Hacker News Reader

Comment by scop | Hacker News Reader

Eric Weinstein had a great segment on his Portal podcast about this very thing. I can't recall the interview (maybe with Balaji?), but if it comes to me I'll comment it. The gist was that he was talking about Covid and he observed that the guest had to spend an inordinate amount of time saying what he was not saying, to the point of being absurd. He had to constantly preface his comments with a long series of statements of disassociation. "Now I'm not saying X, or Y, and I'm definitely not a P, and I don't agree with everything Z said but..." How can you have a conversation if so much time is spent not saying things?

View on HN

> How can you have a conversation if so much time is spent not saying things?

Slowly, in carefully written form reviewed by people with the right training.

Unfortunately, in the middle of an emergency with the bodies of voting-aged people piling up... Not at all.

(Although, I guess not going to the other extreme of "having this conversation in bits of 140 characters among strangers with advertisers at each corner" did not help much.)

watching eric go through his arc of disillusionment in public, despite all his sincerity and hopefulness and intelligence was really sobering for me.

A lot of us have this inner "oh if only I was a better speaker / smarter / worked on my persuasion skills ..."

It's just not how power works. It's not how society works. I get that now, and it was amazing anthropology to see it unfold.

Mind explaining what you mean by his arc of disillusionment? I don't follow the guy, my only recollection of him is from listening to him on a podcast about some wild "physics theory of everything" a while back. I recall it being one of those "I'm not sure if I'm an idiot, or he's crazy, but this sure is a fun ride" kinds of experiences.

“The idealism of every era is usually the cover story of its greatest thefts.”

this is my favorite eric quote, which he also just applied to the ftx mess.

Eric's way of seeing things isn't a linear thing I can summarize, there's a few youtube vids you can search for the concepts of Kayfabe or his anger at the Consumer Price Index methodology which he's been making noise about for a decade, way before all the cool kids today tweeting about inflation.

It's about seeing narrative frames and language games that institutions play to intrinsically hide (to others and themselves) the mechanics of power/money. If you believe in beautiful liberal middle-class dreams it's really painful to square with reality of those machines.

He calls his own podcast The Portal because to see these patterns you need that moment where you step out of the calcified frame of current understanding, like in those kids books where youre stuck in a drab deadened state and then find a magical portal to narnia, can return transformed.

(You have to have those moments yourself, it usually feels like a loss of innocence imo)

>"Now I'm not saying X, or Y, and I'm definitely not a P, and I don't agree with everything Z said but..." How can you have a conversation if so much time is spent not saying things?

Further, it intellectually constricts the speaker, both in thought and speech. It's running a race with lead weights and straitjacket.

For a smaller, but longer-lasting example, think of how many times in the past six years you heard someone preface a statement with "I hate Trump, but". Those who lived under Communism and Nazism experienced the same thing: Anything that might be perceived by another as being against approved thought in any way had to uttered in a way that would plausibly insulate the speaker from undesirable consequences. Now, think of how long-term adherence to such behavior crabs the intellect and soul.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com