High Modernists

Article

High Modernists is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 29, 2021 and February 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “scary High Modernists”; “Klein traces the issue back to a well-intentioned reaction against eg Robert Moses, the High Modernists”; “reaction against eg Robert Moses, the High Modernists”. It most often appears alongside New York Times, Robert Moses, 80,000 Hours.

Metadata

• Category: Concepts
• Mention count: 2
• Issue count: 2
• First seen: January 29, 2021
• Last seen: February 20, 2021

Appears In

• Contra Weyl On Technocracy
• Ezra Klein On Vetocracy

Related Pages

• • New York Times (2 shared issues)
• • Robert Moses (2 shared issues)
• • 80,000 Hours (1 shared issues)
• • AI alignment problem (1 shared issues)
• • America (1 shared issues)
• • Anand Giridharadas (1 shared issues)
• • Bill Gates (1 shared issues)
• • Biosecurity And Pandemic Preparedness Program (1 shared issues)
• • Brasilia (1 shared issues)
• • California (1 shared issues)
• • climate change (1 shared issues)
• • Congress (1 shared issues)

External Links

• • https://beverlypress.com/2024/05/uptick-in-graffiti-paints-a-bleak-picture/
• • https://biblehub.com/greek/3646.htm
• • https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/ncvs
• • https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/
• • https://what3words.com/guitars.record.caps
• • https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families
• • https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-the-2024-US-presidential-election
• • https://x.com/AppSpartacus

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Contra Weyl On Technocracy

January 29, 2021 · Original source

I want to make it really clear that I'm not saying that technocracy is good and democracy is bad. I'm saying that this is actually a hard problem. It's not a morality play, where you tell ghost stories about scary High Modernists, point vaguely in the direction of Brasilia, say some platitudes about how no system can ever be truly unbiased, and then your work is done. There are actually a bunch of complicated reasons why formal expertise might be more useful in some situations, and local knowledge might be more useful in others.

Ezra Klein On Vetocracy

February 20, 2021 · Original source

Second, why is this happening? Any explanation that focuses too much on national politics must be wrong; it's happening equally at the local and corporate level. Klein traces the issue back to a well-intentioned reaction against eg Robert Moses, the High Modernists, and their tendency to devise grand projects, refuse to consult anyone affected, and bulldoze over anything that stood in their way (especially underprivileged people). Eventually citizens got tired enough of this that they implemented some veto points. Overall there seems to be a story where people were doing something bad, concerned citizens came up with a solution - add more veto points, so somebody has a chance to stop bad things before they happen! - and this became a one-way ratchet where veto points often increase but never decrease. Environmental impact reports, civil liberties groups suing the government over new laws, labor unions forcing terms on companies - all of these are examples of good people trying to prevent bad things in ways that introduce more veto points.

Inline links: High Modernists, refuse to consult anyone affected

Backlinks

• Concepts: H
• Contra Weyl On Technocracy
• Ezra Klein On Vetocracy
• Robert Moses