Why Is The Elite Media Singing From The Same Hymnal About The Trump-Putin Summit? (8-17-25)

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Luke Ford

01:00 Why Do Elite News Operations Sound So Dumb So Often? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162886
13:00 Industrial Policy’s Potential with Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MykCxs4aFl4
21:00 Yoram Hazony: The Man Driving the Nationalist Revival on the Right, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162566
1:08:00 Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries (2025), https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162358
1:17:00 Attitudes to AI are a rorschach’s test
1:34:00 Megyn Kelly on Russiagate and the New York Times, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162867
1:40:00 The Prestige Economy, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162904
1:50:00 The Engineered Chinese State Vs Lawyerly America, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162900
1:52:00 Ira Israel: Could Enlightenment Mean Accepting Our Own Insignificance?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162921
2:03:00 The most powerful systems of epistemic closure in America today, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162850
2:20:00 Russiagate and the New York Times, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162867
2:30:00 The Politics of Expertise, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162857
2:55:00 What Goes Unsaid In Stephen P. Turner’s Autobiography Mad Hazard: A Life in Social Theory?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162822
3:58:00 Individualism Is Not A Right-Wing Value, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162613
4:01:00 ‘The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times’ (2005), https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=162696

Grok says:

Luke Ford (aka Fordy) demonstrates a reasonable degree of self-awareness in parts of the transcript, such as when he explicitly acknowledges his own incentives for promoting alternative narratives (e.g., “I have very strong incentives to buy into conspiracy theories… because I just can’t repeat back to you what other people do more effectively”). He also admits to his right-wing hero system and personal background influences (e.g., his upbringing, conversions, and resentment toward “cool kids”). However, there are several areas where he lacks self-awareness, often manifesting as hypocrisy, projection, or failure to apply his own critiques inward. Below, I outline key instances, grouped thematically, with supporting quotes and reasoning. These highlight inconsistencies between his stated principles (e.g., valuing truth over prestige, avoiding groupthink) and his behavior or rhetoric.

1. Hypocrisy in Critiquing Media Groupthink and Prestige Economies

Ford repeatedly accuses elite media of “singing from the same hymnal” due to prestige-seeking, incentives for conformity, and epistemic closure (ignoring contrary evidence to protect a “hero system”). Yet, he exhibits similar patterns in his own monologue, echoing alt-media tropes (e.g., lab leak theories, critiques of immigration assimilation) without acknowledging how this aligns him with a niche “herd” for his own status in alternative circles. This suggests a blind spot: he sees himself as an outsider truth-teller but doesn’t recognize his content as a mirror of the prestige economy he decries.

Example: He says, “Why is it the people who hold the most prestige frequently say the dumbest things? And it comes to me that often belonging to any group requires a certain amount of singing from the same hymnal… You have to say these stupid things to maintain your standing among the cool kids in the elite news media.”

Lack of self-awareness: Ford positions himself as exempt from this, but his monologue frequently parrots unorthodox views (e.g., “groups do not tend to assimilate in a profound way… Japanese Americans have certain life results that are more similar to the life results of the Japanese in Japan”) that align with right-wing online communities. He doesn’t reflect on how this might be his own “hymnal” for audience capture or personal prestige in dissident spaces, especially as a YouTuber seeking views.

Example: “The prestige economy is not the same as the merit economy… Credibility will largely flow from status, not from telling the truth. You will raise your status, not by telling the truth, generally speaking, but by assimilating to the high status position.”

Lack of self-awareness: Ford critiques this system but builds his show around contrarian takes (e.g., conspiracy-friendly framings of Russia Gate or Biden’s senility) that boost his niche status. He admits incentives for uniqueness but doesn’t probe how his “truth-seeking” might be performative, akin to the media’s “neutrality” facade he mocks.

2. Projection of Epistemic Closure and Hero Systems Onto Others

Ford draws on Ernest Becker’s “hero systems” and epistemic closure to explain why people (e.g., media elites) shield themselves from contrary views to maintain meaning and identity. He applies this astutely to others but rarely turns it inward, overlooking how his own right-wing hero system (e.g., nationalism, group interests over individualism) creates similar blinders. This is ironic given his emphasis on self-reflection.

