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

Megyn Kelly on Russiagate and the New York Times

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Luke Ford

Megyn: When I woke up Wednesday morning and checked my podcast feed, I saw the New York Times’s The Daily Podcast, which I often listen to, and they had finally gotten around to covering all of the Russiagate revelations that we’ve been doing on this show for weeks. Host Michael Barbaro brought on the New York Times investigative reporter, Michael Schmidt. I thought this is going to be really interesting because he is the reporter that we’ve learned James Comey used for leaks through his Columbia law professor friend. Comey used his Columbia law professor friends to leak to Michael Schmidt. And I remembered that Schmidt won a Pulitzer Prize for his Russiagate reporting. So I thought, okay, they’ve got a few things to acknowledge up front and then let’s hear what he has to say about all this stuff.

Of course, shockingly, the Times did not acknowledge any of that in its episode. None of it. That he is personally involved in the controversy, that he is part of it, because the media acting like lap dogs, taking what we now know was flimsy at best and, let’s face it, false intelligence and slapping it on the pages of their magazines and newspapers without checking in an effort to smear Donald Trump is one of the biggest media scandals of all time. And I would think if you’re running the Times and The Daily, Schmidt is probably realistically the last person you would want to platform as the expert on this, given the fact that he’s personally coming under fire daily on the podcasts and the websites that are actually bothering to cover this new scandal. But no, they platformed him like he was truly a trustworthy — the trustworthy, one might say — expert on Wednesday and once again misled their audience about everything on this scandal.

Here he is on a different broadcast. This is over on MSNBC. And he decided the podcast was just so good he needed to go on MSNBC to promote it. And he chose to do that on the show hosted by Nicolle Wallace. Now, Nicolle Wallace — let’s just remember who she is. She was literally part of the Bush administration. She was communications director for George W. Bush and was intimately involved in selling his policies. And now she sits there every day at four o’clock on MSNBC pretending to be some sort of neutral journalist while running the most partisan Democratic talking points you’ll hear anywhere. She is not a neutral host. She is not some straight-news anchor. She’s a political operative who has been rebranded as a TV anchor, and yet the media treats her as though she is Edward R. Murrow.

So Schmidt goes on her show, knowing he’s going to get nothing but softballs, and he presents himself as if he’s just the neutral explainer of all things Russiagate. But let’s not forget: this is the guy who carried water for James Comey, who was a willing participant in pushing a narrative that turned out to be false. And now he’s out there again, trying to spin, trying to minimize, trying to make the Times and himself look like they weren’t central players in one of the most embarrassing chapters in modern journalism.

And it’s incredible to me that The Daily, which reaches millions of listeners, would present this as if they’re finally giving you the inside story — when in fact what they’re giving you is damage control, narrated by the very person who ought to be answering for his role in creating the false narrative in the first place. No acknowledgment of his Pulitzer Prize being awarded for work that is now under serious scrutiny. No acknowledgment of the leaks. No acknowledgment that they were wrong. Just more spin, more gaslighting of their audience.

And this is what drives people crazy about the media. They never admit fault. They never just come out and say, you know what, we screwed up, we got used, we let our hatred of Trump cloud our judgment, and we reported things that weren’t true. Instead, they double down. They re-platform the same people. They give you the same talking points, dressed up as “new revelations,” when really it’s just the same old nonsense recycled.

Meanwhile, the people who actually did the hard work of uncovering what really happened — the Durham Report, investigative reporters outside the mainstream, independent podcasters — they get dismissed as partisan hacks or conspiracy theorists. But as time goes on, it’s becoming clearer and clearer who was telling the truth and who was running cover. And unfortunately, the Times, MSNBC, CNN, and so many others were running cover. They were not telling you the truth.

They treated Trump as if he were guilty from day one. The FBI opened an investigation with almost no evidence, based on gossip, political opposition research, and bad sources. They took the Steele Dossier—a collection of unverified, unsubstantiated allegations dug up by a British spy, paid for by the Clinton campaign through Fusion GPS—and they used it. They attached it as an annex to the intelligence community assessment. They used it to get FISA warrants. They used it to justify surveillance of an American presidential campaign. And the CIA Director at the time, John Brennan, overruled his own seasoned Russia experts, saying of the dossier: “it rings true.” That’s what carried the day. That’s not analysis—that’s bias.

