59
edits
31: Ryan Holiday - Conspiracy, Manipulation & other Pastimes: Difference between revisions
31: Ryan Holiday - Conspiracy, Manipulation & other Pastimes (edit)
Revision as of 19:05, 16 September 2023
, 16 September 2023→Human-edited Transcript
| Line 68: | Line 68: | ||
To this way of thinking, what was happening was simple. The magic trick of holding back nearly all aspects of our true future required all three elements to be in place simultaneously. Now nothing had changed with respect to the first two. In fact, all that had occurred was that their luck had finally run out with the COVID virus. To my generation, and the ones that followed, that past version of the post-war American dream was like a mesmerizing rumor and tale that the older generations had repeatedly and vividly wielded to cast a spell. This intimidated many of us from demanding answers and a say in our own future. If you can't get a second home in your 30s from a paper route, a low-cost education, or a life in public service, then perhaps you should wait your turn and let the elders who made it work lead for a little while longer, until the younger generations can prove that they're ready to assume adult responsibilities. | To this way of thinking, what was happening was simple. The magic trick of holding back nearly all aspects of our true future required all three elements to be in place simultaneously. Now nothing had changed with respect to the first two. In fact, all that had occurred was that their luck had finally run out with the COVID virus. To my generation, and the ones that followed, that past version of the post-war American dream was like a mesmerizing rumor and tale that the older generations had repeatedly and vividly wielded to cast a spell. This intimidated many of us from demanding answers and a say in our own future. If you can't get a second home in your 30s from a paper route, a low-cost education, or a life in public service, then perhaps you should wait your turn and let the elders who made it work lead for a little while longer, until the younger generations can prove that they're ready to assume adult responsibilities. | ||
This was a magical spell indeed, which blinded those of us who were forced to repeat " | This was a magical spell indeed, which blinded those of us who were forced to repeat "Okay, Boomer" to explain our seeming relative inability to earn and lead in the presence of elders who could out-earn us in their prime. And this was even under the weight of multiple divorce settlements, or three-Martini lunches, and without the extensive training and apprenticeships that we seem to require. | ||
Well, that spell is now broken for me, watching our supposed leaders contend with the true pandemic. The Silent and Boomer generations, lacking any kind of precedent, now look like incompetent dolts. I suppose it is theoretically possible that the rest of us former gritty latchkey kids and digital natives would not fare better, but we could scarcely do worse. In fact, our elders are revealed not as go-getters or can-do leaders, but as creatures of The System, who simply held back confronting the inevitable future for decades, because its shape and form are indeed terrifying. And it wasn't really the virus that was accelerating the terrifying future across the board. Any worldwide crisis of sufficient depth would have done it. The world has always been caught up in escalating plagues, wars, depressions and conflicts, and the Coronavirus was ushering in the future, simply because it was the first piece of early-20th-Century-scale bad luck to fall into our new millennium, characterized, as it is, by fragility. | Well, that spell is now broken for me, watching our supposed leaders contend with the true pandemic. The Silent and Boomer generations, lacking any kind of precedent, now look like incompetent dolts. I suppose it is theoretically possible that the rest of us former gritty latchkey kids and digital natives would not fare better, but we could scarcely do worse. In fact, our elders are revealed not as go-getters or can-do leaders, but as creatures of The System, who simply held back confronting the inevitable future for decades, because its shape and form are indeed terrifying. And it wasn't really the virus that was accelerating the terrifying future across the board. Any worldwide crisis of sufficient depth would have done it. The world has always been caught up in escalating plagues, wars, depressions and conflicts, and the Coronavirus was ushering in the future, simply because it was the first piece of early-20th-Century-scale bad luck to fall into our new millennium, characterized, as it is, by fragility. | ||
| Line 274: | Line 274: | ||
Eric Weinstein | Eric Weinstein | ||
So if all of our minds are now really the product of eclectically chosen inputs, and we can't count on a canon, so that there is a less shared context, what would be the art that would be appropriate to this time that we could look back and say, ‘Hey, do you remember how we shared that?’ I mean- | So if all of our minds are now really the product of eclectically chosen inputs, and we can't count on a canon, so that there is a less-shared context, what would be the art that would be appropriate to this time that we could look back and say, ‘Hey, do you remember how we shared that?’ I mean- | ||
Ryan Holiday | Ryan Holiday | ||
| Line 291: | Line 291: | ||
-and everyone was dancing it at weddings, and- | -and everyone was dancing it at weddings, and- | ||
Eric Weinstein 44:32 | Eric Weinstein 44:32 | ||
-but the first thing was just your jaw was dropping. What am I watching? It didn't even make sense. It's like some sort of hypnagogic state. So that grabbed the mic and said, “Now hear this.” | -but the first thing was just your jaw was dropping. What am I watching? It didn't even make sense. It's like some sort of hypnagogic state. So that grabbed the mic and said, “Now hear this.” | ||
Ryan Holiday | Ryan Holiday | ||
