Funny how the same meaning expressed by different people led to so much outrage...
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.″
The first quote talks of “changing” reality, the second talks of “creating” it , making the first seem like an encouragement to try and change reality, and the second like sollipsism (specifically, “creating our own reality”).
The second also seems very dismissive of the need to think before you act, the first much less so (if at all).
The second quote is clearly not solipsism; note that what is “created” will be solid enough to be judiciously studied by other actors, empiricism, etc. Note also that the second quote does not talk about creating “reality,” it talks about creating “our own reality.” In other words, remoulding the world to suit your own purposes. Any sensible reading of the quote leads to that interpretation.
Like Lumifer, the Singer/Feuerbach quote, made me think immediately of the famous “reality-based community” quote.
No, the second clearly implies that the speaker simply doesn’t hold with Enlightenment principles, empiricism, and all that “judicious study of discernible reality” crap. That speaker clearly prefers to just act, not out of rational calculation towards a goal, but because acting is manly and awesome. This is why people have such vicious contempt for that speaker: not only is he not acting rationally on behalf of others, he doesn’t even care about acting rationally on his own behalf, and he had the big guns.
This is why people have such vicious contempt for that speaker
Actually, no, I think that some people have such vicious contempt for that speaker because he is a prominent member of the enemy political tribe and so needs to have shit thrown at him given the slightest opportunity.
What other option is there? Preferring to act out of rational calculation towards a goal would put the speaker among those who “believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality”, i.e. the very people he’s arguing against. We are left to guess what alternative decision procedure the speaker is proposing. eli_sennesh’s interpretation is one possibility, do you have another?
I read him as saying his empire was so powerful he didn’t need to care about existing reality or to plan ahead; he could make it up as he went and still expected to succeed no matter what, so he didn’t need to judiciously study the existing reality before overwriting it.
We are left to guess what alternative decision procedure the speaker is proposing. eli_sennesh’s interpretation is one possibility, do you have another?
I read him as saying that the people he is talking to and about are out of the loop. They write about what the politicians are doing, but only after the fact. The politicians have their own sources of information and people to analyse them, and the public-facing writers have no role in that process.
in other words, remoulding the world to suit your own purposes
Denotationally, that seems like a reasonable interpretation. It sets off solipsism warnings in my head, possibly because I know some self-described sollipsists who really are fond of using that kind of phrasing.
However, the speaker could have chosen to say this in a more straightforward way, as you do. Something like “We are an empire now, we have the power to remould parts of the world to better suit our purposes”. And yet, he did not. Why not? This is not a rhetorical question, I’m open to other possible answers, but here’s what I think:
I don’t think it is very controversial that this quote is arguing against “the reality-based community”.
It is trying to give the impression that “acting … to create our own reality” is somehow contradictory to “solutions emerging from your judicious study of discernible reality”. In reality of course, most or all effective attempts at steering reality towards a desired goal are based on “judicious study of discernible reality”. He is trying to give the impression that he (“we, an empire”) can effectively act without consulting, or at least using the methods of, the “reality-based community”. He doesn’t say that denotationally, because it’s false.
I think you are underestimating the importance of being well-informed for being an “agenty mover and shaker”. Look at this guy and these guys for example. Were they “agenty movers and shakers” ? They certainly tried!
The first quote talks of “changing” reality, the second talks of “creating” it, making the first seem like an encouragement to try and change reality, and the second like sollipsism.
I think this is exactly the same thing. When you change existing reality you create new reality.
The second also seems very dismissive of the need to think before you act
I read it more as pointing out that what many accept as immutable is actually mutable and changeable. This also plays into the agent vs NPC distinction (see e.g. here).
The parent comment and the replies to it are a case study in how different people intuitively draw strongly opposed conclusions from a piece of ambiguous, politically charged evidence.
Funny how the same meaning expressed by different people led to so much outrage
Because no one ever got outraged at fluffy old Karl Marx, dear me no.
