Politics

The Consilience Project posted an informative article; can honest communication survive the culture wars?

The situation has degraded to the point where it is widely believed that calls to good faith (such as this paper) are themselves acts of bad faith, undertaken only by those interested in controlling the discourse. Calls for good faith communication are understood at best as naive requests to calm the outrage and conflict that now runs rife in political discourse. Both ends of the political spectrum (the far left and the far right) express this view. Both sides believe that “the other side” simply can’t be trusted and therefore cannot be engaged in good faith. To do so would be to fall into a trap, serving only to validate the dangerous views of groups known to be acting in bad faith.

Venkatesh Rao, of ribbonfarm.com, wrote about the idea of states and large organizations frequently imposing “order” on pre-existing chaotic systems, in an effort to improve legibility.

His primary source is the book Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, in which the author, James C. Scott, describes some major social engineering ventures in history that have failed spectacularly.