Jekyll2024-03-23T09:44:01+01:00https://derekkedziora.com/feed/essays.xmlDerek Kedziora | EssaysThe place on the web where I do more procrastinating than writingDerek KedzioraThe Hidden Complexity of Static Sites2023-09-16T10:55:00+02:002023-09-16T10:55:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/hidden-complexity<div class="callout">
<h2 id="update">Update!</h2>
<p>Thanks to some help from readers <a href="https://micro.canneddragons.net">Robert</a> and <a href="https://www.cocktailsandcoffee.com">Jimmy</a>, I’m experimenting with hosting this on <a href="https://blot.im">blot.im</a>, which solves most of what I was looking for.</p>
</div>
<p>Every year or so, I get the urge to host this site myself, By that, I mean use one of the relatively cheap hosting companies and pay for every bit that gets served up.</p>
<p>But there’s a lot of complexity that’s hidden behind the sleek exterior of static sites. GitHub works as a <em>de facto</em> database and Netlify as a server. This allows me to update my site from my phone, which is often how I write my shortest notes. Then I push to my repo on GitHub and Netlify does a new build and deploys in the background.</p>
<p>The easiest way to do a static site that’s not deployed by some combination of the free GitHub type services and then built by another service like Netlify or Cloudflare is to just build the site locally on my computer and host the static files.</p>
<p>But:</p>
<ol>
<li>Now I can only publish from my computer, which isn’t the end of the world, but a bit annoying</li>
<li>Suddenly this requires a lot of web-admin know-how to get all the 404s redirecting properly, to not have <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">rootdomain/static</code> open a directory with every file on the site, and other odds and ends like that</li>
<li>Even things as simple as an SSL certificate aren’t that easy to provision yourself</li>
</ol>
<p>GitHub Pages, Netlify, and the rest make all of that <em>just work</em> out of the box. But the cost is that I’m now beholden to a “free” service, which is precisely what I don’t want. I have deep misgivings about the ethics of the “freemium” model. No, GitHub and Netlify aren’t the cesspool of Facebook or Twitter, but I still don’t like entire model.</p>
<p>Things get even more complex if I don’t want to build the site on my personal computer. Then I’ve got to set up a server with both Git and Jekyll, and honestly, I can barely prod all the Ruby Gems to work on my own computer.</p>
<p>There are people who do this on the likes of DigitalOcean or NearlyFreeSpeech, but, jeez, it sure ain’t easy. And I want to spend the majority of the time and energy allotted to my humble abode on the world wide web actually writing, not pleading with servers to work.</p>
<p>Granted, this problem has been solved. It’s called WordPress. For about five bucks a month there are <em>dozens</em> of companies that will have you up and running with your own site that checks all the boxes of what I want.</p>
<p>For now, I have no plans to migrate. I’ll keep pushing commits to GitHub and letting Netlify do its thing without paying either of them a dime. And the main reason I’ll continue to do that is that there’s nothing, that I know of — and if I’m wrong, please <a href="/contact">let me know</a>, that does all that for static sites and is priced for regular people, something like five bucks a month so.</p>
<p>The simplest things are often far more complex than we can imagine, as is summed up, more academically in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_conservation_of_complexity">Tesler’s law</a> or more vividly in <a href="https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm#minimalism">Chickenshit minimalism</a>. And we do end up paying for everything, albeit often in ways that we can’t predict. The freemium tiers and VC giveaways aren’t sustainable, and I don’t think any of us can say we’s going to come next. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up in a sort of knowledge desert; the easy UXes have collapsed because they weren’t profitable, and there are too few people left that actually can coax the machines directly.</p>Derek KedzioraThe Shaping Power of Words2023-06-10T14:47:00+02:002023-06-10T14:47:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/shaping-power-of-words<p>There’s a relationship of reciprocal shaping between our vocabulary and our perception of the world. This isn’t so extreme as to say that you <em>can’t</em> perceive something you don’t have a word for, but a lack of vocabulary does make it harder to notice, remember, classify, and integrate raw sensory data. And once you have a robust verbal system, it becomes harder to integrate experience that doesn’t conform to that system. Thus you ignore it.</p>
<p>The way how we talk tells a lot about our values and how we classify the world. It’s important to remember that what we often take for granted as neutral or just the way things are, is actually the product of being a human in a certain culture, time, and speaking a specific language. Similarly, the language that we hear and read affects how we perceive the world.</p>
<p>To take a <a href="https://twitter.com/emilynussbaum/status/1652743741189308417">mundane example</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I love you Gen Z, but you are wrecking your brain by labeling everything as mid, basic, cringe, problematic or sus & it will ultimately bite you in the butt, even if you are an Aquarius</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I disagree with this being a Gen Z thing. I notice it when talking to people who are really plugged in to social media or the political rants as entertainment crowd (think John Oliver or Tucker Carlson). Everything gets a quick, simplistic, and irreversible label.</p>
<p>When the ultimate classification system is social media, the need to think of how to express every experience as a TikTok video starts to mediate sensory input. And once that filter overlays everything, it’s hard to step back from in.</p>
<p>The way how traditional media report events is more sinister. There’s been a lot criticism of how stories about drivers hitting pedestrians and cyclists are covered (<a href="https://www.camcycle.org.uk/magazine/newsletter110/article8/">nice example here</a>).</p>
<p>Even more bizarre is how the <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1666744450968682496">New York Times has chosen to cover Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka Dam</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Breaking News: President Volodymyr Zelensky said he visited flood-hit southern Ukraine, where rescue efforts after a dam disaster entered a third day.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>First of all, <em>dam disaster</em>?</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>This was a deliberate attack meant to terrorize Ukrainians, impede Ukraine from crossing the Dnipro river, and destroy Southern Ukrainian agriculture for years to come.</p>
<p>The New York Times doesn’t refer to 9/11 as an <em>airplane disaster</em>.</p>
<p>This is an intentional attempt to remove Russian agency from the discussion.</p>
<p>And then <em>flood-hit southern Ukraine</em>. No. After it rains, places are flood-hit. This is not a natural disaster that just randomly happened.</p>
<p>And the kicker for me: <em>Zelensky said he visited</em>.</p>
<p>We have zero reason to believe the Ukrainian president lied about this trip. Zero. In fact you could argue that he shouldn’t have made the trip because Russia dramatically increased shelling of the evacuation areas in an attempt to hit Zelensky.</p>
<p>Here’s how I would rewrite this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Breaking News: President Volodymyr Zelensky visited southern Ukraine, where rescue efforts entered a third day after the flooding caused by Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka Dam.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This tells a very different story.</p>
<p>You might argue that the Times is simply trying to remain neutral. Yet here’s how the paper covered <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/world/europe/putin-mariupol-crimea-ukraine.html">Putin’s visit to Mariupol</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Defiant Putin Visits Mariupol, a City Razed by Russian Forces</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And that also tells a story.</p>
<p>The Times and other “liberal”, “neutral” outlets in West consistently chose to take Russian propaganda at face value and use language that undermines the very existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Some of it is deliberate — a lot of the “Russia” experts are old school lefties that miss the Soviet Union, there’s an over-reliance on Russian-language sources as most journalists covering the region speak Russian but not Ukrainian. But there’s also just a lot of inertia and status-quo bias.</p>
<p>For the die-hard Russian imperialists like Chomsky or the mere grifters like Tucker Carlson and Glen Greenwald, there’s no hope. Let them be.</p>
<p>But there are many who repeat such narratives accidentally, without really thinking about the weight of their words. I believe it’s possible to have a good faith conversation with them.</p>
<p>Stepping back from “dam disasters”, the larger point to be made here is that we, as humans, use language to convert raw sensory data into a narrative in an almost instantaneous process.</p>
<p>There are some ways to challenge this.</p>
<p>Simply noticing when what’s presented as “bare facts” is actually a constructed narrative is huge step.</p>
<p>Play with language, rewrite things to remove or change the narrative. A useful tool is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime">E-Prime</a>, dropping “to be” from sentences in order to detect bias.</p>
<p>Thus the sentence, “A useful tool is E-Prime…” becomes: “I find E-Prime, removing “to-be” from standard English, useful when trying to detect bias.” This forces an object into view and makes the subjectivity more obvious. This is just a tool to help clarify thinking, not some absolute dogma — notice I dropped out of E-Prime.</p>
<p>I also find it useful to enrich my vocabulary. It’s easier to avoid the trap of simplistic buckets when you have a lot more buckets to fill. The extra second of evaluation is sometimes just enough time to see depth and complexity that would otherwise be passed over.</p>
<p>And the more fiction I read, the easier it is to see how the best novels are permeated with timeless truths while the facts on the pages of the New York Times are filled with fictions.</p>Derek KedzioraThere’s a relationship of reciprocal shaping between our vocabulary and our perception of the world. This isn’t so extreme as to say that you can’t perceive something you don’t have a word for, but a lack of vocabulary does make it harder to notice, remember, classify, and integrate raw sensory data. And once you have a robust verbal system, it becomes harder to integrate experience that doesn’t conform to that system. Thus you ignore it.The Unreckoned2023-03-12T20:03:00+01:002023-03-12T20:03:00+01:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/the-unreckoned<p>In the span of a few weeks the Dutch government has told people to stop doing self tests for COVID and reiterated that there’s no need for any more boosters. The era of mass hypochondria and hysteria has come to a close. COVID is done.</p>
<p>Good riddance.</p>
<p>But we need a reckoning that will likely never come. COVID as a social phenomenon was largely a product of the American media, fueled by Silicon Valley tech companies, and used by large corporations for record profits while obliterating their smaller competitors.</p>
<h2 id="what-could-have-been">What could have been</h2>
<p>Decades of painstaking research, trial and error, and planning went into developing the protocols for a pandemic caused by flu-like viruses. These protocols fleshed out why it was critical to keep schools open, how <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/the-real-science-on-masks-they-make">wearing masks doesn’t stop airborne viruses</a>, and how to use limited quarantining to protect vulnerable people such as the elderly.</p>
<p>Sweden is the only Western country that followed these existing protocols with the results speaking for themselves. Sweden had Europe’s <a href="https://twitter.com/prof_freedom/status/1473635587299151877">lowest mortality rate in 2021</a> and one of the lowest for the entire duration of the pandemic. Because of high trust in public health authorities, which didn’t become involved in partisan politics, Sweden quickly achieved a high vaccination rate, thereby further protecting vulnerable members of society from COVID.</p>
<p>But so much more could have been done. Besides age, obesity and related diseases are the main co-morbidities leading to severe disease and death from COVID. This would have been the perfect opportunity to stop subsidizing the processed junk food that’s making so many people obese. Instead, it could have been treated like tobacco: hard to get and heavily taxed. Imagine if the money from that were used to provide a <em>healthy</em> breakfast and lunch at every school.</p>
<p>One of the main problems causing the entire crisis was lack of hospital capacity. I have yet to hear any politicians talk about plans to increase funding for national health systems or how to encourage more young people to go into healthcare professions.</p>
<p>There will be more novel viruses. A healthy and resilient population along with a robust healthcare system is the best defense. It seems nobody has learned this lesson.</p>
<h2 id="remembering-the-maine">Remembering the Maine</h2>
<p>Sensationalist media played a key role in getting the United States to enter the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_propaganda_of_the_Spanish–American_War">Spanish-American War of 1898</a>. Wars and rumors of war are profitable things for media companies, and we should exercise the utmost caution when the media are playing into hype cycles that demand you consume even more media. In the case of the Spanish-American War, it’s not that the the USS <em>Maine</em> didn’t sink, nor that there weren’t real reasons for diplomatic tension. But the hastily conclusions of sensationalist, profit-driven journalism rushed to misattribute blame for the sinking of the <em>Maine</em>, and whipped the US populace into such a frenzy that anything less than war was impossible.</p>
<p>For some reason, we seem to forget that we’re just as susceptible to the forces of limbic capitalism as the war hungry American public of the late 19th Century.</p>
<h2 id="the-silicon-valley-worldview">The Silicon Valley worldview</h2>
<p>We also tend to forget how much the media, especially big tech companies, shape the information we have access to and how much of the narrative overlay comes from the ideology of Silicon Valley. According to which, all old ideas, such as existing pandemic protocols, need to be “disrupted”, and some wunderkind with an algorithm — without any domain knowledge — will save the day.</p>
<p>And that’s why people like Bill Gates can only view <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/why-bill-gates-is-pivoting-on-existing-covid-vaccines/">COVID as if it were a software problem with a technological solution</a>. In fact, in this worldview, there’s nothing without a tech solution and some nudging from the Science™.</p>
<p>To quote from the book <em>Stolen Focus</em>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And how did we cope [with the pandemic]? We turned more heavily than ever before to our Silicon Valley-controlled screens, which were waiting for us, offering connection, or a least a hologram of it. As we used them more, our attention seemed to get worse. In the US, in April 2020, the average citizen spent thirteen hours a day looking at a screen. The number of children looking at screens for more than six hours a day increased sixfold, and traffic to kids apps trebled.</p>
<p>In this respect, Covid gave us a glimpse of the future we were already skidding towards. My friend Naomi Klein, a political writer who has made many strikingly accurate predictions about the future for twenty years, explained to me: ‘We were on a gradual slide into a world in which every one of our relationships was mediated by platforms and screens, and because of Covid, that gradual process went into hyper-speed.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the profits of the tech and media companies went up when people were forced to stay home and stare at screens all day. Companies like Netflix have literally only been profitable when the majority of Western World was under house arrest. And thus many of the tech-bros see of this as an unmitigated success validating their original ideology.</p>
