The Jiu-Jitsu Political Move We Need

How to solve the coordination problem needed to improve the human condition

I. Background

The recent Netflix documentary The Three Body Problem starts with a dramatic scene from the Cultural Revolution where a professor is beaten to death by the Red Guards.

Quite aside from the immense horrors of the Cultural Revolution itself is the additional horror that most Western intellectuals defended Mao until his death. For instance John Kenneth Gailbraith, one of the leading liberal intellectuals of the time, wrote about the Cultural Revolution in A China Passage, published in 1973,

“The workers were rather proud of having confined their fighting to the morning. . . . Sadly some windows did get broken.”

His tone throughout the travelogue is that of a fond observer who ends the book stating,

“Dissidents are brought firmly into line in China, but, one suspects, with great politeness. It is a firmly authoritarian society in which those in charge smile and say please. . . . The Chinese economy isn’t the American or European future. But it is the Chinese future. And let there be no doubt: For the Chinese it works.”

The book as a whole is a sort of gentle love letter to Mao. Gailbraith was joined on his trip by two future Nobel laureate economists, Wassily Leontief, who won his prize in 1973, and James Tobin, who won his prize in 1981. Neither contradicted Gailbraith’s perception of Mao’s China. Mao was widely regarded as a revolutionary hero to be celebrated by American academics well into the 70s. In the late 60s and 70s Mao’s Little Red Book was the most widely published book in the world, with an entire Maoist academic fan base.

When I entered Harvard in 1979, the active boundaries of intellectual discourse among students there was between advocaties of Marxist revolution, on the one hand, and democratic socialism, a la Scandinavian nations, on the other. There were a handful of more reactionary students who openly advocated for capitalism, but they were mostly regarded as unsavory characters, beyond the pale. The faculty were mostly democratic socialists, more or less, with more Marxists pushing in a hard left direction than advocates of capitalism. Gailbraith was a campus hero.

Then, as now, everyone knew which opinions led to respect and popularity and which opinions led to opprobrium and marginality.

In 1977, Gailbraith’s “The Age of Uncertainty” was broadcast by PBS and then came out in book form as well. Republicans regarded it as biased and PBS agreed to Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose,” which was also broadcast by PBS and also came out in book form. Along with the victories of Reagan and Thatcher, free market ideas entered the mainstream, though they were still mostly marginalized in academia.

In the late 1980s I spent a semester in the philosophy department of the Claremont Graduate School, where we were introduced to Herbert Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” by a gentle older Marxist who cheerfully justified shooting escapees from East Berlin in the back (they were stealing from the regime by taking their human capital with them as well as undermining the Revolution with their reactionary preference for capitalism). Of course, Marcuse openly justified censoring the expression of “right wing” beliefs, including any support of capitalism.

Later in the 1980s I studied economics at the University of Chicago, where within the economics department, along with law and business schools, there was open support of free market economics. The political science and philosophy departments were mostly open to civil, empirically-driven analyses of capitalism as well. But most of the rest of the university remained implacably opposed. As one metric of this opposition outside of econ, poly sci, and philosophy, it is worth noting that when the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics was launched in 2008, it was vocally opposed by the U. of C. faculty because it was regarded as"a symbolic endorsement of his views by the University.” It had to be renamed.

Of course one of the reasons that he was so hated was that he once met briefly with Pinochet and provided him with advice on how to improve the Chilean economy. This has led to ongoing opprobrium towards Friedman despite the fact that he had also met with Chinese leaders after Mao’s death and provided them with similar advice (and explicitly repudiate the political repression of both Pinochet and the CCP).

There is, of course, not a trace of opprobrium in academia towards Gailbraith despite his praise of Mao’s China. And of course likewise no opprobrium towards the thousands of scholars who openly supported Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, or any of the other 20th century socialist mass murderers.

