… https://t.co/p2eblKNldv
Keep calm and carry on was a phrase the Brits used in early WW2 to steel populations for the massive challenges ahead. It wasn’t urging them to fight the war on behalf of government. Pleading with them to do the right thing. The right thing was already being done, was being… https://t.co/p2eblKNldv
It does. But you have to understand why it does. It replaces an extensive network of hierarchies, based on expertise and experience, with hierarchies based only on popularity. Likes and followers. It strip-mines societies of their institutional history. A history written in… https://t.co/DGTnUvaYo8
I prefer the ancient stories, where humans were more acutely aware of how little of their own fate was theirs to determine. When gods were used to personify the much greater forces to which humans are subject. The Copernican revolution de-centred existence. But we re-centred…
Musk correctly noting here that the status quo will never change of its own accord. It has to be disrupted, even destroyed. Most of us really don’t want to surrender our social status. Our identity and position in the groups we’re part of, and in society. That would make us a… https://t.co/gspStfazAN
So human systems exhibit human behaviours. One of the great brakes on human progress today is the determination to find fault in every change. To demand utopia before anything is done. Which of course never arrives, and so nothing is done. Those with half a brain make… https://t.co/UoopdnqTOj
What does Angus suggest to fix the international Trump-created chaos? Be Australia’s own Trump. Make Australia Great Again. Drill, Baby, Drill. The Liberal Party is dead. https://t.co/IKfqNiscZz… https://t.co/Wzpl1aSfSC
What does Angus suggest to fix the international Trump-created chaos? Be Australia’s own Trump. Make Australia Great Again. Drill, Baby, Drill. The Liberal Party is officially dead. https://t.co/YhZjTmxh6T https://t.co/2tqPpF495o
It goes further. The idea nations can choose between a more government driven and a ‘market’ approach is a fantasy. Everything we call the market is the highly regulated outcome of centralised coordination and planning. All societies are regulated, by status hierarchies. We… https://t.co/M1VTvbA4Ap
The delusional psychology of ‘urging’ public action. The day after Albo’s pep-talk to the nation, the car enthusiasts’ take at work? “He’s trying to force us to drive crap Chinese cars.” They all went out to refuel to the max.
It is obvious surely that Trump sees his entire life, including time as President, as just new episodes of The Apprentice? Making (usually catastrophically bad) deals. And firing, lots of firing. There’s chest-thumping impotent bravado in firing. https://t.co/8F6STyzbNF
Australia has been producing well over 10 million tonnes of coal ash waste, per year, for decades, to generate its electricity. The vast majority of it just sits in big holes in the ground, in ash dams. https://t.co/mKe7IrdUyo
Australia has been producing well over 10 million tonnes of coal ash waste, per year, for decades, to generate its electricity. The vast majority of it just sits in big holes in the ground, in ash dams. Compare with the 90,000 tonnes of solar panel waste being talked about… https://t.co/mKe7IrdUyo
Post-revolutionary societies are mostly stuck in that ‘rise up’ mode for the rest of their short (in historical terms) existence. The revolution destroys every other way of doing things. https://t.co/kIv4DAGk88
Happy to test this dreary old hypothesis by removing all subsidy to fossil fuels, and letting the two options slug it out. https://t.co/xzSYBlZddF
It would surely take almost zero political courage to dump the biggest albatross in the entire Australian budget. AUKUS. https://t.co/8wpzmBlPfA
China being able to roll-out over 50,000 km of high speed rail in under 20 years, while Anglo countries have as good as none. The Anglosphere lives inside social media. All social media creates is argument. Usually sponsored argument to protect a status quo off social media, and…
Another fake binary (free markets vs the State) exported into the real word as if either of these were an actual thing. Societies are made up of networked hierarchies of humans. Hierarchies of status, re-badged as systems and -isms, as if those were real things. https://t.co/7VwICacDR4
Another fake binary (free markets vs the State) exported into the real world as if they were real things. Societies are made up of networked hierarchies of humans. Hierarchies of status, re-badged as systems and -isms, as if those were real things. https://t.co/7VwICacDR4
Another fake binary (free markets vs the State) exported into the real world as if they were real things. Societies are made up of networked hierarchies of humans. Hierarchies of status. A ‘free market’ is just one status hierarchy being replaced by another, under cover of the… https://t.co/7VwICacDR4
The more imitation is allowed to operate in an uncontrolled way, the more status us uncontrolled, the more a culture will revert to nostalgia, in a search for meaning and status. https://t.co/IlaPMtr037
