The Struggle

Whilst mumbling in our beer about the failings of the world, Tom bemoaned the state of the blogging game. Which brings some thoughts to mind:

With success comes power and great success has been given me
And with great power comes great fuckability.

(The Struggle, by Scroobius Pip, as you doubtless recognise). I make no claims in that direction, indeed I am thinking of the opposite: with great lack of reach, comes great lack of responsibility.

By which I mean that I have come to terms with the world. A great many stupid, pointless, cruel, horrible things have happened, are happening, and will happen in the future¹. In many cases far better outcomes could be achieved with little more that a small willingness to compromise, a slight ability to sift evidence and make accurate rather than partisan evaluations; and a whole host of other tiny trivial improvements that just won't happen.

I don't think I ever blogged with much hope of being listened to². When I read Xitter posts of those who very much do want to be listened to it all seems rather desperate and most often doomed, and I'm certainly not going to make the attempts to shout that they do. The world has far too many competing voices searching for ears, and far too many of the people who do listen are listening for entertainment purposes only, not because they wish to have their prejudices challenged or corrected, or even wish to think.

So blogging is really only to have an interesting conversation. That doesn't always work, but at worst I'm having a conversation with my future self; and those who do comment here are always welcome, even if I don't always reply in the most temperate of terms. I write what I think is true, but I don't feel any obligation to temper my message into ear-shaped portions or strive to avoid offending fools.

Notes

1. For example, did I mention my brilliant solution to the Palestinian Problem? The Palestinians should surrender. They'd be far better off as second class citizens of Israel than they ever could be as even first class citizins of a Free Palestine, even if that were ever to come into existence. Self-determination is over-rated. Yes, I know there is no chance of this happening.

2. I've said this before, I find; see this comment on Yet more Exxonknew drivel.

Refs

* My pic: Assyrian relief from the British Museum. Still amazingly good, after all these years.

* For those interested in The Bell Curve, some interesting graphs from Cremieux on Xitter. Here is the male / female comparison: males are ~3 times as represented as females at IQ 140, but also at IQ 60 (note that these are SAT scores converted to IQ).

* The Grave Evil of Unemployment / Intellectual Autobiography of Bryan Caplan.

* On the inefficient economics of US slavery. Note that while the rest is interesting, I don't endorse it all.

* Conversations - ATTP. I notice, reading that, this post isn't quite what I thought it was... I was more talking about me being at peace with the world than specicially about blogging. ATTP mentions Substack, which is a thing; indeed I even have one but do nothing with it.

* Volokh: The Moral and Strategic Case for Opening Doors to Gaza Refugees.