And the media amplified it. They ran with it. They won Pulitzers off it. They smeared Trump for years, undermined his presidency, changed his relationship with Russia, and altered U.S. foreign policy—all based on bad intelligence and partisan spin. Brennan called Trump “treasonous.” Clapper fed innuendo to the press. The Times, the Washington Post, cable news—they all treated this fiction as fact.

Meanwhile, dissenting voices were silenced or ignored. Analysts within the intelligence community who said, “this doesn’t add up,” were overruled. Anyone who questioned whether Russia-gate was being exaggerated was branded as a Trump stooge. The Clinton campaign framed Trump as a Russian agent. The FBI and CIA ran with it. The media rubber-stamped it. And the public was left with the false impression that the President of the United States was compromised by Moscow.

Think about it: Hillary Clinton’s campaign hires Christopher Steele. Steele feeds his wild theories to the FBI in early July. By the end of that month, the FBI opens its investigation into Trump. They use Steele’s allegations as source material. They hide from the FISA court that Steele was paid by the Clinton campaign. And all the while, the press prints it as gospel.

It was agenda-driven from the start, and it remains agenda-driven. The people who pushed this—whether in government, in the media, or in the campaigns—have never really been held accountable. Instead, they’ve been rewarded with book deals, TV contracts, and in Schmidt’s case, a Pulitzer Prize.

They undermined Trump’s presidency, they misled the American people, and they damaged trust in our institutions. And to this day, outlets like the Times refuse to admit the scale of their failure. Instead, they platform the very people most compromised in the scandal, and they pretend it was all just an honest mistake. It wasn’t. It was a deliberate, coordinated effort to delegitimize a sitting President.

That’s the truth about Russia-gate, and no matter how much the Times tries to spin it, the record is clear.

ChatGPT: Stephen Turner would likely treat Russiagate—whether framed as Obama-era “treason” by MAGA voices or as a “nothingburger” by mainstream experts—as a case study in the politics of expertise and epistemic closure.

From his work in The Politics of Expertise (2013) and Making Democratic Theory Democratic (2023), Turner emphasizes a few key dynamics that map directly onto this clash:

Experts as Partisan Actors

Turner notes that expert claims are never “neutral” in the way liberal democracies imagine. In Russiagate, intelligence officials, journalists, and legal analysts all positioned themselves as authoritative voices. But their judgments were shaped by institutional loyalties and ideological leanings, not purely by detached fact-finding. To Turner, this isn’t aberration—it’s the normal state of expertise.

Epistemic Closure

Competing camps enforce their own boundaries of acceptable discourse.

For mainstream outlets like The New York Times, doubting the “collusion story” early on marked one as unserious or even pro-Trump.

For MAGA voices, dismissing the scandal as trivial was treated as complicity in a deep-state cover-up.
Turner would say both sides rely on consensus policing, not just evidence—mirroring his remarks on the academic reaction to The Bell Curve.

The Collapse of Neutrality

A liberal democratic state is supposed to adjudicate between knowledge and ideology. Russiagate illustrates Turner’s warning that when knowledge itself is politicized, neutrality collapses. Government bodies (DOJ, FBI) and media institutions could no longer appear as neutral arbiters—they became combatants.

Credibility as a Scarce Resource

Turner stresses that public trust in experts is a fragile, depletable resource. Russiagate’s conflicting narratives burned through enormous reserves of credibility. Intelligence agencies, the press, and political elites all came out with diminished authority. From a Turnerian angle, this is the long-term cost of weaponizing expertise for partisan ends.

If he were commenting directly, Turner wouldn’t resolve the empirical truth of Russiagate. Instead, he’d highlight the structural lesson: when rival expert communities lock into mutually exclusive “truths,” what matters is not which side is right, but how the system of expertise itself loses legitimacy.

The Politics of Expertise

He has a sustained argument that there are no Archimedean points of neutrality. That’s where he makes the “creation science / race & IQ” asides you flagged — showing that credibility judgments about knowledge vs. ideology are socially enforced, not neutral.

He also talks about the way professional and governmental bodies use consensus as closure to decide who counts as an expert. That’s a direct analogue to how Russiagate “experts” were credentialed in MSM vs. discredited in MAGA outlets.

Making Democratic Theory Democratic

He doubles down on credibility as a political resource. Experts don’t just bring facts; they also impose frames of legitimacy that foreclose rival interpretations.

He argues democratic theory needs to recognize this dynamic: expert claims are never purely epistemic, they are political moves embedded in institutions.