Well, what's interesting is, that was the first video to do a billion views. Right? Okay. And now there are videos that have done a billion views that you and I have never heard of, which is very strange to think about. I remember the other day, someone had recommended this book A Man Called Ove, which is this interesting little novel | Well, what's interesting is, that was the first video to do a billion views. Right? Okay. And now there are videos that have done a billion views that you and I have never heard of, which is very strange to think about. I remember the other day, someone had recommended this book A Man Called Ove, which is this interesting little novel; it was actually really good. But, he [said] ‘Hey, you should check out this book.’ And it had recently come out, and I pulled it up, and it had 18,000 reviews on Amazon-and I'd never heard of it. Not [just that] I hadn't read it, but I'd never heard of it. I'd never seen it written about anywhere. It had won no awards. It had not been made into a movie. And so you realize things can be flat out cultural phenomenons, but have no cultural impact whatsoever because they are filtered out of whatever that dominant media narrative is. | ||
I even see this with with my own books; so, my books have sold millions of copies; have been reviewed [maybe] twice in newspapers. And they were almost all from the [inaudible] book, because that was a media-centric book. So my book that's got the most media connections got the most attention, but actually sold the fewest amount of copies. | |||
Eric Weinstein 46:20 | |||
And for the rest of it, you don't really fully exist? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah. Basically, it exists to the people who get it surfaced to them in the Amazon algorithm. So crazy, but it’s not just the media culture; I could walk into a large number of indie bookstores-it’s not just that they wouldn't have my books; they would not have heard of my books. Even though their businesses literally should be finding books that are selling copies, and putting them in front of people. So, I'm fascinated with the New York Times bestseller list-two things about it. Because to the public, The New York Times list is a reflection of what books are selling best. And to anyone in the industry, this is emphatically not the case. It's heavily edited. The New York Times list, for instance, discounts Amazon, and weighs independent retail as a-their algorithm says independent retail matters more than Amazon, even though Amazon is responsible for roughly 80% of all book sales-only until 2000; it was only in 2012, 2013 that they started counting ebooks. Audible was, in some cases, not included. If you look at the fine print on the New York Times bestseller lists, it says, ‘Explicitly not included are perennial sellers.” Which means that The Great Gatsby should be on the bestseller list most weeks, but The New York Times says, “Oh, that's old. Let's put How To Be Anti-racist on the list.”-even though actually that book is selling a fraction of Seven Habits. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
So, this is this complex supporting our human malware, and our malware runs between our ears, so it’s client side. So I have a program that says if I want to know what's hot, I should check the New York Times bestseller list. And the idea is, “Why am I maintaining the malware client side to participate in this crazy drama?” Is it only because other people are using the same list, and so it's a QWERTY phenomena where it's a terrible arrangement of keys on the keyboard that was originally there to get keys not to stick [which] slow down typists? Or, I mean, how do I get rid of my legacy architecture? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Well, it’s probably a little bit that, right? It's the cultural inertia and legacy of, ‘This thing is existing, and so it's a shorthand.’ There's probably a Girardian argument that we want what other people are wanting. And there's also- | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
But you’re telling me they're not even wanting that. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Right. But we think that's what people are wanting. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
I know, but if I want to have a real Girardian moment, I want to actually want what you're wanting, not what somebody else is telling me that you're wanting. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
That's true. Yes. Okay, so it's Girardian virtue-signaling, then. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Oh, this is good. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
And then I think a lot of it is the paradox of choice, right? There's so much choice that we gravitate towards anything. So we go to the most-read list on the side of the New York Times, we go to the top of Amazon, we-“Please reduce choice for me.” I think that's what we're saying. | |||
Eric Weinstein 50:00 | |||
Or-I mean, and-please allow me to plug into a large mimetic complex so that my time isn't wasted with references. For example, I drove here, and I have this Discord server of people who talk about the show and the culture. And I wanted to announce myself as coming in. So I said this line from the HMS pinafore, “My gallant crew, good morning!” and I was hoping somebody would echo back, “Sir, good morning!” | |||
Ryan Hamilton | |||
Right. You want them to get the reference. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
I want them to get the reference, and nobody has the reference, because why is anyone maintaining HMS pinafore from the 1800s in 2020 on a Discord server? | |||
Ryan Hamilton | |||
Well, that is when it's Zen mostly right about ancient philosophy. So I sort of, you know, reading these books, what I what I love is your reading Montegna, or Seneca, they'll quote lines from, you know, the Odyssey or Virgil or they're quoting poetry in place and things. And it never occurs to them to attribute the line. It's always in the footnote from the translator. This is a last line from a European ease play or whatever, right? But in the ancient world, it was assumed that he was you would not only Yeah, you'd not only have seen said play, but you would have seen said play so many times, that you would recognize it. And you know, I think I think the problem is there was just so much le | |||
s stuff right. So was it There's that but there's also this this weird discomfort we have of teaching a Canon for the purpose of keeping inter op | s stuff right. So was it There's that but there's also this this weird discomfort we have of teaching a Canon for the purpose of keeping inter op | ||