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Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
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11 Jul, 6 tweets, 2 min read
We've reached some sort of inflection point in our politics where things have stopped meaning anything, and have become in-group signals without any external significance.
Practically no one outside each little clique understands who's getting attacked or supported, or what the dunks even mean.

All the shouters have found product-market fit now. They have their messages down, their followings are primed to mash the retweet button. Everyone stays in their lane. There's little real discussion, just an infinite recursion of hipsterisms.
And that, I think, is the point. We're evolving social defenses against the disruptive insanity of Twitter.

That's why I kind of suspect we're now past the peak of unrest in America. We may see more political chaos, especially if the GOP goes for an election steal in 2024. But I'm going to go ahead and call the peak on the era of grassroots upheaval.
@Peter_Turchin I know we're at the beginning of your predicted interval, but I'm feeling weirdly confident for some reason!

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
12 Jul
1/Today's Substack post is about foreign policy. It's about the looming threat of Cold War 2.

I don't want Cold War 2, and you shouldn't either. Cold wars are bad. But we don't always have good options.

noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-us-didnt…
2/The post was prompted by allegations coming from the Left that the U.S. is trying to start a new cold war with China.

For example, here's the open letter from the Sunrise Movement:
foe.org/wp-content/upl… Image
3/Sunrise and the other groups never specify whether the "anti-China rhetoric" is criticism of China's human rights abuses.

Anyway, here is Bernie Sanders in Foreign Affairs:
foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…
Read 25 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
9 Jul
I need to do a whole running series of stories about the weird encounters I have when I wear my "Free Hong Kong" shirt around San Francisco. Everyone stops me and wants to talk politics.
Today a Greek immigrant real estate developer stopped me to give me a very dadcon lecture about how socialist kids are just lazy, and if you work hard and believe in God, anyone can succeed.
In the middle of his spiel he stopped to say hi to his friend, a Black construction worker who was walking down the street with a boombox blasting Kpop.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
8 Jul
I always thought the story "Cat Person" was not very good, since it doesn't dive into the emotional life of its protagonist/narrator.

But also, it turns out it was a dark distortion of a reality that was much more benign:

slate.com/human-interest…
This, by the way, is why I think "realist" fiction is actually a more fantastical kind of fantasy than the kind with dragons.

In "realist" fiction, the fantasy is how the characters feel and behave. But unlike dragons, people believe this fantasy represents reality.
People will read "Cat Person" and think they now know the dark truth about human relationships. But the real relationship "Cat Person" was based on, while not ideal, was much sweeter and healthier than the dark fantasy depicted in the story.
Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
5 Jul
Interesting! Was just talking about this question with @JvNixon. I think the key is to first redesign the system of scientific credit, and then after that to build an education/funding system around that base.
My view of universities is that while education is an important function, it's also not that hard to get right. But research is also an important function, and is hard to get right. So we need to think more about how to optimize the research component of universities.
Some people are asking "Why combine teaching and research?".

For grad students the answer is very clear:
1) Only profs have the ability to teach and train grad students
2) Profs need grad students to do much of the actual research
Read 10 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
3 Jul
Me: Oil drilling is catching the ocean on fire. Perhaps we should switch to electric cars, so we don't use much oil anymore.

My followers: No, because brake pads will still release pollution. What we need to do is rebuild our entire urban landscape so that
"The real reason we can't switch to electric cars and save the ocean from burning is because then Elon Musk would make even more money", admitted no one ever
If you want a more serious version of this argument, btw, see here:

Read 4 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇 Profile picture
1 Jul
New Pew survey of opinions about China just came out.

Opinions are positive in Singapore and Greece, negative in all other developed countries.

Especially negative are Japan, Sweden, Australia, South Korea, and the U.S.

pewresearch.org/global/2021/06…
Even in countries where people approve of China, most say it doesn't respect the freedoms of its people.
Here are the changes in opinion over time.
Read 4 tweets

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