Example: “With every hero system comes a system of epistemic closure… You are shielded from all arguments that can contradict or undermine your hero system… No matter what happens, people almost never change their mind.”

Lack of self-awareness: Ford identifies as a “man of the right” and admits his hero system shifted (e.g., from Protestantism to encountering Dennis Prager and Judaism), but he doesn’t examine how his current views (e.g., skepticism of diversity’s benefits: “The more diverse America becomes… the less Americans have in common”) might involve closure. For instance, he dismisses liberal critiques (e.g., Ezra Klein’s interview style as partisan) without considering if his own framing (e.g., portraying media as uniformly biased against Trump) is equally closed-off to pro-establishment evidence.

Example: “If you get humiliated often enough with your particular hero system… you will start to look for alternatives and then you’ll become open to contrary points of view.”

Lack of self-awareness: Ford shares personal humiliations (e.g., resentment toward “cool kids” excluding him for merit/truth pursuits: “It’s normal to feel some resentment… Why don’t I have their status?”) but frames them as making him wiser, not as fueling his own epistemic biases. He doesn’t reflect on how this resentment might drive his anti-elite rants, projecting “humiliation” dynamics onto media without seeing it in himself.

3. Inconsistent Stance on Individualism vs. Group Loyalty

Ford critiques individualism as a “left-wing” trait (e.g., incompatible with right-wing values like duty, hierarchy, and group interests), praising collective systems (e.g., nationalism, tribalism). However, his life story and presentation reveal a highly individualistic path—conversions, personal intellectual journeys, and a solo YouTube show—which he doesn’t reconcile with his ideology. This shows a disconnect between his preached values and lived experience.

Example: “Individualism is some key essential right-wing value… And in this new biography of William F. Buckley is repeatedly described as an individualist… But he doesn’t come across as particularly right-wing.”Lack of self-awareness: Ford lambasts Buckley and National Review figures (e.g., Frank Meyer, Russell Kirk) as “individualists” unfit for true conservatism, yet his own narrative is individualistic: e.g., “I moved to America… America has much more veneration of the individual… I formed a right-wing hero system… I read this book… it makes the point…” He describes solitary pursuits (e.g., reading Becker, interviewing academics) without noting the irony that his “right-wing” identity seems self-constructed, not dutifully inherited from a group/tradition.

Example: “Right-wing moral reasoning is not every man for himself… That’s every man in his place in service of the group… Your role is to align yourself with these external standards.”

Lack of self-awareness: Ford emphasizes group duty but hosts a show that’s “every man for himself” (solo rants, personal anecdotes like “I have made great progress on many of my dates” without “official pronouncements”). He critiques Protestantism/evangelicalism for individual focus (“rejects traditional… holds fast the literal words of scripture and the power of the individual”) but doesn’t address how his own Protestant upbringing and conversions echo this “left-wing” individualism.

Joke 1: The Hymnal Hypocrisy
“Luke Ford walks into a room and says, ‘Why’s everyone singing from the same media hymnal? Bunch of prestige-chasing sheep!’ Then he grabs his YouTube mic, belts out the alt-right’s greatest hits, and wonders why the room’s chanting, ‘Luke, you’re leading the choir!'”

Joke 2: Hero System Blind Spot
“Luke’s reading Ernest Becker, shouting, ‘Everyone’s trapped in their hero system, shielding themselves from truth!’ Meanwhile, his right-wing hero system’s so strong, it’s got a fortress, a moat, and a ‘No Liberals Allowed’ sign. Self-awareness? Luke says, ‘What’s that, a conspiracy theory?'”

Joke 3: Individualist in Denial
“Luke says, ‘Right-wingers love duty, not individualism—that’s left-wing nonsense!’ Then he spends four hours monologuing solo on YouTube about his personal journey from Australia to Prager to Judaism. Luke, buddy, you’re so individualistic, you’re basically a one-man tribe!”