I agree with Plasmon that there are important differences between the two quotations other than what political tribe they come from, and that the words attributed to the Bush aide suggest a contempt for “judicious study” and looking before one leaps, which Marx’s aphorism doesn’t. But even if we set that aside and stipulate that the two quotations convey the exact same meaning and connotations, the point you seem to be making—that the Bush guy got pilloried for being from the wrong tribe, whereas everyone loves Karl Marx when he says the same thing because he’s from the right tribe—seems to me badly wrong.
First of all, if you think Marx is of the same political tribe as most people who take exception to the Bush aide’s remarks, you might want to think again. That’s a mistake of the same magnitude (and perhaps the same type?) as failing to distinguish Chinese people from Japanese because they all look “Oriental”.
Secondly, while Marx’s aphorism gets quoted a lot, I don’t think that’s because everyone (or everyone on the “left”, or whatever group you might have in mind) agrees with it. It expresses an interesting idea pithily, and that suffices.
I wouldn’t suggest that Marx is in the same tribe as people who don’t like Bush. I would, however, suggest that Marx is within the Overton Window for such people and that Bush is not, and that has similar effects to actually being in the same tribe.
Most people don’t reject violent revolution for the practical reason that it’s a unworkable strategy but because they find the idea of going and lynching the capitalists is morally wrong.
Marx idea of putting philosophy into action brought along the politics of revolution.Bush’s relationship with the “reality-based community” leads to misleading voters and ignoring scientific findings.
In both cases the ideas get judged by their practical political consequences.
No need to lynch anyone: after all, Marx didn’t feel that capitalists were evil, he felt that they were just doing what the prevailing economic system forced them to do: to squeeze profit out of workers to avoid being outcompeted and driven to bankruptcy by the other capitalists. But (most of them) are not actively evil and don’t need to be punished. So you could just let them live but take their stuff, and there does exist wide support for the notion of forcibly taking at least some of people’s stuff (via taxation).
Marx didn’t think that you can simply get a democratic majority and tax rich peoples wealth away via taxation. He considered that no viable political strategy but advocated revolution.
You ignore the political actions that Marx advocated. In dialectics a thesis needs a contrasting antithesis to allow for synthesis.
Stalin also didn’t kill people because they were evil. That’s besides the point. The action that resulted in dead people were justified because they move history along.
The earlier question was about whether Marx would be in people’s Overton window. I think that if someone thinks “well, Marx had a pretty good analysis of the problems of capitalism, though he was mistaken about the best solutions”, then that counts as Marx being within the window.
What evidence moves you to say that the primary reason for rejection of violent revolution is morality rather than practicality? (And why do you/the majority of people think that violent revolution has to end in lynchings? Is there another widely-held opinion that simply stripping the capitalists of their defining trait—wealth—would be insufficient?)
holding that the violent revolution idea has been shown not to work.
That’s not true. The violent revolution idea worked very well. It’s just that what happened after that revolution didn’t quite match Marx’s expectations.
Well if you ignore all the predictions for what should happen afterwards, the mere idea that it’s possible to have a violent revolution that would topple an old authoritarian regime wasn’t exactly original to Marx.
The thing that was original to Marx was that a revolution is the only way to create real political change and that it’s impossible to create that change inside the system.
I find it hard to believe this was an original idea. In a classic autocracy with a small rich legally empowered class, how could you possibly expect to radically change things except through violence? What alternatives are there that were ignored by all the previous violent revolutions in history?
I find it hard to believe this was an original idea. In a classic autocracy with a small rich legally empowered class, how could you possibly expect to radically change things except through violence?
The idea is that even representative democracies creating radical change within the system is impossible.
Great Britain is still a Monarchy in 2014, but I would say they changed a great deal without a violent revolution.
I always thought that this quote was probably fabricated. When a Tribe B reporter encounters a “man on the street” , “black friend”, “highly placed source” or in this case “an aide” who is ostensibly a member of Tribe A, yet goes on to issue a quote that is more or less a call to arms for B I’m immensely suspicious.
I could still buy it though, if the aide talked like the protagonist of his own story. But he’s just an orc, snarling his hatred of applause lights to the innocent reporter. I don’t buy it.
It’s not too uncommon for reporters to massage quotes, or at the very least to quote selectively, in order to push an editorial agenda or tell a better story.