The engineered hysteria from the fossil fuel status quo will become more and more strident as the entire edifice collapses. https://t.co/V5fxeqmjty
The redeeming thing about Musk is, unlike most culture warriors, he actually builds things. You can tolerate a lot of the culture war drivel because the net impact on societies of the building work is overwhelmingly positive. Which goes to my frequent point. Societies that… https://t.co/jm5RArTsOu
Time to shift allegiances, to China. They’re already our overwhelming trade partner, while the US offers as good as nothing there. Europe should do the same. It may even get the Russians in the European tent. (Amused that one of the references for her rant is Tony Abbott.) https://t.co/kJwJRlziPQ
This is Turchin’s ‘wealth pump’. When higher status people and groups hoard vast amounts of a society’s wealth, sitting on it like a dragon on top of its gold. Societies collapse when rivals within the status elites fight each other, combined with widespread immiseration of the… https://t.co/29tRLlSTeD
So please, stick to that. The culture warring is undermining the future livelihood of those brilliant engineers. https://t.co/ro1L8bFqj4
The 3 great modern superpowers are America, Russia and China. Russia and China were both crippled by populist revolutions, heavily inspired by the West, creating dysfunctional cultural outcomes. China’s long history gave it some cultural fat to rebuild with. Russia still…
The 3 great modern superpowers are America, Russia and China. Russia and China were both crippled by populist revolutions, heavily inspired by the West, creating dysfunctional cultural outcomes. China’s long history gave it some cultural fat to rebuild with. Russia still…
The ism-folk, those who see existence as battling ideologies, always take credit for all human social progress. All the -isms are fictions. Humanity progresses when it builds things, because building requires agreement and suffocates rivalry. No -ism has ever built a single… https://t.co/I10QJvh6Zo
Australia’s Trump cover band, playing all the hits. Isn’t Trump doing well, too. https://t.co/sIWwDRasQN
Last time I checked Australians were finally buying EVs, because embracing fossil fuels was sending them broke. https://t.co/rKsdTnqiLU
Maybe there’ll come a time when the idea that societies are run by -isms will seem ridiculous. Because it is absolutely ridiculous. https://t.co/lHYrbUDvRe
Another way to look at this is that populism is always, and has been for thousands of years, a self-corrective idiocy that destroys a dysfunctional status quo. Populists think this is for their benefit, but they’re one of the first to be swept away by their own destruction.… https://t.co/rvCgtH6h7P
If we could just harness the hot air of social media influencers… https://t.co/xhGKe6HoTS
And yet every idea we have about democracy says this is the right thing to do. To consult, to build consensus, to sound out the community/the people. Progressives lose in politics because they believe these ideas about democracy. They don’t offer an alternative king, who will… https://t.co/hQMJHAreCO
Offer the Chinese their own bases in Europe. The Americans will stay. https://t.co/jDQp7fPcfW
Machiavelli understood status as the central coordinating function of all human life. It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new…
The UK is famous for a sort of calm pragmatism. That’s due to its relative modern absence of revolutionary movements, meaning custom and tradition continue to play a steadying role in UK life. It was when it substituted its aristocracy with at least some idea of noblesse… https://t.co/MxuUUI02BS
The UK is famous for a sort of calm pragmatism. That’s due to its relative modern absence of revolutionary movements, meaning custom and tradition continue to play a steadying role in UK life. It was when it substituted its aristocracy with at least some idea of noblesse… https://t.co/Jk2eDcRHIR
Yep. Social media is a literal existential threat to civilisation, it’s that bad. Those who don’t understand that don’t understand how societies work, and why these platforms destroy them. Societies run on status. Social media attacks status directly. It destroys trust in… https://t.co/MmhrHyqL08
Work colleagues today were discussing how this latest moon mission ‘proves’ that the moon landings were always fake. The logic? ‘They’re not landing, it shows nobody ever landed there.’ Civilisation’s next moonshot must be to shut social media down. To save itself. Social… https://t.co/eeGhLXswgW
We got here because our most popular model for how humans interact and form groups and societies is crazy. The idea that societies run on information, and people are information processors, who then by some form of ‘invisible hand’ create emergent collective life. Societies… https://t.co/7KGgFtooF0
I’d like to say I’m never surprised by what the fossil fuel status quo will come up with as a way to avoid change. But the idea Australia will now become a major oil producer is maybe Peak Bullshit.