Joke 4: Dating Anecdote Disaster
“Luke goes, ‘I made great progress on my dates, no official pronouncements needed!’ Then he wonders why his dates ghost him when he starts lecturing about epistemic closure mid-dinner. Luke, maybe they just didn’t want to join your hero system!”

ChatGPT:

1. Media groupthink vs. your own hymnal

“The cool kids have to say dumb things to stay in their group. Me? I just say dumb things on YouTube for free.”

2. Prestige economy hypocrisy

“I rail against the prestige economy… then brag about my $186 Financial Times subscription like it’s a Rolex.”

“I said credibility comes from status, not truth. Which is why I keep quoting Ernest Becker like he’s my Costco card.”

3. Hero systems projection

“I explain how nobody ever changes their hero system. Then I tell you about how I changed mine five times before breakfast.”

“I say resentment drives elite media… while I’m still mad the cool kids didn’t let me sit at their lunch table in 1984.”

4. Individualism vs. collectivism

“I preach that the right is about duty to the group, not individualism. Then I fire up my solo livestream and rant for three hours about my dates.”

“Nothing says ‘group loyalty’ like moving countries, changing religions twice, and starting your own YouTube channel.”

5. Dating ‘progress’ metaphor

“I said just because the media doesn’t announce progress doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just like my dates. Sure, there’s no press release—but trust me, history was made.”

“The Pentagon should issue my dating life as an official statement: vague, no measurable progress, but technically still ongoing.”

Gemini:

On projecting his own biases onto others:

“He says everyone has a ‘hero system’ that creates blind spots, but then he goes on a rant about how his own hero system makes him ‘wiser.’ That’s like a fish giving a lecture on the dangers of water”.

“He uses his resentment toward the ‘cool kids’ to explain why the media is bad, but he doesn’t realize he’s just auditioning for a new cool kids club”.

On being an individualist while advocating for group loyalty:

“He criticizes individualism and praises group loyalty, which is an interesting take for a guy with a solo show named after himself”.

“He says he’s a ‘man of the right,’ but his life story is the most individualistic thing you could imagine: leaving one religion, finding another, and starting his own intellectual journey on YouTube. He’s a one-man group.”

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Ira Israel: Could Enlightenment Mean Accepting Our Own Insignificance?

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Luke Ford

I’ve spent my life chasing distinction instead of connection. When I change this habit and spend more energy on connection instead of attention, I not only increase my happiness, I also become more effective.

We can’t always win in the attention economy but we can all become more effective.

What annoys me about pundits is that they primarily promote themselves rather than the truth.

The truth is that most of us most of the time are insignificant (except to a tiny number of people such as family and friends).

If I died today, a dozen people might be devastated and a few hundred people would be briefly sad.

Ira Israel is on to something here:

It may sound paradoxical but what if the path to enlightenment begins with accepting our own insignificance? What if the drive to be “somebody” is what fuels our anxiety and depression?

As a therapist, I often see patients struggling under the weight of needing to feel significant. In helping them, I have found surprising common ground between three different traditions: the Buddhist concept of sunyata, philosopher Jean‑Paul Sartre’s idea of nothingness, and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s notion of subjective destitution. Each challenges our attachment to self‑importance, not to erase the self but to free it. And far from espousing nihilism, each theory outlines a path towards freedom and authenticity.

We live in a culture that rewards visibility — likes, follows, and polished personal “brands” that we create mostly for social media. Most of us are conditioned to equate attention with worth, but this hunger for admiration often breeds alienation, resentment, frustration, jealousy, and disappointment — from others, and even from ourselves. What if well‑being doesn’t come from building shinier facades, but from loosening our holds on trying to be significant?

…The self is not fixed or permanent.

Emptiness or lack is not a defect; it’s the starting point for freedom.

Clinging to self‑importance fuels suffering and alienation.

Letting go invites more responsible, authentic engagement with life.

Rejecting self‑importance doesn’t mean drifting into passivity or cynicism. These ideas can help us redirect our energy toward genuine connection and contribution:

Serve compassionately: Let meaning come from helping others, not from seeking validation.