<p>Insidiously, questioning this point on one of the major tech platforms was a quick way to get banned as many doctors and scientists quickly learned. Dissent from the Science™, meaning that essentially everyone needed to stay home, eat processed food, and interact with screens all day, was a surefire way to face social exile. The levers of power were diverse, ranging from outright social media bans to calling anyone who questioned the absurdity of the official narrative a conspiracy theorist.</p>
<p>To summarize:</p>
<ol>
<li>Media companies and social media companies, whose profits soar during fear-driven events, hype up and exaggerate the risk of a new flu-like virus.</li>
<li>These same companies decide to ban anyone who questions this narrative, including doctors who promoted the standard protocols for a flu-like pandemic.</li>
<li>The only solution offered to the problem is a complete surrender of nearly every waking moment to big-tech.</li>
<li>Large corporations and investors made huge amounts of money during the pandemic while using regulations to destroy smaller competitors.</li>
<li>Zero health promoting public policies were actually undertaken during the pandemic.</li>
<li>The media made sure the debate centered around masks, hand-sanitizer, and other equally useless totems.</li>
</ol>
<p>To be clear, I’m not claiming that the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg sat in a room and cooked up this whole thing. What likely happened is that the tech and media types got high on their own supply: overexposure to news and social media led to a vast overreaction to COVID and further entrenched them in their Silicon Valley worldview of needing a high-tech solution, more screens, and more big tech.</p>
<h2 id="the-anemic-european-media-environment">The anemic European media environment</h2>
<p>Nearly every Western nation experience COVID through the eyes of America. This either took the form of clickbait hysteria that the American tech ecosystem has made more profitable than serious journalism or it happened on platforms entirely under the control of Silicon Valley. As a side note, look at the role Facebook has played in places such as Burma and Brazil; it’s an even more sordid tale than in the West.</p>
<p>This is nothing less than an existential threat to Europe. Following <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message">McLuhan’s logic</a>, American-style, engagement-driven media will always devolve to the basest impulses of limbic capitalism.</p>
<p>Americans, at least for now, are wholly incapable of emerging from this quagmire because of partisan myopia and the influence of social media itself. The answer to Donald Trump isn’t AOC; the answer is to realize that both of them are products of the same media environment. And thus nearly every American I’ve talked to is only looking at how to manipulate social media to win the next election cycle for their preferred candidate rather than thinking of systemic reform.</p>
<p>It’s up to Europe to regulate big tech and build an alternative to the attention economy that promotes thoughtful reflection instead of 140 character hot takes. This is far less radical than it sounds. Start taxing online advertising like it’s alcohol or tobacco, ban personalized ads, and put regulations in place for algorithmic feeds.</p>
<p>Given how much American blood has been spilled to save Europe from itself in the 20th Century, it’s nigh time that debt is repaid.</p>Derek KedzioraIn the span of a few weeks the Dutch government has told people to stop doing self tests for COVID and reiterated that there’s no need for any more boosters. The era of mass hypochondria and hysteria has come to a close. COVID is done.Defaults instead of Habits2022-09-17T21:25:00+02:002022-09-17T21:25:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/defaults-instead-of-habits<p>Habits are the darling of the self-help and productivity worlds, but I’ve found much of the approach towards them not quite helpful in my own life. Instead, I find it more useful to think of defaults.</p>
<p>A habit is something that’s always there, every single day. Missing a day or two breaks your streak and sets you back at zero. Even making the commitment to start a habit can be daunting — meditating <em>every day</em>, never drinking alcohol again, waking up early every morning, it feels easier to never even start.</p>
<p>A default is just how you do things, unless you have some reason not to do it that way. There’s no shame, no failure if you don’t pick the default option. That said, it’s worth monitoring and seeing if you need to reset the default or make a conscious change.</p>
<p>I’d been stuck in a rut lately: feeling down, anxious, stressed, self-medicating with alcohol and generally meh. If you insist on labels, it’d likely be depression and anxiety, but the stories and communities surrounding those labels weren’t something I wanted to identify with. The options looked like forever whining about being powerless or <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/ssri-antidepressant-side-effects/">taking a terrible cocktail of drugs</a>. No thanks.</p>
<p>Looking at how I was living, it was obvious that many of my default behaviors were contributing to my poor mental health. When you’re in such a state, motivation and willpower are in short supply. Thus it’s important to use them prudently: find something you can change and then use that victory to generate additional motivation. And that’s how I’ve reset some important defaults over the course of the past three months or so.</p>
<h2 id="alcohol">Alcohol</h2>
<p>My default alcohol consumption is now zero. That doesn’t mean I’m never going to have another drink in my life, although I suppose I could go that route. Instead, it means that without a compelling reason, I’m not going to drink.</p>
<p>When I need to unwind in the evening, a cup of herbal tea does a better job than a beer. I’ve been working on reducing anxiety, which means I also don’t feel the need to drink in awkward social situations.</p>
<p>My real bane was binge drinking. I’ve found that going to parties with some board games and non-alcoholic beer does the trick just fine. And no hangover is a real plus.</p>
<p>I came to this new default, because I could see that at 35, my body couldn’t handle alcohol like it used to. Furthermore, having more than a couple of beers left me feeling down for days afterwards. I’m not some AA touting prohibitionist; the cost-benefit analysis of alcohol no longer makes sense for me at this stage of my life.</p>
<p>Am I going to have a <em>single</em> really nice Trappist beer on my birthday? Probably. And that’s the beauty of defaults: I can “break” the habit whenever it makes sense to.</p>
<h2 id="caffeine">Caffeine</h2>
<p>Coffee had become an anxiety bomb for me. Now that I haven’t had a cup in over two months, I can’t understand how I used to have three or four cups a <em>day</em>.</p>
<p>Of all of my resets, getting rid of daily caffeine might be the biggest bang for the buck. I sleep like a baby, my background anxiety has dialed way down and I wake up feeling refreshed. Beating back the anxiety means that I don’t feel as inclined to grab a beer at the end of the day or doomscroll away the evening.</p>
<p>I’m not sure yet what the final result of this is going to be. I’m playing around with having a cup or two of tea a week. This feels like it’s giving me the benefits of caffeine when I want them without the negative side effects.</p>
<p>Caffeine is one drug where I’m not convinced that zero is the right default for most people. Limiting myself to one cup of coffee or tea a day still gave me 90% of the benefits, so that might be the right choice for most people.</p>
<p>In any case, my default is no longer rolling out of bed and fumbling towards the kitchen to make myself a coffee. In self-help speak, this is the atomic habit that’s the cornerstone of everything else right now.</p>
<p>Treating this as a default rather than an absolute might just be a psychological trick, but it works for me. If I really want to, I can hop on over to a coffee shop and get a gourmet coffee — just not every day.</p>
<h2 id="cold-showers">Cold showers</h2>
<p>If I’m feeling a little off, a bit sore, then I take a nice relaxing, warm shower. Otherwise I take a cold shower. This works out to be 4–5 cold showers a week.</p>
<p>This is enough to get the benefits of cold exposure without having to dread an everyday commitment. And these benefits include a burst of euphoria, and improved heart rate variability, which in turn makes you better able to handle stress, lowering anxiety and setting that feedback loop in motion.</p>
<h2 id="fasting">Fasting</h2>
<p>My default is one 24-hour fast a week. I don’t hit it every week if I’m too busy or something comes up. But it’s another default that’s an easy win, which increases motivation and also makes the me feel better.</p>
<h2 id="getting-loopy">Getting loopy</h2>
<p>All of these defaults work together in feedback loops. Skipping a heavy night of drinking means I don’t feel morose for the next two days, which means I’m less likely to experience worse depression symptoms, I don’t need to have multiple anxiety-inducing coffees to get through the day, which means I’m less likely to need to mindlessly unwind come evening.</p>
<p>Likewise the health benefits build. I’ve lost some extra weight over the past few months, sleep better and naturally end up doing more exercise. Improved physical health naturally leads to better mental health, which in turn further improves physical health. It’s nice to use feedback loops to your advantage!</p>
<p>Rereading this, it came off as more self-helpy than I would have liked. My intention though is challenge the idea that you need <em>perfect</em> habits. You will fail, you will want to make exceptions from time to time, and that’s why I prefer to think in <em>mostlies</em> and defaults.</p>
<p>In my case, changing my default alcohol and caffeine intake to zero on any given day led to some big changes. Adding in a couple of healthy practices as defaults still brought benefits while letting me be more relaxed about grabbing some junk food here and there.</p>
<p>So yeah, go and change a couple defaults and see how it affects your life.</p>Derek KedzioraHabits are the darling of the self-help and productivity worlds, but I’ve found much of the approach towards them not quite helpful in my own life. Instead, I find it more useful to think of defaults.Buddhism at War2022-09-13T00:00:00+02:002022-09-13T00:00:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/buddhism-at-war<p>Holding to a philosophy that espouses non-violence as the foundation of its ethical system while watching a war unfold ever closer to those you love is bound to be fraught with contradictions.</p>
<p>Here are two opinions written by some of the most respected, senior members of the American Sangha, who take radically different approaches:</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/buddhism-nonviolence-and-the-moral-quandary-of-ukraine/">Buddhism, Nonviolence, and the Moral Quandary of Ukraine</a> by Bhikkhu Bodhi</li>
<li><a href="https://tricycle.org/article/at-war-with-the-dharma">At War with the Dharma</a> by Thanissaro Bhikkhu</li>
</ol>
<p>From the perspective of early Buddhist teachings, Ajahn Thanissaro is undoubtably correct. He states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The only way to keep yourself from getting sucked into this pattern is to have strong principles against killing, principles you hold to no matter what. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha formulated the precept against killing in the most uncompromising way: Don’t intentionally kill anything or anyone. Ever. Don’t tell other people to kill. And don’t condone the act of killing. When the Buddha was asked if there was anything whose killing he would condone, he answered with just one thing: anger. (SN 1:71).</p>
<p>That’s as clear-cut and absolute as you can get, and it’s clear-cut for a reason: Clear-cut rules are easy to remember even when your emotional level is high—and that’s precisely when you need them most.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bhikkhu Bodhi argues in favor of something approaching a Buddhist just war theory, which is something utterly incompatible with the Dhamma.</p>
<p>Kind of. I’d rather say the two esteemed Bhikkhus are talking past each other. Ajahn Thanissaro is arguing from an ideal, monastic perspective, Bhante Bodhi from the historical perspective of actual Buddhist societies.</p>
<p>Even the archetype of the just Buddhist ruler, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka">Ashoka</a>, waged war and killed. He instituted policies to mitigate this, but a kingdom of this world can’t escape the trappings of this world entirely.</p>
<p>To quote Ajahn Thanissaro:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now, it’s important to remember that the Buddha never forced the precepts on anyone. Instead of calling them obligations, he called them training rules, and the training is something you take on voluntarily. Your moral behavior is a voluntary gift of safety to the world. If you can make that gift universal, with no exceptions, you can have a share in universal safety as well (<a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an08/an08.039.than.html">AN 8:39</a>). If you actually break a precept, the safe course of action is not to try to redesign the training to justify what you’ve done. Instead, you honestly admit that your training has lapsed, and do your best to get back on course.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, the Buddha wasn’t trying to impose a utopian order on society. If you’re committed to the Buddhist path, figure out how to follow this precept as far as you can, but if you can’t keep to it fully, don’t pretend you’re following the complete path. Keep to it as much as you can.</p>
<p>Thus, I’d say the more nuanced position is:</p>
<ul>
<li>There is no just war theory in Buddhism.</li>
<li>The intention when going to war does still matter: defending your family from certain slaughter carries different karmic consequences than going off to war for conquest and pillage.</li>
<li>Monastics should <em>never</em> be cheerleaders for war or have anything to do with war.</li>
<li>The further removed you are from fighting and killing, the better. If you need to fight, understand the consequences and make an informed decision.</li>
<li>Even from a secular perspective, killing in a war of self defense will leave deep scars on a soldier: PTSD will likely haunt many of Ukraine’s defenders for the rest of their lives.</li>
</ul>
<p>Thinking about it, I find it odd that Bhikkhu Bodi even felt compelled to write this article about Ukraine in the first place — Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote in response. Why does an American monk even need to have an opinion on a war on the other side of the planet that likely has a personal impact on a minuscule percentage of his community? Perhaps the more important point is that the sangha should be largely removed from the day-to-day politics of secular life. There doesn’t have to be a Buddhist™ position on everything.</p>
<p>Bhikkhu Bodhi ends his essay with an interesting point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On reflection, I would have to conclude that the ethics of early Buddhism do not offer blanket solutions to all the complex predicaments of the human situation. Perhaps that was never their intention—perhaps their intention was to issue guidelines rather than proclaim moral absolutes, to posit ideals even for those who cannot perfectly fulfill them. Nevertheless, the complexity of the human condition inevitably confronts us with circumstances in which moral obligations run at crosscurrents.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reality is that even in the day of the Buddha, followers of the path ate meat, plowed fields (which kills countless insects, rodents, snakes, etc.) and went about their ordinary lives. There’s a lot of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_luck">moral luck</a> involved, which from a traditional Buddhist perspective is also based on past kamma. And that’s the rub of samsara, you’re often not in a position to full extricate yourself from suffering.</p>
