Astral Codex Ten

@slatestarcodex

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@slatestarcodex

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@slatestarcodex is a recurring Instagram account in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 29, 2021 and August 08, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “I think @slatestarcodex’s insistence on breaking apart mechanisms v. judgement”; “As @slatestarcodex says”; “Okay so finally a bonus 3). @slatestarcodex says this”. It most often appears alongside Scott, Biden, Overton Window.

Metadata

  • Category: Instagram Accounts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: January 29, 2021
  • Last seen: August 08, 2024

Appears In

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.

Weyl Contra Me On Technocracy
January 29, 2021 · Original source
1. Let me start with concessions. There are many points where @slatestarcodex correctly highlights various areas where my grasp of beliefs and facts are limited or wrong, especially in the depth of my grasp of the views of the rationalist community. I freely admit that there are serious limits to how much I've been able to research the views of people in this community and I certainly hope they are not as I characterized them, though as I will point out below many elements of Scott's response confirm my concerns.
4. Furthermore, the positive examples of technocracy @slatestarcodex refers to are...surprising. Two examples. To call school desegregation a technocratic invention papers over decades of community activism for desegregation. Perhaps even more dramatically looking at the coronavirus as an example of the success of technocracy runs against pretty much any reasonable reading of the international data. Danielle Allen and I have a piece coming out on this (we were both deeply involved in developing a response plan here https://ethics.harvard.edu/Covid-Roadmap that significantly influenced now-President Biden's response), but perhaps the sharpest point here is that the country, Taiwan, which performed best in the virus was led in part by Audrey Tang who moved back to Taiwan after being immersed in and repulsed by the rationalist movement in Silicon Valley - see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-minister-hacked-the-pandemic/) and dedicated herself to doing things differently in Taiwan (see her amazing poetic job description here:
Inline links: https://ethics.harvard.edu/Covid-Roadmap, https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-minister-hacked-the-pandemic/
6. I think @slatestarcodex's insistence on breaking apart mechanisms v. judgement from top-down v. bottom-up misses a key part of the argument and of what sociologists of science have long said. There is no unitary thing called "science" or "mechanism". There are a variety of disciplines of information processing across academic fields, across cultures, across communities with in a culture, etc. "Mechanism" is just how one group of people seeks to claim that their mode of reasoning is uniquely unbiased and unaccountable to other ways of processing information. It is precisely this move, the unwillingness to think, speak or justify oneself on terms acceptable to those who think differently from you, that his response manifests and that concerns me.
Highlights From The Comments On Orban
November 11, 2021 · Original source
Lyman Stone on Twitter: @slatestarcodex piece: astralcodexten.substack.com/p/dictator-boo…\n\nOverall, I agree with a lot of his assessment of Orban. But I want to quibble on two points:\n\n1) The relationship between dictatorship and democracy\n2) \"Why admire Orban?\"","username":"lymanstoneky","name":"Lyman Stone 石來民 ??????","profile_image_url":"","date":"Fri Nov 05 19:16:25 +0000 2021","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":0,"retweet_count":0,"like_count":7,"impression_count":0,"expanded_url":{"url":"https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/dictator-book-club-orban","image":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/112ea78f-c29c-47a5-b175-fa943b33e310_1200x800.jpeg","title":"Dictator Book Club: Orban","description":"...","domain":"astralcodexten.substack.com"},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":false}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM"> I won’t make you read it all in tweet format. He continues:
Inline links: Lyman Stone
His crude poll share was about 60% before the 2010 election, but given the threshold effects, he'd likely have ended up at a supermajority under almost any system. And as @slatestarcodex [says], a lot of the initiatives that the EU most despises under Orban are initiatives that *everyone agrees* have supermajority public support among Hungarian voters.
Inline links: @slatestarcodex
Moreover, I agree with @slatestarcodex that if public opinion turned in Hungary, Orban would probably turn on a dime too. The dude loves power. But that should inform our read of what's going on in Hungary. *Hungarians wanted* a right-nationalist authoritarian leader, *and so they voted for one*, and the electorate has *wanted* recurrent intensifications of that regime. So is it a dictatorship? Or is it a democracy?
Inline links: @slatestarcodex
Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche
August 08, 2024 · Original source
A key factor I don't think @slatestarcodex sufficiently addresses — even if he touches on it at points — is the way strong collective identities have been the way of squaring high celebration of power and excellence with affirmation of low achievers. When there are well-defined, bounded, and honoured groups, within which all group members have common, secure, and meaningful belonging, a group can encourage high achievement in its members, while also allowing all members, even the lowliest, to share in the glory. The all-important requirement for the high agency group members is that they work for the benefit and glory of the group, not merely their own.
naraburns writes:
Inline links: writes
I think Orders - voluntary association groups that place strict demands on their members - are a surprisingly under-explored tool. But maybe their very rarity suggests there’s some reason they won’t work.
Inline links: are a surprisingly under-explored tool