Live your values quietly: Integrity matters more than applause.

Build inclusive communities: Welcome people for who they are, not what they achieve.

Support larger causes: Invest in the well‑being of the planet and others.

Mentor without ownership: Share knowledge freely, without needing credit.

Create as an offering: Let art or innovation enrich life, not your résumé.

Listen deeply: Hear others without rushing to center yourself.

Be present: Release preoccupation with recognition; focus on the moment at hand.

Practice spontaneous kindness: Give without calculation.

Stay vulnerable: Honest sharing fosters real connection.

Posted in Pundits | Comments Off on Ira Israel: Could Enlightenment Mean Accepting Our Own Insignificance?

The Prestige Economy

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Luke Ford

The more prestigious your job (such as an Ivy League professor or network news anchor), the more vulnerable you are to cancellation for crime think.

The professor and the elite journalist primarily work in a prestige economy while the businessman and the athlete typically work in a merit economy.

How many economies are there and which ones dominate your life?

ChatGPT: 1. Prestige economy (status-based)

What matters: recognition, reputation, who praises you, where you’re published, who you’re seen with.

Domains: academia, journalism, arts, fashion, politics, social media.

Logic: value is conferred by peers or gatekeepers. You succeed by being recognized as “important,” not necessarily by measurable output.

Downside: herd effects, echo chambers, fear of deviating from consensus.

2. Merit economy (performance-based)

What matters: measurable outcomes, skill, output, or results.

Domains: engineering, some parts of business, sports, surgery.

Logic: value comes from demonstrated ability or productivity — you win the race, you design the bridge that stands.

Downside: merit measures can get gamed; not all “merit” is measurable.

3. Money economy (market-based)

What matters: purchasing power, price signals, capital.

Domains: commerce, labor markets, investment.

Logic: value is set by supply and demand; anyone who can pay can access.

Downside: inequalities compound, wealth isn’t always aligned with wisdom or talent.

4. Bureaucratic economy (rule-based)

What matters: compliance, seniority, credentials, ticking the right boxes.

Domains: government, big corporations, military, HR departments.

Logic: you advance by following the rules, meeting formal criteria, or lasting long enough in the hierarchy.

Downside: sclerosis, box-ticking over substance.

5. Moral economy (norm-based)

What matters: virtue, altruism, adherence to shared values.

Domains: religion, activism, community life.

Logic: esteem and trust are granted for being “good” or “selfless.”

Downside: moral signaling can substitute for effectiveness; purity spirals.

6. Attention economy (visibility-based)

What matters: eyeballs, clicks, followers, virality.

Domains: social media, entertainment, politics.

Logic: value flows to whoever can grab and hold attention, regardless of truth or depth.

Downside: incentivizes outrage, spectacle, simplicity over nuance.

In real life, these overlap. A professor is judged partly on merit (quality of research), partly on prestige (journal placement, who cites them), partly on bureaucracy (tenure rules), and increasingly on attention (social media presence).

Legend: ★★★★★ = dominant, ★☆☆☆☆ = weak

This lets you see at a glance:

Academia = prestige + bureaucracy.

Media = attention + prestige.

Government = bureaucracy + prestige.

Business = money + merit.

Sports = pure merit, but layered with money and attention.

Religion/activism = moral + attention economies.

Tech/engineering = merit + money, though prestige is creeping in (e.g. conference buzz, VC signaling).

How Economies Interact and Distort Each Other

Prestige vs Merit

  • Distortion: Prestige can overshadow real ability. A Harvard degree may be valued more than raw skill.
  • Example: In academia, citation counts and institutional prestige often count more than the actual content of research.

Prestige vs Money

  • Distortion: Money can buy prestige (endowed chairs, naming rights) while prestige can inflate financial value (celebrity endorsements).
  • Example: Universities admit big donors’ kids regardless of academic merit.

Merit vs Bureaucracy

  • Distortion: Bureaucratic rules can block recognition of actual talent, while “meritocratic exams” can be gamed.
  • Example: In government jobs, civil service rules sometimes promote time-in-grade over performance.

