If anyone is interested in setting up a research institute where we can troll for grants to study why people might want to give us grants, let me know!
These companies are among the most successful in the world at extracting tax cash. All other activities maybe true, but finance has been and continues to be via the tax payer in multiple countries.
I don't know if it's people or institutions that matter more in grantsmanship. It's a truism that people run institutions, but often enough the institutions may act semi-independently of their supporters, because they have the instincts of churches and other religious institutions that act as gatekeepers for whatever novel ideas come along. And as Eugyppius indicates, mere novelty does not guarantee soundness or sense.
The Overton window is sort of like the Dunning-Kruger effect. Smug intellectual sphincters on Twitter repeat the phrase endlessly until it has lost any meaning or use that it once had.
Almost all uses I remember felt like after-the-fact rationalizations. Post-hoc-ergo-proctor-hoc-or-some-thing-or-another. Every usage I see now drags down the author's reputation.
Eugyppius has an academic background in some sort of linguistic specialty which I never fully grasped. As such, I respect his superior depth of knowledge and objection to the phrase "Overton Window", especially in its original, more technical sense.
As a much more shallow thinker, I found it a very useful shorthand for viewing how the political correctness of discussions changed over time, most especially with regard to Covid and wokeness.
It's no secret that state actors can pretty much ignore what the rabble says, but as a member of the rabble, I stubbornly cling to the belief that being allowed to express myself, along with many other grains of rabble, isn't a completely fruitless exercise. At the very least, we might influence more of the rabble, hopefully dragging the unspeakable window in a new direction 😜
I can live with rabble. We have been called worse, riffraff, the unwashed, irredeemable, deplorable, etc. All the things we are called by the elite who thinks their shit don't stink.
I would quite like a shorthand way of describing what you refer to, 'the political correctness of discussions'. I noticed that very few people dared to defend J.K.Rowling when she criticised the granting of access of biological males to female spaces. But now I think I see more people supporting than denigrating her. In fact the only people I know of who denigrate her are Trans people and actors.
The consensus of the rabble is heavily influenced by what the elites (whoever they are) advance. For example, for reasons not clear to me, all of a sudden we are talking about the evils of "data centers", without any facts to back up the argument seeking their restriction or abolition. Even otherwise conservative politicians, sticking their wet fingers in the wind, are coming out in opposition. OK, don't call it a "window", but public opinion is moving in real time on this issue, and I don't understand why. Not too long ago, we used to call them "server farms"...
1. Why build dedicated centres using a scale of servers rarely seen before, in so many places at once?
2. Why build such vast sheds when the server capability needs less space rather than more?
3. What will the vast sheds become when the bubble pseudo finance implodes (see circular inter-company loans) and the wealthy discard this fashion item?
4. What becomes of the present server network?
It is an expensive farce, where once again the few take money from the many in return for absolutely nothing.
I had not thought of that, even though I'm well-aware of history's parade of expensive social manias, promoted by fraudsters that have wasted humanity's substance. The first book I read about that was a real eye-opener, even though it dates back to the mid-19th century. That was Charles MacKay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"
There is a related concept that is employed, however, that does shift ideas of acceptability, articulability, and then policy called 'psychological priming.' Which is used to achieve all sorts agendas that could/would never be considered acceptable, articulable, much less desirable, actual policy until the minds of sufficient masses and the 'elite institutions were primed.
Much of that is done via entertainment. This Stack explored psychological priming, shared a popular meme that went viral making the rounds on social media in the mid-2010's, primed minds to accept their sacrifice to 'protect grandma' and be led by the weakest, least fit among us, for a compassionate 'greater good':
And this is from the TIME 100 Summit in 2019 where a panelist explained how just talking about ideas moves them into action long before they are considered acceptable topics, how introducing ideas into Hollywood, particularly Sci-fi genre serves the purpose of priming and normalizing ideas considered taboo, depraved, wicked, anti-human:
Panel: Creating Medical Miracles, Ethically, April 23, 2019
(queued to panel discussion, Dr. George Church, Dr. Giuliana Testa, Dr. Pardis Sabeti, Ariana Huffington moderator. Note: George Church was a Jeffrey Epstein BFF, recipient of massive donations, fellow eugenics proponent. Pardis Sabeti is a Bill Gates plandemic medical tyranny 'scientist', population control, surveillance state specialist, daughter of Parviz Sabeti, former head of the Shah of Iran's SAVAK (i.e. Stasi, KGB, Gestapo), "Most Feared Man in Iran")
"AH: You all have been to the idea of the third rail in each of your fields, like where would you not go? And I would love to hear a story or an example of a time when you said “I’m not going to go there. I’m not going to play God.” Have any one of you had a moment like that?