<p>Those committed to non-violence can still do much to help Ukraine right now. The humanitarian catastrophe is only going to get worse as winter sets in. Other parts of the world are going to be affected by grain shortages. Even many in richer European countries will have trouble making ends meet as energy prices rise. Helping out any of these people is a wonderful thing to do, and is far removed from killing on the front line.</p>Derek KedzioraHolding to a philosophy that espouses non-violence as the foundation of its ethical system while watching a war unfold ever closer to those you love is bound to be fraught with contradictions.A Non-Compete Clause with your Phone2022-08-31T21:40:00+02:002022-08-31T21:40:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/non-compete-with-you-phone<p>I can’t be more interesting than something the greatest minds of a generation have spent perfecting, the addictive entertainment of the latest social media app.</p>
<p>I can’t compete with it. If I’m presenting something in a meeting, it won’t be more interesting than scrolling Twitter or Reddit. TikTok will always be more amusing than anything I can say in casual conversation.</p>
<p>Trying to compete with someone’s phone is demoralizing. The problem is, most people are so addicted that you can’t even point this out to them. Yet any time there’s so much as a quick lull in a conversation, out comes the phone.</p>
<p>Do I become the eternal grump and refuse to talk to people when their phone’s within sight? No, that won’t work. But I no longer have the energy to compete, because I’ve long ago lost.</p>Derek KedzioraI can’t be more interesting than something the greatest minds of a generation have spent perfecting, the addictive entertainment of the latest social media app.Book Notes: Wanting2022-08-29T08:49:00+02:002022-08-29T08:49:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/wanting<p><em>Wanting: the Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life</em> was one of those books that I enjoyed reading, had lots to ponder in it but I still expected more out of it. I was initially drawn to the author because he has the rare gift of actually being erudite on the internet (examples: <a href="https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/the-noonday-demonour-metaphysical">The Noonday Demon—Our Metaphysical Laziness</a> or <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/technology-philosophy-three-city-problem/">The Three-City Problem of Modern Life</a>). But the book <em>Wanting</em> is written like an airport business book crossed with self help.</p>
<p>But first the good. This is an accessible introduction to Girard and mimetic theory. You’ll walk away with a deeper and more contextual understanding than skimming the wikipedia articles would give you.</p>
<p>An incredibly brief summary is that all human desire is based on wanting what others want instead of the myth of autonomous persons wanting things independently of the outside world. When we model our desires off of those out of reach, saints, great artists and the like, things remain calm. Problems arise when everyone starts modeling their peers. A cutthroat mimetic crisis arises that requires a scapegoat to placate the masses.</p>
<p>I was hoping for more material about that actual crisis and how to get out of it. There were a lot of one liners along the lines of “Homogenizing forces are creating a crisis of desire” and “Ideological monopolies are the worst monopolies” without much that was concrete.</p>
<p>One of the more interesting concepts is the <em>mirror model</em>, which is like a regular model but with a twist of teenage rebellion. Whatever the model does, you want to do the exact opposite. This model explains much of US politics and the world wide covid response. If a politician you despise orders schools to remain open, then you will do everything possible to close them while operating under the delusion that this is an independent desire of yours.</p>
<p>A few other gems:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…Girard in his <em>book Resurrection from the Underground Foodor Dostoevsky</em>: “He no longer relies on priests and philosophers, of course, but he must rely on people nevertheless, more than ever, as a matter of fact.”</p>
<p>And who are these people? “They are the experts, continues Girard “the people more competent than we are in innumerable fields of endeavor.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What seems an increasingly potent threat to free speech in the West:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann coined the term “spiral of silence” in 1974 to refer to a phenomenon that we see often today: peoples willingness to speak freely depends upon their unconscious perceptions of how popular their opinions are. People who believe their opinions are not shared by anyone else are more likely to remain quiet; their silence itself increases the impression that no one else thinks as they do; this increases their feelings of isolation and artificially inflates the confidence of those with the majority opinion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My experience of companies with “no hierarchy” has always been miserable, turns out Girard has an explanation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A human-centered approach to business involves grappling with the messiness of human interactions—with human nature. To introduce something foreign to human nature, which doesn’t complement it—like an organizational “operating system” that doesn’t account for mimetic desire—is to open up a Pandora’s box.</p>
<p>Zappos had eliminated the management hierarchy, but they couldn’t eliminate the network of desire and the need that people have to be in relationship to models. There is always a hierarchy of desire from the perspective of an individual: some models are worth following more than others, and some things are worth wanting more than others. We are hierarchical creatures. This is why we like listicles and ratings so much. We have a need to know how things stack up, how things fit together. To remove all semblance of hierarchy is detrimental to this fundamental need.</p>
<p>When Zappos moved to holacracy, what disappeared aboveground—the visible roles and titles—reappeared in different ways underground. “The environment became more political,” journalist Aimee Groth, who wrote about holacracy for Quartz, told me. “People were less secure in their jobs… less clear on how they could hold on to their roles and their jobs.” However, you still had a few people who had infinite power because they had a strong relationship with Tony. There was a hidden web of desire that nobody could decipher.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I really would have like to see more on this point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In much ancient literature, the line between biological epidemics and psychological epidemics is fuzzy. Girard thought that stories of physical disasters, like plagues, were probably mythologized versions of what really happened: a social crisis, fractured relationships, mimetic contagion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When historians look at the corona “pandemic”, it will almost certainly be seen a mass mental health and social crisis. Not that there wasn’t a respiratory virus that killed many. There was. But the societal reactions had no relationship to that virus.</p>
<p>Silicon Valley has used mimetic theory to engineer an entire economy of desire, but little thought is given to the opportunity cost of this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The extraordinary success of a few internet companies has masked the embarrassing lack of major breakthroughs in other domains.</p>
<p>There has been little improvement in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, which affect nearly a third of all Americans over the age of eighty-five. There is still no cure for cancer. Life expectancy is declining in many parts of the world. So is quality of life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a sample of some of the interesting ideas that Burgis brings up, but I was always left with the feeling that he didn’t flesh them out. Most authors churn out internet posts and podcasts appearances to hawk their book, which is their most refined thinking. Here it feels like the opposite is going on: the book is a fluffy intro to Burgis’ substack, which is far better written than his book.</p>Derek KedzioraWanting: the Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life was one of those books that I enjoyed reading, had lots to ponder in it but I still expected more out of it. I was initially drawn to the author because he has the rare gift of actually being erudite on the internet (examples: The Noonday Demon—Our Metaphysical Laziness or The Three-City Problem of Modern Life). But the book Wanting is written like an airport business book crossed with self help.Mettā at War2022-08-10T00:00:00+02:002022-08-10T00:00:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/metta-at-war<p>Maintaining a Buddhist practice while your country is at war is challenging balancing act. It’s easy to fall into patterns of deep negativity, wishing ill on others and bursts of hate, even when you’re safely abroad.</p>
<p>The point of the Buddhist path is to protect the practitioner from future states of psychological suffering and trauma. Far from a moralistic land of absolutes, the ethical system of early Buddhism focused on harm reduction.</p>
<p>Ukraine recently targeted what appears to be munitions stores at a military airfield in Crimea. There have been numerous videos of Russian beachgoers in Crimea frantically fleeing the explosions in the background. The civilians were never in any particular danger, but obviously it makes sense to seek shelter during an active military operation.</p>
<p>Many of my Ukrainian friends are happy with schadenfreude. Let the Russian colonists and collaborators in occupied Crimea feel the same thing they’ve unleashed on us. From a Judeo-Christian sense of justice, this is fair. From the Buddhist perspective, this feeling of schadenfreude is dangerous.</p>
<p>The danger lies in how schadenfreude and hate affect your own mind. You will bear scars from it, scars on top of those inflicted by the trauma of this war.</p>
<p>The less harmful emotion is dispassion or equanimity. I’m not glad these people are suffering, but their suffering is the inevitable result of their own actions. True compassion is calling on people to stop doing actions that will bring long-term harm to themselves. Thus my wish when I see scenes like this, is that Russians wake up and end this war. It’s ultimately in their hands.</p>
<p>The difference is subtle: I try to avoid any pleasure in their misfortune, see their suffering as the inevitable consequence of their own actions and out of genuine compassion hope that Russians stop this war before it’s too late. This isn’t a naïve sense of both sides are wrong or a warped pacifism that sees the aggressor as equal to the victim. This is protecting my own psychological well-being as I witness these events unfold.</p>
<p>Intention plays the key role. I hope that strategic military targets can be hit in Crimea, as that will hasten the day that my friends can live in peace in their own homes. I hope this war is over soon, with a decisive Ukrainian victory; this will also stop the suffering of what is a largely slave army taken from Donbas, Dagestan, Buryatia and other far flung corners of rural Russia. But I don’t actively wish that any Russian suffers as a first order consequence. The fact that many will inevitably suffer is something I look at with a mix of sadness, inevitability and equanimity.</p>
<p>The early Buddhist concepts of <em>mettā</em> and <em>karuṇā</em> are often misunderstood and mistranslated. Many of us in the West filter them through Christian ideals of compassion and love — the patient martyr forgiving his torturers. Later offshoots of Buddhism also started to take this almost cartoonish version of compassion as well.</p>
<p>One of the best examples of the early Buddhist take I’ve heard is to think of <em>mettā</em> as being cordial. If you see a cobra in the jungle, you wish it no harm and give it enough space to go its own way without having to interact with it. It’s <strong>not</strong> running up to the cobra, giving it a smothering hug and then making some melodramatic forgiveness when it bites you. Non-harm in many cases is non-interaction. Wishing everyone well is letting them get on with their lives, without your interference, without imposing your agenda on them.</p>
<p>The older strands of Buddhist folklore and mythology are filled with tales not of saints senselessly bearing ghoulish violence out of compassion, but trying to convince their torturers <em>not</em> to kill them because of the terrible karmic consequences of cold-blooded murder.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup></p>
<p><em>Mettā</em> and <em>karuṇā</em> are always paired with <em>upekkhā</em>, a sense of equanimity, calmness and dispassion. Going back to the analogy of the cobra, when you see it eat a mouse, the proper response is one of equanimity and understanding. Forcing the cobra to eat a diet of tofu is just going to kill it. Sometimes you have to step back and let the consequences of things work themselves out.</p>
<p>With scenes of the war coming onto our devices daily, it’s worth pausing to evaluate how these images are affecting us and the right way to react to them.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>One such example is the story of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aṅgulimāla">Aṅgulimāla</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Derek KedzioraMaintaining a Buddhist practice while your country is at war is challenging balancing act. It’s easy to fall into patterns of deep negativity, wishing ill on others and bursts of hate, even when you’re safely abroad.The Star Wars Prequels Are Actually Pretty Good2022-07-25T21:37:00+02:002022-07-25T21:37:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/star-wars-prequals<p>I’ve decided to watch everything in the Star Wars Universe in chronological order, which means started with the much maligned prequels. I remember watching each one only once and mostly forgetting about them in negativity surrounding them.</p>
<p>But, I don’t think that reputation is fair having rewatched them. Yes, there are some odd bits, some continuity tensions and a few outright sighs. Nonetheless, there’s a great story with some points to think about it.</p>
<p>It’s easy to see everything through the prism of of binary, partisan politics: the Republic vs. the Separatists. But this is often missing the point. There was a power-hungry evil worse than either faction pulling the strings. So distracted by petty struggles, the real evil went on unnoticed until it was too late. The true powerbrokers in society understand how to play the masses off of each other while going unnoticed.</p>
<p>Even in an epic that’s a battle of good versus evil, there’s a tremendous amount of complexity. Many of those on the ostensible side of good, the Republic, would go on to join the Empire. While outwardly “evil”, plenty of those who supported the the Trade Federation and Separatists simply wanted more local rule.</p>
<p>This means that yesterday’s heroes often turn into tomorrow’s villains. Many of those who are convinced they are on the side of the right end up having supported the wrong side in hindsight.</p>
<p>Our educational system has an almost cartoonish historiography of evil. Nazis are born as some sort of primordial evil and the choice between good and evil is always clear cut. The real, of course, is a bit more complex.</p>
<p>The fall of Anakin captures this complexity and true banality of evil. People look at the end result of Darth Vader, and expect Anakin to have chosen this primordial evil in a pure form from the outset. Instead, Anakin fell to the dark side through a mix of vanity, pettiness and <em>good</em> intentions such as wanting to protect Padmé. We want a narrative of serial killers having been born diabolical, torturing animals as toddlers and leaving a lifelong trail of suffering. Seeing a character arc like Anakin’s — someone turning truly evil over the most mundane of things is unsettling.</p>
<p>Nearly everyone ushered in the end of democracy in the Republic while believing they were supporting democracy. Some craved security and order, others crude profit and the rest pure power.</p>
