[Link] Noam Chomsky Killed Aaron Schwartz

I was going to leave a comment there when I read it this morning, but Moldbug doesn't read his comments, so...

To claim that the activists were strong is pretty absurd. The activists failed for approximately a century, in a regime that did a very good job of returning to the status quo ante bellum, died repeatedly while I don't recall hearing of very many KKKers ever dying, and a partial victory at some point in some small town shows that they're 'strong'?

Reminds me of the over-application of 'revealed preferences' and the dormitive fallacy: 'who are the strong? Those who win. How do you win? Be the strong.' Well, uh, OK, if you think that's anything but word games, I'll leave you to it then.

And then there's the selection biases here; how many activists do you ever hear of? How many movements? As all analyses of power acknowledge, there's a lot of chance & variation involved... I remember reading that in China right now, they average something like 6000 disturbances or movements a year, of which I can name maybe 2 or 3 categories - Tibetan and Falun Gong, and whatever the last strike or protest the New York Times covered was.

(So basically, classic Moldbug: provocative and interesting, but the more you think on it, the less convincing it gets. I subscribe for the former, but I wish there was less of the latter.)

Moldbug's article is interesting where it speaks in generalities, but on the specifics of Aaron Swartz's story, it seems to misunderstand the power relations involved. Yes, MIT and the State are powerful; but Aaron never intended to cross them; he expected, incorrectly but not unreasonably, that they'd stay neutral. He did intend to go against JSTOR, but while JSTOR may have been powerful, it looked to casual observers like a fairly simple institution with only one trick, not like an actual political player that could recruit MIT and the state into a questionable cause.

weak institutions (Exxon, Pentagon) instead of strong ones (State, academica incl. MIT)

I guess it's a huge relief for Bradley Manning (whom M.M. has carefully avoided mentioning along with Assange and Greenwald, although all three tend to get media exposure in connection) that he tried to "bully" a weak, indecisive Pentagon, whose hands are tied by its mortal enemies in the civillian bureaucracy - and thus the military can't stand up to the treasonous filth and has to treat him with kid gloves on.

And of course, the dirty, brainwashed, cowardly commies who hung out at the Occupy "protests" are the Obama regime's wet dream, spewing abuse against the already powerless big business and financial institutions - a perfect opportunity for it to further rob the deserving and appearse the plebs! Which is why the regime is intimidating its police into accommodating the lawless rioting scum - and the cops slavishly obey. The forces of law and order wouldn't dare lay a finger on those good-for-nothing hippies, not with the propaganda media watching!

Oh wait, this isn't relevant! Moldbug's above such inconvenient commie-sympathizing "facts", he's using Schwartz' death as an occasion to preach the hallowed and unchanging party line. He's for Truth and Clarity, unlike all the delusional left-wing fanatics!

Normally, posting all this tripe on LW would be merely adding noise, but it also happens to be exploitative of a community figure's recent and shocking death. Moldbug fails. You fail.

Unlike him, you seem to be capable of critical self-evaluation. Seems like you should employ some right now, and learn from it.

First, note the spelling: confusingly, it's Swartz, not Schwartz.

While it's as hard as ever to make sense of Moldbug's stream of consciousness, it seems like he is stuck in a circular redefinition of "underdog". The regular definition involves comparing priors, while his is comparing posteriors:

In the real world in which we live, the weak had better know their own weakness. If they would gather their strength, do it! But without fighting, even "civil disobedience." To break a law is to fight. Those who fight had better be strong. Those who are not strong, had better not fight.

How do you actually figure out who is stronger? The only definitive test is to let them fight it out. No one expected a minor act of civil disobedience in Tunisia to topple multiple governments across the globe.

As for the typically sensationalist title "Noam Chomsky Killed Aaron Swartz", while Chomsky's writings may have inspired Swartz to act, like they inspired other people to act, the decision to fight and the choice of weapons was Swartz's alone. How close he was to his next victory (he won against the establishment several times before), we will never know, because the trial will not happen now. He could have been one depression pill away from pulling through. His cause may yet prevail if the paywall customs will change in the wake of his suicide.

What do people see in Moldbug, anyway, beyond his provocative writing style?

Moldbug is leaving out the possibility that the balance of power might be changing, so that behavior which was too dangerous in the past is now worth attempting. Also, people's behavior can occasionally change the balance-- the Federal government was on King's side because a great many people worked to put it there.

Does getting assassinated say anything about one's power level?

MESSAGE TO ADMINS: THIS POST HAS SOME FLASH CONTENT IN IT'S HTML (BOTTOM) THAT'S CAUSING BUGS ON THE MAIN DISCUSSION PAGE - PLEASE EDIT THE HTML AND DELETE IT.