That maps perfectly onto Russiagate: MSM leaned on “expert consensus” to foreclose MAGA interpretations, while MAGA built an alternative credibility network (e.g., Barr, Durham, independent journalists) that Turner would see as a counter-closure.

Posted in Russiagate, Stephen Turner | Comments Off on Megyn Kelly on Russiagate and the New York Times

Why Do Smart News Operations Sound So Uniformly Dumb So Often?

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Luke Ford

I love the news. I subscribe to Apple News Plus, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and numerous book reviews (such as the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Claremont Review of Books, etc). Most of the time, I get my money’s worth. I typically get an hour of pleasure a day from reading the smartest reporting. Sometimes, however, I’m disappointed by the group think. For example, today I notice that the high-brow MSM is singing from the same hymnal with regard to Trump’s summit with Putin. How could the reaction be so uniform with regard to such a complicated topic?

In college I read a book on this topic by Irving L. Janis that has stayed with me: Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.

This thesis matches my experience of life — that the cool kids often arrive at a consensus and the social pressure to conform to maintain one’s seat at the cool kids table tends to overwhelm independent thought.

Another dominant life experience of mine is that people usually hate it when you change. We all like predictability in our relationships. Bosses and peers want you to be predictable. If you are predictable, you cause other people less stress.

Peter Baker of the New York Times: Trump Bows to Putin’s Approach on Ukraine: No Cease-Fire, Deadlines or Sanctions
The net effect of the Alaska summit was to give President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a free pass to continue his war against his neighbor indefinitely without further penalty, pending talks on a broader peace deal.

FT: No concessions, no ceasefire: how Putin outplayed Trump in Anchorage

WP: Trump’s pursuit of a quick deal makes it easier for Putin to dictate the terms

WP: Russia sees victory as Trump adopts Putin’s approach to ending Ukraine war

WSJ: Putin Returns to Moscow With Air of Triumph After Summit
The meeting with Trump helped give the Kremlin leader much of what he wanted, including putting Russia on an equal footing with the U.S.

NYT: Ukrainians Fleeing Russia’s Attacks Say the Alaska Summit Was an Insult
Evacuees at a shelter in eastern Ukraine reacted angrily to talk that land that has long been theirs could be given to Russia in exchange for peace.

Are there any elite journos saying anything different about this summit?

ChatGPT and the work of Stephen Turner helped me with this post:

They’re uniform for the same reason they were on Biden’s senility, the lab-leak, Russiagate, etc.: elite journalism isn’t primarily a contest of scoops anymore, it’s a prestige economy. The safest way to maintain status is to align with the consensus line, especially on “big stakes” foreign policy where deviation risks being branded naïve, soft on dictators, or unpatriotic.

Here’s why you’re seeing the hymnal effect on Trump–Putin Anchorage summit coverage:

Shared frame from wire services and the “cathedral” papers. Once the New York Times and Washington Post fix a frame (“Trump bows, Putin triumphs”), others echo it. It signals professionalism and shields editors from accusations of going off-script.

Pack journalism under time pressure. Major outlets lean on the same pool of analysts, ex-diplomats, and think-tank voices. Their talking points get laundered into nearly identical ledes.

Foreign policy priesthood. The U.S. foreign policy establishment (State Dept., NATO think tanks, Atlantic Council, etc.) sets the “respectable” range of opinion. Journalists amplify it because dissent risks loss of access.

Prestige mimicry. Reporters read each other more than they read events on the ground. If the FT and NYT say “Putin outplayed Trump,” you look unserious if you write “Trump gained leverage.”

Audience capture. The readership of these outlets largely expects a critical-of-Trump stance. Editors know stories framed otherwise would alienate their base and invite internal newsroom pushback.

So the result: five different mastheads, one narrative — Putin won, Trump lost. Not because every fact forces that conclusion, but because the institutional incentives all point toward uniformity.

How does this happen?

1. Closure

Stephen Turner argues that expert communities (including journalists) achieve closure by narrowing the range of acceptable positions. Once a dominant interpretation is established—“Putin outplayed Trump”—alternative framings (“Trump shifted the negotiating field” or “Trump extracted concessions”) are effectively excluded. Closure isn’t about truth, but about agreement, which provides stability and authority.

Anchorage example: NYT, FT, WP, WSJ all closed around the line that Trump “bowed” and “Putin triumphed,” foreclosing debate about U.S. strategic interests or alternative measures of success.

