[FRIAM] if by 'populism' he meant ...

[Marcus Daniels]

If there is an ordinary person class or subclass, which I also doubt, then it is dispensable, or even a liability, because it is just another person heating up the atmosphere and accelerating the demise of life as we know it on earth.   In  this view, one would compress out the sameness using the population for context (the Great Dictionary), and whatever is unique is the value of that person.  One might not be surprised if individuals with low residual entropy might find safety in numbers or even declare their concerns to be a movement. 

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From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2020 12:51 PM
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Subject: Re: [FRIAM] if by 'populism' he meant ...

OK. I suppose I can take elements of all 4 responses and make my own criticism of my own idea. From:

• MGD: Not a delusion. A compressible thing has an internal, essential structure from which details can be [re]generated. And classes can be binned off that internal structure instead of the expanded (perhaps noisy) expression. And some things might be more compressible than other things. An "ordinary person" class could be built based on that compressibility and/or the extent to which we can distinguish between the essential (compressed) structure versus the ancillary fully expression.

• RJA: Not a delusion. An intersubjective resentment over class or social status.

• SAS: Maybe delusional, but requires a policy-making component. Basically a form of herd mentality. But add in an impetus to write the mentality into law.

• NST: Not a delusion. An appeal to basic needs/instincts/emotions, lower on the pyramid. This would include experience-based tribalism like visible signals of the adoption of -isms.

If I'm close in my restatements, only Steve allows for my assertion that the intersubjective stance is delusional. Everyone else seems to think there may be some actual basis for the stance. I'll have to read a book to extract Tom's or Frank's. 8^(


On 12/23/20 9:16 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> I have always taken it to mean appeal to the "lowest" common denominator, "lowest" to be understood in a strictly mathematical sense.  Sex Food, and rock and roll, rather than world peace and justice.  I have been interested in the debate between AOC and Abigail Stanberger, who seem to agree that the Democrats should focus on getting particular things done and which particular things to get done, yet continue to be lured by the press into arguments around such words as "defund the police" and "socialism."  They both seem very different from Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts for whom the slogans seem central.   I thought I was going to have a conclusion about which of these was populism, but now that I get here, I see that I don't.   Maybe Pressley is the populist because she avoids the details?  

On 12/23/20 9:06 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> 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 8:47 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. 

On 12/23/20 8:38 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> To the extent I can be gzipped, am I not also redundant?

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