Originally published at: Pluralistic: Marshmallow Longtermism (04 Sep 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Today's links
- Marshmallow Longtermism: My latest Locus Magazine column.
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019
- Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
Marshmallow Longtermism (permalink)
My latest column for Locus Magazine is "Marshmallow Longtermism"; it's a reflection on how conservatives self-mythologize as the standards-bearers for deferred gratification and making hard trade-offs, but are utterly lacking in these traits when it comes to climate change and inequality:
https://locusmag.com/2024/09/cory-doctorow-marshmallow-longtermism/
Conservatives often root our societal ills in a childish impatience, and cast themselves as wise adults who understand that "you can't get something for nothing." Think here of the memes about lazy kids who would rather spend on avocado toast and fancy third-wave coffee rather than paying off their student loans. In this framing, poverty is a consequence of immaturity. To be a functional adult is to be sober in all things: not only does a grownup limit their intoxicant intake to head off hangovers, they also go to the gym to prevent future health problems, they save their discretionary income to cover a down-payment and student loans.
This isn't asceticism, though: it's a mature decision to delay gratification. Avocado toast is a reward for a life well-lived: once you've paid off your mortgage and put your kid through college, then you can have that oat-milk latte. This is just "sound reasoning": every day you fail to pay off your student loan represents another day of compounding interest. Pay off the loan first, and you'll save many avo toasts' worth of interest and your net toast consumption can go way, way up.
Cleaving the world into the patient (the mature, the adult, the wise) and the impatient (the childish, the foolish, the feckless) does important political work. It transforms every societal ill into a personal failing: the prisoner in the dock who stole to survive can be recast as a deficient whose partying on study-nights led to their failure to achieve the grades needed for a merit scholarship, a first-class degree, and a high-paying job.
Dividing the human race into "the wise" and "the foolish" forms an ethical basis for hierarchy. If some of us are born (or raised) for wisdom, then naturally those people should be in charge. Moreover, putting the innately foolish in charge is a recipe for disaster. The political scientist Corey Robin identifies this as the unifying belief common to every kind of conservativism: that some are born to rule, others are born to be ruled over:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/01/set-healthy-boundaries/#healthy-populism
This is why conservatives are so affronted by affirmative action, whose premise is that the absence of minorities in the halls of power stems from systemic bias. For conservatives, the fact that people like themselves are running things is evidence of their own virtue and suitability for rule. In conservative canon, the act of shunting aside members of dominant groups to make space for members of disfavored minorities isn't justice, it's dangerous "virtue signaling" that puts the childish and unfit in positions of authority.
Again, this does important political work. If you are ideologically committed to deregulation, and then a giant, deregulated sea-freighter crashes into a bridge, you can avoid any discussion of re-regulating the industry by insisting that we are living in a corrupted age where the unfit are unjustly elevated to positions of authority. That bridge wasn't killed by deregulation – it's demise is the fault of the DEI hire who captained the ship:
The idea of a society made up of the patient and wise and the impatient and foolish is as old as Aesop's "The Ant and the Grasshopper," but it acquired a sheen of scientific legitimacy in 1970, with Walter Mischel's legendary "Stanford Marshmallow Experiment":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment
In this experiment, kids were left alone in a locked room with a single marshmallow, after being told that they would get two marshmallows in 15 minutes, but only if they waited until them to eat the marshmallow before them. Mischel followed these kids for decades, finding that the kids who delayed gratification and got that second marshmallow did better on every axis – educational attainment, employment, and income. Adult brain-scans of these subjects revealed structural differences between the patient and the impatient.
For many years, the Stanford Marshmallow experiment has been used to validate the cleavage of humanity in the patient and wise and impatient and foolish. Those brain scans were said to reveal the biological basis for thinking of humanity's innate rulers as a superior subspecies, hidden in plain sight, destined to rule.
Then came the "replication crisis," in which numerous bedrock psychological studies from the mid 20th century were re-run by scientists whose fresh vigor disproved and/or complicated the career-defining findings of the giants of behavioral "science." When researchers re-ran Mischel's tests, they discovered an important gloss to his findings. By questioning the kids who ate the marshmallows right away, rather than waiting to get two marshmallows, they discovered that these kids weren't impatient, they were rational.
The kids who ate the marshmallows were more likely to come from poorer households. These kids had repeatedly been disappointed by the adults in their lives, who routinely broke their promises to the kids. Sometimes, this was well-intentioned, as when an economically precarious parent promised a treat, only to come up short because of an unexpected bill. Sometimes, this was just callousness, as when teachers, social workers or other authority figures fobbed these kids off with promises they knew they couldn't keep.
