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Comment by nemo44x | Hacker News Reader

Curtis Yarvin’s concept of “The Catgedral” extrapolates on this I believe. Beyond the elite media he also identifies the prestigious academic institutions, which consequently are the source of elite media and business power, as a part of the apparatus that determines what’s ok to think.

The observation being that it’s interesting that on subjective things, every prestigious academic institution comes to the same conclusion. And these conclusions are passed onto the elite media which then manufactures consent.

Of course an academic like Chomsky would be blind to this.

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It reminds me of AlphaGo not playing for a win by a large margin, unlike humans do. I don't think the system needs to stomp Chomsky to the ground, unlike some totalitarian systems that demand complete subordination. They only need to make sure that more people listen to Tucker Carlson than Noam Chomsky, for which not inviting Chomsky to mainstream TV was so far pretty sufficient.

Tucker Carlson would be closer to the "Flak" than the New York Times though. He has been pushed to the margins by his previous employer Fox, who are more or less a flak machine at least compared to elite media that are taken seriously by policy makers and the academics that shape those policies.

That's a good point. The mass media and elite media really use different language, which is an additional obstacle. They don't seem to be a part of the same structure, and are presented to be at odds.

I am reminded how Chomsky described the 1930s, that working class people were often pretty well-read. The above divide seems to help in maintaining the ignorance.

> Beyond the elite media he also identifies the prestigious academic institutions, which consequently are the source of elite media and business power, as a part of the apparatus that determines what’s ok to think.

These theories seem to start with the assumption that all ideas are equal, and what's 'ok' is arbitrary preference. We are dealing with truth.

High quality media directly check and corroborate facts; they use journalism to systematize delivery of truth. Quality research is about revealing truths - about nature, society, etc., systematizing it via scientific method.

Yes, humans fail all the time at truth, but they succeed all the time too. These institutions do a pretty good job, IMHO, and simultaneously a very flawed job that could be improved.

We are dealing with power, not truth neccessarily. They lie by omission all the time and selectively and arbitrarily determine what is and what is not news. They exist to sell a narrative that is useful to their life support sources. There's some good apples, of course, but by and large they lie constantly because the lies are useful.

> Quality research is about revealing truths - about nature, society, etc., systematizing it via scientific method

Most things can't be systematized via science because they aren't science. They aren't falsifiable. They are in essence opinions.

IME and IMHO that's not reality. People do care about the truth, as well as power, and many other things. They generally are truthful. It's also (enlightened) self interest and we are highly evolved social beings, able to organize on the scale of billions.

The idea that we are only or mostly our worst, most self-destructive instincts and not, for a equally likely example, only our best instincts, is an odd one, but people love to think it these days.

Caring about power yields more power. All people are a mix of all these qualities, but if some qualities help to survive/succeed in an organization, the organization will be lobsided towards these. It doesn't take evil masterminds, just bits of "worse" instincts that get amplified in the dynamics of the organization.

I find it quite apparent in academia too. Academics do care about the truth and such, but to survive in academia you have to "play the game" even when it means being a bit flexible with the truth or other such principles. Or conversely, being too rigorous with principles means you don't usually stay a (paid) academic for long.

Chomsky has spoken about this issue many times. His most famous work on this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Responsibility_of_Intellec...

It's hard to compete with ideas that generate power. I'm not sure Chomsky has ever fully realize this. His problem has always been he's too academic and doesn't understand human nature or reality very well. Smart guy though.

But going back to the idea of ideas that generate power - that's what is useful. Ideas and concepts that can be used to justify the use of power in some form. Ideas that can be used to "change the world", or more bluntly "exercise power over others". It doesn't mean that every notion that is useful to power is wrong but rather that we should be suspicious of it.

And unfortunately, with the way universities are incentivized today a lot of bad ideas are taken as given because they produce power and are therefore more useful than the ideas that don't. Hence all the "crises", and "injustices", etc.

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