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.
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.
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.
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.
Eugyppius was the one who really reintroduced “retard” to regular programming. Writing about the German greens and the rest of German politics, it fits like a glove.
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.
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.
"All ideas, from Maoism to anarcho-capitalism, will of course enjoy articulability among specific subcultures, but the more this articulability depends upon foreign moral systems or arcane terminology or unfamiliar prior beliefs, the less articulability these ideas will enjoy beyond their originating fandom."
I think Overton, regardless of his grift-iness, conceived something along the lines of increasing exposure to foreign moral systems and arcane technologies so that ideas would become more articulable. The irony of the Overton window itself being distilled into something quite articulable - but also wrong and useless - is pretty delicious.
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.
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 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.
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!
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 am glad it was you who tackled the Overton Window. Your demolition is a thing of beauty and a joy to read. Thank you.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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 !
Good man! Antifa have no answer for that.
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.
Eugyppius was the one who really reintroduced “retard” to regular programming. Writing about the German greens and the rest of German politics, it fits like a glove.
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.
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.
"All ideas, from Maoism to anarcho-capitalism, will of course enjoy articulability among specific subcultures, but the more this articulability depends upon foreign moral systems or arcane terminology or unfamiliar prior beliefs, the less articulability these ideas will enjoy beyond their originating fandom."
I think Overton, regardless of his grift-iness, conceived something along the lines of increasing exposure to foreign moral systems and arcane technologies so that ideas would become more articulable. The irony of the Overton window itself being distilled into something quite articulable - but also wrong and useless - is pretty delicious.
Well now, this piece really moves the Overton Window concerning the Overton Window!
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.
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 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.