[HN Gopher] On Priesthoods
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On Priesthoods
Author : feross
Score : 47 points
Date : 2025-01-08 13:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.astralcodexten.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.astralcodexten.com)
| memhole wrote:
| I stopped reading the news a long time ago. After reading this, I
| haven't really put much thought into what would make me return to
| having a regular habit again. Or what would even signal to me
| that I suddenly have something to gain from it?
|
| I there's something to be said about keeping one foot in the
| public sphere while also having a degree of skepticism. The
| difference between Gary Numan and David Bowie.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| This article appears to be a defense of priesthoods and the
| traditional media:
|
| > But I still have basic trust that something in the New York
| Times' non-opinion pages is 99% likely to be factually true -
| probably spun a bit, probably selected from the space of
| possible news articles because it supports the Times' agenda,
| but factually true - in a way I don't believe for random
| YouTubers.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I have a theory that with the decline of religion in the West,
| people replaced what they got from religious ideology with
| political ideology. The sense of belonging and community. The
| sense of certainty in basic tenets. The confidence of being able
| to reliably recite their 'scriptures'. (Which 'scriptures' all
| having been laid down by their prophets.) And they are all guided
| by faith, not necessarily data. They have become quasi-religious
| organizations, and I'm sure in the future, will probably
| crystalize into something fairly overtly similar to what we would
| call religions today.
|
| I guess the point is that you can see some of the same behaviors
| of religious types being evoked in adherents to the various
| political ideologies. To the point of not really even being
| willing to listen to math, or data, or science. There is a very
| real perception among them that the scriptures allow a better
| understanding of nature and the universe than the systems nature
| and the universe provide to aid our understanding. Even more
| worryingly, as the article points out, they will often put forth
| ideologically pure 'domain experts' who can be relied on to give
| explanations grounded more in doctrinal alignment than scientific
| veracity. So we've already reached a point where explanations
| that are in accordance with 'scripture' have become a matter of
| great doctrinal import to these groups, and are being actively
| sought out. I guess by that I mean, the poison has leaked over
| from general society, into the sciences.
|
| I honestly believe that, as these groupings of political
| ideologues coalesce to replace religion more and more, I'd bet
| dollars to donuts that extremism in the future will be fueled
| almost exclusively by these quasi-religious political groupings.
| DanielHB wrote:
| The only ideology that should be unquestioned is human rights.
|
| The one that really pulls my nerve are the hardcore
| libertarians, because they often pretend to be backed by data
| when there is no data or contrary data around. Although I
| mostly lean on libertarianism, hardcore libertarians are
| usually impossible to argue with.
| AdhemarVandamme wrote:
| There's plenty of room for reasonable discussion and
| questions, even about human rights. Are all human rights
| individual rights, or are there collective human rights
| (peoples' rights)? Are there limits to free speech, and if
| so, what are they? Are liberties more fundamental than rights
| that require taxpayer expenditure? Is paid holiday really a
| human right (UDHR art. 30)? Does the expansion of the concept
| of human rights weaken fundamental human rights?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > The only ideology that should be unquestioned is human
| rights.
|
| Why should an ideology that's obviously derivative of
| Christianity be treated as beyond question and not
| Nietzscheanism or Wahhabism?
| graemep wrote:
| I think that is part true, but there are multiple other
| factors. I think one is that the main religion in the west is
| anti-wealth ("eye of a needle", "root of all evil", "give all
| you have to the poor" etc.) and that fits uncomfortably with a
| wealthy society.
|
| > There is a very real perception among them that the
| scriptures allow a better understanding of nature and the
| universe than the systems nature and the universe provide to
| aid our understanding.
|
| That is mostly true in the west of a new variant of
| Christianity - American evangelical Christianity. It only
| really really took off in the 18th century (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism#History ) and
| has gained a lot of ground in recent decades. TO some extent I
| think it is a product of the same culture as political
| ideologies: polarisation and blind loyalty. Like those
| ideologies it originated in the US.
|
| > I'd bet dollars to donuts that extremism in the future will
| be fueled almost exclusively by these quasi-religious political
| groupings.
|
| It is already the case. If you look at the 20th century the
| most extreme violence was fuelled by fascism (secular, wanted
| to replace existing religions, some leaders like Mussolini were
| atheists) and communism (almost always anti-religious and
| persecuted religions).
|
| I think maybe these ideologies opposed religions were because
| religions are rivals for capturing people's values and
| loyalties.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Fascism didn't oppose religions.
| graemep wrote:
| Communism opposed religions in general.
|
| The leader of the Italian fascists was personally an
| atheist.