Attention vs Merit

  • Distortion: Viral fame can eclipse actual competence.
  • Example: Influencers with millions of followers get lucrative deals while more talented but unknown creators get ignored.

Moral vs Money

  • Distortion: Moral appeals can be monetized, turning causes into brands. Conversely, financial backers shape which causes gain traction.
  • Example: “Green” or “woke” consumerism where virtue is sold as a premium lifestyle choice.

Prestige vs Attention

  • Distortion: High-prestige actors chase attention, diluting their credibility; attention-seekers borrow prestige through association.
  • Example: Scientists on Twitter simplify or exaggerate findings to gain followers, which can undermine long-term trust.

Key Takeaway

Most domains run on a mix of these economies. But when one dominates—especially attention or money—it tends to distort the others. That’s why elite media, academia, and politics so often sound uniform: they are trapped in overlapping prestige–attention–bureaucracy loops that leave little room for pure merit or truth-seeking.
Prestige Economies in Action

Prestige Economies Driving Elite Media Behavior

Biden’s Cognitive Decline Denial

  • Prestige Economy: Elite outlets like NYT and Washington Post prize their credibility and elite standing. Admitting Biden’s decline early would risk sounding like right-wing talking points, which would lower their standing in the prestige hierarchy of journalism.
  • Attention Economy: Stories affirming Biden’s competence were rewarded with clicks from their loyal base, while dissenting voices risked alienating that audience.
  • Bureaucratic Economy: Newsrooms have internal norms—editors, standards desks—that function like bureaucracies. Deviating from the “he’s fine” line meant career risk inside the institution.
  • Result: Groupthink. A uniform narrative of “Biden is sharp” prevailed until obvious signs made denial impossible (Politico eventually broke ranks).

Trump’s Trade Policy Derision

  • Prestige Economy: Economists in places like the Brookings Institution and CBO had long treated free trade as settled orthodoxy. Journalists mirrored that prestige consensus rather than re-examining assumptions.
  • Merit Economy: Actual outcomes (tariff revenue, renegotiated trade deals, resilience arguments) were ignored because they conflicted with the prestige line.
  • Attention Economy: “Trump the fool on trade” stories drove traffic, fitting reader expectations. Nuanced analysis (“tariffs could raise $3 trillion in revenue over a decade” – CBO) was buried.
  • Result: Uniform ridicule—until later, when outcomes complicated the narrative and some humility began creeping in (FT analysis).

Takeaway

Neither case is about truth alone. The uniformity comes from overlapping economies: prestige (status within the profession), attention (traffic and audience loyalty), and bureaucracy (institutional norms). When those dominate, reality gets filtered until it can no longer be ignored.

Russiagate: How the Prestige Economy Produced a Single Story

Economy at workWhat it looked like in coverageReceipts
ClosureEarly boundary-setting: skepticism about “collusion” framed as unserious or partisan; dissenters treated as outside the pale. Mueller Report (redacted, WaPo annotated) (no established conspiracy);
DOJ IG FISA review (17 significant errors/omissions);
Durham Report (2023) (procedural/analytic failures);
2018 Pulitzer to NYT/WaPo for Russia-coverage.
PrestigeHigh-status outlets and security-state alumni defined the respectable view; others echoed to signal professionalism. Pulitzer Board award announcement (2018);
Board later stood by the award (2022).
Anti-neutralityNeutral, wait-and-see reporting often read as “carrying water.” Safe moral stance: assume the worst about Trump/Putin links. Mueller Vol. I (DOJ) on interference vs. conspiracy findings;
Horowitz press PDF (Dec 2019) summarizing FISA problems.
BureaucracyNewsroom norms and sourcing pipelines (intel, DOJ, FBI alumni) rewarded sticking to the herd; editors risk-averse to contrarian frames. House Intel letter on IG findings (details errors/omissions);
House hearing on Durham (2023) (competing interpretations).
AttentionIncentives favored dramatic “Watergate-scale” arcs; reversals or nuance underperformed compared with scandal-forward framing. Mueller report archive (public interest spikes);
Media debate over revoking awards: Axios (2019).