The comments under these posts are almost universally little Aussie Trumpies saying ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’ Australian conservatives are at the ‘will drop pants for food’ stage of extinction denial. Using the destruction of Australia’s greatest strategic advantage in renewable… https://t.co/5hprouMFl6
This is the root of all human thought and behaviour. Belonging in social groups, in competition with other social groups. Members bound together by imitative rivalry. We will never understand a thing by assuming humans act like a free market of sovereign-thinking individuals,… https://t.co/pUIUx8EJGt
It’s true that social progress is driven by a tiny handful of people. It’s not true that means they should be astronomically rich for doing it. The Republic of Letters was like a Justice League of elite thinkers and innovators, that created much of modern civilisation. I don’t… https://t.co/NcfZ79MJCH
It’s true that social progress is driven by a tiny handful of people. It’s not true that means they should be astronomically rich for doing it. The Republic of Letters was like a Justice League of elite thinkers and innovators, that created much of modern civilisation. I don’t… https://t.co/NcfZ79MJCH
In social media culture, something being ‘over’ simply means it’s stop trending. Only what trends is real. We live inside social media now. https://t.co/rOJupm6DBY
In social media culture, something being ‘over’ simply means it’s stopped trending. Only what trends is real. We live inside social media now. https://t.co/rOJupm6DBY
Eventually reality prevails, in most things. Electric cars are (by far) the best cars, from an engineering point of view. And Tesla engineers the best electric cars. Kidult hashtag culture dented the reality for a while. ‘We don’t like Elon, we’re going to cancel him’. I was a… https://t.co/FECZTj2m1D
Everywhere a ‘market’ mechanism is introduced, you get the same outcome. What was previously a simple service provision, for basic social services, is transformed into a status mechanism. That’s because markets don’t exist. It’s a fiction designed to sideline existing status… https://t.co/WX4RKQGpsp
You can do a lot worse than choosing Spinoza as a guide in life. https://t.co/aWTX0r0z2W
One of the many circulating weaponised propaganda pieces that people confuse with their own ideas, is that EVs are heavier than combustion vehicles. Nearly all of Australia’s favourite combustion utes and SUVs are heavier than all of its most popular EVs.
#Insiders of course didn’t mention the grossly distorting diesel fuel rebate, which the jellyfish-backed politicians on all sides won’t touch, and which is vastly larger than any subsidy for EVs. Also not even basic research on the couch. Fuel excise hasn’t been designated for…
#Insiders of course didn’t mention the grossly distorting diesel fuel rebate, which the jelly-backed politicians on all sides won’t touch, and which is vastly larger than any subsidy for EVs. Also not even basic research on the couch. Fuel excise hasn’t been designated for road…
The terminal failure of electoral democracy is the centrepoint of it, which many equate with democracy itself. Elections. Introduced as a mechanism to try to sound the ‘popular will’. (That will itself is a fiction.) Using popularity to assess collective desire. Not one test…
If as history suggests meaningful change comes only from catastrophic destruction of an existing status quo, every day this war goes on accelerates needed change to our societies. Covid brought us widespread WFH. Iran may finally break the back of fossil fuel hierarchies. https://t.co/t9OIw8dZ1d
It took a catastrophic challenge to the status quo to shift working habits. (Gemini-compiled data.) We shouldn’t immediately think fixing the Trumpian populist era means a shift back to business as usual. Somebody beating him in an election, for example. The populist wrecking… https://t.co/1t5UTDWtUq
It took a catastrophic challenge to the status quo to shift working habits. (Gemini-compiled data.) We shouldn’t immediately think fixing the Trumpian populist era means a shift back to business as usual. Somebody beating him in an election, for example. The populist wrecking… https://t.co/8OCs5Lf4P2
Having machines fight each other in war would be progress, above making the kids of poorer parts of the population do it, on behalf of battling global elites. https://t.co/Om7UTvDn9Z
Modern democracy has been in steady decline since its introduction. This from The Economist’s 2024 state of democracy report. Not because it’s being undermined, but because our ideas about it are a fantasy. All societies are ‘authoritarian’. They’re all run by status… https://t.co/9SMhZQrbPD
Because populist societies are decoupled from history, interested only in a trending present of whims and fads, we forget the origin of the checks and balances and due process we use to define democracy. They never had a thing to do with ordinary people. They were controls… https://t.co/DYNtunuEXb
(Image by Arthur C Michael.)
Social media. Where millions assemble every day to argue with each other on topics they know nothing about.
