Bill Maher is tired of heaing about stuff like the Overton window, MKUltra, the “shadow docket” of the Supreme Court, looksmaxxing, “heuristic,” “cognitive offloading” and other examples of what he calls “pedantic bullshit.” (But he really hates the Overton Window. His curmudgeonly diatribe segues into a Dr. Seuss-like poem. He winds up arguing that his brain having been filled with useless knowledge—like the names of all the Kardashians and the characters in “Friends”—is “violence.” Indeed!
The guests you see are Financial Times editor Gillian Tett and NYT op-ed columnist Bret Stephens.
So, the “Old Man Yells at Clouds” headline seems appropriate.
I thought it was one of the better episodes. I had heard that he gave Newsom a hard time and that Newsom gave it back harder. After watching it I thought they had a great conversation. I was impressed by Newsom who is clearly running for president. He would be a good nominee, although I don’t think the country wants a Dem from California. I don’t normally listen to the panel guests. But I like Brett Stephens and I thought the conversation was pretty interesting. The New Rules segment cracked me up.
When free speech meets free speech, this happens – and it is good.
Politics and the English Language
George Orwell
1945
Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power
Josef Pieper
1973 (?)
Thanks for these excellent references. Orwell often makes me wander how much self-awareness he had regarding his foresight/prescience-ness {futuristic abilities(?} Pieper’s paper has me feeling I need to loosen the heuristics I apply to my perceived notion of what is pouring through that elusive Overton Window.
Risking a bit of overcommenting :
Maher is demonstrating this Orwell excerpt :
“This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.”
THAT is prescient… or, maybe timeless?…
Though, Maher is objecting to “new” words, perhaps a whole new essay can be written on that.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. When I tell people I know almost nothing about the Kardashians, they invariably reply “That’s great! Good for you.”
Brilliant, as always! Recently, my co-authors used the word heuristics in our paper. After googling it and contemplating its meaning, I removed it. I cannot imagine a context in which it would be useful.
A heuristic is simply a rule of thumb.
Kahneman and Tversky (1982)
Judgement under uncertainty: heuristics and biases.
The book is a classic in decision theory.
Their lectures were the first time I encountered the term “heuristics”.
At the risk of coming off as a conspiracy theorist, it seems that some of these new buzz words come into full bloom over a weekend. “Indiscriminate,” as in Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing, burst forth from the mouth of President Biden, to be dutifully repeated over and over. So is “affordability,” a word that Democrats calculate will catapult them into power. And so we have the “the Overton Window,” the definition of which will not be provided here. It’s quite the coincidence that such words seem to pop into existence all at once from the mouths of allied political operatives. Or is it?
Comment by Greg Mayer
While some of the terms I’ve never heard and don’t especially care to learn about (e.g. looksmaxxing), I’m surprised Maher complained about the”Overton window”. It’s a pretty standard political science term. I’ve known the term since about the Great Recession, and I remember thinking in 2016 that, while I was not a Bernie supporter, I was glad he was trying to shift the Overton window in the right direction. I’m just a herpetologist; as a political pundit, Bill ought to know the term.
GCM