Outside Plato's Cave episode 1

1/ 1992 Los Angeles riots

With all this crazy shit going on at the moment in the US, it is a good time to remember the 1992 LA riots, very interesting clip below on a bad motherfucker named David Joo.

By the time the riots ended, 63 people had been killed, 2,383 people had been injured, more than 12,000 had been arrested, and estimates of property damage were over $1 billion, much of which disproportionately affected Koreatown, Los Angeles. 

Editor’s note : Full documentary (worth it) : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6728618/

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2/ Do violent protests work ?

A police car burned by protestors in NYC - 2020

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023118803189

How do people respond to violent political protest? The authors present a theory proposing that the use of violence leads the general public to view a protest group as less reasonable, a perception that reduces identification with the group. This reduced identification in turn reduces public support for the violent group. Furthermore, the authors argue that violence also leads to more support for groups that are perceived as opposing the violent group. 

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-violent-protests-change-politics

If you are an activist and there is this outrageous incident (like a knee on a neck) and you say, “How can we advance our interests?,” it might be that both violent and nonviolent protests are legitimate—but it still might be more effective to employ nonviolence, if we get everything we would from a violent protest, plus we don’t splinter a coalition that favors change. One puzzle is, if you are an activist, are nonviolent tactics going to get you more of what you want, or are violent tactics? And what I found from the sixties is that nonviolent protest achieved many of the same sorts of outcomes that the more militant activists were fighting for without splintering the Democratic coalition. There was a pro-segregation media at the time, and there were all kinds of state and federal repression—and, despite all of that, the nonviolent wing of the civil-rights movement was really able to move the country from tolerating Jim Crow to breaking Jim Crow.

https://hongkongfp.com/2020/02/16/hong-kong-protests-violence-work/

By contrast, violent protests are not always counter-productive. For instance, Mohammaad Ali Kadivar, an associate professor of sociology and international studies at Boston College, and Neil Ketchley, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo, used the case of the 25 January Egyptian Revolution to illustrate that “unarmed collective violence” is sometimes capable of “diverting repressive forces away from frontline protest policing duties” and offering protection to peaceful protesters

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/why-street-protests-dont-work/360264/

What we’ve witnessed in recent years is the popularization of street marches without a plan for what happens next and how to keep protesters engaged and integrated in the political process. It’s just the latest manifestation of the dangerous illusion that it is possible to have democracy without political parties—and that street protests based more on social media than sustained political organizing is the way to change society.

Editor’s note : It can work in a set of very limited scenarios, most of the time it doesn’t work and it can even backfire (do you really think HK protestors are going to win against China ? China will probably increase its repression)

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3/ Random food for thought

1. Good post on why You should give it five minutes.

And what did I do? I pushed back at him about the talk he gave. While he was making his points on stage, I was taking an inventory of the things I didn’t agree with. And when presented with an opportunity to speak with him, I quickly pushed back at some of his ideas. I must have seemed like such an asshole.

His response changed my life. It was a simple thing. He said “Man, give it five minutes.” I asked him what he meant by that? He said, it’s fine to disagree, it’s fine to push back, it’s great to have strong opinions and beliefs, but give my ideas some time to set in before you’re sure you want to argue against them. “Five minutes” represented “think”, not react. He was totally right. I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.

Editor’s note : You should almost always give it five minutes.

2. Read this on why Humans aren’t designed to be happy.

Humans are not designed to be happy, or even content. Instead, we are designed primarily to survive and reproduce, like every other creature in the natural world. A state of contentment is discouraged by nature because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival.

The fact that evolution has prioritised the development of a big frontal lobe in our brain (which gives us excellent executive and analytical abilities) over a natural ability to be happy, tells us a lot about nature’s priorities. Different geographical locations and circuits in the brain are each associated with certain neurological and intellectual functions, but happiness, being a mere construct with no neurological basis, cannot be found in the brain tissue.

Editor’s note : Happiness is a myth, almost a childish thing to pursue.

3. Read this on Human lifespan history.

So it seems that humans evolved with a characteristic lifespan. Mortality rates in traditional populations are high during infancy, before decreasing sharply to remain constant till about 40 years, then mortality rises to peak at about 70. Most individuals remain healthy and vigorous right through their 60s or beyond, until senescence sets in, which is the physical decline where if one cause fails to kill, another will soon strike the mortal blow.

The maximum human lifespan (approximately 125 years) has barely changed since we arrived. It is estimated that if the three main causes of death in old age today—cardiovascular disease, stroke, and cancer—were eliminated, the developed world would see only a 15-year increase in life expectancy. While an individual living to 125 in the distant past would have been extremely rare, it was possible.

Editor’s note : Our body is a machine with a maximum lifespan of 125 years (if you win the genetic lottery and absolutely luck out at life) and we haven’t found a way to increase that yet.

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