Astral Codex Ten

Walter Cronkite

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Walter Cronkite

Article

Walter Cronkite is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 17, 2021 and December 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “if they’d been listening to Walter Cronkite found themselves adding to the avalanche”; “People liked and trusted the President and Walter Cronkite and all the other bipartisan elites because they were American, and fellow warriors in the battle against Communism or terrorism or poverty or Saddam or whatever”; “owl statue (voiced by a recording of Walter Cronkite)“. It most often appears alongside Fox News, George Washington, Iraq.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: September 17, 2021
  • Last seen: December 29, 2022

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.

Book Review: The Revolt Of The Public
September 17, 2021 · Original source
With the beginning of the Internet at the turn of the 21st century, bloggers and social media influencers short-circuited the established hierarchy. America's crimes and failures in Vietnam had percolated slowly and inconsistently through word of mouth, with most people content to believe whatever sanitized version the nightly news told them. But when America had crimes and failures in Iraq, leaked photos of torture in Abu Ghraib spread instantly across the Internet; there was no opportunity for elites in government and media to come to an agreement on how much of it they were going to share or what the narrative should be. The scientific equivalent (Gurri argues) was Climategate, where hackers leaked the emails of top climate scientists and everyone got to see exactly how the sausage got made and decide for themselves whether they trusted it or not. And then there was the 2008 market crash. For the first time, people were able to go on Facebook and the comment sections of their favorite blogs and talk about how everyone involved in finance and government was a crook who needed to be hung from a lamppost. The discussion had a momentum of its own, and people who wouldn't have dared think a heretical thought if they'd been listening to Walter Cronkite found themselves adding to the avalanche.
You could think of this as a mere refinement of Gurri. But it points at a deeper critique. Suppose that US left institutions are able to maintain legitimacy, because US leftists trust them as fellow warriors in the battle against rightism (and vice versa). Why couldn't one make the same argument about the old American institutions? People liked and trusted the President and Walter Cronkite and all the other bipartisan elites because they were American, and fellow warriors in the battle against Communism or terrorism or poverty or Saddam or whatever. If this is true, the change stops looking like the masses suddenly losing faith in the elites and revolting, and more like a stable system of the unified American masses trusting the unified American elites, fissioning into two stable systems of the unified (right/left) masses trusting the unified (right/left) elites. Why did the optimal stable ingroup size change from nation-sized to political-tribe-sized?
Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying
December 29, 2022 · Original source
Although many details of the meeting are secret, we do know that in the opening ceremony each year, a group of torch-bearing hooded figures bring a human effigy to a forty-foot tall owl statue, then set the effigy on fire, while the owl statue (voiced by a recording of Walter Cronkite) promises that with this sacrifice, the attendees have purchased freedom from worldly cares. I swear this is true.
Inline links: I swear this is true