<p>And for all the nay sayers, I think they’ve forgotten just how many cheesy one-liners and awkward moments the original trilogy had. One of the things that convinced me the most that the prequels actually aren’t the bad is talking to younger people. For them, these three films <em>are</em> Star Wars.</p>Derek KedzioraI’ve decided to watch everything in the Star Wars Universe in chronological order, which means started with the much maligned prequels. I remember watching each one only once and mostly forgetting about them in negativity surrounding them.Book Notes: Dune2022-07-17T14:23:00+02:002022-07-17T14:23:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/dune<p>I finally got around to reading <em>Dune</em>, something I should have done long ago. I’d been put off by the idea that it was kind of a simple story of giant worms that every other science fiction epic has relentlessly pilfered from. There is that, but there’s also a lot more.</p>
<p><strong>Note</strong>: no spoilers beyond what you’d get from reading the back cover of the book.</p>
<p>I’ll start by quoting from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)">Wikipedia</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tim O’Reilly suggests that Herbert also wrote Dune as a counterpoint to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. In his monograph on Frank Herbert, O’Reilly wrote that “Dune is clearly a commentary on the Foundation trilogy. Herbert has taken a look at the same imaginative situation that provoked Asimov’s classic—the decay of a galactic empire—and restated it in a way that draws on different assumptions and suggests radically different conclusions. The twist he has introduced into Dune is that the Mule, not the Foundation, is his hero.” According to O’Reilly, Herbert bases the Bene Gesserit on the scientific shamans of the Foundation, though they use biological rather than statistical science. In contrast to the Foundation series and its praise of science and rationality, Dune proposes that the unconscious and unexpected are actually what are needed for humanity.</p>
<p>However, both works contain a similar theme of the restoration of civilization and seem to make the fundamental assumption that “political maneuvering, the need to control material resources, and friendship or mating bonds will be fundamentally the same in the future as they are now.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And thus it’s fascinating to see a future where scientism and the strict materialist don’t dominate. Instead ecology and mental development are guiding principles that determine who controls the galaxy.</p>
<p>One quote from the novel that makes this point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Deep in the human unconsciousness is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That which is beyond logic is explored in several strands throughout the novel; the one of psychedelics is arguably the most relatable. Under the influence of spice, Paul can see time fork with many possible futures all dependent on minute decisions in the present. None of it is preordained, with the themes are free will, bravery and leadership dominating.</p>
<p>I’m curious about Hebert’s choices in world building: why leave so many Islamic principles entirely intact? I doubt it was laziness, but at times it also felt kind of hokey. Perhaps the broader theme is that the deeper religious <em>mythos</em> of our contemporary religions hold something far more meaningful and powerful than most scientific materialists can appreciate.</p>
<p>This is what good sci-fi and fantasy is: putting humanity in a strange, unfamiliar setting and looking at that, which is fundamental. It’s easy to lose that in the special effects, battle scenes and fun of world building, but <em>Dune</em> has the good stuff, I definitely wished I had read it sooner.</p>
<p>To sum it up: <em>Dune</em> is a future where the scientific materialists <em>don’t</em> win without becoming a ridiculous dystopia or a kumbaya fest either. As much as it’s a foil to Asimov’s <em>Foundation</em>, some of the themes and conclusions are remarkably similar to <a href="https://derekkedziora.com/blog/end-of-eternity"><em>The End of Eternity</em></a>.</p>Derek KedzioraI finally got around to reading Dune, something I should have done long ago. I’d been put off by the idea that it was kind of a simple story of giant worms that every other science fiction epic has relentlessly pilfered from. There is that, but there’s also a lot more.Public and private selves2022-06-12T14:29:00+02:002022-06-12T14:29:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/public-and-private-selves<p>DDH wrote a <a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/bring-your-work-self-to-work-f5fbc2eb">piece about work selves</a> that resonated with me, but I think it’s only the start of a larger conversation.</p>
<p>The gist is summed up right in the opening paragraphs:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If employees are expected to spend the majority of their life at work — pulling those 60-80+ hour weeks — it’s no wonder they in return demand work embraces their “<a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_bring_your_whole_self_to_work">whole self</a>”. But that’s a terrible trade in both directions. What work and you really need is for everyone to show up with their “work self”.</p>
<p>Your work self needn’t be a facade, it can still be you — just not all of it. It’s the part that shows up to be courteous to coworkers (even when you don’t really feel like it), engaged in solving the tasks at hand (even when you’d rather do something else), and with no more of your outside-of-work self than you’d be comfortable sharing with a kind stranger on a long plane ride.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The argument goes on to promote being a bit more reserved and keeping work from creeping into your private life. Valid points.</p>
<p>There’s an important concept in Dutch political theory called sphere sovereignty, to quote <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_sovereignty">Wikipedia</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In neo-Calvinism, sphere sovereignty (Dutch: soevereiniteit in eigen kring), also known as differentiated responsibility, is the concept that each sphere (or sector) of life has its own distinct responsibilities and authority or competence, and stands equal to other spheres of life. Sphere sovereignty involves the idea of an all encompassing created order, designed and governed by God. This created order includes societal communities (such as those for purposes of education, worship, civil justice, agriculture, economy and labor, marriage and family, artistic expression, etc.), their historical development, and their abiding norms. <strong>The principle of sphere sovereignty seeks to affirm and respect creational boundaries, and historical differentiation.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sphere sovereignty implies that no one area of life or societal community is sovereign over another. Each sphere has its own created integrity.</strong> Neo-Calvinists hold that since God created everything “after its own kind,” diversity must be acknowledged and appreciated. For instance, the different God-given norms for family life and economic life should be recognized, such that a family does not properly function like a business. <strong>Similarly, neither faith-institutions (e.g. churches) nor an institution of civil justice (i.e. the state) should seek totalitarian control, or any regulation of human activity outside their limited competence, respectively.</strong> (emphasis mine)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, no one part of human society should subjugate the rest of society. To this day, Dutch society largely runs along this principle, with governing being a balancing act of compromises with all parts of society. Yes, the role of religious institutions has waned, but trade unions, schools, cultural groups and political parties still negotiate in their limited spheres.</p>
<p>The underlying assumptions are that you’ll never get everything you want, people around you have diverse interests and people from different groups should be able to tolerate one another. DHH, who is very much a product of a similar Northern European Protestant culture, is restating this in a secular and modernized form.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly for a Protestant movement, sphere sovereignty was a reaction again Catholic political thought — that a single institution should subjugate every aspect of human activity. While I don’t see a resurgent Papal State dominating politics any time soon, it’s not uncommon for people to think that their ideology ought to dominate the world, whether it be The Science™, Nationalism or the Wokism.</p>
<p>This isn’t to idealize Dutch Calvinist political thought. Plenty of nasty things also came about under this system, but it’s a starting point for many countries in Northern Europe.</p>
<h2 id="privacy">Privacy</h2>
<p>There’s been a steady erosion of privacy in the last few decades. I remember when you could politely decline to give your opinion about something due to not wanting to talk politics or religion. It was a tiny, but vocal minority that put political bumper stickers on their cars.</p>
<p>When I look at the social media profiles of the “thought leader” types in my industry, I can see a timeline of all the big political issues with matching emojis: 🌈😷✊💉🇺🇦</p>
<p>It’s not that I necessarily disagree with any of these things, but it’s the lack of privacy and expectation that I too should have a public position on <em>everything</em>.</p>
<p>This hit me with the war in Ukraine. In the weeks before the war, I’d get asked constantly about it. I don’t have any inside scoop and have access to the same newspapers that everyone else does. Now I’m constantly seeing performative denunciations of Putin.</p>
<p>It’s all too raw and personal. I don’t want to talk about it at work. And I get the feeling that for the emoji-cause crowd, this is just the latest round of reality TV. It’s entertainment. I simply don’t want to be part of this show, and it would be nice if I could avoid it in a professional setting.</p>
<p>Instead, the pernicious idea of “silence is violence” had turned every interaction into parroting the “right” bumper sticker style slogans.</p>
<p>Even something like the war in Ukraine is tremendously complex. The general outline is about as black and white as modern conflicts get, but once we get into concrete policies it gets complicated fast. Are sanctions and collective punishment acceptable? Should Ukrainian refugees be given priority over others? Nobody should <em>have to</em> have an opinion on these at all, much less have to take a public position <em>at work</em>.</p>
<p>That’s why I recommend <a href="https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/dont-feed-your-conscience-to-the">Don’t feed your conscience to the dogs</a> by Luke Burgis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We live in a society where people are forced to manifest their conscience on issues ranging from sexuality to geo-politics to abortion—even on whether or not they agree with someone else’s tweet—in real-time, and practically at gunpoint. The threat of ostracization, job loss, or public ridicule lurks behind the slightest deviation from the mimetic moral norm of the day.</p>
<p>With the loss of human dignity come new assaults on the conscience, and I wish we all talked less about ‘free speech’ (which has become something of a conservative thirst trap) and more about what the conscience is, and why it must be protected.</p>
<p>The conscience is the ‘organ’ of freedom, in the words of German Catholic philosopher Robert Spaemann—the organ that a person must exercise in order to come to a full knowledge and embrace of the truth, but on their own time and in their own way. This is a vision of the human person that has all but been lost in secular society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I like this line of thought, that the moral compass is something that must be developed on an individual level. When forced to take a public position on <em>everything</em>, people just repeat whatever is expected of them. There’s no thought, no reflection, no moral development.</p>
<p>Give the complexity of modern political issues, it’s not realistic for everyone to have an informed opinion about <em>everything</em>. But saying that you don’t know, abstaining from the conversation gets you in trouble with the “silence is violence” crowd.</p>
<h2 id="the-ketman">The ketman</h2>
<p>This brings to mind <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/ketman-and-doublethink-what-it-costs-to-comply-with-tyranny">Czesław Miłosz’s Ketman</a>, whereby one takes up a public performance of one set of views while privately believing something altogether different.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even as Miłosz’s fellow intellectuals fell in line with the new regime, they privately insisted that they were acting of their own free will. Ketman helps to explain this seeming contradiction. Persecution has long forced believers to conceal their beliefs. But ketman as used by Miłosz means something more than just simulation. It goes deeper than mere lying. Ketman reaches deeper into the soul than simple hypocrisy. Ketman deceives the deceiver, as much as the person being deceived.</p>
<p>Time and again, Miłosz returns to the metaphor of an actor on stage. It is a continuous performance, allowing those who engage in it to survive the sensation of living with a divided mind. As Miłosz puts it, ketman is a ‘self-realisation against something’. He didn’t view it as something purely imposed from outside. As a poet and a radio broadcaster, he knew that performance, however coerced, can be a source of identification: ‘After long acquaintance with his role, a man grows into it so closely that he can no longer differentiate his true self from the self he simulates.’ He saw that deception can carry its own pleasures:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To say something is white when one thinks it black, to smile inwardly when one is outwardly solemn, to hate when one manifests love, to know when one pretends not to know, and thus to play one’s adversary for a fool (even as he is playing you for one) – these actions lead one to prize one’s own cunning above all else. Success in the game becomes a source of satisfaction.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>None of this comes with a definite conclusion or a self-help listicle of five things to do in order to change the world. Rather this is a reflection. Do I need to air my private views on LinkedIn profile or make a point of referencing them at professional conferences or the company chat? Should I expect other people to take public and definitive positions on complex issues? Do I have the space to abstain, to simply say that I don’t know?</p>Derek KedzioraDDH wrote a piece about work selves that resonated with me, but I think it’s only the start of a larger conversation.Chickens coming home to roost2022-05-28T09:36:00+02:002022-05-28T09:36:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/chickens-coming-home-to-roost<p>The signs point to rough economic times ahead. There’s a major war that’s affecting energy and food supplies. Inflation is rising and eating away at what little money the working class and poor have. The middle classes, buried in debt, will start missing payments with echos of 2008.</p>
<p>My big prediction is that this round will wipe out most of the big valuation but unprofitable tech companies.</p>
<p>Starting with Uber and Lyft, which are <a href="https://slate.com/business/2022/05/uber-subsidy-lyft-cheap-rides.html">loosing massive amounts of money</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Uber has lost an astounding sum since its founding in 2009, including more than $30 billion in the five-odd years since the company’s finances became public. Together with earlier losses and a similar strategy at rival Lyft, this has amounted to an enormous, investor-fueled subsidy of America’s ride-hailing habit.</p>
<p>Those days are over, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees in a memo last week. “The average employee at Uber is barely over 30, which means you’ve spent your career in a long and unprecedented bull run,” he wrote. “This next period will be different, and it will require a different approach. … We have to make sure our unit economics work before we go big.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sounds like a WeWork moment to me.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/1/21/netflix-peloton-shares-erase-pandemic-era-gains">Netflix and Peloton only turn profits when people are under house arrest</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/buy-now-pay-later-is-coming-due-for-all-of-us.html">The Buy Now Pay Later bubble is also ready to burst</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Klarna racked up $700 million in losses last year, and 65 percent of it was from credit defaults. Affirm lost almost the same over the past 12 months, while its marketing expenses tripled to $427 million. Any hope of profitability depends on overextended consumers somehow making their payments and continuing to mash the BUY button. What’s more likely is that the precarious finances of the 20-something generation are going off the precipice soon, and there’s a big risk of collateral damage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>None of this is sustainable.</p>