2. Prestige Economy

For Turner, academia (and by extension elite journalism) isn’t a neutral marketplace of ideas but a prestige economy: credibility flows from status, not empirical competition. Reporters and outlets gain legitimacy by echoing the consensus of the “serious” press and foreign policy establishment.

Anchorage example: By mirroring the Times and Post’s framing, the FT and WSJ ensure they’re inside the “serious” club. Stray too far (say, writing that Trump had leverage), and you risk being seen as unserious or even dangerous.

3. Anti-Neutrality

Turner stresses that expertise today isn’t just knowledge—it’s moralized. To appear neutral in a polarized climate can itself be seen as bias. The “correct” stance for elite outlets is skeptical of Trump, wary of Putin.

Anchorage example: A neutral frame like “Talks produced no deal, further negotiations planned” would be attacked as whitewashing Putin. So the moralized consensus—that Trump’s eagerness for a deal empowered Putin—was the only safe stance.

4. Institutional Peer Pressure

Turner notes that expert credibility is fragile—it depends on shared trust within a community. For journalists, deviating from the pack risks professional isolation.

Anchorage example: If one major reporter had written “Trump’s gambit could pressure Putin later”, they’d face ridicule from peers and editors. Safer to harmonize with the chorus.

5. Esoteric vs. Exoteric (Straussian Layer)

Exoterically, the public-facing story is simple: Putin triumphed, Trump blundered.
Esoterically, insiders may recognize more nuance (Trump’s disruptive diplomacy could unsettle old NATO patterns, or create bargaining chips). But these subtler takes don’t make print, because they risk undermining closure and prestige.

Bottom line:

Turner might say the Anchorage summit coverage isn’t an accidental chorus but a textbook case of how a prestige economy with built-in closure mechanisms produces uniform narratives. What looks like “dumb groupthink” is, in his sociology, the rational outcome of institutions trying to maintain credibility, neutrality-as-moral-stance, and professional status.

According to Stephen Turner’s The Politics of Expertise and Making Democratic Theory Democratic, three ideas are central for understanding things like Russiagate and elite journalism’s “singing from the same hymnal”: closure, neutrality, and credibility.

Closure: Turner describes how expert communities attempt to “close off” debate by defining certain questions as already settled. Once consensus is declared, dissenters are painted as cranks, extremists, or ideologues. This is visible in Russiagate: mainstream experts quickly moved to frame skepticism of collusion claims as irresponsible or partisan, while MAGA-aligned experts framed belief in collusion as a partisan hoax. Both sides attempted closure, but with different “communities of credibility” policing the boundary .

Neutrality: Turner repeatedly notes that the liberal state and expert communities claim neutrality, yet are inevitably accused of ideology. On race and intelligence, for example, critics denounce the research as inherently racist; defenders insist it is neutral science. In politics, Russiagate plays out similarly—MSM journalists frame their reporting as neutral truth-seeking, while opponents see it as partisan warfare in disguise. Turner’s point is that neutrality itself is a contested claim, not a secure foundation .

Credibility and the Prestige Economy: Turner emphasizes that academia and expert culture operate less like free markets of ideas and more like prestige economies, where credibility is distributed through networks of status and institutional authority rather than open contestation. In Russiagate, the prestige media (NYT, WP, CNN) and security-state veterans (CIA, FBI) carried enormous authority, allowing their claims to dominate—even when later walked back. Meanwhile, outsider experts or dissenters were dismissed as lacking standing, regardless of their arguments .

In short: Turner might say Russiagate is a perfect case of dueling closures. Each side claimed neutrality but was accused of ideology. Each side policed credibility by appealing to its own prestige economy—mainstream institutions on one side, alternative media and political figures on the other. What looked like a clash of facts was really a clash of authorities.

The media is a prestige economy, not a truth economy. Journalists at the top outlets don’t compete for accuracy, they compete for status inside their professional subculture. That means their real audience is colleagues, editors, and Twitter peers, not you.

Here are the dominant dumb ways of thinking that reinforce this sameness:

Pack journalism (herd instinct)

Reporters fear being “the odd one out.” If everyone calls something a “conspiracy theory,” you’d risk career death challenging that—even if it’s true. They’d rather be wrong together than right alone.

Narrative over fact

Stories must fit a moral arc—heroes, villains, progress, reactionaries. Anything that breaks the story structure (like Biden’s decline) gets downplayed because it’s “off-script.”