GC: Well, I don’t think we’re in any danger of playing a major deity, but we’re, we could certainly do, there’s a line which we don’t cross. There’s some things which I don’t even discuss, until many years later when someone else thinks of the same idea.
An example of that was, personalized weapons, biological weapons, when you make a weapon that is specific for a particular person. And I kept that a secret, I didn’t tell anybody for about a decade. And then somebody else who I happen to know thought about it independently and was planning on publishing it in The Atlantic, and I said to him, “do you really want to do this, I mean this is enabling, for no particular purpose?” And it was framed in terms of Barack Obama being the target. And I just thought it was a, that’s an example of a line that I didn’t cross and I wouldn’t. But it did, and it was published, so.
AH: Should the decision not to publish something that in the hands of the wrong people could wreak devastation be a matter for government regulation?
GC: Both ideas I did share because I do think that other people are thinking about. Just they’re a rare one every now and again that it seems like there could buy us an extra ten years if I shut up. But I think because we talk about these ideas so far in advance, the ones we think that we can protect, that we do, that the ethics can stay ahead of technology. Not just catch up, but stay ahead, so we, the, the world of science fiction writers, the Hollywood, can come up with scenarios that are well outside our technical capabilities, but are inside our abilities to have a discussion among the entire population by introducing it to millions of television or movie watchers for example, or book readers, magazine readers. That is how we start the discussion before it is technically possible. And then many of these, we’ve been worrying about designer babies since before the first IVF in 1978. That’s an example of something that the ethics especially got ahead of the technology."
Point being, while the term "Overton Window" may be flawed as our host, eugyppius offers, there are many related fields that many of the same concepts the Overton Window introduces are based in the real, intentional application of psychology, language, story-telling to take ideas that are inconceivable, unacceptable and move them into the realm of acceptability, articulability, actual public policy. Not by matter of happenstance, natural evolution of human psyche. But by prompts, stimuli, pushing idea envelopes.
My wife has noticed the blatantt psychological priming on Netflix shows. The connections between Jeffrey Epstein and the entertainment complex have not been well-revealed and there has been little discussion of the NM ranch. Thank you for your long comment.
Like when I see and hear the "Report Human Trafficking" PSA's at airports and public places in cities where political leaders and police, prosecutors are known for being some of the most notorious traffickers/pedophiles where there's no accountability for pedophilia and trafficking. It's really in-you-face mockery. And anyone who legitimately reports human trafficking in those jurisdictions ends up becoming the target they scramble to contain, make go away. Sames.
No, I got that. I'm just saying, those people don't understand how data centers are actually cooled, which is why they hold that position. As in so many things, they don't have an opinion on the subject, they have *someone else's* opinion on the subject.
Sure, it doesn't _have to be_ single loop. But you can bet that the companies involved will make it single loop if they can get away with it, as that would be cheaper. Saving them perhaps 6 figures in initial engineering costs - and the importance of this gives the lie to the reality of the AI companies' supposed $bns or $tns "valuations".
Really the fault lies not in the Evil Companies trying to plant these pointless things everywhere - that's what Evil Companies do; it lies with our dumbass local and national governments (looking at you, Westminster!) who are stupid enough to lie down and let themselves be walked all over.
> But you can bet that the companies involved will make it single loop if they can get away with it, as that would be cheaper.
Not really. One wants to de-ionize the water, and then add corrosion inhibitors to the coolant medium, as well as something akin to automotive antifreeze, as it makes the fluid actually *more* able to rapidly exchange heat than plain water. And of course, once one has done that, one can't legally pump it into the drain, not to mention that it makes the stuff expensive.
At least, that's how the cooling works for the several data centers on the campus where my office is located, and which hold my servers in them. But we're also in a desert, so we place a bit of a premium on not wasting water.
At any rate, my ultimate point is that even if a data center wanted to do single loop with some sort of post-use cooling manifold and ultimate delivery back into a reservoir or to be used for watering the grass or whatever, they could be *mandated* to do so in an environmentally conscious manner.