II. Breaking Away from the Blue Church Responsibly

The remarably unified censorship on mainsteam social media sites the last few years has led to greater awareness of what Jordan Hall calls “The Blue Church” and Curtis Yarvin calls “The Cathedral.” There has long been an elite establishment that has defined the boundaries of legitimate opinion. It has long been striking that for the most part, elite academia (Ivy League plus), elite media (NYT, WaPo, LA Times), and Hollywood mostly shared norms about what was acceptable to discuss. As former CIA analyst Martin Gurri notes in his book The Revolt of the Masses, when there were three major broadcast networks the boundaries of acceptable elite opinion generally defined reality for most Americans. For instance, JFK conspiracy theories were unacceptable, Nixon was uniquely bad, etc.

But the internet has gradually unleashed all sorts of other information. The censorship of content on mainstream social media is an attempt to preserve this narrative control by elites. What was most striking is the extent to which The Blue Church has been unified surrounding various waves of opinion, from cultural issues such as gay marriage, the #metoo movement, Black Lives Matter, and gender affirming care to public health related issues associated with COVID such as mask wearing, school closures, vaccinations, and origins of COVIDs.

Of course, the generous interpretation is that of course those with the most expertise should define opinion - shouldn’t we all defer to the experts? And if they were all agreed, and/or if they were almost always correct, then of course we should. So a naive interpretation of the unity around the Blue Church is that the prevailing opinions of the experts should be regarded as authoritative.

An alternative epistemological paradigm is that the pressures to conform to Blue Church dogmas exceed the social benefits associated with following the prevailing accepted elite opinion. There are many who are fearful of this option because it would appear to relinquish our decision-making to the barbarians: Racists, anti-vaxxers, sociopathic corporate interests, etc. Surely it is better to remain loyal to the establishment, no?

To a first approximation, the solution that many of us have been focused on for some time is to rely on reputational bets, prediction markets, and superforecasters (those who consistently outperform in forecasting). In his 2005 book Expert Political Judgment, Philip Tetlock showed that domain experts were no better than the public at predicting the future even within their domains. This eventually led to the Good Judgment Project and Good Judgment Open where one can check on superforecaster predictions. Metaculus provides a wide range of issues where superforecasters compete on prediction markets.

This entire field was largely launched by Robin Hanson’s 1990 paper, “Could Gambling Save Science?” In that paper, Hanson documented the many flaws of peer review as a method of ensuring that an outcome was valid. Insofar as prediction is the source of science’s prestige, going back to the extraordinary predictive capacity of physics and astronomy from Galileo onwards, it makes sense to ground sound epistemology in predictive accuracy. It is not the only path to knowledge (see David Deutsch’s work on “explanations”), but perspectives that fail to lead to empirical validation should be rejected.

Thus the first easy step for breaking away from the Blue Church without wandering off into crazyland is to prioritize respect for predictive ability over elite credentials. Very concretely, if I run into a claim in the media that strikes me as dubious or uncertain, my first step is to check at Metaculus to see if there is some kind of prediction competition that can give me a rough sense of the likely validity of the claim. I frequently do this for climate change issues because I perceive that the issue is so highly politicized it is hard to obtain unbiased perspectives. The added advantage of focusing on these markets is that if one does, indeed, have a more accurate perspective one can bet on it and make money and build a reputation by having out performed even the superforecasters).

Thus Step #1 in the Jiu Jitsu political move we need is for a critical mass of us to prioritize predictive accuracy over elite credentials. Well known rationalist blogger Scott Alexander already does this, as do many in the rationalist movement broadly construed.

III. The Social Dynamics of Elite Opinion Conformity

N.S. Lyon’s “The China Convergence” is the best analysis I’ve seen for the conformity of Blue Church opinion. In explaining how our diverse society nonetheless leads to consistent norms regarding what should be censored on social media,

So, to recap: in this conception, if there is a united front in the West it is not an explicit network of actors deliberately working together, but instead a unity formed out of conformity to narrative. It functions as a kind of swarm intelligence (or egregore), rather than operating through any central or top-down control. This can explain why soft managerial institutions all move almost completely in sync with each other, and have for some time.

That is, although we don’t have a CCP enforcing ideology from on high, nonetheless acceptable opinion at Harvard, The New York Times, and the Aspen Institute are largely coordinated as if they were.

