[FRIAM] Fridman V Rogan (V Rutt), Tolerance and Charitability

[steve smith]

glen wrote:
>
> Sure, as EricS points out, Fridman's cohort may have more credible 
> members than Rogan's cohort ... or maybe not. But it brings up the 
> great exploration v exploitation dilemma ... a bit like the paradox of 
> tolerance <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance>. 

I don't "follow" Fridman, but I am amazed at how often he is 
interviewing a person I'm interested in or on a subject with a person I 
was unfamiliar with.    My own reason for (almost exclusively) avoiding 
Rogan is precisely because of this "paradox of tolerance"...  his 
tolerance (embrace?) of whackadoos of various stripes and my tolerance 
of him doing so, particularly in the style he does so, seems only to 
feed something "ugly" IMO. Lex, on the other hand feels easier for me to 
allow/support with my attention because on average I feel that I can 
quickly vet whether I'm interested in his interviewee (despite the 
format being very long-form by contemporary measures).   When the 
interviewee is deeply questionable to my values (e.g. Jared Kushner, 
Tucker Carlson, Netanyahu ...) I usually scan and sample for specific 
topics I am actually curious about how they will come out in such a 
context (compared to the usual 
press-release/soundbite/adversarial-journo style we usually get.

I find Fridman, Rogan, Rutt (and Hossenfelder) all on one spectrum or 
another.   I'm more allergic to the Testosterone/Authority spectrum that 
Rogan (and to a lesser extent Rutt) travels on.

Tolerance:  I tried attending the Los Alamos Unitarian Church for a 
while (in the 90s) but was exhausted by the "more Tolerent than Thou" 
experience that their "meetings" had...  I appreciated the idea of the 
"tolerant embrace" but it felt at least partly performative and possibly 
contra-indicated to the deeper values I (and I presumed many of they) 
were pursuing...  not only did it risk the Paradox of Intolerance as you 
(glen) reference, but also seemed to cheapen a superclass of "tolerance" 
such as "embrace"? It is hard to really get to know someone/thing and 
engage it on it's terms when you are "tolerating" it.

> One of Fridman's schticks is "love" ... to entertain, say, fascists 
> who, were they to be in any sort of powerful position, would gladly 
> destroy you and all your loved ones. But as long as they're fringe 
> enough, you can listen to them with the same credulity with which you 
> listen to, say, Sara Walker. Maybe it's a form of security through 
> obscurity? There's so much traffic that nobody can separate the wheat 
> from the chaff. So Lex can't be a part of the alt-right pipeline. 
> Obviously.

I'm not sure if I read you right here?  You are positing that Lex is 
part of the "alt-right pipeline"?   Or more that his "tolerance" of the 
kushner/netanyahu/ctucker types enables the alt-right?   I see his "tech 
bro" embrace of the likes of Musk/Bezos/Zuck to be it's own problem but 
not precisely as an alt-right phenomenon?

His interview with Neri Oxman (more tech-bro/avante-garde artist?) came 
long before her husband (who I didn't know was her husband)  Bill Ackman 
stuck his foot in it and demonstrated HIS alt-right alliance this year 
so egregiously.

>
> [sigh] Charitability can be a vice. Maybe we should do ourselves and 
> our cohort a favor and be less charitable.

Charitability...   a close cousin to Tolerance with many of the same 
strengths and weaknesses.

My father's favorite aphorism of "moderation in all things, especially 
moderation" had the corrolary of "tolerance of all things except 
intolerance"....  I find "tolerance" less useful/interesting than 
eschewing "intolerance".