I held my own idiosyncratic (generally positive) apprehension of "populism" both for best and worst for the longest time... maybe right up until it was applied to Trump's appeal. I now map "mobocracy" much more strongly onto it. For me Mobocracy fails worse than the mere implications of "unwashed masses", but rather the entrainment aspects of mob-swarms. An idea doesn't have to be "good" to be "popular".
On 12/23/20 9:47 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: > I recently saw an article that defined populism as something like the > resentment of poorly paid, poorly benefitted, and for the most-part > hands-on workers toward those who have reasonably well-paying, > well-benefitted, and can-work-from-home jobs. > _ > _ > __-- Russ Abbott > Professor, Computer Science > California State University, Los Angeles > > > On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 8:38 AM Marcus Daniels <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > To the extent I can be gzipped, am I not also redundant? > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of u?l? ??? > Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2020 6:55 AM > To: FriAM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > Subject: [FRIAM] if by 'populism' he meant ... > > Britain’s Last Day in Brussels: A Populist Punch-Up > > https://bylinetimes.com/2020/12/08/britains-last-day-in-brussels-a-populist-punch-up/ > > <https://bylinetimes.com/2020/12/08/britains-last-day-in-brussels-a-populist-punch-up/> > > I've struggled to understand what populism means. The dictionary > definition is no help (appeal to ordinary people) because I don't > think such people exist. There is no "average person". We're all > "elite" (special) in some way or another. Each thing has its own > particularity. (Down to Pauli exclusion.) Binning concrete things > into classes requires removing particulars. This kindasorta > implies that populism means appealing to the most common feature > set. Average every possible feature and choose the top, say, 5-7 > most common features. > > But that's a problem because we people aren't very objective. So, > a data-driven populist would stick pretty close to an algorithm > like that. But a "populist" politician probably would not. There's > some other criteria at work ... some *conception* of the ordinary > person that isn't objective ... a kind of shared subjectivity, > "intersubjectivity" > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjectivity > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersubjectivity>>? > > My *guess* is that the way "populist" is used refers to a shared > *delusion* ... like the American Dream, which was always a > delusion. It's simply becoming more obvious as our information > ecology changes. The intersubjectivity involved seems to be a mass > psychogenic illness > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness>> ... > kinda like popular music and the same damned person winning the > pop contest year upon year. > > I'd be grateful for any criticism of that conclusion. > > I have another idea that was triggered by the Byline article: that > populism is a kind of forcing structure [⛧], a reduction from high > to low dimension, from high to low diversity. Where "elites" take > an appropriate amount of time to, say, explain/understand quantum > decoherence, a populist over-simplifies it so that the "ordinary > person" can believe they see it everywhere. Or, where "elites" > accept the cost of sympathizing with each particular wak they > meet, the populist stereotypes those [in|out] of their tribe. This > 2nd idea could be seen as a derivative of the 1st one, where the > shared delusion is the overly simplified model. I'm not as > interested in criticism of this 2nd idea. Killing the 1st idea > would, I think, kill the 2nd. But if the 1st idea sounds about > right, then it might be worth trashing the 2nd. > > > [⛧] ... whether [endo|exo]genous, which isn't irrelevant, but > perhaps tangential. > > -- > ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > <http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> un/subscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > <http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC> > http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> > > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