The US has prided itself on being some supposed break from the ‘authoritarian’ world of kings and their taxation. In reality it substituted a monarchy with a plutocracy. Its ‘no kings’ rallies highlight how deep the history runs, and how little self-awareness there is about how… https://t.co/R9AQkTI0lg
This has never had widespread popular support. The poor want to be the rich, not to tax them. Societies run on status. You have to target status, not the secondary expressions of it. https://t.co/lsa3Ve1SDq
Populism is a correction to our idiot idea that ‘the people’ run democracies. The people don’t, and they hate being given that job. They go looking for a new ‘king’. Somebody to provide leadership again. That’s all populism is. The destruction and chaos of Trumpism is a genuine…
I don’t celebrate or welcome destruction. But i think the doomscrolling world of the socials misses that without destruction, true social change was never going to happen. History shows this repeatedly. Reframe the chaos of today in that way. The ‘system’ is breaking. It always…
I don’t celebrate or welcome destruction. But i think the doomscrolling world of the socials misses that without destruction, true social change was never going to happen. History shows this repeatedly. Reframe the chaos of today in that way. The ‘system’ is breaking. It always…
I don’t celebrate or welcome destruction. But i think the doomscrolling world of the socials misses that without destruction, true social change was never going to happen. History shows this repeatedly. Reframe the chaos of today in that way. The ‘system’ is breaking. It always…
Any sane society would have been on a war footing for years already. This is an orders of magnitude greater threat than those we stopped the whole world for over a decade, to fight 2 world wars. Societies that go too long between catastrophes think of themselves as gods,… https://t.co/Vd9ewr7Qut
Amazing that even in 2026 people can believe that wealth is in some direct proportion to work and talent, rather than status. Also, why the envy counter narrative works, because the poor dislike the rich less than they want to be them. https://t.co/qtyNpSEGUl
Amazing that even in 2026 people can believe that wealth is in some direct proportion to work and talent, rather than status. Match, if not most of it is inherited. Also, why the envy counter narrative works, because the poor dislike the rich less than they want to be them. https://t.co/qtyNpSEGUl
Amazing that even in 2026 people can believe that wealth is in some direct proportion to work and talent, rather than status. Much if not most of it is inherited. Also, why the envy counter narrative works, because the poor dislike the rich less than they want to be them. https://t.co/qtyNpSEGUl
There are remnants of Australia’s superb public health system and pride in its achievements. Trashed since Covid. When a bunch of National Cabinet numpties sent everybody out to be infected, so that they could hopefully win upcoming elections. All now gone. Covid remains,… https://t.co/BUudrSkBYj
When you get Covid, after years of trying to avoid it, the endless procession of shock posts showing its terrible effects on people are thrown into stark relief as a pointless strategy. They don’t budge the Infinite Covid folk. And are relentlessly demoralising for people trying…
When you get Covid, after years of trying to avoid it, the endless procession of shock posts showing its terrible effects on people are thrown into stark relief as a pointless strategy. They don’t budge the Infinite Covid folk. And are relentlessly demoralising for people trying…
When you get Covid, after years of trying to avoid it, the endless procession of shock posts showing its terrible effects on people are thrown into stark relief as a pointless strategy. They don’t budge the Infinite Covid folk. And are relentlessly demoralising for people trying…
The great delusion of populist/electoral politics is that we’re always just one election away from salvation. No governance system run by popularity can ever change the world in meaningful ways. https://t.co/kt4nh1WVgt
Most road safety is the attempt to mitigate against human status games in driving, the battle for status/position on the road. For example people often speed up when being overtaken, because they feel they’re losing their position/status on the road. Using semi-autonomous… https://t.co/CKylSGbq6b
N=1 pondering, on Covid immunity. A lot of categorical statements are made about immunity. But the real-life experience sometimes makes me wonder. I tested positive to Covid for the first time, on Christmas Day 2025. From the point of view of immunity, it was my immediate…
The culture that the anti-immigration warriors say migrants need to ‘integrate’ with doesn’t even exist. It’s a Queen and Country fantasy from the 1950s. The true integration needed is a lot of old white Anglos needing to wake up and notice the Australia they’ve been ignoring…
This theory is nonsense. Populism isn’t the rising up of the oppressed masses, it’s rivalry between elites, who co-opt ordinary people in various ways and then claim they’re acting for those people. It’s all elites. Bypassing existing status hierarchies by using popularity to… https://t.co/m92Ddj9S7C
Because the institutionally-driven levelling of Australian society post both world wars, arising from repair after those conflicts, created a ‘we’. Starting in the 1970s, the ‘market’ alternative was targeted at this we, dismantling it. The pandemic showed that little of the… https://t.co/qGd5ES3MHS