In the UK, though, the bigger problem would be the government's absolute opposition to actually generating electricity effectively.
AI is massively unpopular for many good reasons. Data centers are a tangible thing representing AI that the public can actually block, causing much-needed harm to the AI Business Idiot class. A lot of people don't want to put it this way, so they find other justifications.
"A lot of people don't want to put it this way, so they find other justifications."
Ouch. You've just proved that my point (below or above in the comments, depending on order) about the Overton Window being really about dressing up ideas in other terms applies equally to political opposition. And to causes I agree with.
My position is: the sooner we can explode this vile AI bubble - with the least harm possible to the real economy, - the better. If the vile specimens at the heart of the promotion of this nonsense all end up losing their $ms/$bns and have to panhandle on a street-corner, so much the better. And then we can take a proper look at the actual, real use-cases for LLMs/ML. To that end, any argument - water, energy, noise, lack of local jobs - will do for me!
Yup. Anyone can be a retard, more or less often, and deserve to be called that. Including me. The people who object to it are those who make it their life's mission to deliberately be retards.
It's also an English-language thing. The corresponding idiom in Swedish is "åsiktskorridor" = "opinion-corridor". Opinions outside the corridor gets you cancelled, are unthinkable, cannot be fathomed and so on.
So, in our domestic debate-field the imagery used is one of people creating select rooms adjoining the corridor, or trying to widen the corridor or make branches or raising the roof in it.
My not-very-original point is, which language is used matters a lot more than one may think, and I suspect native speakers of English are more liable to become entrapped in unconsciously assuming the English term-phrase-idiom-et c is universal, in all aspects and effects.
I think perhaps those of us who are not native speakers yet reasonably fluent in English can be of great help here, in turning the Overton window (and other concepts and such) into a more panoramic "Burspräke" - something I'd argue would benefit all much more than the sad trend of European academics adopting the English terminology the way a drain takes to water.
I think the reason people keep talking about the Overton Window is that they can feel something has fundamentally changed from what it used to be. They notice that the political and social boundaries are different, so they explain it by saying that the acceptable range of opinion has shifted.
But I think they are actually quite close to something real. They just misidentify the mechanism. And this article gets much closer to it when it starts talking about institutions.
What people are noticing is that a relatively small left-wing political minority has infiltrated institutions like universities, government agencies, the media, cultural institutions and so on. I call this the "legislature" of the left. These institutions define the language, the moral categories and the social rules. They decide what is respectable, what is extreme, what is hateful, what can be said and what cannot.
Then you have the executive branch, made up of thousands of government-funded NGOs, activist organizations, foundations and pressure groups. Together, these institutions engage in political activism that punches far above what this left-wing minority could ever achieve through elections alone.
That is why so many people feel persecuted or constantly under political pressure. Because there really is a minority that has acquired the power to determine what can be said, what is socially acceptable and which opinions are treated as beyond the pale. And if you challenge that consensus, you can immediately find yourself facing a media campaign, protesting activists, NGOs, institutional pressure and attempts to destroy your reputation.
So I think the instinct behind the Overton Window idea is not stupid at all. People are noticing a real change in the distribution of political power. They just describe it as a moving opinion window when what they are actually seeing is institutional capture and the ability of a political minority to exercise far more power than its numbers at the ballot box would ever allow.
I have not seen this mentioned in the comments yet, but it cannot be a coincidence that social censorship of dissident ideas has grown with the takeover of institutions, especially political ones, by know-it-all, useless females. Check the piss-poor-performances of female college "Presidents" and "legal experts" before US Congressional committees.
I'm in the process of having my windows replaced. Now I think an actual Overton Window should be included in the plans. Ideally, I would situate it to have a view of a defined region of my rear veranda in which one can place perfectly operational clocks and watch them cease to run almost immediately. We call it the Bulova Triangle.
Thank you -- I've been annoyed and puzzled by the Overton Window for some time, and now I see exactly why. So it came from a small think-tank that was trying to drum up donations...well, that explains a lot! It's just mushy thinking, and I am getting quite tired of it.
Screenplay tried to inject high culture with the madam saying "honi soit qui mal y pense" whose meaning was explained to me by my colleague who was a dead ringer for Bette Davis and had once been married to the heir to the Gannett newspaper fortune and she had a profound effect on the course of my life because she looked at the raw clay I was and molded it a little into functional form.