While we would like to believe that we live in a meritocracy, everyone knows that if one wants to succeed in most hierarchies in academia, the media, and the non-profit world, it is critical not to be perceived as outside the acceptable mainstream. Thus Gailbraith, who praised the leading mass murder of the 20th century, was an entirely acceptable liberal. Conversely Milton Friedman, who is probably responsible for bringing more people out of poverty than anyone else in the 20th century, is not acceptable.

Scholars Timur Karan and Cass Sunstein developed a theory of availability cascades,

An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance.

Cumulatively, such cascades result in extraordinary evils being perpetuated (e.g. widespread intellectual support for Mao) as well as extraordinary opportunities for good remaining invisible.

If every decent person accepts elite opinion and enforces the perspective that a person is only socially acceptable if they accept elite opinion, then the Blue Church may continue to make egregious mistakes without ongoing corrections.

Thus Step #2 in the Jiu-Jitsu political move needed to improve the world is to support independent thinking, especially when validated by predictive success, and not to impose conformity on others simply because other people do.

At this point there is a large community of heterodox thinkers, including conservatives and libertarians, but also many formerly mainstream liberals who have become disillusioned by Blue Church conformity over some issue or another (including Barry Weiss, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, RFK Jr., Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying, Jonathan Haidt, Nate Silver, and many more).

These people have already rejected Blue Church conformity. But they have not yet succeeded in creating a rallying point that succeeds in bringing over a larger percentage of elites. Indeed, on most campuses, Blue Church conformity is more heavily enforced than ever (see here for a 2022 survey showing a steady decline in the percentage of students who feel that freedom of speech on campuses is secure).

Where might we find a rallying point that would allow us to break free?

A New Political Trope: Entrepreneurial Solutions and the Moral and Intellectual High Ground

I have tremendous respect for those who advocating for “building,” a return to entrepreneurship and innovation. But insofar as they are focused on technology alone, they will not inspire a large percentage of the population who are more concerned with quality of life for human beings. The only way to win is to gain the moral high ground.

How to identify the moral high ground?

1. Create global prosperity for 8 billion people. The Startup Cities/Charter Cities/Free Cities movement is working on this. As someone who has been involved with this movement for 20 years, I’ve seen many capable young people become inspired by it, especially in recent years. It has the capacity to become an inspiring global youth movement.

2. New educational projects providing self-mastery and lifelong happiness and wellbeing for those who are educated in such programs. Again, many capable young people become inspired once they have experienced the possibilities beyond trad schooling.

There are other important movements out there that also have traction. The YIMBY movement has the moral high ground in many urban areas because young people are tired of paying absurdly high rents. Bitcoin and crypto have attracted many people, some for personal gain but the core is highly idealistic (read The Bitcoin Standard for a wonderfully inspirational account of how Bitcoin will reduce global violence while accelerating prosperity for all).

How do we get the availability cascades to switch in favor of these movements?

Each node in the information networks, every one of us, needs to amplify those ideas which can accelerate human progress and ignore debates that sidetrack us or that perpetuate existing political tribalisms. Each of us needs to be strategic and intentional in what and how we promote ideas. Each of us needs to be morally and intellectually confident when we support unfamiliar or controversial ideas.

In the past fifteen years I’ve seen YIMBY and Bitcoin go from being marginal movements to becoming well-supported growing movements. Both Startup Cities and innovative education have also gained traction. They both now need to gain much larger followings to supercede the Blue Church.

YIMBY is empirically important because housing is such a significant driver of the cost of living. But no one sees it as the anchor for a worldview. With respect to education, once we develop a worldview anchored in the belief that new forms of education created by entrepreneurs is a significant driver of human well-being, then the government school paradigm of the Blue Church will be displaced.

Bitcoin is immensely important because control of monetary systems drives everything else. Long term, Bitcoin is one of the most important movements in the world. But we will need meatspace places to build work, play, and live. And Startup Cities as an immediate path to global prosperity is exciting work we can engage in now. It gradually displaces the ideal of governments as benign and effective agents as the core of the Blue Church belief system.

The intellectual foundations for these movements are very deep. For now, follow my wife, Magatte Wade, on Startup Cities and me on educational innovation. But I’m happy to provide details on the intellectual foundations for these perspectives. If you are hesitant to promote them due to a lack of intellectual or moral confidence, let me know and I’ll do what I can to support you going forward.