Funny how the same meaning expressed by different people led to so much outrage...
source
These quotes don’t seem similar to me at all.
The first quote talks of “changing” reality, the second talks of “creating” it , making the first seem like an encouragement to try and change reality, and the second like sollipsism (specifically, “creating our own reality”).
The second also seems very dismissive of the need to think before you act, the first much less so (if at all).
The second quote is clearly not solipsism; note that what is “created” will be solid enough to be judiciously studied by other actors, empiricism, etc. Note also that the second quote does not talk about creating “reality,” it talks about creating “our own reality.” In other words, remoulding the world to suit your own purposes. Any sensible reading of the quote leads to that interpretation.
Like Lumifer, the Singer/Feuerbach quote, made me think immediately of the famous “reality-based community” quote.
No, the second clearly implies that the speaker simply doesn’t hold with Enlightenment principles, empiricism, and all that “judicious study of discernible reality” crap. That speaker clearly prefers to just act, not out of rational calculation towards a goal, but because acting is manly and awesome. This is why people have such vicious contempt for that speaker: not only is he not acting rationally on behalf of others, he doesn’t even care about acting rationally on his own behalf, and he had the big guns.
Actually, no, I think that some people have such vicious contempt for that speaker because he is a prominent member of the enemy political tribe and so needs to have shit thrown at him given the slightest opportunity.
I cannot read this anywhere in the text,not even between the lines.
What other option is there? Preferring to act out of rational calculation towards a goal would put the speaker among those who “believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality”, i.e. the very people he’s arguing against. We are left to guess what alternative decision procedure the speaker is proposing. eli_sennesh’s interpretation is one possibility, do you have another?
I read him as saying his empire was so powerful he didn’t need to care about existing reality or to plan ahead; he could make it up as he went and still expected to succeed no matter what, so he didn’t need to judiciously study the existing reality before overwriting it.
I read him as saying that the people he is talking to and about are out of the loop. They write about what the politicians are doing, but only after the fact. The politicians have their own sources of information and people to analyse them, and the public-facing writers have no role in that process.
Denotationally, that seems like a reasonable interpretation. It sets off solipsism warnings in my head, possibly because I know some self-described sollipsists who really are fond of using that kind of phrasing.
However, the speaker could have chosen to say this in a more straightforward way, as you do. Something like “We are an empire now, we have the power to remould parts of the world to better suit our purposes”. And yet, he did not. Why not? This is not a rhetorical question, I’m open to other possible answers, but here’s what I think:
I don’t think it is very controversial that this quote is arguing against “the reality-based community”. It is trying to give the impression that “acting … to create our own reality” is somehow contradictory to “solutions emerging from your judicious study of discernible reality”. In reality of course, most or all effective attempts at steering reality towards a desired goal are based on “judicious study of discernible reality”. He is trying to give the impression that he (“we, an empire”) can effectively act without consulting, or at least using the methods of, the “reality-based community”. He doesn’t say that denotationally, because it’s false.
Seems to me you’re overthinking the simple difference between being a passive observer and being an agenty mover and shaker.
Or in an old Arab saying, the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
I think you are underestimating the importance of being well-informed for being an “agenty mover and shaker”. Look at this guy and these guys for example. Were they “agenty movers and shakers” ? They certainly tried!
Even the famous Sun Tzu, hardly a passive observer himself, devotes an entire chapter to the importance of being well-informed.
I think this is exactly the same thing. When you change existing reality you create new reality.
I read it more as pointing out that what many accept as immutable is actually mutable and changeable. This also plays into the agent vs NPC distinction (see e.g. here).
The parent comment and the replies to it are a case study in how different people intuitively draw strongly opposed conclusions from a piece of ambiguous, politically charged evidence.
Because no one ever got outraged at fluffy old Karl Marx, dear me no.
I agree with Plasmon that there are important differences between the two quotations other than what political tribe they come from, and that the words attributed to the Bush aide suggest a contempt for “judicious study” and looking before one leaps, which Marx’s aphorism doesn’t. But even if we set that aside and stipulate that the two quotations convey the exact same meaning and connotations, the point you seem to be making—that the Bush guy got pilloried for being from the wrong tribe, whereas everyone loves Karl Marx when he says the same thing because he’s from the right tribe—seems to me badly wrong.
