horseshoe theory
Article
horseshoe theory is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 14, 2021 and January 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “You might have heard of the horseshoe theory in political science”; “Is this some kind of weird horseshoe theory situation where the maximally socialist response overlaps with the maximally libertarian one?“. It most often appears alongside China, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, Alinea.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: May 14, 2021
- Last seen: January 19, 2022
Appears In
Related Pages
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- China (2 shared issues)
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- Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (1 shared issues)
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- Alinea (1 shared issues)
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- Alp Blossom (1 shared issues)
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- Alpha Tolman (1 shared issues)
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- Amazon (1 shared issues)
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- American Gaming Association (1 shared issues)
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- Amish (1 shared issues)
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- Askinosie (1 shared issues)
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- Astralcodexten Com (1 shared issues)
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- Australia (1 shared issues)
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- Australian Gambling Research Center (1 shared issues)
External Links
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.
You might have heard of the horseshoe theory in political science, which claims that the far-left and far-right are much closer to each other than either is to the center of the political spectrum. Imagine a similar horseshoe for states of existence. In the center, you have daily life: activities like eating, cleaning, and working. On the right, you have altered states of existence where time and individuality cease to matter: Csikszentmihalyi’s flow, meditative trances, or just intense absorption in interesting work. On the left then, you would get similar altered states of existence, but those which are destructive instead of creative, like the zone machine gamblers desperately seek.
Inline links: horseshoe theory, flow
This was another place where I found myself confused about why the US system works so badly. What exactly is “market price” for a drug in the US? Consumers don’t pay for drugs directly; only insurance companies pay for drugs. In Germany, all the insurance companies get together and form a Drug Price Bargaining Group, which bargains with drug companies the same way a government would. Why don’t insurance companies do that in America? Is the problem just that this would be a monopoly (technically a monopsony, I guess?) Is only antitrust law preventing them from trying this? Is this some kind of weird horseshoe theory situation where the maximally socialist response overlaps with the maximally libertarian one?
Inline links: problem