[FRIAM] bougie

[glen]

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bougie

Right "Libertarians" Are Just Fascists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmT7nLDinhY

‘Don’ of a new era: the rise of Peter Thiel as a US rightwing power player
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/30/peter-thiel-republican-midterms-trump-paypal-mafia

I can't help but think there's something to be said, here, about degrees of freedom and open-ended evolution. A friend described their neighborhood as "bougie". I can't shake the feeling that Thiel *must* think of Trump as bougie. But it's less about money and more about power (including cognitive & computational - C&C - power). Trump is to Thiel as Harris is to Garfield, I guess. 8^D

But the problem with privilege, well-identified by the Woke, is the (almost by definition) invisibility of the platform on which one stands. At least Wolfram is honest in throwing up his hands and giving up on the scholarly task of tracking down all the thoughts that weren't actually his. That's a lot of busy work, time he could be spending doing actual work. To be bougie is, on the one hand, to revel in the fact that you're standing on a platform, but a platform obviously *lower* than that of the actual (C&C) powerful, the actual wealthy.

It seems to me the fundamental question of open-ended evolution is whether or not one's scaffolding/platform increases or decreases one's wiggle room. Thiel has his cake and eats it too, without the platform-based constraints that would tie down, say, a Platonic philosopher fasc^H^H^Hking. To self-inspect one's privilege is to aim one's attention at the constraints, rather than aiming it at the freedoms. But if we remove (or broaden to its limit) the subjective attention, are there, ontologically, more or fewer freedoms when privileged by a platform? Or is it zero sum?

My own guess is that it's context dependent. Some platforms are, objectively, more constraining than others. And there might be platforms that are more freeing than others. The trick is, when the Musks and Thiels of the world discuss the freedoms they *see* from their platforms, are they tides that will raise all boats? Or is their freedom bubble more localized?

Adam Something's distinction between "right" and other libertarians plays well in that context.

-- 
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