Marxism in the 21st century, replication games & a bit of hope
CC#70 - A Three-State 'Solution', Mandatory Profit Sharing & Being Patient
Hey there and welcome to ✨ CuratedCuriosity - a bi-weekly newsletter delivering inspiration from all over the internet to the notoriously curious.
Things I Enjoyed Reading.
🧑🔧 #295 - Richard Wolff: Marxism and Communism, Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman interviewing economist and philosopher Richard Wolff about Marxism and its implications for the 21st century. I think Richard Wolff does a great job in explaining what could be implications and potential implementations of some of the ideas of Karl Marx. Definitely some interesting non-mainstream perspectives that get one thinking.
🕊️ A three-state solution is the only viable future for Israel and the Palestinians
I have been trying to read up a bit on the Israel-Palestine conflict and being honest, every piece I read made me less hopeful that a ‘way out’ of the current situation (whatever this means) will be found soonish. While things are way too complicated and nuanced to really judge what could be a ‘good’ solution, I think this analysis was informative and puts the different legal proposals in context.
In other words, (almost) everybody should just keep living where they’re living, and have a country.
The harder question, of course, is how to get from here to there. Gazan and West Bank Palestinians are unlikely to simply declare independence for the territories they currently control. Israel would have to unilaterally withdraw its forces and its settlers and declare that the West Bank and Gaza are independent. That would then give Gazans and West Bank Palestinians a choice between formal recognition, with all of the associated economic and security benefits, or eschewing recognition in order to demonstrate a commitment to irredentism. My bet is that they would choose the former, though it might take a while to come around. In any case, it’s not clear how Israel could be motivated to do something like this, given the short-term security risks and the ideological commitment of its right wing to the settler movement.
But it seems to me that something like this three-state solution simply has to be the long-term endgame for Israel/Palestine, simply every other solution seems far less workable. If you have a better idea that doesn’t involve massive ethnic cleansing or unrealistic assumptions about Israelis and Palestinians joining together as one people, I’d love to hear it.
🏝️ True Leisure and the Tyranny of Total Work
As someone for whom the transition between work and leisure is fluid (which is something I have intentionally chosen & enjoy in general), this article resonated a lot with me and definitely got me thinking a bit…
Leisure is the absence of the concept of work altogether. Leisure is what happens in the spaces where you’re neither “actively working” nor “not actively working.” And as work becomes more total, leisure becomes more difficult to access. This is a problem, because not only is leisure where all of the rest of your life happens, away from work; it also provides the spaciousness necessary to surface things that really matter.
You may be inclined to avoid the spaciousness of leisure, because it can bring up feelings you don’t want to be with, like that fear of finitude—of one day having to leave the party of experience before the end. As Pascal puts it: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” And when unable to sit quietly in a room alone, many of us choose to work instead, and then we tell each other that this is just fine, actually.
The thing is, those fears and preoccupations aren’t going away, and those unexamined fears will be waiting patiently for you at the end. Why not turn and face them earlier? Socrates told us that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, to be able to examine your life in such a way that it is worth living requires the spaciousness of leisure.
Food for Thought.
🇪🇺 According to a new report, the average EU country is poorer by head than almost all U.S. states. While I think this analysis is a bit ‘one-sidedly’ focused on why Europe is doing worse (in terms of economics & life quality) than the U.S., there is of course an element of truth.
One ‘counterexample’ would be average life expectancy which is higher in most EU countries than in the U.S.
📈 More of this type of research/experiments please!
☮ No words needed.
Random Stuff.
📊 More graphs & less tables in Economics papers please!
😇 Some wisdom for your week.
💪🏻 And some practical advice for the week.
Personal Update.
Participated in the replication games in Stockholm (FYI: replication games are basically one day hackathons where people try to replicate parts of scientific papers) & the Swedish Open Science yearly conference:
learned a lot about the statistics of multilevel-modelling
learned once more that I always underestimate the effort/time needed to ‘just run this little piece of code’. Somehow I don’t seem to be able to become better at.
produced only very little scientifically relevant output/contribution - I guess you could say its the thought that counts
met some nice people from the Institute for Replication that are doing awesome work
Visited this year’s world press photography exhibition. Impressive. Depressing. Makes you realize how infinitely small all your daily problems are.
Visited Dali: Cybernetics the immersive experience in CPH. I can recommend, its artsy, its hip, it gets you thinking. And Dali was a really impressive visionary. Pro Tipp: Go on a Sunday evening when there is no one else disturbing you.