Oddbean

Daily life in the 21st century means resolving a thousand life-or-death technical questions *every day*. Our regulators - corrupted by literally out-of-control corporations - are no longer reliable sources of ground truth on these questions. The resulting #EpistemologicalChaos is a cancer that gnaws away at our resolve to do anything about it. It is a festering pool where nihilism outbreaks are incubated. 34/

The liberal response to conspiratorialism is mockery. In her new book *Doppelganger*, #NaomiKlein tells of how right-wing surveillance fearmongering about QR-code "#VaccinePassports" was dismissed with a glib, "Wait until they hear about cellphones!" https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine But as Klein points out, it's *not good* that our cellphones invade our privacy in the way that right-wing conspiracists thought that vaccine passports might. 35/

The nihilism of liberalism - which insists that things can't be changed except through market "solutions" - leads us to despair. By contrast, leftism - a muscular belief in democratic, publicly run planning and action - offers a tonic to nihilism. We don't have to let logging companies decide whether a forest can be cut, or what should be planted when it is. We *can* have nice things. 36/

The art of finding out what's true or prudent didn't die with the #Reagan Revolution (or the discount Canadian version, the #Mulroney Malaise). The truth is knowable. Doing stuff is possible. Things don't have to be on fire. eof/