<p>The advice I’ve been giving everyone who works in the tech industry is to completely ignore compensation packages that are heavy on stock. Even strong companies are going to see big corrections in stock valuations. Also, work for “boring” yet profitable companies. Now is not the time to work for a hip but unprofitable company like Klarna or Netflix.</p>
<p>Just as a finished this draft, I saw that <a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/who-s-been-swimming-naked-b7904ccc">DHH posted nearly the same thing</a>. He has even more examples and is more concerned about the business side of things. I’m more worried about my friends in the tech industry that are navigating the job market right now.</p>Derek KedzioraThe signs point to rough economic times ahead. There’s a major war that’s affecting energy and food supplies. Inflation is rising and eating away at what little money the working class and poor have. The middle classes, buried in debt, will start missing payments with echos of 2008.The paper of record2022-05-26T11:48:00+02:002022-05-26T11:48:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/paper-of-record<p>As often happens in the US, there have been more back to back mass shootings.</p>
<p>Tim Urban of Wait But Why fame has the <a href="https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy/status/1529242579212156930">right approach</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Any media or big social accounts that publish the shooter’s name, face, politics, or backstory are doing a really bad thing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As he <a href="https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy/status/997947168685248514">originally wrote in 2018</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After a shooting, I see 2 glaring discussion points: gun laws and the media’s practice of making every shooter a globally-famous martyr & underground hero to future shooters. But 99% of the outrage is on the former issue since the latter isn’t a key button in the tribal foodfight</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To put this in perspective, both political parties in the US have been in power for about equal amounts of time over the past few decades. Despite the theatrics, one party always seems miraculously unable to affect any change when they’re in control of both the presidency and congress at the same time.</p>
<p>I suppose a Martian anthropologist would conclude this is some sort of ritual war dance where the speaker of the house and leader of the senate pretend to spar in order to generate wealth<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> But I’m getting distracted. The point is, no matter who is in power in the United States, I wouldn’t expect serious changes to gun regulation.</p>
<p>That leaves us with Urban’s other point, which should be something much easier to control.</p>
<p>The New York Times has published the shooter’s name and is already starting to speculate about motives. There are breaking minute by minute updates and a story of the events written like a thriller novel.</p>
<p>None of that was necessary.</p>
<p>And the horde of bumper sticker liberals keep supporting the Times.</p>
<p>None of this is to say that the yellow press in the US is equally responsible for mass shootings as the gun culture. But we need to stop consuming low-quality, sensationalist journalism, such as the New York Times before we have any hope of making systemic change in the third largest country in the world.</p>
<p>Without a cultural shift away from the cult of breaking news, using each tragedy to push a partisan agenda<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> and news as entertainment, we’re not going to build a better society. And unfortunately, I see the US exporting these trends to Europe.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Amusingly enough there’s a <a href="https://www.investmentnews.com/pelosis-portfolio-performance-now-wrapped-in-an-etf-218304">Nancy Pelosi EFT</a>, the humble public servant <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2010/12/5/925858/-">Mitch McConnell ain’t doing so bad either</a> and there was the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_trading_scandal">whole <span class="small-caps">Covid</span> stock thing</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Wade into the partisan fray at your own peril: one side is claiming this proves the need for <em>more</em> guns and armed security everywhere, the other side somehow connecting this to the need to support the BLM movement <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Derek KedzioraAs often happens in the US, there have been more back to back mass shootings.Book notes: Snow Crash2022-05-22T21:44:00+02:002022-05-22T21:44:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/snow-crash<p>Neal Stephenson’s <em>Snow Crash</em> is one of those books with a mediocre plot and good enough characters that will stick with you for a long time after reading it. But it doesn’t feel like one of those philosophical novels with hollow characters representing a school of thought.</p>
<p>The cyberpunk world building is fascinating without being overdone. And the the whole thing will leave you thinking about a lot of things. It’s worth a read in my opinion, so much so that I’m going to add some of Stephenson’s other books to my list.</p>
<p>The world of <em>Snow Crash</em> is a programmed universe, with the ultimate consequence being that the human mind executes programs. This makes it possible for a single virus to affect both computers and humans.</p>
<p>Virus isn’t really the right word, it’s more of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">meme in the academic sense of the word</a>. Thus humans lived in a programmed happy state akin to Eden, a “virus” wrought mayhem akin to the Tower of Babel and the plot of <em>Snow Crash</em> deals with the consequences thereof.</p>
<p>Some philosophical points to ponder:</p>
<ul>
<li>Religions can be a sort of vaccination: the meme space that religions spread and take up in an individual are mostly benign to positive, this protects a person from being susceptible to more malicious viruses. Perhaps the better analogy would be how good bacteria outcompete harmful bacteria in the fermentation that results in beer, kimchi or kefir.</li>
<li>“Religions of the book” provide a level of information hygiene. Having unchanging texts locks out viruses.</li>
<li>Information hygiene can go too far, the example cited was the pharisees turning into legalistic automatons.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="beyond-snow-crash">Beyond <em>Snow Crash</em></h2>
<p>I’ve also been reading a bit about René Girard’s ideas of mimetic theory, which fits in nicely with the idea of information hygiene. There’s <em>a lot</em> to dig into with the whole concept of information hygiene — the constant barrage of social media and news we consume and the lack of care in taking positions don’t lend themselves to a healthy relationship with information.</p>Derek KedzioraNeal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is one of those books with a mediocre plot and good enough characters that will stick with you for a long time after reading it. But it doesn’t feel like one of those philosophical novels with hollow characters representing a school of thought.Corona and Western Consensus Thinking2022-05-20T21:15:00+02:002022-05-20T21:15:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/corona-western-consensus-thinking<div class="callout">
<h2>Background</h2>
<p>I’ve previously written about <a href="https://derekkedziora.com/blog/western-consensus-thinking">Western Consensus Thinking</a>. Here’s a short recap: the prevailing mode of thought in developed nations, in fact the only officially sanctioned philosophy-religion, is a sort of “end of history”, all problems have been solved mix of unlimited development.</p>
</div>
<h2 id="the-western-consensus-thinking-approach">The Western Consensus Thinking approach</h2>
<p>Western Consensus Thinking only admits progress, which meant that <span class="small-caps">Sars-Cov-2</span> had to be <em>eliminated</em>. Raising the general public health levels by seriously discussing obesity and other risk factors wasn’t enough. Creating much larger hospital capacity over the long term also isn’t a viable solution — that would mean paying more workers and cutting into corporate profits.</p>
<p>The approach that most Western politicians ultimately took is deeply rooted in the denial of death and illness as inevitable as well as the near religious devotion to only hi-tech solutions being our only salvation.</p>
<p>Hence Western nations would only accept vaccines made with new technologies, dramatic signaling and calls for elimination, regardless of the actual efficacy of any of these.</p>
<p>Challenging this approach summoned something akin to burning heretics at the stake. This was clearly an emotional response because questioning the wisdom of masks, vaccine mandates and other overreactions to the <span class="small-caps">Sars-Cov-2</span> response is actually questioning the entire premise of Western Consensus Thinking: constant progress and a technological solution to every problem.</p>
<h2 id="wu-weithe-path-of-no-solution">Wu wei — the path of no solution</h2>
<p>The problem, of course, is that the approach of the Western Consensus Thinking didn’t produce the best results. Luckily Sweden didn’t give into the insanity and serves as a control group: no mandatory masks, no school closures, no vaccine passports, no zero <span class="small-caps">Covid</span>.</p>
<p>The results speak for themselves: Sweden had the lowest excess death rate in Europe in 2021 and one of the lowest in Europe over the course of the entire pandemic<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>.</p>
<p>The harshest lockdowns didn’t correlate to better outcomes. Lockdowns and masking became destructive rain dances that didn’t actually stop the spread of <span class="small-caps">Sars-Cov-2</span>.</p>
<p>The vaccines have also been a mixed bag. Of the four Western vaccines, only one of them is safe enough to be recommended for everyone in most European countries (the clot shots J&J and Astra-Zeneca are no longer widely available, Moderna isn’t administered to men under 30 in much of Europe). Questioning the safety of the vaccines a year ago would have been a quick way to get a social media ban. But we’ve always been at war with Eurasia.</p>
<p>Effectiveness also seems to be a bust. We’ve known early on that the vaccines don’t stop transmission. How long lasting the protective effects against severe illness last is anyone’s guess.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I got Coronavac, one of non-Western vaccines, and came down with Corona a few months afterwards. Without a control, it’s impossible to say I got a lighter case than I otherwise would have without the vaccine.</p>
<p>The dramatic interventions were mostly infective at reducing <span class="small-caps">Covid</span> deaths, may have been counterproductive and society will be paying the price for decades.</p>
<p>The argument against this is the no true Scotsman fallacy in a fresh kilt: we didn’t lock down hard enough! We should have put the entire world under house arrest and forcibly injected everyone, then we would have won the war against Eurasia.</p>
<h2 id="the-other-approach">The other approach</h2>
<p>The great wisdom traditions of the world such as traditional Christianity, Buddhism or Stoicism have similar approaches to death, aging and disease. They are inevitable and largely beyond our direct control<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>.</p>
<p>Bad flu seasons come and go. Completely eliminating a respiratory virus with wide animal reservoirs isn’t realistic. The best we can do is provide some protection for the vulnerable during waves of illness.</p>
<p>Everything else needs to be done well ahead of time. Politicians had stripped hospitals of funding for decades. The sedentary Western lifestyle had left much of the population obese yet malnourished (for example, vitamin D deficient) and thus vulnerable.</p>
<p>We will all get sick, we will all eventually die — perhaps unexpectedely. But life and society go on.</p>
<p>Compare this with the panicked approach that most Western politicians took that is deeply rooted in the denial of death and illness as inevitable and that only hi-tech solutions can save us.</p>
<p>None of this is to say we should embrace a passive fatalism and give up doing <em>anything</em>. Not at all. But, understanding that we, as humans, have limits and are not the complete masters of our destinies is ultimately liberating. We can work on the things under our control instead of giving into neurosis about that which is beyond our grasp.</p>
<h2 id="how-this-happened-good-intentions">How this happened: good intentions</h2>
<p>Admitting that we don’t know everything and that there are problems that we will never solve has become subversive. You’ll be accused of being a pessimist, luddite or whatever.</p>
<p>How why actually got here, where large enough sections of society embraced the rituals of Western Consensus Thinking in order to impose draconian measures is a curious thing. I don’t believe in any sort of tinfoil hat conspiracies. Instead, I think a lot of good intentions gone awry, some philosophy explain it all and a flawed conceptual framework mostly explain it.</p>
<p>Let’s take Bill Gates. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he has good intentions. That said, his approach to this pandemic is the culmination of a lifetime of gracefully failing — without consequences, of course.</p>
<p>I’ll quote extensively <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/why-bill-gates-is-pivoting-on-existing-covid-vaccines/">from Brownstone</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After finally stepping back from Microsoft’s operations, Gates started dabbling in other areas, as newly rich people tend to do. They often imagine themselves especially competent at taking on challenges that others have failed at simply because of their professional successes. Also by this point in his career, he was only surrounded by sycophants who would not interrupt his descent into crankiness.</p>
<p>And what subject did he pounce on? He would do to the world of pathogens what he did at Microsoft: he would stamp them out! He began with malaria and other issues and eventually decided to take on them all. And what was his solution? Of course: antivirus software. What is that? It is vaccines. Your body is the hard drive that he would save with his software-style solution.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the pandemic, I noted that Gates was pushing hard for lockdowns. His foundation was now funding research labs the world over with billions of dollars, plus universities and direct grants to scientists. He was also investing heavily in vaccine companies.</p>
<p>Early on in the pandemic, to get a sense of Gates’s views, I watched his TED talks. I began to realize something astonishing. He knew much less than anyone could discover by reading a book on cell biology from Amazon. He couldn’t even give a basic 9th-grade-level explanation of viruses and their interaction with the human body. And yet here he was lecturing the world about the coming pathogen and what should be done about it. His answer is always the same: more surveillance, more control, more technology.</p>
<p>Once you understand the simplicity of his core confusions, everything else he says makes sense from his point of view. He seems forever stuck in the fallacy that the human being is a cog in a massive machine called society that cries out for his managerial and technological leadership to improve to the point of operational perfection.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>People like Gates genuinely think their “management expertise” is all that society needs. Working in the tech industry, I see this sort of arrogance all the time. Every half way decent programmer thinks he (and it’s almost always a he) can solve every problem in the world.</p>