Too many "educated" people getting paid to sit around and think. Perhaps a limiting formula based on populations on the number of "Think Tanks" allowed. It would seem to me that to continue getting paid to think you would have to producee thought and that is probably part of the problem.
I am glad it was you who tackled the Overton Window. Your demolition is a thing of beauty and a joy to read. Thank you.
If anyone is interested in setting up a research institute where we can troll for grants to study why people might want to give us grants, let me know!
Think “The Art World”. Be gay/trans. Bingo$!
Welp, Tesla and SpaceX exist already!
Yeah but you have to do actual WORK if you go work for them. Not think tank consulting bullshit.
These companies are among the most successful in the world at extracting tax cash. All other activities maybe true, but finance has been and continues to be via the tax payer in multiple countries.
I don't know if it's people or institutions that matter more in grantsmanship. It's a truism that people run institutions, but often enough the institutions may act semi-independently of their supporters, because they have the instincts of churches and other religious institutions that act as gatekeepers for whatever novel ideas come along. And as Eugyppius indicates, mere novelty does not guarantee soundness or sense.
Licking The Overton Window on The Short Bus of Ideas.
Brilliant!
The Overton window is sort of like the Dunning-Kruger effect. Smug intellectual sphincters on Twitter repeat the phrase endlessly until it has lost any meaning or use that it once had.
Usually execs on expenses trying to march in unison to the latest mad tune from those who really are in charge.
You mean, they specialize in intellectual farting?
Almost all uses I remember felt like after-the-fact rationalizations. Post-hoc-ergo-proctor-hoc-or-some-thing-or-another. Every usage I see now drags down the author's reputation.
Eugyppius has an academic background in some sort of linguistic specialty which I never fully grasped. As such, I respect his superior depth of knowledge and objection to the phrase "Overton Window", especially in its original, more technical sense.
As a much more shallow thinker, I found it a very useful shorthand for viewing how the political correctness of discussions changed over time, most especially with regard to Covid and wokeness.
It's no secret that state actors can pretty much ignore what the rabble says, but as a member of the rabble, I stubbornly cling to the belief that being allowed to express myself, along with many other grains of rabble, isn't a completely fruitless exercise. At the very least, we might influence more of the rabble, hopefully dragging the unspeakable window in a new direction 😜
Cool, as long as you understand media and commenting is used primarily for surveillance. See: China, social credit score, etc.
I can live with rabble. We have been called worse, riffraff, the unwashed, irredeemable, deplorable, etc. All the things we are called by the elite who thinks their shit don't stink.
I'm just a grain of rabble :)
I would quite like a shorthand way of describing what you refer to, 'the political correctness of discussions'. I noticed that very few people dared to defend J.K.Rowling when she criticised the granting of access of biological males to female spaces. But now I think I see more people supporting than denigrating her. In fact the only people I know of who denigrate her are Trans people and actors.
The consensus of the rabble is heavily influenced by what the elites (whoever they are) advance. For example, for reasons not clear to me, all of a sudden we are talking about the evils of "data centers", without any facts to back up the argument seeking their restriction or abolition. Even otherwise conservative politicians, sticking their wet fingers in the wind, are coming out in opposition. OK, don't call it a "window", but public opinion is moving in real time on this issue, and I don't understand why. Not too long ago, we used to call them "server farms"...
I think the issues include:
1. Why build dedicated centres using a scale of servers rarely seen before, in so many places at once?
2. Why build such vast sheds when the server capability needs less space rather than more?
3. What will the vast sheds become when the bubble pseudo finance implodes (see circular inter-company loans) and the wealthy discard this fashion item?
4. What becomes of the present server network?
It is an expensive farce, where once again the few take money from the many in return for absolutely nothing.
I had not thought of that, even though I'm well-aware of history's parade of expensive social manias, promoted by fraudsters that have wasted humanity's substance. The first book I read about that was a real eye-opener, even though it dates back to the mid-19th century. That was Charles MacKay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"
There is a related concept that is employed, however, that does shift ideas of acceptability, articulability, and then policy called 'psychological priming.' Which is used to achieve all sorts agendas that could/would never be considered acceptable, articulable, much less desirable, actual policy until the minds of sufficient masses and the 'elite institutions were primed.