|
| The Nazis opposed particular religions including
| Christianity - they made multiple attempts to supplant
| Christianity as the major religion of Europe with neo-
| paganism and Positive Christianity. They were not keen on a
| religion founded by a non-violent Jew.
| alephxyz wrote:
| Fascist Italy supported the Catholic Church and made it
| their state religion. Same thing for francoist Spain.
|
| A better example would be the chinese cultural revolution
| and their campaign against the Four Olds.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| This is my belief (heh) as well, in no small part from the
| staggering number of Bay Area "woke" types that turn to _Islam_
| , which holds quite the set of conflicting views on the
| progressive-conservative axis.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| So I'm not muslim but I am a leftist in a conservative
| religious tradition.
|
| The thing you might be missing is that sincerely religious
| people, including converts, don't necessarily "shop around"
| for a religion that aligns with their other beliefs. If you,
| somehow, come to believe that god is the one true god and
| muhammad was his last prophet, then you are going to become
| muslim. You don't have any other authentic choice.
|
| For some beliefs you have options, eg if you believe jesus
| died for our sins but are flexible about the rest there are a
| lot of churches you can sincerely participate in. But if you
| believe in for example apostolic succession culminating with
| the bishop of rome well then you're going to be catholic.
|
| I don't want to get into an evaluation here of who does and
| doesn't convert sincerely, or what are the valid sources of
| these beliefs or whatever. Pretty much every religious person
| has personal beliefs that are in conflict with the teachings
| of the religion. There are a lot of different ways to handle
| that contradiction but it's a fundamental part of the
| experience of belief.
| like_any_other wrote:
| Is the author perhaps overcomplicating the explanation on how
| 'wokeness' captured so many priesthoods, by invoking complex
| memetic virality? E.g. Marxism was very effective at capturing
| priesthoods in China and Russia (e.g. Lysenkoism) because it was
| politically powerful, as well as morally - it was considered
| immoral, even treasonous, to not be communist.
|
| In the same way, modern Western morality is based on anti-racism,
| and wokeness is merely its next logical step.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| The point was that there are too many people like you out in
| society in quasi-religious political groupings that adhere less
| to natural reason and more to ideological 'scriptures'.
| 'Scriptures' like woke-ness, or anti-woke-ness. You're clearly
| the anti-woke-ness jihadi type, but the idea is the same.
|
| You have effectively gone out immediately after reading the
| article and proven the article's larger point. It makes
| responding to you awkward, since you appear to be unaware of
| how your comment validates so many of the article's larger
| implications in a way that you clearly did not intend. So most
| of the people interacting with this thread are just downvoting
| you in the hopes that your comment will disappear. They'd just
| as soon not have that uncomfortable conversation with you where
| they point out that your anti-woke-ness is as cringe as the
| woke-ness you're decrying.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > You have effectively gone out immediately after reading the
| article and proven the article's larger point.
|
| You must misunderstand my position, because I don't really
| disagree with the article overall - it seems plausible to me.
| Just that it uses an over-complicated explanation for one of
| its points.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| Can we apply Ising models used to explain ferromagnetism to how
| opinions get formed in crowds?
| rob_c wrote:
| How about you get off your 17th century witch doctor house and
| admit you're a human following practices that broadly work which
| have been refined and tested by a large group of humans using a
| scientific like model over many years. Done...
|
| And please try to do some actual outreach with children. It helps
| refine what you're talking about into short simple statements vs
| rambling comparisons between Maoist china and the clergy.
|
| Comparing yourself to a priest in a tower turns away many and
| encourages anti-thesim type conversations to start which I think
| is what you're ironically making fun of here. (A lot of very
| vocal people simply don't/won't see that).
|
| And simply put, no I don't have the free time to finish reading
| all of that...
| jerojero wrote:
| I feel like the author has fallen into the trap he describes
| himself.
|
| It seems to me as though the phenomenon of "wokeness" is not well
| characterised through out the piece and instead it is used in a
| "we all know what wokeness is" fashion that actually clashes with
| the way the concept is viewed within the circles he himself is
| criticising.
|
| I think within sociology and political theory there's actually a
| lot of discussion around the concept of "wokeness". What does it
| mean, how does it affect progressive views of the world when it
| comes to diversity and inclusion. It's definitely not a monolith
| and I think treating it as such is disrespectful to other people
| and bad for the public discourse.
|
| In the same vein there seems to be a tacit agreement that
| everything involving Marxism is wrong. There's comments like "in
| the recent years all the sociologist departments have turned
| Marxist" as if that by itself was a condemnation. Although
| personally there's a lot of ideas in Marxism I disagree with, Ive
| really come to appreciate the critical analysis that's done of
| the capitalist mode of production through the Marxist lens.