First of all, if you think Marx is of the same political tribe as most people who take exception to the Bush aide’s remarks, you might want to think again. That’s a mistake of the same magnitude (and perhaps the same type?) as failing to distinguish Chinese people from Japanese because they all look “Oriental”.
Secondly, while Marx’s aphorism gets quoted a lot, I don’t think that’s because everyone (or everyone on the “left”, or whatever group you might have in mind) agrees with it. It expresses an interesting idea pithily, and that suffices.
I wouldn’t suggest that Marx is in the same tribe as people who don’t like Bush. I would, however, suggest that Marx is within the Overton Window for such people and that Bush is not, and that has similar effects to actually being in the same tribe.
I don’t think going around and making a violent revolution to get rid of capitalism is within the overton window of most people on the left in the US.
One could be sympathetic to many of Marx’s ideas while nevertheless holding that the violent revolution idea has been shown not to work.
Most people don’t reject violent revolution for the practical reason that it’s a unworkable strategy but because they find the idea of going and lynching the capitalists is morally wrong.
Marx idea of putting philosophy into action brought along the politics of revolution.Bush’s relationship with the “reality-based community” leads to misleading voters and ignoring scientific findings. In both cases the ideas get judged by their practical political consequences.
No need to lynch anyone: after all, Marx didn’t feel that capitalists were evil, he felt that they were just doing what the prevailing economic system forced them to do: to squeeze profit out of workers to avoid being outcompeted and driven to bankruptcy by the other capitalists. But (most of them) are not actively evil and don’t need to be punished. So you could just let them live but take their stuff, and there does exist wide support for the notion of forcibly taking at least some of people’s stuff (via taxation).
Marx didn’t think that you can simply get a democratic majority and tax rich peoples wealth away via taxation. He considered that no viable political strategy but advocated revolution. You ignore the political actions that Marx advocated. In dialectics a thesis needs a contrasting antithesis to allow for synthesis.
Stalin also didn’t kill people because they were evil. That’s besides the point. The action that resulted in dead people were justified because they move history along.
The earlier question was about whether Marx would be in people’s Overton window. I think that if someone thinks “well, Marx had a pretty good analysis of the problems of capitalism, though he was mistaken about the best solutions”, then that counts as Marx being within the window.
I don’t think anyone would say that Bush was wrong about everything to the extend that he’s outside of people’s Overton window.
What evidence moves you to say that the primary reason for rejection of violent revolution is morality rather than practicality? (And why do you/the majority of people think that violent revolution has to end in lynchings? Is there another widely-held opinion that simply stripping the capitalists of their defining trait—wealth—would be insufficient?)
That’s not true. The violent revolution idea worked very well. It’s just that what happened after that revolution didn’t quite match Marx’s expectations.
Well if you ignore all the predictions for what should happen afterwards, the mere idea that it’s possible to have a violent revolution that would topple an old authoritarian regime wasn’t exactly original to Marx.
The thing that was original to Marx was that a revolution is the only way to create real political change and that it’s impossible to create that change inside the system.
I find it hard to believe this was an original idea. In a classic autocracy with a small rich legally empowered class, how could you possibly expect to radically change things except through violence? What alternatives are there that were ignored by all the previous violent revolutions in history?
The idea is that even representative democracies creating radical change within the system is impossible.
Great Britain is still a Monarchy in 2014, but I would say they changed a great deal without a violent revolution.
I always thought that this quote was probably fabricated. When a Tribe B reporter encounters a “man on the street” , “black friend”, “highly placed source” or in this case “an aide” who is ostensibly a member of Tribe A, yet goes on to issue a quote that is more or less a call to arms for B I’m immensely suspicious.
I could still buy it though, if the aide talked like the protagonist of his own story. But he’s just an orc, snarling his hatred of applause lights to the innocent reporter. I don’t buy it.
It’s not too uncommon for reporters to massage quotes, or at the very least to quote selectively, in order to push an editorial agenda or tell a better story.