<h2 id="how-this-happened-schismogenesis">How this happened: schismogenesis</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>One important factor would seem to be the gradual division of human societies into what are sometimes referred to as ‘culture areas’, that is, the process by which neighbouring groups began defining themselves against each other and, typically, exaggerating their differences. Identity came to be seen as a value in itself, setting in motion processes of cultural schismogenesis.<br /><br />
— <em>The Dawn of Everything</em>, Graeber and Wengrow</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One’s response to <span class="small-caps">Sars-Cov-2</span> became an easy way to mark yourself as either part of the elite and right thinking people or as a Girardian scapegoat for all the problems in the world.</p>
<p>It didn’t help that some truly odious politicians took questionable early positions on the pandemic. This sealed the fate of the rest of us: in order to show that you’re not one of them, you have to go overboard in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>Had a certain loudmouthed American politician taken an early position of extreme lockdowns, the anti-wrongthink crowd would likely have been fighting to keep schools open and pointing out that cloth masks don’t actually do anything.</p>
<p>This can all be explained with basic mimetics, scapegoating and schismogenesis.</p>
<h2 id="the-aftermath">The aftermath</h2>
<p>All this goes to show that Western Consensus Thinking isn’t some mere background noise. It’s having a profound impact on our daily lives. It’s not some sappy positivity, can do spirit and a pinch of annoying self help—belief in eternal process and the solvability of every problem with technology is a disaster.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>The first claim is taken from <a href="https://twitter.com/prof_freedom/status/1473635587299151877?s=20">data provided by <em>the Economist</em></a> while the second claim is straight from t<a href="https://ianmsc.substack.com/p/a-new-world-health-organization-report">he WHO as analyzed here</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>For example see <a href="https://derekkedziora.com/blog/5-daily-reflections">Buddhism’s five daily reflections</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Derek KedzioraBackground I’ve previously written about Western Consensus Thinking. Here’s a short recap: the prevailing mode of thought in developed nations, in fact the only officially sanctioned philosophy-religion, is a sort of “end of history”, all problems have been solved mix of unlimited development.The Star Wars periphery2022-05-14T13:00:00+02:002022-05-14T13:00:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/star-wars-periphery<p>I’ve finished watching all the major Star Wars productions outside of the Skywalker Saga, and I have to say there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in them. I’m talking about: <em>Rouge One</em>, <em>Solo</em>, <em>the Mandalorian</em> and <em>Boba Fett</em>.</p>
<p>Outside of the galactic core, it seems like a lot of people didn’t really care much about the Empire, Republic, Rebels or even know what the Jedi were.</p>
<p>The motivations of those on the side of the Empire were often more complex than cartoonish evil. You have cases of social lift through the imperial bureaucracy, lack of better options to genuine belief that the Empire offered a sort <em>Pax Romana</em> bringing order, stability and prosperity. This is summed up in <a href="https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/05/star-wars-the-empire-was-right.html"><em>the Empire was Right</em></a>.</p>
<p>These arguments aren’t unlike the the apologists for European colonialism. “Well yes, it was bad, but…hospitals, schools, roads.”</p>
<p>The thing is, authoritarian governments are often popular. While it’s easy to mock fictional characters for siding with evil, we all love cheap consumer goods, energy supplied by dubious governments and the massive military-industrial complex that protects global trade. For those in the galactic core, turning a blind eye to the excesses of the Empire is easy when their entire lifestyle depends on the spoils of imperialism.</p>
<p>For those on the periphery, things are more complicated. The Empire is rightly despised, but perhaps the only thing worse than the Empire is life without the Empire.</p>
<p><em>The Mandalorian</em> and <em>Boba Fett</em> explore this world, and I see a lot of echos of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Empire brought initial euphoria which quickly turned to dread as crime bosses moved in to fill the power vacuum. Some of these crime bosses and former Imperials tried to turn legitimate, with mix results. There were Imperial hold outs and true believers fighting for nostalgia of the Empire. The new, supposedly democratic replacement for the Empire was nice in theory, but left a lot to be desired in practice.</p>
<p>Decolonialization is a messy process. Early democracy requires dealing with a lot of unsavory characters. The war lasts a lot longer than the end of the big battles.</p>
<p>That’s why I like the non-Skywalker Saga Star Wars. The periphery is rich with local identities, “outdated” religions and struggles that don’t neatly fit into the good vs. evil paradigm of the Jedi worldview.</p>Derek KedzioraI’ve finished watching all the major Star Wars productions outside of the Skywalker Saga, and I have to say there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in them. I’m talking about: Rouge One, Solo, the Mandalorian and Boba Fett.Western Consensus Thinking2022-05-04T21:35:00+02:002022-05-04T21:35:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/western-consensus-thinking<p>As I’ve recently been thinking about <a href="https://derekkedziora.com/blog/timeless-tales">Tolkien</a> and the history of Western thought in general, I’m struck by how genuinely odd, or at least different, the current dominant way of thinking is compared to much of what’s come before us. As the proverbial fish doesn’t notice the water that surrounds it, many of us similarly don’t notice this intellectual background because of just how dominant it is.</p>
<p>For lack of a better term, this is what I’d call Western Consensus Thinking:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Linear progress</strong>. History is unfolding in a linear way with each epoch becoming progressively better, more enlightened.</li>
<li><strong>The end of history.</strong> We’re in a sort post-historical era with all of the major problems solved. The only thing blocking worldwide progress is people not embracing Western thought.</li>
<li><strong>Scientism</strong>. There are no real limits to what we can know via science, and science is the ultimate arbiter of truth and only source of knowledge.</li>
<li><strong>Individualism</strong>. The ultimate good is personal fulfillment and radical individualism. Any spiritual pursuits are relegated to personal improvement rather than ends in and of themselves.</li>
<li><strong>Rationality</strong>. Everyone is rational, rational thought is the only acceptable form of thoughт and anyone not embracing Western thought is a sign of irrationality.</li>
<li><strong>Moralism</strong>. The West is morally superior to any other civilization. This is coupled with a missionary zeal.</li>
<li><strong>Materialism</strong>. There’s no room for anything that can’t be explained via scientism, thus any theists are extreme deists.</li>
</ol>
<p>Think Steven Pinker.</p>
<p>I just don’t find that line of argument that entirely convincing, though. And I never have. I’ve always been fascinated by religion, the limits of knowledge and non-Western thought.</p>
<p>One of the consequences of Western Consensus Thinking is an idealogical monoculture that’s not only stagnant, it’s just plain boring. Genuinely different views are no longer aired publicly. Even seriously challenging the paradigm labels you as a nutter.</p>
<p>Another point is that this is fairly recent. Public intellectuals used to debate, disagree and hold fundamentally different core beliefs. People in the West used to be exposed to differing view points far more often than they are today. In my experience, firm believers in Western Consensus Thinking become genuinely uncomfortable around people who disagree with them.</p>
<p>That’s the first part: What is Western Consensus Thinking. I’m still hashing it out, but I think my outline above is a good starting point.</p>
<p>What I’m working on next:</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://derekkedziora.com/blog/corona-western-consensus-thinking">Why Western Consensus Thinking went into a moral panic over Covid</a></li>
<li>Heretics and the problems of losing ideological diversity</li>
<li>Viable alternatives</li>
</ol>Derek KedzioraAs I’ve recently been thinking about Tolkien and the history of Western thought in general, I’m struck by how genuinely odd, or at least different, the current dominant way of thinking is compared to much of what’s come before us. As the proverbial fish doesn’t notice the water that surrounds it, many of us similarly don’t notice this intellectual background because of just how dominant it is.Since we’re all talking about Twitter2022-04-27T10:03:00+02:002022-04-27T10:03:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/talking-about-twitter<p>I’ll make my own list of likely and less likely improvements I’m hoping for under Twitter’s new management:</p>
<ul>
<li>Make accounts and lists into RSS feeds.</li>
<li>Stop aggressively promoting the non-chronological feed (you have to go to the very non-clickable looking stars and select between poorly named options to get the chronological feed, a.k.a “Latest tweets”, and then have it randomly switch back every few weeks.</li>
<li>Open up the algorithm that is used to promote tweets on the non-chronological feed.</li>
<li>Enough with the partisan bans. The Iranian Ayatollah happily tweets away repulsive things. I don’t follow him because I don’t need “Death to the Jews” in my life. If you don’t like certain <em>democratically elected</em> politicians in the West, block ’em 🤷♂️</li>
<li>I’d also like public block lists that are community run, much like how most popular ad blockers work. It’s entirely transparent, open source and opt in: I could toggle on the lists of people I don’t want to see such as Kremlin trolls, crypto bros, shit posters, etc.</li>
<li>Go all in on inter-operability, almost like Mastodon. That way I can use whatever interface I want, whether it be an RSS reader, dedicated micro blog client (that would work with Twitter, Mastodon, others), the web or Twitter made apps.</li>
<li>The fact that <em>paid</em> third party Twitter clients are so popular is a huge monetization opportunity away from the ad-driven model. Release an official client that’s feature rich and subscription in exchange for no ads. That’s why I pay for Apollo and not a dime to Reddit.</li>
<li>If we finally get the edit button, please add a public version history.</li>
<li>Better data portability would be great: I’d like to be able to download all of my tweets.</li>
<li>Clean up the HTML, especially on threads and replies. Threads should go in a single <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><article></code> tag, also if linking a reply, that reply and the original tweet should also be in <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><article></code> tags. This is important for data portability plus viewing and saving tweets.</li>
<li>The best example of what I’d like to see Twitter become is the site <a href="https://micro.blog">micro.blog</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>That said, I actually like Twitter. It’s a fast and public way to share information that doesn’t have any true competitor for now. There are frivolous tweets — cats in art account 😻 — niche interests, professional content and great journalism. And there’s a whole lot of nonsense that I don’t follow or block so that it never bothers me.</p>
<p>For those hand wringing over a tech billionaire controlling speech by owning Twitter (I think the argument is something like giving people I disagree with free speech is restricting my rights, but I digress), there’s a <a href="https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/big-media-big-conflicts-of-interest">far more serious media monopoly problem</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Today, Comcast, Disney, AT&T, Sony, Fox, and Paramount Global control 90% of what you watch, read, or listen to. These companies spend millions on lobbying each year to sway legislation in their favor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a much deeper censorship problem with any major Western outlet afraid to run content that isn’t fawning of China. “Mainstream media” routinely <a href="https://taibbi.substack.com/p/a-brief-note-on-the-gentlemens-agreement">hides that guests are lobbyists making paid appearances</a>. Then there are <a href="https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/weathervanes-harmful-covid19-pundits">dubious “experts” just parroting popular talking points</a>.</p>
<p>These are far more serious issues than a certain orange buffoon being allowed to tweet again, which seems to be causing existential dread in some circles right now.</p>
<p>Sometimes people openly say what they mean, such as <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/why-would-elon-musk-want-to-buy-twitter">this New Yorker piece</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The world’s richest man seems intent on preserving Twitter as a means for himself and others to continue influencing vast audiences without interference.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How horrendous that the filtering class, which has gotten so many things flat out wrong over the past few years, isn’t allowed to control every single bit of speech!</p>Derek KedzioraI’ll make my own list of likely and less likely improvements I’m hoping for under Twitter’s new management:Timeless tales2022-04-10T12:30:00+02:002022-04-10T12:30:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/timeless-tales<p>I was in 6th grade when I first read Tolkien. I watch the movies every year, many quotes and themes often come back to me.</p>
<p>This is what a timeless work of literature is. The outlines of Tolkien’s world began to take form a century ago, yet the story is as relevant today as when it was written. That’s the power of <em>mythos</em>.</p>
<p>Tolkien’s oeuvre is a collection of Northern European mythology distilled into a more modernized form. And that’s precisely why it’s timeless. <em>Mythos</em> speaks of the battle of good vs. evil, both accepting and resisting fate and finding meaning beyond ourselves. The question of evil dominates his work — where does it come from, is it absolute, can it be redeemed? Each person, each generation has to struggle with these questions for themselves. And that’s what powerful <em>mythos</em> does.</p>
<p>The woke internet doesn’t like Tolkien. His books don’t have complex female characters — although most of the male characters are also mere archetypes. There are accusations of racism since the “good guys” inevitably resemble the English whereas many of the forces of evil are not white. There are no transgender, gay or other social groupings that became popular only in recent years. A bit of searching shows that these criticisms aren’t hard to find.</p>
<p>I find this whole discource indicative of the shallowness of the current criticism of the past. The woke crowd can only understand the most literal and concrete reading of anything, with a narrow literalism that rivals only Fundamentalist Protestants.</p>
<p>Tolkien’s ideal world is a vast tapestry of different cultures, peoples, languages all living in harmony and mutual respect. The lust for power and dominance is the root of violence and evil. The highest good is to serve others and protect the weak.</p>
<p>I genuinely find it odd that someone is unable to read these themes, written in the guise of much older Northern European mythology, and not apply the universal values to our times, with out own issues. One does have to look hard to find those lusting for power attacking the vulnerable, sowing discord and destroying a beautiful multicultural tapestry with a cruel monoculture.</p>
<p>Of course, each generation also needs to retell the old myths in their own way. I’d rather see the effort invested in attacking the past put into creating something new that will stand the test of time.</p>Derek KedzioraI was in 6th grade when I first read Tolkien. I watch the movies every year, many quotes and themes often come back to me.Techniques and philosophy2022-04-03T09:51:00+02:002022-04-03T09:51:00+02:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/techniqes-and-philosophy<p>I’m come to believe that the actual philosophical foundation of a person has little to do with whether they identify as Buddhist, Stoic, Christian or something similar. Most of us born in the West are materialists, have notions of justice formed by Christianity and Roman law, and liberal values largely stemming from the Enlightenment. These assumptions are so taken for granted that they’re never discussed.</p>
