Eclectic Spacewalk — August 2018

Here is a sampling of the best content I consumed this past month. Enjoy scratching your brain’s curiosity itch! Also published on my website: https://www.eclecticspacewalk.com/home/eclectic-spacewalk-august-2018

NicholasRMcCay
Aug 31, 2018 · 44 min read
  • Books
  • Audio books
  • Top 10 Articles/Essays
  • Podcasts
  • TED Talks
  • Videos
  • Lectures/Debates
  • Documentaries
  • “Best of the Rest” Articles/Essays



Top 10 Articles/Essays:

Neither human genes nor human societies distribute life’s gifts according to any principle we would recognize as fair or humane, given the extraordinary role of luck in our lives. We all become adults with wildly different inheritances, starting our lives in radically different places, propelled toward dramatically different destinations.

We cannot eliminate luck, nor achieve total equality, but it is easily within our grasp to soften luck’s harsher effects, to ensure that no one falls too far, that everyone has access to a life of dignity. Before that can happen, though, we must look luck square in the face.”

“For one chapter’s epigraph, Mike Lofgren reaches back to James Madison, who in 1795 wrote, “No nation could reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” One of the tragedies of the post-war world order is that the United States never truly converted itself back into a peacetime nation. War — and all the often- corrupting forces that must be mustered on its behalf — became an atmospheric condition, part of the texture of daily life. So it is today, with this latest forever war. We are trapped in a permanent state of emergency that enables some of the most illiberal forces among us. Whether a discrete cabal or a smattering of influential officials, the Deep State has wrested our country’s resources away from the common good and given them to the church of militarism. It is not just the environment, cultural pluralism, or civil liberties at stake. Our suffering is material; a new gilded age asserts itself, as the average American life expectancy declined in 2016 for the first time in twenty years. While the power elite lards itself with defense contracts and plum cabinet gigs, the rest of the country can only look on dumbfounded. It hits like a bad epiphany: These are the people who rule our nation, the ones who stand pofaced behind Trump as he rants again on television about draining the swamp. There they are, arrayed together, the supporting cast of our pitiful oligarchy. They won.

“While the logic of Gideon’s case has been largely undermined, and the legal representation that poor people receive is far from equal, the landmark ruling still serves as a reminder that poverty has everything to do with rights and justice — that material deprivation is inextricably linked to fundamental questions of citizenship. It’s also a reminder that most advances for poor people have been made only through an active confrontation with state power — Gideon scrawling in the prison library, appealing his case even as the civil rights movement surged through the South (though he himself was white).

The treatment of poor people documented by Bridges and Edelman only makes sense in a society rigidly structured around fantasies of inequality and domination, in which some people possess all the freedom and others none. Taken together, they make a persuasive case for the idea that securing the most basic of individual rights for all in our society in fact demands a complete overhaul of our existing institutions.”

“Plenty, as it turns out. The mood in America is arguably as dark as it has ever been in the modern era. The birthrate is at a record low, and the suicide rate is at a 30-year high; mass shootings and opioid overdoses are ubiquitous. In the aftermath of 9/11, the initial shock and horror soon gave way to a semblance of national unity in support of a president whose electoral legitimacy had been bitterly contested only a year earlier. Today’s America is instead marked by fear and despair more akin to what followed the crash of 1929, when unprecedented millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes after the implosion of businesses ranging in scale from big banks to family farms.

“Power always learns, and powerful tools always fall into its hands. This is a hard lesson of history but a solid one. It is key to understanding how, in seven years, digital technologies have gone from being hailed as tools of freedom and change to being blamed for upheavals in Western democracies — for enabling increased polarization, rising authoritarianism, and meddling in national elections by Russia and others.

But to fully understand what has happened, we also need to examine how human social dynamics, ubiquitous digital connectivity, and the business models of tech giants combine to create an environment where misinformation thrives and even true information can confuse and paralyze rather than informing and illuminating.”

“Rosling’s image captures many of the perplexities of our collective situation. We desperately want the baby to survive. We also know that survival doesn’t guarantee happiness. The baby is struggling, and suffering, and will continue to do so; as a result, we’re more likely to be happy for her than she is to be happy for herself. (Pinker, similarly, is happier for us than we are.) It’s possible, moreover, that she’ll be saved only temporarily. No one is ever truly out of the woods.

In the meantime, the baby’s survival depends on the act of diagnosis. Until her ailments are identified, they can’t be cured. Problems and progress are inextricable, and the history of improvement is also the history of problem-discovery. Diagnosis, of course, is an art in itself; it’s possible to misunderstand problems, or to overstate them, and, in doing so, to make them worse. But a world in which no one complained — in which we only celebrated how good we have it — would be a world that never improved. The spirit of progress is also the spirit of discontent.