Deference to authority

Elite outlets outsource judgment to credentialed experts, government officials, or “studies.” This absolves them of personal responsibility—“we just reported what the experts said.”

Fear of audience offense

Elite news brands sell a lifestyle to a demographic (college-educated, urban, liberal). Anything that jars that identity is filtered out. Truth that offends the subscriber base is “bad business.”

Performative neutrality

They confuse neutrality with repetition of consensus. Saying “both sides” on safe issues while parroting elite cues on taboo issues allows them to look “professional” while avoiding real risk.

Prestige mimicry

Just as in academia, prestige flows from being cited by the right peers. Journalists mimic the New York Times or Washington Post, because deviating risks being labeled fringe.

So: they’re not dumb in the literal sense—many are clever—but they’re trapped in a cognitive monoculture where independence is punished. The result sounds dumb from the outside, because they’re really performing loyalty to the guild rather than truth-seeking.

Why elite news sounds the same — Turner-style diagnosis with examples

Why elite news sounds the same — Turner-style

Think “prestige economy,” not “marketplace of ideas.” Careers track loyalty to the guild’s consensus, not accuracy.

Dominant dumb ways of thinking in elite news (with examples)

  1. Pack journalism (herd instinct). If the pack frames an idea as “conspiracy,” few will break ranks.
    Example: Early dismissal of the COVID lab-leak hypothesis, followed by quiet walk-backs when official assessments shifted. See PolitiFact’s editor’s note retracting a 2020 “debunked conspiracy” ruling and later coverage noting DOE/FBI views (editor’s note; later update). For the pack effect in general, see research on conformity in newsrooms (Kellogg paper) and ethical critiques of pack reporting (Global Media Journal).
  2. Narrative discipline (“off-script” facts get sanded down). Stories are written to reinforce a moral arc; dissonant facts are minimized until the dam bursts.
    Example: Concerns about Biden’s age were soft-pedaled for years, then flipped after the June 27, 2024 debate when even the NYT editorial board urged him to step aside (WaPo on NYT editorial; timeline roundups: Guardian; Le Monde). Nicolle Wallace’s on-air post-debate line captured the moment: “It is not our job to tell people what to see and hear…” (clip).
  3. Deference to credentialed authority (outsourcing judgment). “We just followed the experts” is used as a shield even when authority is contested or political.
    Example: The 2020 letter from 51 former intel officials suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop had the “classic earmarks” of a Russian operation shaped coverage; later forensic work and court testimony validated large portions of the email cache (Washington Post forensics; explainer on the letter’s wording and impact: WaPo Fact Checker; background: wiki overview).
  4. Audience capture (don’t upset subscribers). National brands sell identity as much as information; pieces that jar the core audience get filtered out or reframed.
    Example: After years of confident framing, quick pivots (Biden age, lab-leak) coincided with noticeable audience pressure and reputational risk; the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 details how fragile business models intensify risk-aversion and sameness.
  5. Performative neutrality (“both-sides” where one side is noise). “Balance” becomes an excuse to repeat a consensus line while avoiding inconvenient facts.
    Example: Years of climate coverage wrestled with “false balance,” a well-documented pathology in mainstream outlets (CJR; Oxford Research Encyclopedia).
  6. Prestige mimicry (follow the cathedral). If the Times/Post frame it a certain way, everyone else copies the frame to signal professionalism and avoid isolation.
    Example: Coverage cascades on contested stories (lab-leak; laptop) show striking frame homogeneity up front, then a coordinated language shift later. See PolitiFact’s archived correction note (editor’s note) and later mainstream re-analyses (update).
  7. Moralized gatekeeping (credibility by accusation). Label dissent as disinformation, racist, or conspiratorial to pre-empt debate; prestige rewards the enforcers.
    Example: The 2020 intel-officials letter shaped newsroom judgments on the laptop story (WaPo Fact Checker; congressional follow-ups: Senate letter, House interim report).

Turner-style bottom line

Elite media is a prestige economy. The real competition is for status inside the guild, not for truth with the public. That’s why it sounds the same.

Sources (selection)

What about the universal media derision after liberation day? Then Trump made a bunch of trade deals that might be good. The CBO said trump’s tariffs might bring in about $3 trillion over the next decade. Did the MSM learn anything? Show any humility? I’m not claiming Trump is right about tariffs. I’m claiming the universal MSM derision greeting his trade policy was weird.