The marshmallow-eating kids had rationally analyzed their previous experiences and were making a sound bet that a marshmallow on the plate now was worth more than a strange adult's promise of two marshmallows. The "patient" kids who waited for the second marshmallow weren't so much patient as they were trusting: they had grown up with parents who had the kind of financial cushion that let them follow through on their promises, and who had the kind of social power that convinced other adults – teachers, etc – to follow through on their promises to their kids.
Once you understand this, the lesson of the Marshmallow Experiment is inverted. The reason two marshmallow kids thrived is that they came from privileged backgrounds: their high grades were down to private tutors, not the choice to study rather than partying. Their plum jobs and high salaries came from university and family connections, not merit. Their brain differences were the result of a life free from the chronic, extreme stress that comes with poverty.
Post-replication crisis, the moral of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is that everyone experiences a mix of patience and impatience, but for the people born to privilege, the consequences of impatience are blunted and the rewards of patience are maximized.
Which explains a lot about how rich people actually behave. Take Charles Koch, who grew his father's coal empire a thousandfold by making long-term investments in automation. Koch is a vocal proponent of patience and long-term thinking, and is openly contemptuous of publicly traded companies because of the pressure from shareholders to give preference to short-term extraction over long-term planning. He's got a point.
Koch isn't just a fossil fuel baron, he's also a wildly successful ideologue. Koch is one of a handful of oligarchs who have transformed American politics by patiently investing in a kraken's worth of think tanks, universities, PACs, astroturf organizations, Star chambers and other world-girding tentacles. After decades of gerrymandering, voter suppression, court-packing and propagandizing, the American billionaire class has seized control of the US and its institutions. Patience pays!
But Koch's longtermism is highly selective. Arguably, Charles Koch bears more personal responsibility for delaying action on the climate emergency than any other person, alive or dead. Addressing greenhouse gasses is the most grasshopper-and-the-ant-ass crisis of all. Every day we delayed doing something about this foreseeable, well-understood climate debt added sky-high compounding interest. In failing to act, we saved billions – but we stuck our future selves with trillions in debt for which no bankruptcy procedure exists.
By convincing us not to invest in retooling for renewables in order to make his billions, Koch was committing the sin of premature avocado toast, times a billion. His inability to defer gratification – which he imposed on the rest of us – means that we are likely to lose much of world's coastal cities (including the state of Florida), and will have to find trillions to cope with wildfires, zoonotic plagues, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees.
Koch isn't a serene Buddha whose ability to surf over his impetuous attachments qualifies him to make decisions for the rest of us. Rather, he – like everyone else – is a flawed vessel whose blind spots are just as stubborn as ours. But unlike a person whose lack of foresight leads to drug addiction and petty crimes to support their habit, Koch's flaws don't just hurt a few people, they hurt our entire species and the only planet that can support it.
The selective marshmallow patience of the rich creates problems beyond climate debt. Koch and his fellow oligarchs are, first and foremost, supporters of oligarchy, an intrinsically destabilizing political arrangement that actually threatens their fortunes. Policies that favor the wealthy are always seeking an equilibrium between instability and inequality: a rich person can either submit to having their money taxed away to build hospitals, roads and schools, or they can invest in building high walls and paying guards to keep the rest of us from building guillotines on their lawns.
Rich people gobble that marshmallow like there's no tomorrow (literally). They always overestimate how much bang they'll get for their guard-labor buck, and underestimate how determined the poors will get after watching their children die of starvation and preventable diseases.
All of us benefit from some kind of cushion from our bad judgment, but not too much. The problem isn't that wealthy people get to make a few poor choices without suffering brutal consequences – it's that they hoard this benefit. Most of us are one missed student debt payment away from penalties and interest that add twenty years to our loan, while Charles Koch can set the planet on fire and continue to act as though he was born with the special judgment that means he knows what's best for us.