Dunkelman traces how nation-building institutions now struggle to build anything at all. We can easily list those who obstruct this building work, like the sponsored small government movements that are really about entrenching established power. But, there’s more… /1 https://t.co/jIITpaSsqU
Dunkelman points out that it’s often progressives who also lead the obstruction, by their longstanding campaigns against centralised power. Their demand that power be held to account. Combined, this led to the emergence of a ‘vetocracy’. A wonderful concept. /2
A generalised power of saying ‘no’, to everything. Of veto, from an explosion of interests and groups. Why this happened is where I think we can go further than Dunkelman. He talks about proceduralism overpowering outcomes. /3
But from the point of view of status and punctuated equilibria, the central mechanisms in all human life, this shift is something more profound. The institutions that actually built things emerged in response to crisis and catastrophe. They were REPAIR jobs. /4
They created a ‘we’, a continuously calculated optimum to guide their work. Targeted at collective good, sanctioned by their repair of catastrophic destruction of social life. Wars, natural disasters. Once they achieved the repair, the battle for status returned. /5
That’s where the vetocracy emerged. Where social groups, in rivalry with one another for status, obstructed any widespread coordination of effort. No collective can function or even exist, without crisis. Without crisis, humans just fight for status. /6
Now collective problems become platforms for status games. We saw it with Covid, we see it with every public issue now. Nobody is really interested in working together to resolve issues. Issues fuel their rivalries, with other groups. They LOVE rivalry. /7
What I’ve always called the ‘team sports’ model of human life. Because it’s the same mechanism, forming teams, competing with other teams for the ‘win’. Elections are the same. People ‘win’ elections. The idea of governance being a ‘win’ is intrinsically perverse. /8
But we don’t spot it, because that imitative rivalry - the team sports status games - is the deepest human activity. We always default to it, in the absence of catastrophe or crisis. Fighting other teams for the win in social status games. /9
Only the near total destruction of life itself can break the hold these status games have upon us. The chokepoint of proceduralism Dunkelman talks about is a midpoint on the passage from a collective ‘we’, to a battling ‘I’, that Robert Putnam talks about. /10
Where individuals and groups shift from working towards a collective ‘we’, targeted towards survival and repair in response to catastrophe. To a fight for their own status and identity, in the absence of this collective work to define it. /11
Their greatest weapon in this fight is the general obstruction of other groups and individuals, in their fight for status. The generalised power of saying ‘no’. The vetocracy. Not coincidentally also what toddlers and adolescents do. /12
They have limited power to change anything. But they can resist, they can simply refuse. We live in a kidult culture, which I Tweet about often. With its origins in compulsory schooling, setting up a divide between child and adult life. /13
And when children started to vastly outnumber adults - the boomer boom - adult life was over. All of society became a perpetual high school. A culture of continuous rivalry for status. A giant schoolyard. Now embedded in social media. A culture of likes and followers. /14
A culture of just saying ‘no’. And building nothing. /end
Trump is dramatically accelerating the collapse of the fossil fuel status quo. The exact opposite of what he wants to do. Populism usually does this. The grandiose, insane dreams of the populists never happen. But their destruction of the status quo brings meaningful change.
Things feel very reminiscent of Covid. Getting worse, but the political response is all about engineering calm rather than doing anything. Australia found another 100 million litres of diesel, yay! That’ll cover about a DAY of use. Let’s try ‘living with’ no fuel. Imminent. https://t.co/UusRjdYoA8
Viruses don’t go viral. Virality is a social phenomenon, grounded in imitation.
The Anglosphere is a playground for permanent adolescents, operating on nothing but trending ‘feels’. It never recovered from its countercultural revolution. Its world of slogans and spin is now colliding with actual reality. Even the US isn’t drilling. https://t.co/z6bmpC8Vsv
Covid revealed our deeper culture, it went well beyond disease. The collapse of a ‘we’-driven institutional response to critical threat. You can smell it all over the response to the Iranian fuel crisis. The abject terror at upsetting the kidults, with any sort of restriction.
One for your friends and GPs, who are puzzled by your ‘mystery’ illnesses. Thanks to @DavidJoffe64 for the reference. https://t.co/W8KtghXuZG
Cropped version. https://t.co/d9yR6208UW
We’re living the existential risk of societies run by social status, absent intelligence of any kind. AI is one of the only non-catastrophic options to bypass social status rivalries. Research is already showing people using it as an arbiter in that way. https://t.co/rDPRZKqv1V
The anti-EV folk are parroting right now that we’ll need nuclear energy for the apparently vast new amount of electrical energy needed for the shift to EVs. The amount of electrical energy needed to fuel your average daily driving is about what’s needed to cook a roast dinner. https://t.co/8IAOewt3WT
Hmm, so when I mute Angus Taylor doing his Trump-lite show on iView, it sub-titles him when muted. There’s no escape.