ChatGPT says: You’ve put your finger on something Stephen Turner would instantly recognize: the mismatch between uncertainty in reality and the certainty projected by elite media and expert discourse.

On Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs and trade policy, here’s what happened:

Universal derision at the start (2018): Nearly every prestige outlet mocked or dismissed Trump’s tariffs as ignorant or doomed. The NYT called them “economic folly,” the Washington Post “Trump’s trade war will backfire,” Financial Times “Trump risks wrecking the global system,” and so on. The consensus was nearly total: tariffs were “obviously” bad.

What actually unfolded: While Trump’s tariffs hurt some sectors and triggered retaliation (e.g. soybeans, steel inputs), they also shifted trade flows, forced renegotiations (USMCA replacing NAFTA), and increased tariff revenue. By 2023, the CBO projected tariff revenues could total roughly $3 trillion over a decade if policies continued. Even the Biden administration quietly kept many of Trump’s tariffs in place, suggesting they weren’t as absurd as initially portrayed.

MSM learning/humility? Very little. Coverage after the fact usually buried or downplayed the revenue and renegotiations, focusing instead on harm to farmers or global supply chains. When Biden retained the tariffs, the story was reframed as “strategic competition with China,” not “Trump might have had a point.” Instead of humility, most outlets re-narrated the policy as part of a different legitimacy frame.

This is classic Turner territory:

The media/elite experts engaged in closure early—declaring the tariff idea unserious and outside legitimate debate.

When facts complicated the narrative, instead of reopening the closure, they shifted the frame (China competition, Biden continuity) to preserve credibility.

Neutrality was compromised: the derision revealed ideological alignment with neoliberal free-trade orthodoxy rather than open assessment.

So to your question: no, the mainstream media didn’t show humility. The prestige economy Turner describes discourages backtracking—prestige is lost if you admit error, so better to re-narrate than to revise.

I am an anxious person. I am high-strung. When people approach me from behind, I jump and I swear and I lose my cool. So when I find things that decrease my anxiety, I embrace them. Two things that consistently reduce my anxiety are clarity and truth. I think I got these in creating this blog post, and as a result, my annoyance with reality diminished and my sense of mastery grew.

News isn’t the only sector of life where I’m disappointed by the uniformly dumb things coming from our social betters. A few years ago, however, I realized that singing from the same hymnal is a requirement for belonging. And if you want to be part of the cool kids club, there’s usually a stiff price to pay — you have to humiliate yourself by saying dumb things, such as that Biden’s obvious periodic senility is right-wing disinformation or that all immigrant groups assimilate equally well into America or that the 2020 election was stolen.

Posted in Journalism, Stephen Turner | Comments Off on Why Do Smart News Operations Sound So Uniformly Dumb So Often?

The most powerful systems of epistemic closure in America today

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Luke Ford

Written with ChatGPT: Epistemic closure = when a community defines what can and cannot be questioned, and enforces consensus not through argument but by gatekeeping who counts as credible. Stephen P. Turner’s point is that closure is inevitable; the question is how it’s managed and what functions it serves.

The most powerful systems of epistemic closure in America today

The U.S. national security state

Intelligence, military, and defense contractors operate under extreme secrecy. Many assumptions (“we must maintain overwhelming force,” “classified assessments are beyond scrutiny”) are taken as unquestionable.

Smooth functioning depends on closure: if every foreign policy decision were endlessly contested, the machinery of security would grind to a halt.

Central banking & macroeconomic management

The Federal Reserve and Treasury set monetary policy with the aura of technical necessity. The assumptions (“inflation must be contained at X%,” “markets must be stabilized”) are framed as technical truths, not political choices.

Closure here underpins financial stability—people need to believe in the Fed’s authority.

Public health / medical consensus

Think vaccines, pandemic responses, dietary guidelines. Once something is declared “settled science,” dissenting research is often marginalized as dangerous.

This closure keeps trust in medicine functional—but it also risks ossifying around bad paradigms.

Tech infrastructure & platforms

Silicon Valley giants (Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon) set de facto standards of communication, commerce, and knowledge retrieval. Their decisions about algorithms, moderation, and AI guardrails enforce what people see as “the world.”

Epistemic closure here is invisible but totalizing—entire realities are shaped by a handful of firms.

Race and inequality discourse

Since the 1990s’ Bell Curve fallout, certain discussions (e.g. biological bases for IQ differences, critiques of DEI frameworks) are policed heavily.