<p>A remark about James Stockdale of Stoic fame got me thinking about this. Massimo Pigliucci writes of the <a href="https://medium.com/stoicism-philosophy-as-a-way-of-life/toicism-broicism-and-stoicism-part-iii-stoicism-and-the-military-75d25a869eed">heavy militarism within the modern Stoic revival</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is no question that Stoic techniques helped Stockdale, and many others, immensely. But — as I have already stressed in the first installment of this series — there is a big difference between the techniques and the philosophy. Just because you meditate, it doesn’t mean you are a Buddhist. To be the latter you have to buy into the philosophy, beginning with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths">Four Noble Truths</a> and the consequent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path">Noble Eightfold Path</a>.</p>
<p>I will submit that Stockdale used Epictetus’ techniques, but did not internalize his philosophy. The best piece of evidence for this claim is what happened on August 4, 1964 and thereafter…</p>
<p>Stockdale did not act Stoically or honorably, in this particular instance. The above amounts to say that he knew that Johnson had started Vietnam on false pretenses. Not only he said nothing, he went along with the charade, and was in fact fearful of giving up this embarrassing piece of intelligence during his captivity. Do we really think that Epictetus would have acted in such fashion?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To clean up Pigliucci’s point a bit:</p>
<ul>
<li>Stockade knew the entire Vietnam War was based on a massive American lie</li>
<li>He had no qualms about going into combat and killing people in the service of that lie</li>
<li>Stockdale used Stoic techniques to endure years of torture, but that doesn’t mean he was a Stoic in a deeper, philosophical sense</li>
<li>A philosophical Stoic would have resigned as an officer, refused to have fight in Vietnam</li>
</ul>
<p>I understand that the weak points of this argument, that in hindsight the reality of the Vietnam war is much clearer to us than it would have been to Stockdale and that this flirts with the true Scotsman fallacy.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there’s an unavoidable and uncomfortable point that still stands. The philosophy of the ancient Stoics, Buddhists or Christians may simply be too remote for us to do anything beyond aping a few techniques and rituals.</p>
<p>You might wonder why any of this matters, isn’t it a game of semantics to quibble wether the modern Stoic revival, or mindfulness movement, is about philosophy or cognitive techniques? But there’s a question that’s even more fundamental to that: What’s the philosophy that we hold that’s <em>blocking</em> us from being able to go beyond aping and fully accept a different philosophy?</p>
<p>Most Westerners tend to think that our nameless philosophy is some sort of post-historical, neutral and inevitable bit of science that any properly educated and advanced mind would hold. I don’t think this is the case.</p>
<p>Not having a name for this, not having a set of tenants makes it much harder to challenge the basic assumptions most of us hold. This also makes it impossible to have any meaningful dialogue with someone from outside of the Western philosophical system.</p>
<p>Going deeper into the “so what”: I’m writing this on the day after the uncovering of what appear to be massive Russian war crimes in Bucha. Those of us who have lived on the border West and the “Russian world” are not surprised.</p>
<p>The actions of Russian troops follow the internal logic of the “Russian world”, but leaders in the West seem to think that the average Russian operates with the same basic philosophical assumptions as the average European. They don’t. This is the problem of assuming the Western view is neutral and inevitable with enough development and education. Any ceasefire based on this assumption is the road to another Aleppo, Mariupol or Grozny.</p>
<p>Hence rooting out our baseline cultural assumptions isn’t an exercise in navel gazing. It’s the first step in having <em>any</em> meaningful interaction with the outside world.</p>Derek KedzioraI’m come to believe that the actual philosophical foundation of a person has little to do with whether they identify as Buddhist, Stoic, Christian or something similar. Most of us born in the West are materialists, have notions of justice formed by Christianity and Roman law, and liberal values largely stemming from the Enlightenment. These assumptions are so taken for granted that they’re never discussed.Audience lock in2022-03-17T20:25:00+01:002022-03-17T20:25:00+01:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/audience-lock-in<p>Switching from advertisements to subscription revenue was supposed to bolster the New York Times’ independence and improve the quality of their journalism. I’d argue the exact opposite has happened. Now the paper is increasingly partisan and beholden to printing what subscribers want instead of leading to more objective editorial decisions.</p>
<p><a href="https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/no-news?s=r">Others have noticed the decline</a>. The Times of a decade ago was a decidedly different publication.</p>
<p>The same phenomenon is happing with “independent” journalists that are paid directly by their readers via Substack, Patreon, etc.</p>
<p>Let’s take Michael Tracey.</p>
<ul>
<li>He had great reports on <a href="https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-ugly-truth-about-the-blm-protests/">the aftermath of BLM riots on poor communities</a>: well off whites instigated violence that primary hurt poorer people of color.</li>
<li>There’s was something <a href="https://mtracey.substack.com/p/what-the-media-hasnt-told-you-about">fishy about the Cuomo thing</a>. Turns out it was likely a political hit.</li>
<li>Lots of criticism of Covid non-sense along the lines of mask-loving politicians not following their own rules and the creeping authoritarianism at universities.</li>
</ul>
<p>He’s built up a paying audience that’s partisan, even tribal, in demanding that any mainstream position <em>must</em> be wrong. Thus Tracey had no choice to go all in on attacking Ukraine. Had he chosen to say that brutally attacking a neighbor, forcing millions of refugees across the border and killing thousands is, well, bad and that Russia solely to blame, he’d have lost his audience.</p>
<p>There’s an argument to be made about what level of involvement the US and EU should have. That’s not what Michael Tracey is arguing. I’ll let him speak for himself:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Let it be recorded for posterity that the world’s number one lobbyist for World War III has also been christened the world’s number one hero</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When you look at the <a href="https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1503877118555533318">original tweet</a>, he’s talking about Zelensky — not the man who started an unprovoked full-scale war in Ukraine, is propping up a dictator in Syria and is sitting on frozen conflicts in three other countries.</p>
<p>Zelensky’s crime, in the eyes of Tracey and his ilk, is wanting his country to survive this war and continue to exist. Zelensky is a war monger for not immediately acquiescing to every single Russian demand.</p>
<p>Let’s not forget that Zelensky was elected in free and fair elections. European integration was broadly popular <em>before</em> the war, now support for joining <span class="small-caps">NATO</span> and the <span class="small-caps">EU</span> are nearly unanimous. Thus the will of 40 million people in a democratic country is meaningless, they just need to listen to tyrant with bigger guns.</p>
<p>Tracey’s reporting on this, from Poland no less, is a bit asinine. He doesn’t speak any of the local languages, has no in-depth knowledge of the region. He’s a <a href="https://derekkedziora.com/blog/imperialism-of-chomsky">chomskian imperialist</a>.</p>
<p>That leaves two options for Tracey, Greenwald, et al.:</p>
<ol>
<li>They’re idiots</li>
<li>They’re not arguing in good faith</li>
</ol>
<p>I’ve seen little to demonstrate that Tracey is an idiot. On the contrary, his writing shows deep reflection and thoughtfulness.</p>
<p>Coming back to where I started, the New York Times became less independent after relying on their subscribers rather than advertisers for support. American political tribes are polarized and will cancel their subscriptions if you don’t publish exactly what they want to read.</p>
<p>Sometimes the contrarians are right, but basing an entire ideology on being a contrarian is a surefire way to end up being nothing more than a horse’s ass.</p>Derek KedzioraSwitching from advertisements to subscription revenue was supposed to bolster the New York Times’ independence and improve the quality of their journalism. I’d argue the exact opposite has happened. Now the paper is increasingly partisan and beholden to printing what subscribers want instead of leading to more objective editorial decisions.The imperialism of Chomsky2022-03-16T20:50:00+01:002022-03-16T20:50:00+01:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/imperialism-of-chomsky<p>As the specter of war has descended on Europe, the propagandists have come out in force. The far-left, whom I admire for many of their domestic positions, have been quick to blame everyone except those who are actually killing thousands of innocent civilians.</p>
<p>This <a href="https://newlinesmag.com/review/chomsky-is-no-friend-of-the-syrian-re">critique of Chomsky’s position on Syria</a> is equally relevant to Ukraine and well worth a read. While about Chomsky specifically, the criticisms are equally valid of the far left in general, such as Glen Greenwald or Michael Tracey.</p>
<p>Let’s take a look at some of the main points.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Chomsky’s] scattered comments reveal that he views the Syrian struggle — as with every other struggle — solely through the frame of American imperialism. He is thus blind to the specificities of Syria’s politics, society, economy and history. What’s more, his perception of America’s role has developed from a provincial Americentrism to a sort of theology, where the U.S. occupies the place of God, albeit a malign one, the only mover and shaker.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The irony is that many of those who decry “yankee imperialism” can only view the world through the lens of domestic politics in the US. This is equally true of the Chomsky types and mainstream American politicians.</p>
<p>This war is either Trump or Biden’s fault. Nobody outside of the US has any meaningful agency.</p>
<p>The US domestic politics thing is an odd thing. For all the clamor of Trump being a Russian agent, Putin has invaded Ukraine twice while Biden has been in the White House. More likely than not, the US president was simply irrelevant to Putin. Or Trump as so genuinely unpredictable, that Putin feared escalation. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure, but I’d guess Putin simply didn’t care who the US president was.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Chomsky’s Americentric perspective tends systematically to minimize the crimes of states that are opposed to the U.S. In a recent interview published in DAWN in January 2022, he said: “You can hardly accuse Iran of illegal or criminal behavior by supporting the [United Nations’] recognized government” of Syria. Supporting a regime that Chomsky himself happens to describe as “monstrous” is not criminal or illegal, he insists. He finds nothing illegal about supporting a regime that denies its subjects any rights, and he thinks it would be illegal to punish that same regime for killing over 1,400 of its citizens with chemical weapons in a clear breach of international law. He said this to Independent Global News in September 2013.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The strange silence from Snowden and Assange continues. There’s no doubt that the US has done absolutely awful things. The American war machine is horrendous. Yet of the great powers — America, Russia and China, it’s hard to see the US as anything but the most benevolent, by far.</p>
<p>The war in Ukraine is one of the most white and black conflicts in recent memory. The Greenwald types simply can’t operate outside of the prism that the US isn’t the worst actor in the world.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is not surprising that Syrians are not represented in his comments on Syria. Chomsky never refers to a Syrian, or quotes one, or even mentions a Westerner who supports the Syrian cause. His sources are the likes of Patrick Cockburn, who considers the regime a lesser evil, and possibly the late Robert Fisk, the British journalist who gave voice to sectarian killers like Jamil Hassan, the head of the notorious air force intelligence, and Suheil Hassan, the leader of the equally notorious Tiger Forces, but never to people critical of the chemical regime. All three share a “high politics” perspective centered on “recognized governments” — Russia, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia — as well as jihadists and American imperialism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This has been the most striking absence in most of the far left’s coverage of the war: zero Ukrainian voices. The fact that Ukrainians overwhelmingly don’t want to live under Russian rule and are openly choosing to join the West as part of their decolonization is simply impossible to comprehend.</p>
<p>That the majority of Ukrainians want to join <span class="small-caps">NATO</span> is irrelevant to them. America is evil, therefore Russia has to be right. Any Ukrainian that says otherwise is brainwashed, on Washington’s payroll or whatever.</p>
<p>I don’t think Greenwald or Tulsi Gabbard should be called traitors. I don’t think they should be “canceled”. Their opinions matter, and it’s always important to have a robust dissenting view in society.</p>
<p>On domestic matters, I mostly agree with their positions. They were right on Iraq and Afghanistan. There are valid points to be made about whether the US is being cautious enough to not come into a direct conflict with Russian, whether in Syria or Ukraine.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Greenwald is an American imperialist in the mold of Chomsky. Both are willing to believe any old tinpot dictator over the Western alliance, even as millions of Ukrainians and Syrians face daily war crimes from Putin’s henchmen.</p>
<p>Diversity of opinions is essential, as is the right to be wrong. Chomsky’s idea of manufactured consent is central to how I view the media and politics. But that doesn’t mean I have to go all in on Chomsky-ism. Composite and complex views across a variety of positions are becoming more rare as the media wants to place us in homogeneous and polarized camps. I’m using this is as a reminder to be wary of joining any camp.</p>Derek KedzioraAs the specter of war has descended on Europe, the propagandists have come out in force. The far-left, whom I admire for many of their domestic positions, have been quick to blame everyone except those who are actually killing thousands of innocent civilians.Theater of the absurd2022-02-19T16:50:00+01:002022-02-19T16:50:00+01:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/theater-of-the-absurd<p>Russian media and propagandists have started pushing the same, tired tale of an ongoing “genocide” of the Russian-speaking population in Eastern Ukraine. It’s rather obviously false; one need only do a little digging or walk around predominately Russian-speaking Kyiv to realize this narrative has no basis in reality.</p>
<p>I’m not particularly interested in hashing out propaganda and refuting it. Once upon a time, back in the Maidan era, I dutifully shared well-sourced refutations, long before fake news was in the lexicon of most Americans. The problem with this approach is that it’s not based in human psychology. We tend to believe based on tribal allegiances, not cold facts.</p>
<p>The latest beating the war drum makes it feels like the absurdity is intentional. They know it’s rubbish and they know we know it’s rubbish and we know that they know we know it’s rubbish.</p>
