As I’ve been slowly but surely phasing out of posting much original content on Twitter I’ve been thinking about what has happened to the platform. One thing that I think seems obvious is that all communities degrade and degenerate until only the assholes remain. I saw this pattern in the early teens in “science writer” Twitter. I unfollowed a lot of those people in 2013-2014 because the constant drama was tiresome.
I was smug that “academic science” Twitter wasn’t like that. People were having discussions in good-faith.
It turns out that academics were no better, it’s just that writers had gotten on Twitter in full-force earlier. Just like ecosystem succession, the “climax” ecosystem is dominated by posturing smug assholes.
The problem for Twitter is that it’s democratic, open, and imposes a cap on complexity and nuance. At least with blogging, there was a niche for people who were earnest and wrote 1,000-word entries. Because of the format of Twitter, you couldn’t express a lot of complexity. You had to rely on good-faith engagement. If your interlocutor wanted to be an asshole, the medium really facilitates their behavior.
Unfortunately, unlike scientists, journalists seem to “have” to be on Twitter. I think it’s turning them all into smug assholes. Recently I’ve started seeing pieces in some web publications which are prose forms of what I see on Twitter.
Mohammed bin Zayed’s Dark Vision of the Middle East’s Future. When Western journalists profile M.B.Z. they want to paint a dark picture. But does it come across that way to the fair-minded reader?
How U.S. Firms Helped Africa’s Richest Woman Exploit Her Country’s Wealth. The ruling clique in Angola had a period where they were “Leftists,” or were aligned with the Soviet bloc. But if you read about the history of this faction, that was fake.
Why Do Trump Supporters Support Trump? Michael Lind has a new book out, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite . Lind is an unabashed Hamiltonian, and an admirer of Henry Clay’s “American system.” He is in some ways the inverse of Matt Stoller, though arguably both are to the Left of the Center (Stoller far more Left). Anand Giridharadas, in the review linked, is not a fan. Unlike both Stoller and Lind, Giridharadas says uninteresting and fashionable things. You will never see Giridharadas go off the script in a novel or unsurprising way. This is in contrast to both Stoller and Lind.
I bought the Lind book just now. Like I bought Stoller’s book. Mostly because these two individuals are at least sincere, as opposed to mouth-pieces for factions.
Ancestral Haplotype Reconstruction in Endogamous Populations using Identity-By-Descent.
The Chinese Population Crisis. The one-child-policy was not good. On the other hand, look at the trajectory in other East Asian nations, and it’s pretty clear its impact was on the margin. China was always going to have this problem.
Capitalism Draws Fire, Despite Strong Global Economy. This piece in WSJ has an infographic: “Percentage of people surveyed who believe they and their families will be better off in 5 years – Global average in 2019: 47%.” This looks to be the average of nations, not weighted by population. India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil, are all optimistic nations, 70-80%. These four are over 40% of the world’s population!
Studies of human twins reveal genetic variation that affects dietary fat perception.
Novel phylogeny of angiosperms inferred from whole-genome microsynteny analysis.
A scalable method for estimating the regional polygenicity of complex traits.
In Huawei Battle, China Threatens Germany ‘Where It Hurts’: Automakers.
Simple and efficient measurement of transcription initiation and transcript levels with STRIPE-seq.
Saudi Society Is Changing. Just Take a Look at These Coffeehouses.
The fate of standing variation and new mutation under climate change.
The origin of domestication genes in goats.
Why ‘Star Wars’ Keeps Bombing in China. I’m an “80s-kid”, so a lot of the motifs of “Star Wars” played a big deal in my “playing” during my elementary years. But I never got into the whole series, so I kind of get why the Chinese are shrugging.
Crater Left by One of Earth’s Biggest Ever Meteorite Impacts Finally Found.
Missouri charmer led double life, masterminded one of the biggest frauds in farm history.
Some people are mad about my posts on Tutsi genetics. Do you know who is not mad? Tutsis reaching out to me, angry that the autocratic government of Rwanda is promoting lies. In any case, there are some academics who are uncomfortable about what I did. This reminds me of the fact that a friend who works in human rights in D.C. for a minority group told me of the various groups she engages with, academics are the most cautious and cowardly (she talks to journalists, think-tankers, lobbyists, etc.).