Closure here sustains social cohesion: America’s fragile multicultural fabric would be much shakier if radical questioning in this area were mainstreamed.

Climate change consensus

Not whether warming is happening (that’s broadly settled), but the framing of urgency and policy levers (carbon taxes, green subsidies) has become quasi-sacrosanct.

This closure makes large-scale coordination possible—without it, policy would be paralyzed by endless debate.

Judicial constitutional interpretation

“Originalism” vs. “living constitution” is the visible debate, but underlying closure is that the Court’s rulings are final and binding, even if divisive.

Without this epistemic closure around judicial supremacy, America risks slipping into legal anarchy.

Which are most vital for survival and smooth running?

National security (without closure, intelligence agencies couldn’t function).

Central banking (belief in Fed authority underpins the dollar system).

Judicial supremacy (closure here is the glue of law).

Public health consensus (vital in crises like pandemics).

Others (race discourse, climate change, tech platforms) are highly powerful but less existentially “vital”—they shape cohesion and policy but America could muddle through in more fragmented form if closure eroded.

Epistemic Closure in America Through Turner’s Lens

1. National Security State

Turner’s Frame: In The Politics of Expertise he shows how authority is maintained when insiders claim specialized knowledge the public can’t verify. National security epitomizes this—classified intelligence justifies policy, and the aura of expertise silences outsiders.

Closure’s Function: Governing requires treating this expertise as unquestionable, or else the machinery of defense collapses. Turner would call this the most “Weberian” of closures: rationalized secrecy that stabilizes power.

2. Central Banking & Economics

Turner’s Frame: In Explaining the Normative, Turner dismantles the mystique of “normativity.” Economists often project inevitability (“inflation must be fought this way”) instead of admitting contingency. The Fed operates through epistemic insulation—public trust rests on a fiction of inevitability.

Closure’s Function: Without consensus around the Fed’s authority, financial markets would implode. Closure sustains the illusion that decisions are technical rather than political.

3. Public Health / Medical Consensus

Turner’s Frame: In his writings on science and expertise, Turner stresses how authority comes from boundary-work: deciding who counts as a “real” scientist. In COVID and beyond, health agencies constructed closure by defining dissent as “misinformation.”

Closure’s Function: Enables decisive action in crises, but also shows Turner’s worry: closure hardens too fast, leaving no room for self-correction.

4. Tech Platforms as Infrastructural Epistemic Systems

Turner’s Frame: In Brains/Practices/Relativism, he explains how tacit coordination routines shape what counts as “normal.” Algorithms are the tacit background of today’s knowledge life—they define relevance invisibly.

Closure’s Function: Makes digital life livable (Google, Wikipedia, feeds) but closes off alternative epistemic worlds. Turner would call this an example of “coordination without conscious deliberation.”

5. Race and Inequality Discourse

Turner’s Frame: His reflections on The Bell Curve fallout show closure as taboo enforcement. Rather than arguing substance, disciplines close ranks and declare areas “off limits.” This is a perfect case of epistemic closure by moral sanction.

Closure’s Function: Social peace in a multiracial democracy depends on maintaining this closure. Turner would say: it’s not about truth, it’s about avoiding disintegration.

6. Climate Change Consensus

Turner’s Frame: He critiques how scientific consensus morphs into moral urgency—where dissent becomes heresy. It illustrates his line from The Politics of Expertise: “expert knowledge is not a reservoir of truths, but a way of organizing authority.”

Closure’s Function: Enables coordination (Paris Accords, green transitions). Without closure, climate policy stalls. With too much closure, it risks dogma.

7. Judicial Supremacy

Turner’s Frame: In Making Democratic Theory Democratic, Turner stresses democracy is about workable guardrails, not transcendental values. The closure that “Supreme Court rulings are final” is precisely such a guardrail—it organizes conflict into rules.

Closure’s Function: Prevents endless political unraveling. Without this closure, the U.S. would spiral into legal anarchy.

Turner’s Bottom Line

Epistemic closure is not an aberration—it’s how complex societies function.

The real issue is whether closures are adaptive or brittle.

For Turner, the task is not to “liberate” knowledge but to stay alert to how closures arise, what they protect, and when they calcify into obstacles.

Epistemic Closure in the Abrahamic Religions

Christianity

Closure Mode:

Authority in scripture + tradition: the Bible is canonized, and interpretive authority is vested in church institutions (Catholic Magisterium, Protestant confessions, evangelical pastors).