(It means that this page and discussion are always asking for a flash plugin, which at least on my version of firefox isn't even needed, I'm not the only one with this problem)

(then delete this comment)

Thanks!

Wait, I thought Moldbug considered "actual power" to be aligned with liberal public opinion. But liberal public opinion seems to favor Chomskyite activists like Swartz over evil copyright institutions like JSTOR, or am I out of the loop?

This means that activists like King, Schwartz, and Assange are only effective in bullying the weak, not standing up to the strong

An institution might be very strong in some respects, but not strong enough to move the populace against a sufficiently popular cause backed by a sufficiently charismatic leader.

Some institutions have more power to move the will of the public than others. The US government can to a significant extent shape public opinion by passing laws, not just conform to public opinion. But it can't do so to an unlimited extent, and if another figure pushes for a position that's more in line with public opinion, they're going to have an advantage over the government, even if they have less ability to sway public opinion.

Here he returns to a theme that is one of his real contributions to blogospheric political thought: that victory in political competitions provides Bayesian information about who has power and who doesn't.

This differs from realpolitik how...?

While I don't agree with much of the linked post, the line portraying civil disobedience as an application of might makes right really hits hard for me. I need to do more thinking on this to see if there is justification for me to update my current beliefs.

Why is Firefox telling me that additional plugins are required to display all the media on this page? (And then not providing any when I click the "Install Missing Plugins" button?)

While I said elsewhere that I wouldn't have shared this article on the site, I find it telling that this article started at 6 when I first saw it and is now where it is. I wouldn't have ascribed this much meaning, but if comments like this get heavily down voted too, it fits into a pattern my cluster of users has been noting for several months now.

Perhaps I do need to start my own blog as suggested by some. But as I said I prefer communities to lonely things such as one man blogs, especially if the latter has long periods of inactivity.

Athrelon would you be interested coming on board as a writer? Anyone else interested?

Edit: Details will be arranged via email, if you want to cooperate please PM me with your email address if I don't have it already.

Edit: That this comment is getting heavily down voted just saddens me further. I have always thought I wasn't alone in encouraging LWers to write their own blogs. Some of the things I am interested in may be explicitly banned soon. Some I'm assuming technically probably already are since I haven't received responses to my queries. That I'm not welcomed to write about them elsewhere by a tribe I somewhat identify with is hurtful but steels my resolve.

Edit: This thread seems like a bad location for the post. Made a new post in open thread. Moving Discussion there. ErikM has joined as a co-blogger and I've heard confirmation from Athrelon over email.

Better to be a live dog than a dead hero. But had Aaron Swartz plugged his laptop into the Exxon internal network and downloaded everything Beelzebub knows about fracking, he would be a live hero to this day. Why? Because no ambitious Federal prosecutor in the 21st century would see a route to career success through hounding some activist at Exxon's behest. Your prosecutor would have to actually believe he was living in the Chomsky world. Which he can't, because that narrative is completely inconsistent with the real world he goes to work in every day.

But when you take on a genuinely respected institution - whether State or MIT - your "civil disobedience" has all the prospects of George Wallace in the schoolhouse door.

As far as it goes that he would have been less likely to have been persecuted as severely this quote is probably true, as are the reasons why this would be the case. But I'm not sure how big an impact the lawsuit has on the probability of him committing suicide in the first place.

But I'm not sure how confidently we can predict a less stressful lawsuit very much reducing his chances of suicide.

He has a much stronger case with the example of Julian Assange than with Aaron.

...may yet get its hands on a similar figure, Julian Assange. You know, when I read that Assange had his hands on a huge dump of DoD and State documents, I figured we would never see those cables. Sure enough, the first thing he released was some DoD material.

Why? Well, obviously, Assange knew the score. He knew that Arlington is weak and Georgetown is strong. He knew that he could tweak Arlington's nose all day long and party on it, making big friends in high society, and no one would even think about reaching out and touching him. Or so I thought.

In fact, my cynicism was unjustified. In fact, Assange turned out to be a true believer, not a canny schemer. He was not content to wield his sword against the usual devils of the Chomsky narrative. Oh no, the poor fscker believed that he was actually there to take on the actual powers that be. Who are actually, of course, unlike the cartoon villains... strong. If he didn't know that... he knows it now!

Can we add ignoring Moldbug to our general "don't feed the trolls" policy? He's deliberately provocative.

Sometimes a decision that results in a clear chance of death is better; stop trying to not lose and maximize the chances of winning.

Or take a more moderate route, and maximize the definite integral of the value of outcomes with respect to their utility.