|
| Inequality in our world is definitely tearing society apart, and
| these concerns can be examined very thoroughly through Marxism.
| It's a framework of analysis that can be used.
|
| So, ultimately, although I agree with the notion of cliques (or
| priesthoods, as he calls them). I think a big part of the
| analysis comes from a very biased perspective that fails at
| trying to comprehend the other's perspective and that's precisely
| something the author points at those he is criticising.
| sdwr wrote:
| I've been frustrated by his writing in the past few years. He
| asks big questions, but is surprisingly small-minded with the
| answers.
|
| Feels like he found a formula for churning out thinkpieces:
|
| - find an interesting topic
|
| - make a simplified model of the issue
|
| - solve the simplified model
|
| - discover reality conflicts with the model (optional)
|
| - ignore reality
|
| - declare victory
| thefaux wrote:
| There is a certain style of libertarian writing, and I
| include the author as well as the mercatus center posse as
| often using this syle, that I find quite off putting. It
| often feels like the primary purpose of most of their writing
| is to show how they are smarter than everyone else. This
| manifests in a writing style that is extremely confident and
| declarative which is an effective mask for the hollowness and
| one sidedness of their ideas.
|
| I'll cherry pick just one example from this article. The
| author in one sentence dismisses the entire field of
| psychoanalysis. Yet I can't help but notice that his entire
| blog sure looks like he is unconsciously carrying out his own
| psychoanalysis in public. You can also see it in the
| grievances against the medical profession where he has to use
| his blog to guard against feelings of inadequacy because he
| didn't get into a top medical school or residency. But he
| gets to play it both ways because the fact that he writes
| these outrageously long, fluff filled pieces, that draw a
| large following he can then use as proof that he is actually
| in fact smarter than the people who previously rejected him.
|
| I have some similar chips on my shoulder so I quickly
| recognize these patterns of behaviors in others. And perhaps
| I am misinterpreting him, but every single time I read one of
| his posts I am left with the main takeaway being that I am
| supposed to be impressed by his intelligence.
|
| Other red flags in this piece include the references to the
| stupidity of the average person (again in implicit contrast
| to his penetrating intellect) as well as the lazy
| generalizations and vacuous statements about amorphous
| concepts such as wokeness along with the bizarre suggestion
| that wokeness somehow conquered most priesthoods even though
| the counterexamples are far, far too long to list. I'll leave
| it with one though: actual priests in the US can hardly be
| said to be woke even though their own sacred texts are far
| more aligned with progressive economics than consumer
| capitalism.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| You're not merely supposed to be impressed by his
| intelligence but in his _virtue_ as a purely rational,
| unbiased mind absolutely free from any corrupting ideology.
|
| He's an insecure like you said and a coward. Too afraid to
| say what he actually believes (or maybe too spiritually
| weak to actually commit to any), he hides his goals and
| motivations behind this pseudo-academic prose style.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I think he just grew up, frankly. I've never had a blog, but
| I'm fairly similar intellectually and dispositionally to
| Scott and have followed him a long time and I've seen the
| same thing happen to me. When I was younger and in school,
| I'd go deep into rabbit holes and investigate them very
| thoroughly, mostly dispassionately, trying to have as little
| bias as possible, maybe come to conclusions, maybe not. But
| having a full-time job I'm reasonably senior in, a family,
| and needing to stick to some regular exercise routine to stay
| functional and healthy as middle age otherwise ravishes me,
| there is simply not the time or mental energy to do those
| things any more.
|
| My reponse has been different, though. I just don't care any
| more. I have had no personal interaction with any person or
| institution that seemed woke in nearly a decade and I have no
| opinion about it, probably because I'm not in school and stay
| off the Internet except for Hacker News every few days. I
| haven't voted in two decades and avoid culture war nonsense.
|
| But Scott is a terminally online person, has built a brand,
| and is being paid lots of money by Substack to keep churning
| out these think pieces. So he has to keep doing it, but he's
| also a middle-aged man running a private psychiatry practice
| with a wife and two young kids. There is no way he has the
| time or mental energy to devote to this stuff that he had 15
| years ago. He has accumulated knowledge and wisdom and is
| still a hell of a writer with a very good understanding of
| how to present statistics to a lay audience, but he's
| probably also forever going to be mentally stuck in 2007 when
| Ron Paul seemed to every professional-managerial class 25
| year-old man in America to be the most intellectual honest,
| exciting thing we'd ever get. He's becoming the poor man's
| version of Andrew Sullivan or Megan McArdle for the kind of
| people who only listen to bands that aren't popular.
| sdwr wrote:
| Suffering from success, DJ Khaled-style! Better to die a
| hero...
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