Systemic Change

Slate Star Codex warns against it, without committing to opposing it. The "system" in question is global capitalism.

It's an interesting and thoughtful post, as usual from this source. Less usual is that it is constructed in the form of a dialogue for large parts of the argument.
Bob: I really do sympathize with you here, of course. It’s hard not to. But I also look back at history and am deeply troubled by what I see. In the 1920s, nearly all the educated, intelligent, evidence-based, pro-science, future-oriented people agreed: the USSR was amazing. Shaw, Wells, Webb. They all thought Stalin was great and we needed a global communist revolution so we could be more like him. If you and I had been alive back then, we’d be having this same conversation, but it would end with both of us agreeing to donate everything we had to the Bolsheviks.

Alice: Okay, so the smart people were wrong once. That doesn’t mean…

Bob: And eugenics.

Alice: Actually…

Bob: ಠ_ಠ

Alice: Fine then. For the sake of argument, the smart people were wrong twice. That still doesn’t…

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

With 881 comments and counting, there's not much I could add that would be useful, even were I uninterruptedly brilliant on the topic. It's a great essay. He does frustrate me because he still doesn't get some aspects of what rank-and-file conservatives are like, but I quibble. He is a liberal who can self-observe and can challenge his own assumptions, God bless him.