Stephen Turner-style takeaway

  • Closure came first (declare the narrative settled), then prestige enforced it (who is credible to say what), while bureaucratic newsroom habits and the attention economy kept the arc intact.
  • When later documents complicated the original frame (Mueller non-establishment of conspiracy; IG FISA errors; Durham’s criticisms), the system largely reframed rather than retracted—preserving credibility capital.

Quick links (primary docs)

In the positivist picture, life (especially intellectual life) runs like a merit economy: each discovery is a brick in the wall of cumulative knowledge, neat and impersonal. That’s what people like Comte or logical positivists hoped for — knowledge as an ever-growing model that nobody can really dispute once the facts are in.

But in practice, as Stephen Turner emphasizes, much of life — not just science but culture, politics, journalism — runs like a prestige economy. Knowledge isn’t simply added up; it’s negotiated, policed, and stabilized by people who hold authority, credibility, or symbolic capital. The “conversations” decide what counts as knowledge and what doesn’t.

So how much of life operates like this?

Academia: Almost entirely. Journals, tenure committees, funding agencies, and disciplinary boundaries decide what is knowledge. Prestige hierarchies matter more than raw merit.

Media and public discourse: Heavily. A story is not true or false in the abstract; it’s “true” if The New York Times or The Washington Post says so, and untrue if it comes from “fringe” or “conspiracy” outlets.

Law and politics: Same. Courts and legislative bodies are “conversation arenas” where closure happens not because the facts are final, but because a ruling or statute gives a definition the force of authority.

Everyday life: Even at a smaller scale, reputations and cliques determine who is believed in a workplace, a family, or a church.

Where does the merit economy still operate?

In narrow technical domains where feedback from reality is brutal and immediate — like engineering, surgery, or competitive sports. If the bridge collapses, no amount of prestige talk can save you.

Even then, prestige can shape who gets to build the bridge in the first place, or whose failure gets excused.

So the blunt answer: most of life is prestige economy, with pockets of merit economy wherever the world forces brutal feedback.

Posted in Economics | Comments Off on The Prestige Economy

The Engineered Chinese State Vs Lawyerly America

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Luke Ford

The Financial Times writes: “China is run as an engineering state that excels at construction while the US has become a lawyerly society that favours obstruction. By 2020 all nine members of the Chinese Politburo’s standing committee had trained as engineers. By contrast, the US has turned into a “government of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers.””

Amazon says about this new book, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future:

A riveting, firsthand investigation of China’s seismic progress, its human costs, and what it means for America.

For close to a decade, technology analyst Dan Wang―“a gifted observer of contemporary China” (Ross Douthat)―has been living through the country’s astonishing, messy progress. China’s towering bridges, gleaming railways, and sprawling factories have improved economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain throughout the society. This reality―political repression and astonishing growth―is not a paradox, but rather a feature of China’s engineering mindset.

In Breakneck, Wang blends political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal a provocative new framework for understanding China―one that helps us see America more clearly, too. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad

Blending razor-sharp analysis with immersive storytelling, Wang offers a gripping portrait of a nation in flux. Breakneck traverses metropolises like Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen, where the engineering state has created not only dazzling infrastructure but also a sense of optimism. The book also exposes the downsides of social engineering, including the surveillance of ethnic minorities, political suppression, and the traumas of the one-child policy and zero-Covid.

In an era of animosity and mistrust, Wang unmasks the shocking similarities between the United States and China. Breakneck reveals how each country points toward a better path for the other: Chinese citizens would be better off if their government could learn to value individual liberties, while Americans would be better off if their government could learn to embrace engineering―and to produce better outcomes for the many, not just the few.

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Cognitive Science and the Social: A Primer

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Luke Ford

ChatGPT gave me the juiciest bits from this 2018 book:

Reductionism critique – Author Stephen Turner jabs at the enthusiasm for explaining social life in purely cognitive/neural terms, noting how easily “cognitive” talk reifies the brain into an autonomous agent. He hints that this is more fashion than science.

