I notice something that shows up in a few of these interviews with well known older authors.. they never pause to think about a question before answering. They have their “core thesis” and backing points, and no matter what question you ask, they always steer the answer back to their core thesis even if it doesn’t apply. He did this with the (very interesting) question “imagine Stalin wasn’t in control but he’s still just as conniving and politically savvy, how would he avoid being purged” — he just ignored it entirely despite you re-clarifying the question 3 times. I noticed that Sarah Paine (whom I adore) did the same thing in the live talks, would just not really answer novel questions you came up with. It’s almost like they feel that they need to have all the answers to maintain credibility and so they can’t just stop to think about a novel question for 10 seconds
Totally agree, Kotkin does it quite a bit. I think he sees podcasts more like a lecture then a discussion. It's an interesting comparison to other guests who like to discuss ideas and Dwarkesh's points.
This one was kinda painful to listen to, he doesn’t seem to understand the concept of discussion and instead just pontificated over you for 2 hours. Lots of good things to say, but not a good discussion
Feet of iron and clay. It’s interesting that that result (strength of government vs the people, in constant conflict) can be viewed as inevitable, as autocrats as world powers successively built better and better communication and transportation systems, whether it was through the spread of the Greek language, or building Roman roads… to eventually the internet and smart phones and enhanced logistics through global shipping systems and the Panama Canal. It eventually led to the empowerment of the people of the earth as a force to counterbalance authoritarian regimes.
I wonder about East/West Germany and East/West Berlin, and the similarity (inverse?) effect to the annexation of Hong Kong to China.
It makes me think there’s a larger multigenerational system that is setting up these enclaves of opposing systems to balance the imbalances by forcing them to merge.
Also, I see how the Israelite/Mosaic Law system avoided this problem with the Jubilee 50 year reset: It “redistributed wealth” with a minimum of economic disruption (the reset was anticipated by adjusting land prices to match how many years were left till the reset), yet allowed people to keep profits and therefore encouraged whatever would have been the equivalent of “GDP” back then… and the seven year cycles squished the excesses out of the system and provided further economic stability. (Setting slaves free if they wanted freedom) I’m surprised no country has analyzed and tried to replicate the logic of it.
I do think bankers have figured out the advantages of having controlled cycles … and Bitcoin kind of merges with psychology and piggybacks on to human nature and the 4 year cycles of many countries elections … in some odd way the Mosaic Law and Bitcoin show a similar genius, in that respect, by accounting for and incorporating human nature into and building their success as economic systems.
It would have been nice if North Korea was a bigger part of the conversation. To say nothing of the figure of Lenin, who was every bit as much of a murderous sociopath as Stalin was, and may have been the model. See here, for instance: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/10/leninthink
An excerpt:
“The citizen belongs to the state and must have no other loyalty, not even to the state ideology,” Kołakowski observes. That might seem strange to Westerners, but, “it is not surprising to anyone who knows a system of this type from within.” All deviations from the Party line, all challenges to the leadership, appealed to official ideology, and so anyone who truly believed the ideology was suspect. “The [great] purge, therefore, was designed to destroy such ideological links as still existed within the party, to convince its members that they had no ideology or loyalty except to the latest orders from on high . . . . Loyalty to Marxist ideology as such is still—[in 1978]—a crime and a source of deviations of all kinds.” The true Leninist did not even believe in Leninism.
When I heard the discussion (in a few places) about the copied text below, in my mind I replaced "peasants" with "workers" and "land" with "jobs" in the context of AI replacing people, leading to the unemployment. What happens when fewer people have a "piece of the status quo"?
Copied text:
"You need to deal with the peasant land hunger so that it becomes a stabilizing political force. You have the peasants get the land and then they have a piece of the status quo and want to retain the system, versus the peasants not having the land and they want to overthrow the system to get the land."
A note on other reading - Kotkin's biography is quite good, but I find the explanations that decenter Stalin's individual decision-making more persuasive. The social structure of the post-NEP Soviet state is fascinating, and I recommend historians like Sheila Fitzpatrick and R. W. Davies on the topic, who look deeper than Kotkin into the periphery of the Soviet state - such as how local committees made decisions independent of the Central Committee and how haphazard and improvised the 5-year plans were. Fitzpatrick is excellent for understanding the incentives facing agents under Stalinism. I also cannot recommend more Simon Pirani's The Russian Revolution in Retreat, a detailed account of how the Bolshevik party and the nomenklatura disempowered the democratic institutions that emerged from the Revolution, with workers self-management of factories terminated by the time Stalin consolidates power within the Party.
These works helps answer questions like the Bukharin counterfactual. What would have happened if the Bolshevik leadership had refused to bring about collectivization? Likely, they would have been taken out the back and shot by urban workers, who would have then proceeded with grain seizures. Mass violence is overdetermined by the character of the regime: an isolated, party-state entirely reliant on the cooperation and relative docility of its working class base, who genuinely believe in the messianic nature of the project and are also heavily armed and organized - with no democratic mechanism to resolve conflicts between social classes.