What Americans Don’t Understand About China’s Power. It’s not China’s rise, but our quiescence.
Your blog readership does not seem to have followed the general pattern, maybe as a consequence of your comments policy. Seems to be the case. If so, it illustrates the utility of having a good policy.
I don’t really get that thing about China threatening the German automobile industry. Most of the big German car makers now have factories in China, and have for a while. If you buy an Audi or Volkswagen in Hong Kong now, it will have been made in China and mostly by Chinese workers (although probably with German supervisors), not by Germans in Germany. The People’s Liberation Army uses Audis as its staff cars. So I’m not clear on where they are directing the threat, exactly. I don’t see them wanting to put all of those Chinese workers out of a job by closing down the factories in China.
They also make Buicks in China, and it’s not hard to guess where. You don’t see them at all in Hong Kong (they lack status symbol appeal, plus the HK Chinese have a high opinion of German engineering, so I guess there is no market for them here), but if you go to Hainan Island, every second car is a Buick.
Mostly because these two individuals are at least sincere, as opposed to mouth-pieces for factions.
This put me in mind of 2 quotes from my childhood: quote one and quote two
The mentioned article “How U.S firms helped Africa’s richest woman…” by the New York Times is about Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the previous Angolan President, not Mozambique…
Why Twitter May Be Ruinous for the Left
“It’s a machine for misunderstanding other people’s ideas and identities. How do you even organize that?”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/01/how-twitter-harms-left/605098/
Is there still absolutely no information about the Dzudzuana samples like pigmentation or even uniparental markers publicly available as of now?
“The Fertile Shore: It’s one of the greatest mysteries of our time. But archaeologists and even geneticists are closer than ever to understanding when humans made the first bold journey to the Americas” By Fen Montaigne
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-humans-came-to-americas-180973739/
“The emerging picture suggests that humans may have arrived in North America at least 20,000 years ago—some 5,000 years earlier than has been commonly believed. And new research raises the possibility of an intermediate settlement of hundreds or thousands of people who spread out over the wild lands stretching between North America and Asia.
“The heart of that territory has long since been submerged by the Pacific Ocean, forming the present-day Bering Strait. But some 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, the strait itself and a continent-size expanse flanking it were high and dry. That vanished world is called Beringia, and the developing theory about its pivotal role in the populating of North America is known as the Beringian Standstill hypothesis—“standstill” because generations of people migrating from the East might have settled there before moving on to North America.
“Much of this new theorizing is driven not by archaeologists wielding shovels but by evolutionary geneticists taking DNA samples from some of the oldest human remains in the Americas, and from even older ones in Asia. Those discoveries have opened a wide gap between what the genetics seem to be saying and what the archaeology actually shows. Humans may have been on both sides of the Bering Land Bridge some 20,000 years ago. But skeptical archaeologists say they will not believe in this grand idea until they hold the relevant artifacts in their hands, pointing out that no confirmed North American archaeological sites older than 15,000 to 16,000 years currently exist. But other archaeologists are confident it is only a matter of time until older sites are discovered in the sprawling, sparsely populated lands of eastern Siberia, Alaska and northwestern Canada.”
The mentioned article “How U.S firms helped Africa’s richest woman…” by the New York Times is about Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the previous Angolan President, not Mozambique…
my bad.fixed
“The one-child-policy was not good.”
The policy was cruel, and cruelly enforced. But, it might have triggered the capital accumulation that feed the initial takeoff of the Chinese industrialization of the late 20th century.
Razib
Please let us know you like “The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite.” I would just buy, but I have to add limits since my [buy:actually read] ratio is pretty large.
One topic which I hope to see him address is that the Managerial Elite (“ME”) are on average really bad at their jobs (at least on a cost / benefit basis). They get by with the reinforcement that their approach is really the only way possible (on the one hand) and their critics (OTOH) are just deplorable.
