Perusing the Modern Techo-Industrial Pathologies of Intelligent Men
Intellectual influencers are irksome to little old me.
In many ways, Jim and Cliff have a warped perspective of Reality.
“Reality” is an extensive set and hard to get one’s educated mind around.
Complex Systems Theory involves the systematic, scientific and mathematical study of complexity itself, as it is found throughout the natural world. With a view to dealing with complexity, this approach looks at the nature of complexity rather than trying to simplify a situation in order to process it.
The problems with their thinking have to do with:
- Being mindful of the framing of a thing
2. A misunderstanding or ignorance of context
3. Causality errors
4. System thinking errors (stocks & flows, feedback loops)
5. Hubristic assumptions
6. Basic assumptions
7. Stubborn ideological adherence (My beliefs are better than yours.)
8. Beliefs (the true believer syndrome)
9. Ignoring the forest for the trees (not listening to or being mindful of BIG NATURE, the Natural Sciences. Of course, all intelligent men believe they do this. Naturally.)
10. Succumbing to the illusion of control
11. A blindness to seeing the contradictions in their mental models
12. Audience capture
13. Bad incentives
14. Groupthink & motivated reasoning
15. Posturing to maintain status
One could go on.
They each have passionate beliefs without an accurate, best guess at the moment, understanding of complex reality. Even though they claim to be sincerely interested in systems and complexity science, they are clumsy in applying such methods of inquiry to sociological and economic domains, much less environmental and ecological impacts. (Of course, they both think they are experts in all of the above.) They both come from a worldview that is assumed to represent reality when, in fact, it describes recent models of a particular approach to socioeconomic controls over natural resources (including hard questions like the uncanny valley of human consciousness) meant to be exploited by a specific ideological tribe that thinks it has all the answers.
“He broke a norm.” Without exploring the reasons why one would want to do something so costly. Why is “the norm” the norm? Groups of people usually have good reasons for doing things. It’s a fatal flaw not to explore those reasons carefully and open-mindedly.
Spending resources on war in the twentieth century is insane. We need new “norms” to help us transcend our obsession with war.
“They started it!” Almost always, all parties to a conflict “start it” through mutually influential and consequential actions. People are compelled to act due to conscious, unconscious, and subconscious factors. What signals were there that you refused to examine?
The smart-asses in public view are terrible at game theory despite pretending they are good strategic thinkers.
Homo hubris is accelerating towards extinction. On that journey, there will be more and more pain and suffering that could have been significantly mitigated if we had paid attention to the things in the list above.
Americans, in particular, are so twisted and myopically arrogant in their assumptions that I think, at this point, the minority of thoughtful, evidence-based, reality-heeding, well-meaning, and considerate experts and kind human participants in social discourse will never have their understanding of our world’s essential challenges gain traction.
The mysteries of the black box hypnotize members of the masses who seek only those emphatic opinions that tell them what to believe.
“Okay then, make me a believer.”
These gentlemen are enamored by their opinions despite merely being nodes in a pathological ideological operating system accelerating toward the abyss.
The labels they fling about so effortlessly are cardboard cutouts and hardly helpful at describing anything that matters.
“Don’t bother your pretty little heads with things you can’t control. Meditate, read the Stoics, Nietzsche, become a neo-platonist philosopher, an orthodox or cultural Christian, a militant atheist, or a science enthusiast — join a clique now. We all need friends and community. Start a new religion. Become a meaning maker…”
If you are WIERD and privileged (lucky), have fun and watch civilization crumble as if it’s a Netflix series. Above all, stay entertained.
“Horray! To the last Ukrainian! To the last Palestinian! To the last Homo sapiens standing! It’s been a wild ride, and I was always right. Death and taxes!”
Guard your ignorance like a family heirloom. Go with the flow. Stick to your clique. Enjoy the emotional roller coaster. Enjoy the super stimuli. Life is short, but not as short as those other poor assholes!
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Jim talks with Cliff Maloney about the November election and his get-out-the-vote campaign, The Pennsylvania Chase. They discuss Cliff’s libertarian background, why Pennsylvania is a crucial state, a Republican return to grassroots, the structure of the operation, the effectiveness of door-knocking, choosing the highest-impact doors to knock on, why Cliff is helping the Republicans, Jim’s political trajectory, oikophobia, why Jim finds Trump intolerable, Cliff’s political background, working for Ron Paul, the loss of the anti-war left, Trump’s gut instinct, Trump’s deficit record, comparing the foreign policy of Nikki Haley & John McCain, hurricane relief & Ukraine relief, whether support for Ukraine is a good investment, the drug war, returning abortion rights to the states, transgender surgeries for kids, luxury beliefs, Christian nationalism in the Republican Party, woke ideology vs the nuclear family, the unsustainability of American public education, teacher’s unions, politics as the adjudication of power, the importance of open disagreements, Thomas Massie, and much more. Episode Transcript Get Out the Vote, by Donald Green and Alan Gerber “Dividend Money: An Alternative to Central Banker Managed Fractional Reserve Banking Money,” by Jim Rutt (YouTube) Cliff Maloney is a United States political strategist and commentator. He is nationally known for launching the grassroots program “Operation Win at the Door,” which has now knocked on over 3 million doors and elected 300+ state legislators. His life’s mission is to create a liberty state by targeting the 5,413 state legislative seats in America to elect principled citizen legislators.
I’m listening to The Jim Rutt Show | EP 262 Cliff Maloney on a Libertarian’s Case for Trump. Check it out!