Much of that is done via entertainment. This Stack explored psychological priming, shared a popular meme that went viral making the rounds on social media in the mid-2010's, primed minds to accept their sacrifice to 'protect grandma' and be led by the weakest, least fit among us, for a compassionate 'greater good':
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/foxes-know-wolves
And this is from the TIME 100 Summit in 2019 where a panelist explained how just talking about ideas moves them into action long before they are considered acceptable topics, how introducing ideas into Hollywood, particularly Sci-fi genre serves the purpose of priming and normalizing ideas considered taboo, depraved, wicked, anti-human:
Panel: Creating Medical Miracles, Ethically, April 23, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJl0_JDDcrQ&t=15546s
(queued to panel discussion, Dr. George Church, Dr. Giuliana Testa, Dr. Pardis Sabeti, Ariana Huffington moderator. Note: George Church was a Jeffrey Epstein BFF, recipient of massive donations, fellow eugenics proponent. Pardis Sabeti is a Bill Gates plandemic medical tyranny 'scientist', population control, surveillance state specialist, daughter of Parviz Sabeti, former head of the Shah of Iran's SAVAK (i.e. Stasi, KGB, Gestapo), "Most Feared Man in Iran")
"AH: You all have been to the idea of the third rail in each of your fields, like where would you not go? And I would love to hear a story or an example of a time when you said “I’m not going to go there. I’m not going to play God.” Have any one of you had a moment like that?
GC: Well, I don’t think we’re in any danger of playing a major deity, but we’re, we could certainly do, there’s a line which we don’t cross. There’s some things which I don’t even discuss, until many years later when someone else thinks of the same idea.
An example of that was, personalized weapons, biological weapons, when you make a weapon that is specific for a particular person. And I kept that a secret, I didn’t tell anybody for about a decade. And then somebody else who I happen to know thought about it independently and was planning on publishing it in The Atlantic, and I said to him, “do you really want to do this, I mean this is enabling, for no particular purpose?” And it was framed in terms of Barack Obama being the target. And I just thought it was a, that’s an example of a line that I didn’t cross and I wouldn’t. But it did, and it was published, so.
AH: Should the decision not to publish something that in the hands of the wrong people could wreak devastation be a matter for government regulation?
GC: Both ideas I did share because I do think that other people are thinking about. Just they’re a rare one every now and again that it seems like there could buy us an extra ten years if I shut up. But I think because we talk about these ideas so far in advance, the ones we think that we can protect, that we do, that the ethics can stay ahead of technology. Not just catch up, but stay ahead, so we, the, the world of science fiction writers, the Hollywood, can come up with scenarios that are well outside our technical capabilities, but are inside our abilities to have a discussion among the entire population by introducing it to millions of television or movie watchers for example, or book readers, magazine readers. That is how we start the discussion before it is technically possible. And then many of these, we’ve been worrying about designer babies since before the first IVF in 1978. That’s an example of something that the ethics especially got ahead of the technology."
Short write-up on the same panel in Time:
https://time.com/5574168/doctors-ethical-medical-miracles-time-100-summit/
For any readers who want to go down a deep rabbit hole that panel took me into:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/step-in-foxs-magic-carpet-ride
Point being, while the term "Overton Window" may be flawed as our host, eugyppius offers, there are many related fields that many of the same concepts the Overton Window introduces are based in the real, intentional application of psychology, language, story-telling to take ideas that are inconceivable, unacceptable and move them into the realm of acceptability, articulability, actual public policy. Not by matter of happenstance, natural evolution of human psyche. But by prompts, stimuli, pushing idea envelopes.
My wife has noticed the blatantt psychological priming on Netflix shows. The connections between Jeffrey Epstein and the entertainment complex have not been well-revealed and there has been little discussion of the NM ranch. Thank you for your long comment.
They call it tell-a-vision programming for a reason. The technology co-opted from inception.
all of a sudden Hollywood is concerned about the sexual abuse of vulnerable young women? What a joke that is.
Like when I see and hear the "Report Human Trafficking" PSA's at airports and public places in cities where political leaders and police, prosecutors are known for being some of the most notorious traffickers/pedophiles where there's no accountability for pedophilia and trafficking. It's really in-you-face mockery. And anyone who legitimately reports human trafficking in those jurisdictions ends up becoming the target they scramble to contain, make go away. Sames.