(Image: Mark S, CC BY 2.0, modified)
Hey look at this (permalink)
- No Exit Opportunities: Business Models and Political Thought in Silicon Valley https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/08/no-exit-opportunities-business-models-and-political-thought-in-silicon-valley/
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Weird and Wonderful Filmstrips https://ironicsans.beehiiv.com/p/weird-wonderful-filmstrips
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Findings Report: Governance on Fediverse Microblogging Servers https://fediverse-governance.github.io
This day in history (permalink)
#20yrago GPL court challenge in English https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/old-docs/OIIFB_GPL2_20040903.pdf
#15yrsago How the UK gov’t spun 136 survey respondants into 7m infringers https://web.archive.org/web/20090906090950/http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351331/how-uk-government-spun-136-people-into-7m-illegal-file-sharers
#15yrsago Canadian Copyright Consultation shows Canadians overwhelmingly support moderate, fair copyright https://web.archive.org/web/20090905160714/https://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4355/125/
#15yrsago Special Pleading, the dirty rhetorical trick used to disqualify all open publishing successes https://web.archive.org/web/20090908002625/http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2009/09/cory-doctorow-special-pleading.html
#15yrsago British musicians — Paul McCartney, Elton John et al — speak out against disconnecting accused infringers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/sep/03/youtube-prs-deal-file-sharing
#15yrsago Damien Hirst installation owner charges teen art-rival with theft of £500,000 for removing box of pencils from installation https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/damien-hirst-in-vicious-feud-with-teenage-artist-over-a-box-of-pencils-1781463.html
#10yrsago California’s incipient dustbowl: photos of a drought https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/09/dramatic-photos-of-californias-historic-drought/100804/
#10yrsago W3C hosting a “Web We Want Magna Carta” drafting session at Internet Governance Forum https://www.w3.org/blog/2014/crowdsourcing-a-magna-carta-for-the-web-at-the-internet-governance-forum/
#10yrsago Net Neutrality video: don’t flush our rights away! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNM8Z1lm9bM
#10yrsago More than 99% of FCC commenters support Net Neutrality https://sunlightfoundation.com/2014/09/02/what-can-we-learn-from-800000-public-comments-on-the-fccs-net-neutrality-plan/
#10yrsago Canadian PM steals site of memorial for political rival’s father https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ottawa-architect-says-government-stealing-site-for-communism-memorial
#5yrsago Why don’t more Chinese people oppose the Chinese government? https://web.archive.org/web/20190907072743/https://supchina.com/2019/07/22/why-do-chinese-people-like-their-government/
#5yrsago Critical essays (including mine) discuss Toronto’s plan to let Google build a surveillance-based “smart city” along its waterfront https://torontolife.com/city/a-smart-city-should-serve-its-users-not-mine-their-data/
#5yrsago Interview with Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue’s labor reporter https://therealnews.com/why-does-teen-vogue-need-a-labor-column
#5yrsago After unsuccessful legislative reform, German radicals defy the law to dumpster-dive at grocery stores https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-examines-legality-of-dumpster-diving-a-1284079.html
#5yrsago Beijing promises “no mercy” for the “backstage masterminds” of the Hong Kong uprising https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3025578/beijing-calls-all-hong-kong-institutions-fight-violent
#5yrsago Dell Magazines have changed the Campbell Award to the Astounding Award, removing the name of fascist John W Campbell https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/04/dell-magazines-have-changed-the-campbell-award-to-the-astounding-award-removing-the-name-of-fascist-john-w-campbell/
#5yrsago They told us DRM would give us more for less, but they lied https://locusmag.com/2019/09/cory-doctorow-drm-broke-its-promise/
#5yrsago Hong Kong protests level up in countermeasures, tactics, art and deadly seriousness https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/04/hong-kong-protests-level-up-in-countermeasures-tactics-art-and-deadly-seriousness/
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Albacon (Albany/remote), Sep 13-15
https://albacon.org/2024/ -
The Right to Read, Boston Public Library, Sep 24
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/66cf2d8bf520192f005fcc50 -
TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
https://tusconscificon.com/
Recent appearances (permalink)
- HC4US
https://soundcloud.com/hc4us/081224-cory-doctorow-a-canadian-british-science-fiction-author-activist-and-journalist -
Tech Rights & The Future of Privacy (Synthetic Minds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD5iAV1YmO4 -
Enzittification with Ed Zitron & Brian Merchant
https://omny.fm/shows/better-offline/enzittification-with-cory-doctorow-brian-merchant
Latest books (permalink)
- The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
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"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
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"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
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"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
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"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
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"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
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"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
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"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
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"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.
Upcoming books (permalink)
- Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
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Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
- Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay. Yesterday's progress: 772 words (42912 words total).
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A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
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Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
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Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Latest podcast: AI's productivity theater https://craphound.com/news/2024/08/04/ais-productivity-theater/
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