I notice something that shows up in a few of these interviews with well known older authors.. they never pause to think about a question before answering. They have their “core thesis” and backing points, and no matter what question you ask, they always steer the answer back to their core thesis even if it doesn’t apply. He did this with the (very interesting) question “imagine Stalin wasn’t in control but he’s still just as conniving and politically savvy, how would he avoid being purged” — he just ignored it entirely despite you re-clarifying the question 3 times. I noticed that Sarah Paine (whom I adore) did the same thing in the live talks, would just not really answer novel questions you came up with. It’s almost like they feel that they need to have all the answers to maintain credibility and so they can’t just stop to think about a novel question for 10 seconds
Totally agree, Kotkin does it quite a bit. I think he sees podcasts more like a lecture then a discussion. It's an interesting comparison to other guests who like to discuss ideas and Dwarkesh's points.
I only listened to a short part, but yeah, what you say rings true so far.
This one was kinda painful to listen to, he doesn’t seem to understand the concept of discussion and instead just pontificated over you for 2 hours. Lots of good things to say, but not a good discussion
Feet of iron and clay. It’s interesting that that result (strength of government vs the people, in constant conflict) can be viewed as inevitable, as autocrats as world powers successively built better and better communication and transportation systems, whether it was through the spread of the Greek language, or building Roman roads… to eventually the internet and smart phones and enhanced logistics through global shipping systems and the Panama Canal. It eventually led to the empowerment of the people of the earth as a force to counterbalance authoritarian regimes.
I wonder about East/West Germany and East/West Berlin, and the similarity (inverse?) effect to the annexation of Hong Kong to China.
It makes me think there’s a larger multigenerational system that is setting up these enclaves of opposing systems to balance the imbalances by forcing them to merge.
Also, I see how the Israelite/Mosaic Law system avoided this problem with the Jubilee 50 year reset: It “redistributed wealth” with a minimum of economic disruption (the reset was anticipated by adjusting land prices to match how many years were left till the reset), yet allowed people to keep profits and therefore encouraged whatever would have been the equivalent of “GDP” back then… and the seven year cycles squished the excesses out of the system and provided further economic stability. (Setting slaves free if they wanted freedom) I’m surprised no country has analyzed and tried to replicate the logic of it.
I do think bankers have figured out the advantages of having controlled cycles … and Bitcoin kind of merges with psychology and piggybacks on to human nature and the 4 year cycles of many countries elections … in some odd way the Mosaic Law and Bitcoin show a similar genius, in that respect, by accounting for and incorporating human nature into and building their success as economic systems.
It would have been nice if North Korea was a bigger part of the conversation. To say nothing of the figure of Lenin, who was every bit as much of a murderous sociopath as Stalin was, and may have been the model. See here, for instance: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/10/leninthink
An excerpt:
“The citizen belongs to the state and must have no other loyalty, not even to the state ideology,” Kołakowski observes. That might seem strange to Westerners, but, “it is not surprising to anyone who knows a system of this type from within.” All deviations from the Party line, all challenges to the leadership, appealed to official ideology, and so anyone who truly believed the ideology was suspect. “The [great] purge, therefore, was designed to destroy such ideological links as still existed within the party, to convince its members that they had no ideology or loyalty except to the latest orders from on high . . . . Loyalty to Marxist ideology as such is still—[in 1978]—a crime and a source of deviations of all kinds.” The true Leninist did not even believe in Leninism.
Dwarkesh, why do you only interview men?
His most popular podcasts of all time are with Sarah Paine..
I’ll be sure to listen to that one! I do enjoy his interviews but when there are like 5 women over ~100 episodes that doesn’t happen by chance
When I heard the discussion (in a few places) about the copied text below, in my mind I replaced "peasants" with "workers" and "land" with "jobs" in the context of AI replacing people, leading to the unemployment. What happens when fewer people have a "piece of the status quo"?
Copied text:
"You need to deal with the peasant land hunger so that it becomes a stabilizing political force. You have the peasants get the land and then they have a piece of the status quo and want to retain the system, versus the peasants not having the land and they want to overthrow the system to get the land."
No mention of Trump?
When is the third volume coming out ?
Brilliant conversation. Nice one!
Strongly recommend that you seek out Joseph Torigian for a chat.
Great conversation, “D.K”!
A note on other reading - Kotkin's biography is quite good, but I find the explanations that decenter Stalin's individual decision-making more persuasive. The social structure of the post-NEP Soviet state is fascinating, and I recommend historians like Sheila Fitzpatrick and R. W. Davies on the topic, who look deeper than Kotkin into the periphery of the Soviet state - such as how local committees made decisions independent of the Central Committee and how haphazard and improvised the 5-year plans were. Fitzpatrick is excellent for understanding the incentives facing agents under Stalinism. I also cannot recommend more Simon Pirani's The Russian Revolution in Retreat, a detailed account of how the Bolshevik party and the nomenklatura disempowered the democratic institutions that emerged from the Revolution, with workers self-management of factories terminated by the time Stalin consolidates power within the Party.
These works helps answer questions like the Bukharin counterfactual. What would have happened if the Bolshevik leadership had refused to bring about collectivization? Likely, they would have been taken out the back and shot by urban workers, who would have then proceeded with grain seizures. Mass violence is overdetermined by the character of the regime: an isolated, party-state entirely reliant on the cooperation and relative docility of its working class base, who genuinely believe in the messianic nature of the project and are also heavily armed and organized - with no democratic mechanism to resolve conflicts between social classes.