I'm not sure it's public "opinion". More like public parroting.
Around here, the water objection carries a lot of weight because we live in a desert and water is a big deal.
Only among people who don't understand how data centers are actually cooled. Water is involved. It does *not* have to be single loop.
Yes, I realize I didn't emphasize that. My comment was only about people’s reaction to data centers, not to actual real impact.
No, I got that. I'm just saying, those people don't understand how data centers are actually cooled, which is why they hold that position. As in so many things, they don't have an opinion on the subject, they have *someone else's* opinion on the subject.
Sure, it doesn't _have to be_ single loop. But you can bet that the companies involved will make it single loop if they can get away with it, as that would be cheaper. Saving them perhaps 6 figures in initial engineering costs - and the importance of this gives the lie to the reality of the AI companies' supposed $bns or $tns "valuations".
Really the fault lies not in the Evil Companies trying to plant these pointless things everywhere - that's what Evil Companies do; it lies with our dumbass local and national governments (looking at you, Westminster!) who are stupid enough to lie down and let themselves be walked all over.
> But you can bet that the companies involved will make it single loop if they can get away with it, as that would be cheaper.
Not really. One wants to de-ionize the water, and then add corrosion inhibitors to the coolant medium, as well as something akin to automotive antifreeze, as it makes the fluid actually *more* able to rapidly exchange heat than plain water. And of course, once one has done that, one can't legally pump it into the drain, not to mention that it makes the stuff expensive.
At least, that's how the cooling works for the several data centers on the campus where my office is located, and which hold my servers in them. But we're also in a desert, so we place a bit of a premium on not wasting water.
At any rate, my ultimate point is that even if a data center wanted to do single loop with some sort of post-use cooling manifold and ultimate delivery back into a reservoir or to be used for watering the grass or whatever, they could be *mandated* to do so in an environmentally conscious manner.
In the UK, though, the bigger problem would be the government's absolute opposition to actually generating electricity effectively.
AI is massively unpopular for many good reasons. Data centers are a tangible thing representing AI that the public can actually block, causing much-needed harm to the AI Business Idiot class. A lot of people don't want to put it this way, so they find other justifications.
"A lot of people don't want to put it this way, so they find other justifications."
Ouch. You've just proved that my point (below or above in the comments, depending on order) about the Overton Window being really about dressing up ideas in other terms applies equally to political opposition. And to causes I agree with.
My position is: the sooner we can explode this vile AI bubble - with the least harm possible to the real economy, - the better. If the vile specimens at the heart of the promotion of this nonsense all end up losing their $ms/$bns and have to panhandle on a street-corner, so much the better. And then we can take a proper look at the actual, real use-cases for LLMs/ML. To that end, any argument - water, energy, noise, lack of local jobs - will do for me!
So they raped poor Overton's idea and he was dead and couldn't do anything about it.
Excellent and well thought out .
On a simpler note I noticed people using “ retarded “ again.
So some force is at work .
Also some failed terms like “ LatinX” are now comical as others are dying from being too silly like LGBTQ+1ABCzng ad on and on …you know RETARDED !
I love the word retarded. I say retarded way too many times. 😝 Retarded is equal opportunity!
Yup. Anyone can be a retard, more or less often, and deserve to be called that. Including me. The people who object to it are those who make it their life's mission to deliberately be retards.
Good man! Antifa have no answer for that.
It's also an English-language thing. The corresponding idiom in Swedish is "åsiktskorridor" = "opinion-corridor". Opinions outside the corridor gets you cancelled, are unthinkable, cannot be fathomed and so on.
So, in our domestic debate-field the imagery used is one of people creating select rooms adjoining the corridor, or trying to widen the corridor or make branches or raising the roof in it.
My not-very-original point is, which language is used matters a lot more than one may think, and I suspect native speakers of English are more liable to become entrapped in unconsciously assuming the English term-phrase-idiom-et c is universal, in all aspects and effects.
I think perhaps those of us who are not native speakers yet reasonably fluent in English can be of great help here, in turning the Overton window (and other concepts and such) into a more panoramic "Burspräke" - something I'd argue would benefit all much more than the sad trend of European academics adopting the English terminology the way a drain takes to water.
words and language are ruts for our thoughts. Deeply ingrained by repetition until thoughts follow their course.