<ul>
<li>The videos calling for the evacuation of the DNR and LNR were made two days before they were released and uploaded to social media without stripping metadata from the files.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup></li>
<li>The “car bomb” in central Donetsk was laughably fake, they even put it in as cheap of a car as they could possibly find.<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup></li>
<li>Ukraine has spent seven years living with this stalemate, planning an attack on the DNR and LNR with 200k Russian troops sitting on the border would be a bit odd.</li>
</ul>
<p>I could go on, but you get the point. The Kremlin’s narrative isn’t attempting to look realistic.</p>
<p>I wonder if being obviously faked is actually the point. I’d posit that’s there’s some sort of anthropological theory that accepting something obviously false is an important marker of in-group identity. It becomes something akin to a ritual, almost sacramental to accept something obviously not true.</p>
<p>“Not true” is hard to define. It can be something outright false on one extreme to impossible to prove on the other side. This is a wide enough definition to include the foundational myths of most religions and the political lies used to justify killing, say that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States.</p>
<p>Another timely example of this is <span class="small-caps">Covid</span> theater. There’s no way that wearing a mask from the front door of a restaurant to your table, unmasking for an hour to eat, booze and schmooze and then dutifully masking up for the 30-second journey from your table to the door makes a lick of sense. People do it to become part of the in-group.</p>
<p>We’re all primates, and all primates are tribal creatures. If adhering to something not true is how we find our tribe, no amount of rational refutation is going to undo that.</p>
<p>I don’t have an answer of how to deal with “misinformation” beyond giving people something better to believe. Nobody, not even James Randi, is a truly rational person. Some narratives are far less harmful than others though.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>This <a href="https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1494663679534637056">whole thread</a> is illuminating <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1495015587873009667">More Twitter</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Derek KedzioraRussian media and propagandists have started pushing the same, tired tale of an ongoing “genocide” of the Russian-speaking population in Eastern Ukraine. It’s rather obviously false; one need only do a little digging or walk around predominately Russian-speaking Kyiv to realize this narrative has no basis in reality.The temporal limits of knowledge2022-02-06T10:18:00+01:002022-02-06T10:18:00+01:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/temporal-limits-of-knowledge<p>I’ve previously written about the <a href="https://derekkedziora.com/blog/life-around-the-universe-part-2">spacial limits of knowledge</a>: 95% of the universe is unknowable without faster than light travel.</p>
<p>I’m reading Graeber and Wengrow’s <em>the Dawn of Everything</em>, which opens thus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most of human history is irreparably lost to us. Our species, <em>Homo sapiens</em>, has existed for at least 200,000 years, but for most of that time we have next to no idea what was happening. In northern Spain, for instance, at the cave of Altamira, paintings and engravings were created over a period of at least 10,000 years, between around 25,000 and 15,000 <span class="small-caps">BC</span>. Presumably, a lot of dramatic events occurred during this period. We have no way of knowing what most of them were.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The point isn’t so much that we <em>don’t</em> know it’s that we <em>can’t</em> know about the vast majority of humanity’s history. It is completely and irreparably closed to us. Not being able to know something isn’t a thing that scientism or most religions handle very well.</p>
<p>The entire argument is long and fleshed out, but a short summary goes:</p>
<ol>
<li>Our evidence and artifacts from early humanity is scant, quite literally a few bone fragments.</li>
<li>It’s almost certain that what’s been preserved is in no way representative.</li>
<li>Places with better conditions for fossilization and preservation, have saved more fragments of the past — most places on Earth don’t possesses such conditions.</li>
<li>Prehistoric research is expensive, and the fact that more prehistoric sites were found in Europe sooner is merely a function of the fact that European governments have the money to fund archeological research.</li>
</ol>
<p>The result has been a proliferation of just so stories about humanity’s past, and the scientific orthodoxy changing rapidly.</p>
<p>I remember being in school and thinking how weird it was to read fully fleshed out stories about pre-historic evolution based off of finding a single random bone somewhere. Of course questioning this narrative meant you had to be some Bible thumping creationist.</p>
<p>Saying that you don’t know, and that something is likely to always be shrouded in mystery should be a respected position. I’d be willing to bet that my high school textbooks are laughably out of date only a couple of decades on. I’m not opposed to trying to string together a narrative out a few puzzle pieces, just do it with a bit of humility.</p>
<p>This also reminds me of the <a href="https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/why-scientific-studies-are-so-often-wrong-the-streetlight-effect">streetlight effect</a>, namely that you measure what you can observe, not what’s important. This is problematic in a field in which, more likely than not, most of the important evidence is completely lost to history.</p>
<p>One last quote that sums it up nicely:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This canvas of human history is distinctly modern. The renowned theorist of culture W.J.T. Mitchell once remarked that dinosaurs are the quintessential modernist animal, since in Shakespeare’s time no one knew such creatures had ever existed. In a similar way, until quite recently most Christians assumed anything worth knowing about early humans could be found in the Book of Genesis. Up until the early years of the nineteenth century, ‘men of letters’ scientists included — still largely assumed that the universe did not even exist prior to late October, 4004 BC, and that all humans spoke the same language (Hebrew) until the dispersal of humanity, after the fall of the Tower of Babel sixteen centuries later.’</p>
<p>At that time there was as yet no ‘prehistory’. There was only history, even if some of that history was wildly wrong. The term ‘prehistory’ only came into common use after the discoveries at Brixham Cave in Devon in 1858, when stone axes, which could only have been fashioned by humans, were found alongside remains of cave bear, woolly rhinoceros and other extinct species, all together under a sealed casing of rock. This, and subsequent archaeological findings, sparked a complete rethinking of existing evidence. Suddenly, ‘the bottom droppedout of human history.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Future discoveries will make most of what we ‘know’ today look naïve, and we can’t even fathom what we don’t know. Dare I invoke the “unknown unknowns” bit?</p>Derek KedzioraI’ve previously written about the spacial limits of knowledge: 95% of the universe is unknowable without faster than light travel.The truth will set you free2022-01-31T21:35:00+01:002022-01-31T21:35:00+01:00https://derekkedziora.com/blog/the-truth-will-set-you-free<p>Much has been made of late about ‘misinformation’ on a certain podcast. I’m not here to talk about that, at least not directly. There’s been some very good perspectives, including <a href="https://unherd.com/2022/01/we-need-to-talk-about-the-vaccines/">critiques about <em>what</em> was said</a> and not simply whether the individuals involved had the right to say what they did.</p>
<p>What does worry me is the desire to shut down criticism and open discussion. There’s something very theocratic about the whole business: the <em>infallible</em> Pontiff has spoken <em>ex cathedra</em>, the discussion is over.</p>
<p>My experience with the skeptical is that very few believe in lizard people, chips and the mark of the beast. My direct experience, heavy sampling bias admitted, is that skeptics are far more informed than the average person who’s just been skimming the headlines this whole time.</p>
<p>To make a point, <a href="https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/01/vaccine-rules-in-other-countries-threaten-dutch-winter-travel-plans/">here’s a recent article about winter travel plans in the Dutch news</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One man, Luke, who has a skiing holiday in Austria booked, told DutchNews: ‘I’ve literally done everything I was told as soon as I could. I’ve had Janssen, had a booster and had Covid. But I still don’t count as boostered.’</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>In Germany people with a Janssen vaccine alone are classed as unvaccinated, whole those with a booster jab count as fully vaccinated but not boostered.</p>
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<p>Another potential headache for Dutch travellers is that Germany has cut the validity of recovery certificates to 90 days, while in the Netherlands people who test positive have to wait three months to book a booster vaccine.</p>
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<p>This is a mainstream publication and the people here simply want to follow the rules and health advice of their country. Yet doing so could easily get you classified as “unvaccinated” in a neighboring country.</p>
<p>To wit, 3 of the 4 Western vaccines are now no longer offered to everyone in many European countries due to safety concerns, one is so widely considered ineffective that receiving it no longer counts as being vaccinated in some countries, none of the vaccines are considered effective in their original dosage and cloth masks are widely said to be useless by public health authorities.</p>
<p>Depending on when you had posted the above information on social media, you would have been branded an anti-vaxxer, spreading misinformation or an agent of the Kremlin.</p>
<p>When it comes to boosting, some countries are getting ready for a fourth shot; others, such as Norway, are <a href="https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/z7eGaq/ta-dose-tre-eller-satse-paa-smitte-dette-svarer-fhi">questioning whether boosters make sense at all for people under 45</a>. American two-year-olds have to wear masks, Dutch teenagers don’t. The contradictions from actual scientists go on and on.</p>
<p>The one thing to keep in mind in the background to all of this: Sweden, the country that has had the least medical theater in the developed world, had Europe’s <a href="https://twitter.com/prof_freedom/status/1473635587299151877">lowest excess mortality rate</a> in 2021.</p>
<p>All this is to say, that nearly every dogma that’s been held to be sacrosanct in the past two years has turned out to be false — not in the opinion of someone ranting on social media, but by the health agencies of European nations. This should caution anyone wanting to ban misinformation, which apparently simply means what one’s political opponents are saying, given how quickly even the mainstream of accepted facts has changed. Take an even longer timespan, and nearly every single scientific fact will be disproven. Let’s leave the arbitration of truth to the theologians.</p>
<h2 id="the-erosion-of-trust">The erosion of trust</h2>
<p>The lack of humility that many public heath officials have had over the past two years, as well as those screaming about misinformation, has done more to damage trust in public health than any podcast ever could.</p>
<p>Imagine an ancient religious debate where one side claimed the timing of an eclipse would prove God was on their side to the detriment of Ba’al. If that eclipse <em>didn’t</em> happen when predicted, the debate would be over pretty quickly.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the high priests of scientism have done precisely that — it’s not hard to find claims of nearly 100% protection from infection with the mRNA vaccines. Anyone who doubted was an anti-vaxxer. And thus the worshippers of Ba’al won.</p>
<p>Public health authorities have become theologians in many countries. They make dogmatic claims and they threaten damnation if they aren’t obeyed unquestioningly.</p>
<p>Traditionally, public health took a very different approach. Humility wins over the skeptics, pointing out the positives of vaccination does more to increase vaccination rate than threats. Public health thinks long term, even if that means a few short term defeats. Scandinavia has largely followed this approach. Lo and behold, they have incredibly high vaccination rates. The US has government talking heads, up to the President himself, continuously scolding heretics on TV. The vaccination rate remains stubbornly low.</p>
<h2 id="the-clerics-and-the-natives">The clerics and the natives</h2>
<p>Incidentally, I recently started reading <em>the Dawn of Everything</em> by David Grabber and David Wengrow. One of the key points, so far, is that during the first period of extended cultural contact between Europeans and indigenous North Americas, it was the Americans who passed on Enlightenment ideals to the European colonists:</p>
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<p>Equality here is a direct extension of freedom; indeed, is its expression. It also has almost nothing in common with the more familiar (Eurasian) notion of ‘equality before the law’, which is ultimately equality before the sovereign — that is, once again, equality in subjugation. Americans, by contrast, were equal insofar as they equally free to obey or disobey orders as they saw fit. The democratic governance of the Wendat and Five Nations of the Haundenosaunee, which so impressed later European readers, was an expression of the same principle: if no compulsion was allowed, then obviously social coherence as did exist had to be created through reasoned debate, persuasive arguments and the establishment of social consensus.</p>
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<p>It really seems like some countries have gone back to their clerical roots of European culture and are resorting to ecclesiastical authority. There are heretics who aren’t to be debated with or convinced; they are merely to be condemned.</p>
<p>The early Jesuit missionaries were more than a little shocked to find that the peoples of Great Lakes not only had no need for Christianity, they were ready to reject it with rather sound philosophical arguments.</p>
<p>We’re at a similar moment in history. The current ‘clerics’ are convinced that their opponents are morally and mentally deficient. Those that are actually willing to engage in dialogue are likely having the same shock those Jesuits did: what if the <em>savages</em> are actually far more refined than we are?</p>
<h2 id="abortive-attempts">Abortive attempts</h2>
<p>Right wing politicians in the US have been obsessed with abortion since the late 1970s. Curiously enough, they don’t care one iota about reducing the actual number of abortions. That’s easy enough: make birth control easily accessible and provide comprehensive sex education. No, they’ve been obsessed with outlawing abortion itself, which is a surefire way to <em>not</em> reduce the number of abortions.</p>
<p>What’s even more curious is the political left in many countries has taken this very approach to vaccination. Instead of a realistic goal of a high vaccination rate, they’ve chosen a much lower rate in order to cling to an ideal of 100% compliance.</p>
<h2 id="a-call-not-to-arms">A call not to arms</h2>
<p>What I’d like to see happen, although I’m not particularly hopeful, is for a cooling off. The media and politicians stop <em>othering</em> their political opponents, they stop making laws and regulations that are purely punitive under the guise of public health and that the theologians pack their bags. The Liberal values of free speech and an open society are worth far more than scoring short-term political points.</p>Derek KedzioraMuch has been made of late about ‘misinformation’ on a certain podcast. I’m not here to talk about that, at least not directly. There’s been some very good perspectives, including critiques about what was said and not simply whether the individuals involved had the right to say what they did.