The best 15 words

apophenia

People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.

It doesn't need to cover everything in the book, it's just the best 15 words.
It doesn't need to be a quote, it's just the best 15 words.
It doesn't have to be 15 words long, it's just the best "15" words.
It doesn't have to be precisely true, it's just the best 15 words.
It doesn't have to be the main 15 words, it just has to be the best 15 words.
It doesn't have to be the author's 15 words, it just has to be the best 15 words.
Edit: It shouldn't just be a neat quote--the point of the exercise is to struggle to move from a book down to 15 words.

I'll start in the comments below.

(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)

It doesn't need to cover everything in the book, it's just the best 15 words.
It doesn't need to be a quote, it's just the best 15 words.
It doesn't have to be 15 words long, it's just the best "15" words.
It doesn't have to be precisely true, it's just the best 15 words.
It doesn't have to be the main 15 words, it just has to be the best 15 words.
It doesn't have to be the author's 15 words, it just has to be the best 15 words.
Edit: It shouldn't just be a neat quote--the point of the exercise is to struggle to move from a book down to 15 words.

I'll start in the comments below.

(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)

I don't see a distinction; if you think science is that institutionally corrupt, on a scale greater than even Lysenko could have aspired to, you're not functionally different from a postmodernist and have just as little credibility when talking about institutional science

Not necessarily. Moldbug might trust scientific consensus to be correct in areas where politics won't distort it.

i obviously do trust the scientific consensus, but steelmanning, there have been times when politics or culture has interfered with science in half-science half-humanities fields like anthropology. Historically, even biology has been tainted by politics at times, when it comes to sexuality. (I'm not talking about modern evolutionary biology, but historical things such as chalking up female orgasms to "hysteria" and the historical attribution of homosexual behavior in animals as "dominance displays")

That's a devil's advocate though. For the most part, I agree with you.

Look up the word "biotruth" or do some research into the anti-GMO movement and you'll see your leftist buddies are on the front line right now fighting against the very science which might someday make transhumanism possible.

I predict that the liberal iteration of this movement will not gain in strength within our natural lifetimes, and will gradually peter out at some point (although maybe it won't peter out within our natural lifetimes). If for some reason it does not peter out, it will gradually become a conservative movement against the transhumanist liberals.

Historically, it hasn't been the first time lefties have done stupid things. Movements in which Lefties Do Stupid Things have tended to die away gradually (separatist feminism) or are considered crazy fringe groups today (Nation of Islam)

Also (I say this with the awareness that I run the risk of committing "no true liberal") each of these Liberals Being Stupid movements have an aspects which I instinctively associate with conservatism. Nation of Islam and Separatist Feminism favors in-groups over out-groups. Anti-GMO is largely driven by concerns about purity and keeping the status quo. If I didn't know the cultural context surrounding the green-blue affiliations, I would have labeled these to be conservative values.

The point is this: I've got some values. Some of those values pin me down as liberal. When I look at "liberals being stupid" examples, I do not see people who have taken the "liberal values" dial and turned them all the way up higher than I would like. Instead, I see people who have either turned off one or more of my liberal value dials, or added a conservative value into the mix. These people don't feel like current trends extrapolated - rather, they feel like a divergent stream.

When I think about what turning up the "liberal values" dial too high would look like, I think of things that don't hurt anyone but are nevertheless disgusting, and cannot be prevented without somehow imposing authority to restrict personal autonomy. For example, if large segments of society were to start falling into self-pleasure-stimulation feedback cycles, I can imagine a hyper-permissive liberal state which decides that they should be given the autonomy to do so.

Just imagine...the entire human race. Totally functional, with most rational faculties intact, still interacting with the outside world...but constantly in a great mood.

I'd really hate that idea. It's a world I wouldn't fit into at all. But oddly, I can already feel Cthulhu's persuasive tentacles convincing me that as long as the rational faculties do remain intact, it wouldn't be so bad if some people chose to live this way. As long as not everyone chooses it, what is the harm?

(history-politics is outside my domain and I haven't fact-checked so you shouldn't take any specific examples I give at face value)

each of these Liberals Being Stupid movements have an aspects which I instinctively associate with conservatism.

That's a very good point.

When I think about what turning up the "liberal values" dial too high would look like, I think of things that don't hurt anyone but are nevertheless disgusting

We have to start being careful about terminology here. The word "liberal" (at least in the contemporary US political discourse) has two quite distinct meanings. The first (at least historically) meaning is the "classic liberal" o... (read more)

0Moss_Piglet13y

I think the issue here is that to you progressivism is a set of very specific ideals whereas to me it is a set of general-purpose political tactics. We could argue it around in circles forever, so why not cut to the meat of the issue; what would we expect the progressive response to be like if each of us were right? Situation A: Three nationalist groups representing their country's majority begin systemic campaigns of genocide against minority groups whom they resent for their higher social standing and perceived foreignness (in reality, both have lived there for centuries). The German NSDAP targets the Ashkenazim, the Vietnamese Viet Minh targets the Hoa, and the Hutu Akazu targets the Tutsi. What do we expect the modern sensible progressive to feel? If this is a simple question of morality, we could expect that each case would merit strong condemnation and the failure to prevent them as an unforgivable tragedy. If on the other hand Progressivism is simple political expedience, we expect our answers to break along purely practical lines; the NSDAP was a rival and is thus condemned as strongly as possible, the Viet Minh are even now an ally and thus their actions are completely ignored, and the Akazu are of no consequence whatsoever and are thus thought of only within the context of expanding the power of allied NGOs. Situation B: Two men lead attacks on US Federal Government buildings in an attempt to spark a race war which they believed was divinely ordained, failed, and were subsequently executed. John Brown attacked the Federal Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, while Timothy McVeigh attacked the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. In both cases innocents were killed as a result of the attacks, and in both cases their actions hurt their cause in the public mind and encouraged the expansion of paramilitary police forces designed to prevent similar future strikes. If this is a question of humanitarian ideals, you might expect that both would be repudiated for their act

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