“We need a new national charter. OHC was drafted 231 years ago by wealthy slaveowners, opulent merchant capitalists, and their dutiful servants with the explicit purpose of keeping democracy — the Framers’ ultimate nightmare — at bay. It’s working.

In the meantime, prior to our next and overdue constitutional convention (could we call it a Constituent Assembly?), there’s got to be something more relevant to do about Trump and the rest of the wealthy oligarchs (atop both parties and including the billionaire impeachment champion Tom Steyer, America’s top campaign financier) who are running this country into the groundthan waiting at the 18thcentury Founders’ command for 4 minutes in a voting booth once 2 or 4 years to “among choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office.”

“I might suggest that, in fact, the whole experience is a demonstration in “immediacy,” the tenth principle of the Playa. It also seems to inspire the entire supposed essence of Burning Man to be easily shed and left behind with the final burn.

Of course, the wealthy keep the spirit of giving going, no doubt — perhaps giving their friend a location to open their new restaurant, or perhaps a vacation home in Italy for the summer, or perhaps a yacht to spend time on in the Greek Islands. But how do these principles, this festival of culture, trickle down?

I’m not sure, in fact, they do.

“The current generation is likely to live to the 500-year jubilee of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 2043. Let’s hope that, by then, we will have completed the Copernican revolution and embraced the hard and deep problems that modern astrobiology is posing. We are now living at the tipping point — the very moment when firm empirical resolution of our biggest and oldest puzzles is in sight. We should not miss that opportunity by fighting for an outdated vision of ourselves as pinnacles of complexity in the universe. Instead, we should reason as if we were near typical for our given epoch. Only then we shall have a fighting chance of piercing the Great Silence.”

“The liquid democracy element unfreezes democratic participation, while enabling/encouraging new forms of representation. The ability to revoke a delegation means that representatives in a liquid democracy will need to be accountable to promises/voter expectations established during campaigning — or risk losing their delegations. Liquid democracy allows for better debate in a non-curated, monetized debate forum, and the tokenized nature of the votes themselves causes people to deploy them in a rational manner.

Regardless of what decisions are being made on the Sovereign platform, using the platform itself is articulating support for democratic values. Indeed — paraphrasing the words of Marshall McLuhan himself — the decentralized medium is the anti-corruption message.

  • “Best of the rest” Articles/Essays at the bottom of the post: Activism, A.I., Algorithms, Anti-Trust, Books, Capitalism, C.I.A., Cities, Climate Change, Computer Science, Corporations, Courts, Data, Design, Drugs, Economics, Education, Facebook, Film, Food, Google, Government, Health & Healthcare, History, Humanity, Immigration, International, the Internetz, Journalism, Law Enforcement, Lobbying, Love, Mathematics, Medium best of, ‘Merica, Military, Music, Neuroscience, Philanthropy or lack thereof, Philosophy, Politics, Prisons, Psychology, Racism, Religion, Science, Social Media, Space, Sports, Student Loan Debt, Surveillance State, Taxes, Tech Dystopia, Tech Utopia, Transportation, Voting, Women are badasses & bullshit they deal with, Work







Best of the Rest Articles/Essays —

Activism

A.I.

https://twitter.com/bdsams/status/1027879335515107329?s=03

Algorithms

Anti-trust

Books

Capitalism

C.I.A.

Cities

Climate Change

Computer Science

Corporations

Courts

https://twitter.com/dburbach/status/1033393296473825281?s=03

Data

Design

Drugs

https://twitter.com/PulpLibrarian/status/1033477664890343434?s=03

Economics

Education

Facebook

Film

Food

Google

Government

Health & Healthcare

History

https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1023290765911445505?s=03

Humanity

Immigration

International

the Internetz

Journalism

Law Enforcement

Lobbying

Love

Mathematics

Medium best of

  • by yours truly.

Democracy Earth

umair haque

Starre Julia Vartan

Woodrow Hartzog

Zander Nethercutt

‘Merica

Military

Music

Neuroscience

Philanthropy or lack thereof

Philosophy

Politics

Prisons

Psychology

Racism

Religion

Science

Social Media

https://twitter.com/IRHotTakes/status/1027957767867453442?s=03

Space

https://twitter.com/NWSBoulder/status/1033567464855089152?s=03

Sports

Student Loan Debt

Surveillance State

Constructing a Data‐Driven Society: China’s Social Credit System as a State Surveillance Infrastructure

Taxes

Tech Dystopia

Tech Utopia

Transportation

Voting

https://twitter.com/ReadFlyRun/status/1034281533652250624

Women are badasses & bullshit they deal with

Work


Eclectic Spacewalk

Your guide to thinking about the future with wisdom from the past, so you can navigate the present.

NicholasRMcCay

Written by

We live in the greatest time Humanity has ever experienced. Let’s start acting like it! https://www.eclecticspacewalk.com/

Eclectic Spacewalk

Your guide to thinking about the future with wisdom from the past, so you can navigate the present.

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