NoFreeWill posted:

right but the extreme goals tend not to get achieved, though that doesn't make them less worth pursuing (but rather more if overton's theory is correct).

congratulations on your Liberalism. i hear the state department is hiring.

shriekingviolet posted:

.custom272822{}NoFreeWill posted:right but the extreme goals tend not to get achieved, though that doesn't make them less worth pursuing (but rather more if overton's theory is correct).

congratulations on your Liberalism. i hear the state department is hiring.

it's hard to look at the historical record and be optimistic. and the "Progress" that was achieved was almost entirely due to exploitation of cheap resources that are going away. The Great Unravelling will be interesting... does feudalism succeed capitalism in this inverted history?

swampman posted:

.custom272822{}NoFreeWill posted:right but the extreme goals tend not to get achieved, though that doesn't make them less worth pursuing (but rather more if overton's theory is correct).I don't think a one- or two-factor political "continuum" is a good way to understand these relationships. The goals of the MLM left are not "extreme" versions of the goals of the bourgeois, progressive "left." The achievement of "moderate" goals in the place of "extreme" ones does not incrementally move the world toward the "extreme" goals, because the goals of "moderates" are not prerequisites for the goals of "extremists." These words imply a relationship that is almost totally opposite to their actual relationship, where liberal bourgeois support for left ideas is continually undermined by class comforts, given in the place of real reform.

And for any goal you want to reach - overreaching is always a bad idea. You don't learn Korean by saying, I'm going to spend 18 hours a day reading this Korean to English dictionary and watch Korean soap operas until I'm fluent in Korean, and even if that doesn't last, I'll at least have learned some Korean. No, you set attainable goals for yourself that are logical, necessary steps toward the larger goal of fluency.

achieving the moderates goals with the help of the extremists demands actually often results in the undermining of the basis for these demands, then resulting in stagnation of the extreme left, weakening the moderates position, and the counterforces growing stronger. this is why the New Deal is being rolled back, and why revolutions happened where reformism couldn't function.

while spergy political "science" approaches to politics are often silly, I find the concept useful. For every MLM group demanding full communism and revolution theres 8 splinter groups that are in various stages of Trotskyist decay and tainted Liberalism and whole hordes of groups that claim to be socialist but are social democratic or whatever. the whole "spectrum" between moderate and extreme is covered and competition and collaboration between the groups produces certain dynamics i think the concept captures.

in your language learning example, the immersion learning experience works the same way. throwing people off the deep end and forcing them to learn doesn't make people fluent, but it achieves results. obviously for this to work you also have to take some " logical, necessary steps toward the larger goal of fluency." and get a basic understanding first. in this weird analogy that's movement building or strengthening unions or whatever idk

NoFreeWill posted:

right but the extreme goals tend not to get achieved, though that doesn't make them less worth pursuing (but rather more if overton's theory is correct).

i think its remarkable how often people assume that the space of political options is literally the most simple nontrivial space they can think of.

NoFreeWill posted:

https://fractalplanet.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/how-guy-mcpherson-gets-it-wrong/oh well he's a crackpot but he shifts the overton window so good on him. we may yet survive...

Yeah I was gonna say McPherson is full of it. He's good with highlighting stuff that climatologists are reluctant to address because there aren't good ways to predict it scientifically (feedback etc.) tho.

daddyholes posted:

that might be tough because there are a lot of decisions that i really would prefer were handled by government because i'm stupid at decision making like every individual person. but if you asked it like that i'd say, let me do it, because the government that would handle them well isn't in charge of the part of the world where i live.

yeah but the question needs to be more abstract than that. like, you wouldnt ask "should you be in control of how (political issue) is handled". id explain myself better but ive been sick for three days now and im about to have explosive diarrhea again. insert joke here about my posting, haha.

Petrol posted:

yeah but the question needs to be more abstract than that. like, you wouldnt ask "should you be in control of how (political issue) is handled". id explain myself better but ive been sick for three days now and im about to have explosive diarrhea again. insert joke here about my posting, haha.

i hope you feel better. about polls, that's what i mean sort of. as in, if someone was like, "okay so it's 3 pm on Thursday and you have to pick a job. would you get upset if someone picked it for you?" i'd probably think semi-consciously "well I don't live in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea so i would probably get real pissed off..."