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[Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git] / content / drafts / the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason.md

diff --git a/content/drafts/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason.md b/content/drafts/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason.md
index 4b0b298..7e4a101 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason.md
+++ b/content/drafts/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason.md
@@ -4,9 +4,9 @@ Category: commentary
 Tags: cathartic, epistemic horror
 Status: draft
 
-> "The only thing standing in the way of my own progress," Sagreda said, "is that the forces that once dealt with us honestly have been buried too deep to reach. All I can touch now is the surface, which is shaped by nothing but whim."
+> The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." 
 >
-> —["Bit Players"](https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/winter_2014/bit_players_by_greg_egan) by Greg Egan
+> —["Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush"](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html) by Ron Suskind, _The New York Times Magazine_
 
 Truth isn't real; there are only competing narratives.
 
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ If people are quantitatively less likely to do business with people who emit her
 
 If you can't win the argument (because the motte is genuinely a great motte) and therefore gain status by appealing to reality, and our minds are better at tracking status than reality, then eventually dissidents either accept the narrative or destroy themselves. (It's tempting to do the equivalent of flipping a table and screaming, "STOP GASLIGHTING ME, YOU SANCTIMONIOUS LYING BASTARDS", but that's not a winning move: depending on the details, you either get ostracized on grounds of being an asshole, or carted off to psychiatric prison on grounds of being mentally ill.) 
 
-If autogynephilic males (who are better at coalitional politics than actual-lesbians for basically the same reasons that men-in-general are better at coalitional politics than women-in-general, as evidenced by the patriarchy) manages to 
+If autogynephilic males (who are better at coalitional politics than actual lesbians for basically the same reasons that men-in-general are better at coalitional politics than women-in-general, as evidenced by the patriarchy) manages to 
 
 -----
 
@@ -40,3 +40,5 @@ if you can mf everyone into beleiving that AGPs are really women, that actually
 but maybe you could get the good result without mfing???
 
 https://twitter.com/pangmeli/status/1079097805250224130
+
+Judiciously. As I do.