40 Observations on Public Discourse

What we have here is a failure to communicate

Many readers seem to enjoy reading highlights from my private journal (see here and here). So we’ll do it again today.

Below are 40 journal entries on the current state of public discourse.

Like the captain said in Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is (mostly) a failure to communicate.

But we’re now failing to communicate in totally new ways.

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40 Observations on Public Discourse

1.

All digital communication is reverting back to primitive ways. The emoji is like the hieroglyphic. The meme is akin to the cave painting. The text message is a throwback to the telegraph.

So it’s no surprise that people are scrolling on their phones. I can almost hear the rustle of the papyrus.

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2.

Why do I see all these homemade videos of people talking into the camera while sitting alone in their cars?

They’re not even driving—just standing still. They’re literally going nowhere.

Is an empty automobile the new town square?

The appropriate metaphor for this: Public discourse is running on empty.

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3.

Alexander Graham Bell would be shocked. The phone is now a device you use to speak into the void. You talk to nobody at all.

But we still keep talking.

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4.

The most popular social media platforms will be those that allow people to avoid responsibility for what they say.

Every society has institutions of this sort. In ancient times, it was the bacchanalia. For us it is online shitposting and the burner account.

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5.

Consider the etymology of the word ‘dictator’—from the Latin dictare (which translates as ‘to say often’). It thus designates a person who talks obsessively—repeating the same thing over and over.

It’s curious that dictators aren’t defined by their deeds, merely their monotonous talk. The assertion of power through repetitive speaking eliminates the needs for listening, or (at an extreme) even for action.

But isn’t this the dominant model of communication in the current era?

Social media is thus the true dictatorship of the proletariat—contrary to what Marx thought.

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6.

If I ran Harvard or Oxford or Stanford, I’d create a large language model that only learned from my best scholars. People will soon decide that they prefer talking with the bot that has the narrowest and most exclusive range of inputs.

The AI overlords haven’t figured this out yet. They want the largest possible training sets for their bots.

They should instead emulate the great artists, who always grasp that their greatness depends on what they leave out.

If this is true of humans, it’s far more true for machines. You don’t want your doctor bot to go anywhere near Reddit.

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7.

Just imagine trying to convince the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to root for the other team. That’s the precise state of political discourse today.

• There are only two teams.

• There will always be just two teams.

• After you pick a team, you are assigned the role of cheerleader. (What did you expect? That they would make you a coach or a quarterback? Hah!)

• All debate now morphs into a cheerleading competition. Nobody expects otherwise.

• But it’s also pointless, pursued merely as a decorative ritual—because, even when the Cowboys have a failing team, their cheerleaders never switch sides.

If you try to pursue political discourse outside this ritual, you are in the worst possible situation. You are operating without a team—that’s the most despised situation of them all, and a weakness others will exploit mercilessly.

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8.

A side point: When I watch the Super Bowl, I can’t tell which team the announcers prefer.

This is the only sphere of American public discourse where that’s true.