I think that this is one reason they hate Trump. Trump is an idiot and worse and yet he is able to lead the country well enough despite rejecting ME’s “only way” policies. This undermine’s ME’s raison d’etre and privileged position. Trump’s presidency is a threat to the “merit” portion of ME legitimacy.
“…a friend who works in human rights in D.C. for a minority group told me of the various groups she engages with, academics are the most cautious and cowardly (she talks to journalists, think-tankers, lobbyists, etc.).”
Put me in mind of something I heard Chomsky say back in the old C-span days of the 80s or so:
“U.S. academics: THE most servile professional class in the world.”
The Giridharadas review really irritated me. For example:
Sure. But hey, look, 40 percent of American presidential elections since 2000 have been won by blacks! By Giridharadas’s logic that should prove that America has solved racism, yet somehow I doubt he’d see it that way. In fact I wonder if he is even capable of understanding why making assertions about today’s intellectual and political climate based on a data set dominated by data points from 50 and 100 and 200 years ago is, well, problematic. (His other two complaints, about syllabuses and C.E.O.s, share the same problem, if perhaps not to the same extent. Frankly his review was riddled with weak logic; this was just the example that ticked me off the most).
I tried to read his book and found it incredibly repetitive and dull. He has essentially one point he’s trying to make – “philanthropy from rich people is no substitute for a good welfare state and public programs, etc, and merely acts to provide cover for said elites” – which can almost fill out a single page essay, but stretched to book length. After about 60 pages I realized he had nothing else to say.
His Twitter feed is also profoundly dull. Some of the most tedious people on Twitter are those who have exactly one thing they want to say, and simply repeat themselves constantly.
Same thing happened to me with the most recent film. I realized after watching it that despite being a big Star Wars fan in my teens and twenties, I was just no longer inclined to give the movie a huge break on nostalgia grounds. It was just another fantasy action movie to me.
I’m around the same age as Razib. I enjoyed the first three Star Wars’ films when I was younger, but never got into them like some people my age. Still, I was excited when I heard in the late nineteen-nineties that Lucas was going to bring out another SW trilogy. But when The Phantom Menace rolled out, I was greatly disappointed. I haven’t seen a good Star Wars’ movie since. By Revenge of the Sith, I stopped going to the cineplex to see them. If I saw them at all (I’ve missed a couple), it was on TV.
To me, the big mystery is not why the Chinese don’t care for the modern Star Wars films – everything from 1999’s The Phantom Menace to the most recent installment which came out late last year – but why so many of my fellow Americans still line up to watch them.
The Chinese are right. The modern films are garbage. They are the worst combination of rehashed sentimentality that I can imagine. The stories are boring because the themes and plots are stale. Let me guess: the most recent film has a bar scene, right? And a young Jedi who must find him or herself with the help of an older mentor? And a Death Star or the technical equivalent? And some of the old characters make appearances?
One would think that in a universe as potentially large as Star Wars, the spinoffs would be far more interesting and original than just another Disneyfied iteration of what happened to Skywalker back in the nineteen-seventies. But they’re not.
@Razib: I think the problem you describe with Twitter goes much beyond that.
The majority of people always have a severe problem with cognitive dissonances, doubts and ambiguity.
I usually argue longer because I want to try to consider the context for a conclusion and substantiate my argument.
But even if I know “A” is correct and “B” is wrong, to my best knowledge and conscience, there are still many instances of “grey areas” in which at least the borderline between right and wrong, between A and B might be blurred.
Fact is, most people don’t want to know about “the grey” or unclear judgement, or if they do, they become unable to act, to risk something, follow a call to action if just small doubts remain.
The digital world as a whole made this much worse, because people lost patience and the ability to evaluate facts on their own by dealing with doubt and different resources to come to a conclusion.
Its a Paradoxon, the internet made such efforts much easier and successful for those who learned it before, but those growing up in the new world, “born digitals”, often just take the path of the least resistance and never cultivate their abilities.
The binary digital world becomes black and white by default. Search engines being optimised to give you one clear answer, one definitive result. This must be a reductionist exercise. And it opens the doors wide for manipulation and determined nonsense.
