Ya'll are not aware of the level of anti-intellectualism and anti-expertise in the Soviet Union, are you? Well, it was so epic and catastrophic - there is a new show about it, called Chernobyl.
To be accurate, there WAS science, engineering, and expertise, but it had to neatly align with the Party Line.
To be accurate, there WAS science, engineering, and expertise, but it had to neatly align with the Party Line.
This should be taken as a warning sign by all intellectuals and everyone with a love of knowledge. When the political animal becomes so arrogant, they're deluded into thinking they can dictate reality, instead of being subject to it, society has wandered into a very dangerous kind of epistemic breakdown.
Look for this in particular, when politics has become "single party" and there is absolutely no room for dissent. Look out for mechanisms and practices of suppressing and intimidating dissent which do not have due process, or which are corruptions of due process mechanisms.
Look out for the situation where you or someone must "hold their tongue." If you must hold your tongue, you are being suppressed by people with unchecked power approaching the epistemic breakdown. If you feel others should "hold their tongue," especially if you despise them, then you are in danger of approaching the epistemic breakdown.
>Look out for the situation where you or someone must "hold their tongue." If you must hold your tongue, you are being suppressed by people with unchecked power approaching the epistemic breakdown. If you feel others should "hold their tongue," especially if you despise them, then you are in danger of approaching the epistemic breakdown.
Holding one's tongue is a social tool that makes meaningful collaboration between dissimilar parties possible. Having the space to speak freely is undeniably a liberty worth defending. But it's important to remain conscious of the difference between being silenced by force and being gracious by custom.
It can be difficult to distinguish between the two when the stakes are high or tempers run hot, but that's when it matters most. The freedom to speak openly is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.
Holding one's tongue is a social tool that makes meaningful collaboration between dissimilar parties possible. Having the space to speak freely is undeniably a liberty worth defending. But it's important to remain conscious of the difference between being silenced by force and being gracious by custom.
This is a good point. What I meant by Must hold your tongue is that all of "the space to speak freely" is being systematically denied to wholesale groups of people. (In particular, if one's response to speech being systematically denied to wholesale groups of people, is to turn around and systematically deny speech to wholesale groups of people, one is part of the problem.)
The freedom to speak openly is a means to an end, not an end unto itself.
True. As in many things, there is balance. A problem with accumulating too much power, is that it enables one to create such imbalances, while insulating one from the information the imbalance is happening.
The USSR also glorified scientists to a degree that is unheard of in the US. While people here grew up with Martin Luther King Ave, the USSR kids grew up with Yuri Gagarin street.
Furthermore, phds were available to people besides wealthy kids or those looking to commit economic suicide.
There were problems with the USSR, but education definitely surpassed US education in the 80s. Furthermore, what Kennedy tried to do with his fitness program was commonplace in the USSR.
I lived for a while in Milwaukee, WI which sports a James Lovell Street. I was curious and I looked up Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Armstrong has streets named after him in California and Nevada, I didn't see one for Aldrin.
Buzz Aldrin is a prominent conservative, and has campaigned over the decades and given speeches at CPAC and the SOTU. Politics also influences how city governments name streets.
Kind of interesting that the ARPANET was justified around military grounds and OGAS around economic grounds.
I guess OGAS spiritually lives on the internet now with ad tracking and payment networks where a few companies have detailed views of economic activity.
It's pretty telling that its the reason why ARPANET succeeded and OGAS failed. But interesting to know that the idea of a decentralized network to manage production demand was already taking place - i always thought if the Soviets had something like that they would have lasted much longer.
ARPNET didn't turn into what it is today because of military usage, and OGAS didn't fail because of it's resource management use. They lived or died because of money. The United States and Soviet Union both had to build all of the precursors and fabric that these systems would run on (telephone lines, computers, etc), which both did. The next logical step was for computers to co-opt existing national infrastructure and create a national network of computers. The Soviet Union faltering elsewhere is why OGAS didn't develop and ARPANET did.
My point was if it wasn't for military usage, ARPANET wouldn't have existed at all. Clearly that was the barrier, since OGAS died for that reason. If they spun it from a military angle, OGAS might have evolved similarly to ARPANET
To be accurate, there WAS science, engineering, and expertise, but it had to neatly align with the Party Line.