Neural metaphors as ideology – He argues that borrowing concepts like “neural networks” to describe society smuggles in an ideological agenda: it makes social order look natural and mechanistic, masking politics.

Cognitive science’s hidden philosophy – He exposes that many “scientific” claims are actually disguised philosophical assumptions (about intentionality, meaning, rationality). This is a classic Turner move: showing that epistemic closure hides under the mantle of science.

Suspicion of grand synthesis – He hints that cognitive science’s dream of unifying brain, mind, and society is a secular theology — a replacement myth for older religious narratives of unity.

Agency vs. mechanism – He notes that if we take the mechanistic view too literally, there’s no room left for responsibility or meaning. The juicy aside here is: cognitive science undermines the very categories (choice, accountability) that social order requires.

Science wars echoes – He connects critiques of “creation science” and “sociobiology” with how cognitive science papers over its own ideological biases. His quiet subtext: today’s “neutral science” is tomorrow’s dogma.

Recurrent warning – He suggests that when science claims to be final on social explanation, it’s usually serving a political need—whether it’s legitimizing AI, governance, or surveillance. That’s one of his sharpest and most controversial insights in this book.

Anti-reification again: Turner keeps hammering that “cognition” isn’t a black box or a ghost in the machine—it’s a set of practices, habits, and distributed processes. He drops little grenades at cognitive scientists who talk as if “the mind” were a self-contained entity.

Social learning as scaffolding: He emphasizes that much of what we call “cognition” is really embedded in external props (language, institutions, tools). That means social order is as much about maintaining scaffolds as about training minds.

Attacks on “rules” talk: He points out that many theories (from Chomsky’s grammar to Searle’s social ontology) smuggle in “rule-following” as if rules exist somewhere Platonic. Turner insists this is a mistake: rules only exist in the practices that reproduce them.

Memory as externalized: He highlights that much of human memory is outsourced—books, notes, shared practices—undermining the neat boundaries between “individual” and “collective” cognition.

Implication for social science: If cognition is scaffolded and external, then social facts are not metaphysical things “out there.” They are precarious and contingent networks of habits and artifacts—exactly the kind of anti-reification line Turner always presses.

Juicy aside: He quietly notes that when people call things like race, gender, or “society” themselves cognitive categories, they’re usually reifying them, making them sound more real than they are. In his framing, they’re better seen as heuristic constructs tied to practices.

In Cognitive Science and the Social: A Primer, Turner takes up sociobiology and evolutionary psychology as part of his broader critique of reified explanations of human behavior. A few highlights:

Suspicion of “just-so stories”: He points out that sociobiological accounts often rely on speculative evolutionary narratives—explaining current behaviors as adaptive without strong evidence. This, for Turner, is a form of reification: treating contingent cultural patterns as if they were hardwired biological facts.

Reductionism problem: He stresses that reducing complex social phenomena to biology misses the scaffolding—language, institutions, external memory, practices—that actually sustain them. Sociobiology tends to act as if these supports were secondary rather than constitutive.

Overlap with cognitive scaffolding: He notes that many behaviors attributed to “genes” or “evolutionary imperatives” can be better explained by distributed cognitive systems: the way habits, artifacts, and practices organize behavior without invoking hidden biological drives.

Politics of expertise angle: He also hints (consistent with his other books) that sociobiology gained traction partly because it provides a “scientific” gloss on social order—an authority claim. That makes it an instance of expertise being used to close down debate rather than open it up.

Anti-essentialism: He repeatedly warns against treating categories like “altruism,” “aggression,” or “intelligence” as natural kinds. Sociobiology tends to assume such essences exist, whereas Turner insists they’re contextual and socially scaffolded.

So in short: Turner doesn’t dismiss sociobiology out of hand—he treats it as an interesting explanatory impulse—but he consistently undercuts its explanatory power by showing how it reifies, skips over scaffolds, and smuggles ideology in the name of biology.

Posted in Stephen Turner | Comments Off on Cognitive Science and the Social: A Primer