May 5, 2023·edited May 5, 2023Liked by Sebastian Jensen
Keith Woods is certainly more aware of the nature of current American cultural trends than most from Ireland, but he still falls into some of the same pitfalls a lot of his countrymen find themselves in when evaluating specific parts of America's character. Generally, I find that people from places like Ireland tend to have a view of America that's about three decades out of date. Due to this phenomenon, a good deal of their takes come across as boomerish. His being convinced that the rising popularity of figures like Andrew Tate is indicative of a resurgence in right-wing thought is akin to older Christians in the 90s who interpreted new social niches like goths and the popularity of genres like punk as signs of a rising left-wing movement. In reality, fads such as these are just spaces in which people who have no real desire to contend with the real political world let out their frustration and try to achieve some sort of catharsis. They might feel strongly about some political issues they've never spent as much as five hours researching, but they will never fervently seek out the creation of a political apparatus like a party let alone be determined to change or introduce specific policies or laws. The political establishment changed very little in response to the antics of groups like rage against the machine or young women dressing in black and reading horrible young adult novels. All of these new social cliques that Keith has put under some sort of e-right umbrella will pan out in a similar way. I know it can be argued that these trends also affect other countries besides America, and they they might be more prone to following the path Keith is proposing, but I sincerely doubt this is the case. Most of these points are mostly relevant in America.
I have a sense that the high-level method of analysis isn't going to get at the actual *causes* of ideological change. The causes are low level; see for example https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/saving-space
I do appreciate what you're doing - in physics we often look at complex signals from black boxes and seek trends or patterns, but given the short length of time you're analyzing, coupled with the shifting nature of the object under analysis, I suspect it's impossible to determine whether a change is brewing using this methodology. Rather, (from my perspective, anyway) the mere fact that you're posing this question might itself be a better indicator of something interesting going on.
Only one I am familiar with is Tate, via people in a similar age range, I suspect that short format videos and the hustlers university stuff explains alot of his popularity, most of my peers get most of their information off short format stuff, this includes fears over population collapse and AI via Elon. A common sentiment of people who like him is that his views are just common sense from a couple years ago. I suspect every generation has such a near term reactionary, but they all seem to have failed in the long run.
Keith Woods is certainly more aware of the nature of current American cultural trends than most from Ireland, but he still falls into some of the same pitfalls a lot of his countrymen find themselves in when evaluating specific parts of America's character. Generally, I find that people from places like Ireland tend to have a view of America that's about three decades out of date. Due to this phenomenon, a good deal of their takes come across as boomerish. His being convinced that the rising popularity of figures like Andrew Tate is indicative of a resurgence in right-wing thought is akin to older Christians in the 90s who interpreted new social niches like goths and the popularity of genres like punk as signs of a rising left-wing movement. In reality, fads such as these are just spaces in which people who have no real desire to contend with the real political world let out their frustration and try to achieve some sort of catharsis. They might feel strongly about some political issues they've never spent as much as five hours researching, but they will never fervently seek out the creation of a political apparatus like a party let alone be determined to change or introduce specific policies or laws. The political establishment changed very little in response to the antics of groups like rage against the machine or young women dressing in black and reading horrible young adult novels. All of these new social cliques that Keith has put under some sort of e-right umbrella will pan out in a similar way. I know it can be argued that these trends also affect other countries besides America, and they they might be more prone to following the path Keith is proposing, but I sincerely doubt this is the case. Most of these points are mostly relevant in America.
I have a sense that the high-level method of analysis isn't going to get at the actual *causes* of ideological change. The causes are low level; see for example https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/saving-space
I do appreciate what you're doing - in physics we often look at complex signals from black boxes and seek trends or patterns, but given the short length of time you're analyzing, coupled with the shifting nature of the object under analysis, I suspect it's impossible to determine whether a change is brewing using this methodology. Rather, (from my perspective, anyway) the mere fact that you're posing this question might itself be a better indicator of something interesting going on.
Only one I am familiar with is Tate, via people in a similar age range, I suspect that short format videos and the hustlers university stuff explains alot of his popularity, most of my peers get most of their information off short format stuff, this includes fears over population collapse and AI via Elon. A common sentiment of people who like him is that his views are just common sense from a couple years ago. I suspect every generation has such a near term reactionary, but they all seem to have failed in the long run.