One thing you missed - the hardcover copy is absolutely beautiful! I remember being transfixed, both my eyes and the touch on my hands, when I received my copy a couple of years ago.
Here in New Zealand our universities and mainstream media are almost completely captured by the proponents of Critical Theory to the extent that debate and discussion are stifled. Cancel culture and ad hominem attacks dominate public discourse and at present I'm not optimistic that the evolution you speak of is going to begin any time soon.
"The [states] that we find useful make up a tiny sliver of the possibilities, while the disorderly or useless states make up the vast majority. It follows that any perturbation of the system, whether it is a random jiggling of its parts or a whack from the outside, will, by the laws of probability, nudge the system toward disorder or uselessness. If you walk away from a sand castle, it won’t be there tomorrow, because as the wind, waves, seagulls, and small children push the grains of sand around, they’re more likely to arrange them into one of the vast number of configurations that don’t look like a castle than into the tiny few that do. ...
The Second Law implies that misfortune may be no one’s fault. The biggest breakthrough of the scientific revolution was to nullify the intuition that the universe is saturated with purpose: that everything happens for a reason. In this primitive understanding, when bad things happen—accidents, disease, famine—someone or something must have wanted them to happen. This in turn impels people to find a defendant, demon, scapegoat, or witch to punish. Galileo and Newton replaced this cosmic morality play with a clockwork universe in which events are caused by conditions in the present, not goals for the future. The Second Law deepens that discovery: Not only does the universe not care about our desires, but in the natural course of events it will appear to thwart them, because there are so many more ways for things to go wrong than to go right. Houses burn down, ships sink, battles are lost for the want of a horseshoe nail. ...
More generally, an underappreciation of the Second Law lures people into seeing every unsolved social problem as a sign that their country is being driven off a cliff. It’s in the very nature of the universe that life has problems. But it’s better to figure out how to solve them—to apply information and energy to expand our refuge of beneficial order—than to start a conflagration and hope for the best."
Many people assume that things are so fundamentally screwed up that any random, undirected change will almost certainly make things better. But in fact, the opposite is true: there are many, many more directions that lead downward than lead upward.
Gurri's book has inspired me for years now, and I've been spending time looking for any emerging, promising solutions to our current instability - if we need new institutions and models as Gurri says, that reduce the distance between the elite and the general population, are there any out there yet?
Here is all I've found so far. Thought some of you might be interested.
a) Lots of non-profits trying to reduce political polarization after the fact, bridge divides, correct polarization based on misperceptions,
b) Lots of courses teaching civil discourse, civil responsibility, how to handle ideas/people you disagree with, etc.
c) The Dignity Index trying to tackle the problem of contempt driving people apart by measuring contempt vs 'shared humanity' with an 8 point scale and campaigning to shift majority (and politicians) away from it (it's a very good tool = helps draw the line in debate - attack the idea, don't call the ppl behind it stupid or evil or idiots).
I disagree that negation alone is not enough. By killing that which needs to die often frees up the mental, financial and creative resources to build something new. Holding on to ossified systems, institutions, and ideas because there's no apparent alternative does not serve the common good.
Seeing this again, linked by Arnold Kling, reminds me that in your dislike of Trump, the man (The Donald!), most critics focus ad hominem insults at him, personally, rather than his big ideas. Which supporters like me think are better than Dem, Biden, or Obama.
Immigration, decoupling from China, reducing foreign wars, more US manufacturing, reasonable law enforcement.
Right now I disagree with him on Ukraine aid, which is used to fight illegal Russian expansion, that part not corruptly taken by UKR and US bribe takers, which is far too many.
Does negation replace Occam's Razor with a chainsaw?
The first politician that puts forth a positive--both in terms of being upbeat and optimistic, and in terms of being something not merely defined by its opposite--vision for the future (not backwards-looking nostalgia like MAGA or invoking the New Deal) will win.
So far, crickets. This is a global problem, so at least the USA isn't behind the rest of the world we are competing with.
One thing you missed - the hardcover copy is absolutely beautiful! I remember being transfixed, both my eyes and the touch on my hands, when I received my copy a couple of years ago.
Great review by the way!
Here in New Zealand our universities and mainstream media are almost completely captured by the proponents of Critical Theory to the extent that debate and discussion are stifled. Cancel culture and ad hominem attacks dominate public discourse and at present I'm not optimistic that the evolution you speak of is going to begin any time soon.
I read that book in 2020, and it's probably the one thing most responsible for keeping me sane through that year!
Definitely one of my top ten books from recent years.