The thing killing democracy globally - and it is dead, all the numbers have been showing it for many years - is the core belief that it means getting everybody to agree, before doing anything. That’s just a recipe for endless status rivalry.
It’s two-thirds of the way through autumn. The deciduous trees in my area have not only not lost their leaves yet, many have not even begun to change colour. Summer is now 50 days longer than it was in 1990. Life is business-as-usual. Only total catastrophe will bring change.
The ‘status quo’ is really humans stuck in habitual ways of doing and thinking. People won’t surrender their status, which is also their identity. Only catastrophe brings change. Incoming. https://t.co/bJJCOBwiRt
Turchin isolates two things that trigger societal collapse. 1. A proliferation of rivals amongst elites, for control/status. 2. Immiseration of everybody else. Anger drives them to identify with one of the elite rivals promising salvation. Elections are an engine for 1.
America is intrinsically violent. Like other societies founded by revolution, it only knows rising up and overthrow as a way to effect social change. Revolutions generate more revolutions, because they destroy the memory, knowledge and even will to act in any other way. https://t.co/uem61lppCm
Have we forgotten how to judge people by what they do rather than by what they believe and say? Elon Musk. Tesla is *doing* astonishing things. Vital, for civilisation. He walks the talk. Few do. The culture warring is tedious, but most entrepreneurs are, outside their lane.
Who’s Who is in its 178th edition in the UK. It’s one of the best ways to ‘read’ a society, because it captures the foundation of all human collective life. Status. The thing we pretend ‘democracy’ took away. https://t.co/sGcuZYT0CU
And we should all get horses again. https://t.co/fUgfaq44PO
If we focus on material outcomes, so much of what happens in the world happens with complete disregard for our daily interpersonal battles and debates. Reality politics. Ignore the re-routing of reality through human status games. https://t.co/v5zji43IfU
The hilarious irony of calling AI ‘slop’, on social media. Social media is swill. An orders of magnitude greater threat.
We’re stuck in the Westphalian bubble that can only see Trumpism as some sort of authoritarianism or fascism. It’s royalism. Or neo-royalism, as some scholars call it. The overwhelmingly dominant form of all history, re-asserting itself. https://t.co/b3IsjbMojh
The Australian government, first on EVs (road user charges) and now on network costs for grid supply, is trying to fund the renewables transition by increasingly targeting Australians who have invested in the change themselves. By evoking ‘freeloading’ narratives about them.
Millions think the rivalry between the free market and the State is a real thing. It’s a fantasy Punch and Judy show. There no markets without States, and no States without markets. All societies are 100% social. All are run by a single thing. Status. https://t.co/AtlE5KMoz8
Every single day I see social media used as if its ‘content’ is what it’s all about. The medium is the message. Like here, the disconnect between what’s actually happening, and the fake imitative rivalry team sports on the socials. https://t.co/r3KT6BbhnR 1/3 https://t.co/PMZ7LwXr8l
The role of social media is to take actual reality and transform it into imitative rivalry between an endlessly proliferating set of fighting social ‘teams’. To transform adult life into continuous team sports.The fight for social status. 2/3
This generates revenue for the platforms, and performs the wider political task of protecting the status quo by engaging people in pointless argument over things they know nothing about. Social media is FAR more dangerous than AI. /end
Travel. Turning the whole world into a theme park for bored First World people. https://t.co/rNi3pzVJul
Socials culture will of course turn this into a fake ‘debate’ about AI vs physicians. Remarkable things are happening with AI. The status fights will find every slip-up, every false step, and magnify them into the Apocalypse. Look to material outcomes. Not status rivalries. https://t.co/Sr6gGgOBXW
And you know what it outperformed by several orders of magnitude? Social media. Which hilariously calls AI ‘slop’. Social media is swill. AI may be our only hope of escaping the culture it’s produced. https://t.co/JDwAq18N6z
Post the great world wars, social progress flourished because the existing status quo had been smashed and irreparably damaged. Beginning in the 1970s, status returned as the dominant force. Under cover of ‘free markets’, really a con to strip away the new institutional ‘we’. https://t.co/7FNFDlO7W8