A philosophy that justifies being assholes

Hunter of Daily Kos takes apart a new trend (that has lots of features of old trends). He discussed an article in the British site The Telegraph about the “pronatalism” movement sweeping the wealthy tech bros of Silicon Valley. Here is my summary of the movement: Because these people equate their wealth with superiority they assume their genes must also be superior. Therefore they must produce more kids. This philosophy also says that the top problem in the world is not enough kids, without them the world is doomed. Having more kids is more important than climate change and a world so polluted it may soon have trouble sustaining life – problems made worse by too many people. It’s also more important than the proliferation of guns, economic inequality, and wars. Must be nice to have a philosophy that justifies being assholes. Yeah, that’s the summary. Alas, there are many philosophies and religions that justify being assholes. Hunter’s full rant is still a good read. He even notes that with a story this absurd with an internal logic this messy it is hard to tell if the Telegraph reporter is teasing us. BuzzFeed has announced they are shutting down their news department due to a lack of money. So what’s left? Fluff? Clickbait? Sarah Kendzior explains why this is bad news:

BuzzFeed News was one of few outlets to report in depth about transnational organized crime and its ties to government. The type of reporting they were doing a few years ago has essentially vanished, despite the topic's popularity. I wonder what will happen to their archives. Buzzfeed News was targeted by the Mueller probe because its reporters dared to dig deep into institutional corruption - long-term corruption that revealed how awful Mueller was in multiple jobs.

Clyde Haberman, former columnist for the New York Times, tweeted:

Years ago, a stranger came to my NY apartment building wanting to speak to me about a topic he hoped I'd write about. The befuddled doorman let him up. I was leery but I talked to the guy, then saw him to the door. The point is: I didn't shoot him. US gun madness has to stop.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer added:

Most people #onhere support journalism and say it's critical for saving democracy. Here's what no one talks about: Great journalism depends on talking to strangers. And it's becoming impossible to talk to strangers in America

A few days ago a 16 year old black boy name Ralph Yarl went to pick up his twin brothers and knocked on the wrong door. 84 year old Andrew Lester shot Yarl. Thankfully, the boy survived and appears to be healing well. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed that black boys and men appear to whites to be bigger, stronger, and more threatening than they actually are. Lester was sure Yarl was six foot tall, when he’s only 5-foot-8 and weighs only 140 pounds. Tamir Rice was described as a 12-year old in an adult body. Michael Brown was compared to Hulk Hogan. Several studies have shown this consistent bias. As for Lester, Dartagnan wrote:

The New York Times interviewed neighbors and relatives of Lester, who described him as “surly,” sometimes “aggressive, and spen[ding] considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume.” In other words, he seems to be just the type of person—with a hair-trigger temper, just waiting to feel threatened—who one might expect to react violently to the unexpected appearance of a young Black male.

I write a great deal about the social hierarchy, how people are so caught up in their position in the hierarchy they seem to spend all their time oppressing people they think should be lower than themselves. A major part of maintaining the hierarchy is convincing those in the lower levels that their place is how things are supposed to be, that being dumped on by the higher levels is natural. Here’s an attempt at that kind of justification. I’m quite interested in the rebuttals. Yann LeCun, professor at NYU and chief AI scientist at Meta, tweeted to justify that AI won’t dominate humans.

Humans are hardwired by evolution to be a social species with hierarchical structure. This includes hardwired drives for dominance or submission. AI assistants will simply have hardwired drives to submit and not dominate.

Leah McElrath replied:

1) Your assertions are not supported by science. 2) Humans aren’t computers. We are not “wired” but rather have neuroplasticity that enables our adaptation. 3) Cooperation contributed to the rise our species. Civilization dates back to the first healed human femur bone fossil.

Daniel Baryon also replied to LeCun:

This is false. In fact, we have very little in common with species that function on natural hierarchies. Very few mammals do. Our species achieved its success by cooperation and the extension of ethical principles to other members of the species, regardless of prestige.

Peter Gelderloos, who is fighting for a world of care, imagination, and mutual aid, also replied:

We should be immensely worried that the people with the most power to sculpt the social architecture of the next decades promote the same kinds of pseudo-science used to justify slavery and segregation.

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, had a few interesting quotes. Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann of The Atlantic discussed Fox News lies and that the National Enquirer pushed false info while hiding true info in helping the nasty guy gain power. The quote ends with:

Together they have succeeded in polluting the marketplace of ideas in which democratic politics is supposed to thrive.

Dworkin quoted James Poniewozik of NYT, who discussed Fox News and Tucker Carlson, who said, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”

Say this for Carlson, he can pack a lot into a few words. There’s an implicit agreement here: Whether or not you, the viewer, are correct in the technical sense, you are right in the larger sense. You are the authentic voice of this country. So you deserve to feel right about your beliefs, about your enemies, about how you have been cheated. You deserve — through whatever combination of insinuation or hypotheticals or myths — to have the space to keep believing it, without us making that harder. All this, trial or no trial, makes clear what Fox News really is. It’s a service provider. That service is the maintenance of a reality bubble and the deference to beliefs that Fox’s hosts helped shape.

After that quote Dworkin added (addressing my annoyance that Dominion didn’t force more accountability onto Fox News):

The other side of the coin is that Dominion, which settled their libel suit for $787.5 million, is also corporation. Corporations are not people, my friend. They are not activists, and their job is to make money, not stick it to Fox. That’s our job.

Dworkin finally quoted Oliver Willis on Substack who discussed the conservative believe that Gen Z is rejecting them because the “radical indoctrination” by the left.

They think that the Borg-like Boogeyman creature they caricature as “the left” has burrowed its way into young minds, via high school and college teachers and professors who are purportedly preaching Karl Marx like biblical heretics, pop culture icons like Cardi B who are imparting life lessons about wet genitals, and TikTok videos that are supposedly making everyday teens decide to become transgender. As always, the Left of the right’s fevered nightmares are impressive and terrifying. Of course, this is all nonsense. What is really happening in America is that young Americans are lashing out at the nightmares built by years of conservative policy and rhetoric, because those toxic ideas are making their lives worse.