Twitter is just driving it to the extreme. Because how much more than “B is wrong” or “A is immoral” can you say in those short messages?
Binary nonsense and fanatism.
Even in psychological tests I hate “yes/no” questions and prefer a gradation. Everything has a price.
Most people are quicker at making decisions, but by the price of ignoring too much they should consider, especially in politics.
Twitter being made to manipulate the “quick ones”, which are the majority in all camps. But its an innate tendency to all digital media.
About Star Wars, I think that the “Star Wars stories” (Rogue One, Solo) are better than the official third trilogy.
RE: Miguel Madeira
I don’t really care for Solo (it was fine, but not good, and some of the choices in production were bizarre), but agreed on Rogue One.
Miguel,
I haven’t seen Solo, but Rogue is probably better than any of the other post-1983 Star Wars’ films that I’ve seen.
But here’s the kicker: Rogue is not a very good film. It’s just better than anything else affiliated with Star Wars over the last twenty years.
With Star Wars it is the same as with Lord of The Rings vs The Hobbit: More CGI and less substance make worse movies. But in the new Star Wars not even the choreography and fights were good. Just two things increased disproportionately, CGI and political correctness. Cultural Marxist PC is not just ideologically wrong, but it also creates boring and unrelatable pieces of Art in all disciplines, but movies and comedy in particular. As if brains, guts and blood being sucked out of the film makers, leaving behind some lifeless hulls. Especially in movies born out of an older tradition and being crippled in the adaptive process.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-57378-8
Genetic insights into the social organisation of the Avar period elite in the 7th century AD Carpathian Basin
Abstract
After 568 AD the Avars settled in the Carpathian Basin and founded the Avar Qaganate that was an important power in Central Europe until the 9th century. Part of the Avar society was probably of Asian origin; however, the localisation of their homeland is hampered by the scarcity of historical and archaeological data. Here, we study mitogenome and Y chromosomal variability of twenty-six individuals, a number of them representing a well-characterised elite group buried at the centre of the Carpathian Basin more than a century after the Avar conquest. The studied group has maternal and paternal genetic affinities to several ancient and modern East-Central Asian populations. The majority of the mitochondrial DNA variability represents Asian haplogroups (C, D, F, M, R, Y and Z). The Y-STR variability of the analysed elite males belongs only to five lineages, three N-Tat with mostly Asian parallels and two Q haplotypes. The homogeneity of the Y chromosomes reveals paternal kinship as a cohesive force in the organisation of the Avar elite strata on both social and territorial level. Our results indicate that the Avar elite arrived in the Carpathian Basin as a group of families, and remained mostly endogamous for several generations after the conquest.
Razib,
Perhaps a bit off topic (but maybe not too much). On several occasions Steve Sailer theorized the main reason South Asian Americans largely repudiate the Republican Party is because they do not explicitly champion liberal immigration policies that will “reunite” the large extended families/clans those South Asian Americans have left behind in the old country. Sailer further theorizes this ethno-centric desire for importing their vast families/clans is the main impetus for South Asian participation in American politics. Per your experience on social media with other South Asians (and in real life as well), does that sound like a plausible explanation? Or is it uninformed/inaccurate crap?
mostly they think republicans are racist and christianist. the young upper middle class types are socialized in very liberal environments. most of the brownz i know are against family reunification.
Lind is an unabashed Hamiltonian
Although technocratic neoliberal overclass seems to be perceptive and accurate, it is kind of clunky to incorporate into a battle cry for those of us so inclined.
I think a blurb or link regarding the fantasy novel pic is missing from the post.
My guess is that it’s a recommendation.
“Although technocratic neoliberal overclass seems to be perceptive and accurate, it is kind of clunky to incorporate into a battle cry for those of us so inclined.”
The Mandarins. The analogy is very close. A ruling elite justified by its mastery of academic subjects and tests, and without supernatural sanction or military capability.
Stars Wars lost me at Jar Jar Binks and the midichlorians. I don’t blame the Chinese for saying meh.