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great article on the rhetoric of "agency" / "you can just do things"

https://thebaffler.com/latest/high-agency-individuals-vincent

#agency #ai #politics

#AI #politics #agency
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@Emma Stamm The article is interesting, but its centrist both-sideism is never as cringe as in the following quote:

On the left, it accords with the complaints of “abundance liberals,” who advocate for governments to ignore obstacles like NIMBYism and environmental protectionism to build, build, build: build houses, more public transport, more power infrastructure, and so on.


What environmental protections people on the left are intent on ignoring in favor of housing, transportation and power infrastructure?

It isn’t a question to you, of course, but I’d be moderately curious to know the author’s motivations for this specific sentence.

@Emma Stamm
Emma Stamm
Emma Stamm  
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he's distinguishing liberals as a particular sort of leftist here, not speaking of the left as a whole
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@Emma Stamm Thank you for the helpful clarification, still curious about the mentioned environmental protections as obstacles in this narrower context.
@Emma Stamm
Emma Stamm
Emma Stamm  
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he's talking about certain liberals wanting to ignore environmental protections in favor of building out infrastructure. it's a very general statement condemning advocates of the "abundance" framework that's become popular recently. the baffler's politics are quite left-leaning, especially in the context of the US
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@Emma Stamm Thank you very much for your time! I'm personally used to outlets I thought were left-leaning taking a centrist turn in the past decade or so, so that was my pessimistic hypothesis reading that particular passage that didn't resonate with specific experiences of mine.
@Emma Stamm
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