All too tru but on this issue I am uncharacteristically optimist:
To use an image: sometimes farmers having plowing-contests. That can be tranferred to language.
Or as a teacher of mine put it, him being a "professional cynic":
"What you cannot articulate, you cannot think - what you cannot think you cannot articulate"
And yet - we can think new things! Invent words, develop and devolve.
"1984" had Newspeak for a reason.
I had not heard of "åsiktskorridor" before -- but in Dutch it would be something like "Uitzichtsgang"
Beautifully written article about the Overton Window, explaining why the concept of the Overton Window is irrelevant. I agree!
Ok ..but whatever is causing a “ shift “ , it is good .
I can now call you a retard …not that you are ..but I can say it
Well, on this site we get to write 'libtard', a special word - one of many - created by eugyppius.
I hasten to add, nobody writing here or subscribing to eugyppius could ever be a 'libtard'. That's what makes us all special.
Eugy has introduced me to lots of brilliant words and phrases, but 'libtard' has been around for a good 15-20 years, no?
I stand corrected. eugyppius was the first place I came across it.
No other Substack I use or any other system permits its use.
yep.
What about Libturd? 😂
I think the reason people keep talking about the Overton Window is that they can feel something has fundamentally changed from what it used to be. They notice that the political and social boundaries are different, so they explain it by saying that the acceptable range of opinion has shifted.
But I think they are actually quite close to something real. They just misidentify the mechanism. And this article gets much closer to it when it starts talking about institutions.
What people are noticing is that a relatively small left-wing political minority has infiltrated institutions like universities, government agencies, the media, cultural institutions and so on. I call this the "legislature" of the left. These institutions define the language, the moral categories and the social rules. They decide what is respectable, what is extreme, what is hateful, what can be said and what cannot.
Then you have the executive branch, made up of thousands of government-funded NGOs, activist organizations, foundations and pressure groups. Together, these institutions engage in political activism that punches far above what this left-wing minority could ever achieve through elections alone.
That is why so many people feel persecuted or constantly under political pressure. Because there really is a minority that has acquired the power to determine what can be said, what is socially acceptable and which opinions are treated as beyond the pale. And if you challenge that consensus, you can immediately find yourself facing a media campaign, protesting activists, NGOs, institutional pressure and attempts to destroy your reputation.
So I think the instinct behind the Overton Window idea is not stupid at all. People are noticing a real change in the distribution of political power. They just describe it as a moving opinion window when what they are actually seeing is institutional capture and the ability of a political minority to exercise far more power than its numbers at the ballot box would ever allow.
The Overton Window does not shift on its own, it follows the movement of the Building.
I have not seen this mentioned in the comments yet, but it cannot be a coincidence that social censorship of dissident ideas has grown with the takeover of institutions, especially political ones, by know-it-all, useless females. Check the piss-poor-performances of female college "Presidents" and "legal experts" before US Congressional committees.
Well now, this piece really moves the Overton Window concerning the Overton Window!
I think someone should build an Overton window - an actual moving window - just for cats. They’re moody suckers. It could be endlessly entertaining.
I'm in the process of having my windows replaced. Now I think an actual Overton Window should be included in the plans. Ideally, I would situate it to have a view of a defined region of my rear veranda in which one can place perfectly operational clocks and watch them cease to run almost immediately. We call it the Bulova Triangle.
Thank you -- I've been annoyed and puzzled by the Overton Window for some time, and now I see exactly why. So it came from a small think-tank that was trying to drum up donations...well, that explains a lot! It's just mushy thinking, and I am getting quite tired of it.
As the girl said in Klute: I like your mind.
Oh gawd. I haven't thought about that movie in years. We called it "Klunk" although I don't remember why; probably we just thought the name was funny.
Screenplay tried to inject high culture with the madam saying "honi soit qui mal y pense" whose meaning was explained to me by my colleague who was a dead ringer for Bette Davis and had once been married to the heir to the Gannett newspaper fortune and she had a profound effect on the course of my life because she looked at the raw clay I was and molded it a little into functional form.
Too many "educated" people getting paid to sit around and think. Perhaps a limiting formula based on populations on the number of "Think Tanks" allowed. It would seem to me that to continue getting paid to think you would have to producee thought and that is probably part of the problem.