Quite insightful and you can find Gurri publishing articles here on Substack under the name Discourse, along with a bunch of other profound thinkers.
Honestly, Discourse is my #1 free site on Substack…
Bravo Greg.☀️
P.S. Enjoyed your appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher
This is so good. brings clarity to the problems we are facing. Bloody scary that it is only the beginning
I highly recommend Steven Pinker's related short essay on the Second Law of Thermodynamics: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27023.
"The [states] that we find useful make up a tiny sliver of the possibilities, while the disorderly or useless states make up the vast majority. It follows that any perturbation of the system, whether it is a random jiggling of its parts or a whack from the outside, will, by the laws of probability, nudge the system toward disorder or uselessness. If you walk away from a sand castle, it won’t be there tomorrow, because as the wind, waves, seagulls, and small children push the grains of sand around, they’re more likely to arrange them into one of the vast number of configurations that don’t look like a castle than into the tiny few that do. ...
The Second Law implies that misfortune may be no one’s fault. The biggest breakthrough of the scientific revolution was to nullify the intuition that the universe is saturated with purpose: that everything happens for a reason. In this primitive understanding, when bad things happen—accidents, disease, famine—someone or something must have wanted them to happen. This in turn impels people to find a defendant, demon, scapegoat, or witch to punish. Galileo and Newton replaced this cosmic morality play with a clockwork universe in which events are caused by conditions in the present, not goals for the future. The Second Law deepens that discovery: Not only does the universe not care about our desires, but in the natural course of events it will appear to thwart them, because there are so many more ways for things to go wrong than to go right. Houses burn down, ships sink, battles are lost for the want of a horseshoe nail. ...
More generally, an underappreciation of the Second Law lures people into seeing every unsolved social problem as a sign that their country is being driven off a cliff. It’s in the very nature of the universe that life has problems. But it’s better to figure out how to solve them—to apply information and energy to expand our refuge of beneficial order—than to start a conflagration and hope for the best."
Many people assume that things are so fundamentally screwed up that any random, undirected change will almost certainly make things better. But in fact, the opposite is true: there are many, many more directions that lead downward than lead upward.
Gurri's book has inspired me for years now, and I've been spending time looking for any emerging, promising solutions to our current instability - if we need new institutions and models as Gurri says, that reduce the distance between the elite and the general population, are there any out there yet?
Here is all I've found so far. Thought some of you might be interested.
a) Lots of non-profits trying to reduce political polarization after the fact, bridge divides, correct polarization based on misperceptions,
b) Lots of courses teaching civil discourse, civil responsibility, how to handle ideas/people you disagree with, etc.
c) The Dignity Index trying to tackle the problem of contempt driving people apart by measuring contempt vs 'shared humanity' with an 8 point scale and campaigning to shift majority (and politicians) away from it (it's a very good tool = helps draw the line in debate - attack the idea, don't call the ppl behind it stupid or evil or idiots).
d) MIT and DemocracyNext's activities including citizen's assemblies. There's also a digital app they're building...mb interesting. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7183030652068388864/
I'm capturing ideas here when I find them https://airtable.com/appuauCxujt8IXjbG/shr5EZJNTpTe0jfhv.
Unfortunately, it looks to me like these are all micro-impact, I don't see anything with widespread traction or scalability.
Please share any promising directions/innovations that you've run across!
I disagree that negation alone is not enough. By killing that which needs to die often frees up the mental, financial and creative resources to build something new. Holding on to ossified systems, institutions, and ideas because there's no apparent alternative does not serve the common good.
Seeing this again, linked by Arnold Kling, reminds me that in your dislike of Trump, the man (The Donald!), most critics focus ad hominem insults at him, personally, rather than his big ideas. Which supporters like me think are better than Dem, Biden, or Obama.
Immigration, decoupling from China, reducing foreign wars, more US manufacturing, reasonable law enforcement.
Right now I disagree with him on Ukraine aid, which is used to fight illegal Russian expansion, that part not corruptly taken by UKR and US bribe takers, which is far too many.
Does negation replace Occam's Razor with a chainsaw?
The first politician that puts forth a positive--both in terms of being upbeat and optimistic, and in terms of being something not merely defined by its opposite--vision for the future (not backwards-looking nostalgia like MAGA or invoking the New Deal) will win.
So far, crickets. This is a global problem, so at least the USA isn't behind the rest of the world we are competing with.
"I recently attended a UC Berkeley conference of Scientists to discuss what to do about society losing faith in science".
Stop politicizing it. That would be a start.