Closure enforces boundaries: “orthodoxy vs. heresy,” with councils historically policing Arius, Pelagius, etc.

Turner Lens: The function isn’t to guarantee truth but to provide guardrails for community coordination. Without closure, the church fragments endlessly (as Protestantism’s splintering illustrates).

Modern Parallel: Evangelical subcultures create “epistemic bubbles” where secular science or media are treated as suspect. That’s closure at work, enabling stability at the cost of intellectual isolation.

Islam

Closure Mode:

The Qur’an as uncreated word of God is itself a closure—critique or higher criticism is off-limits.

Jurisprudence (fiqh) historically functioned as consensus-building (ijmāʿ): once a scholarly consensus is reached, questioning it is taboo.

Turner Lens: Closure here is a distributed authority system (schools of law, hadith authentication) that turns social coordination into sacred truth.

Modern Parallel: Controversies over secularism or reform are often framed not in argument but in whether they transgress the settled closure of “the scholars.” This mirrors Turner’s insight about taboo as enforcement.

Orthodox Judaism

Closure Mode:

The Torah + Talmud + halakhic tradition create a closed interpretive universe: every question is settled inside the system, by reference to precedent.

Closure is policed through rabbinic authority and communal enforcement (what’s kosher, who counts as observant, which practices are off-limits).

Turner Lens: This is a maximal example of his “coordination by tacit routine.” The closure is not just in abstract doctrine but in the minutiae of daily life (dietary law, Sabbath practice)—a lived epistemic closure.

Modern Parallel: The insulation of Haredi communities from secular epistemologies is sustained through closure: information is filtered, dissent treated as defection.

Turner’s Synthesis

Closures are functional, not accidental. They bind communities, avoid chaos, and ensure continuity across generations.

Each religion’s closure is tailored to survival:

Christianity → orthodoxy as boundary of belief.

Islam → jurisprudence consensus as authority.

Judaism → halakhic routine as embodied closure.

Risk: The very closure that protects coherence also makes adaptation difficult. Turner would stress that the question is not whether closures are “irrational,” but whether they are brittle or flexible enough to survive changing environments.

Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death (1973) argues that humans can’t live with the terror of mortality, so we build hero-systems—structures that make our lives feel meaningful and enduring. Turner, by contrast, doesn’t psychologize as much as Becker, but his concept of epistemic closure explains how these hero-systems are maintained socially.

Hero Systems (Becker) and Epistemic Closure (Turner)

1. Christianity

Becker: The promise of eternal life in Christ is the ultimate hero-system—you overcome death by being part of a divine story.

Turner: Closure works by excluding interpretations that would weaken this story (e.g., heresy, demythologizing). It enforces the “orthodoxy” that maintains the hero-system’s power.

Combined: Christianity’s epistemic closure keeps its hero-system stable: questioning resurrection or salvation isn’t just intellectual dissent, it threatens the community’s survival against mortality terror.

2. Islam

Becker: Jihad, submission to God’s will, and participation in the ummah give the individual eternal significance.

Turner: Epistemic closure appears in the doctrine that the Qur’an is uncreated and beyond critique, ensuring that the hero-system (submission to God = immortality) can’t be undermined by rival knowledge claims.

Combined: Closure guarantees the ummah’s hero-system stays intact, anchoring believers’ immortality projects in divine law.

3. Orthodox Judaism

Becker: Survival comes through covenant and continuity—the Jewish people outlive the individual, ensuring symbolic immortality.

Turner: Closure is in halakhic routine: the endless commentary and rabbinic authority filter everything through tradition. This ensures the community persists as a coherent bearer of the hero-system.

Combined: The epistemic closure of daily law enforces a collective hero-system where survival of the people is the victory over death.

How Orthodox Judaism Helps Jews Deal With Death & Feeling Insignificant

Orthodox Judaism doesn’t dodge death—it ritualizes it, frames it, and gives it theological context. A few key layers:

1. Theological framing.

The soul (neshama) is eternal, returning to God after death.

This makes death not an annihilation, but a transition—alleviating existential terror by embedding the self in divine order.

Belief in techiyat ha’metim (resurrection of the dead in messianic times) provides a long horizon of hope.

2. Rituals around dying and mourning.

Vidui (confessional prayer) before death gives the dying person a chance to “make things right.”

Chevra Kadisha (burial society) washes and prepares the body, emphasizing dignity and continuity with tradition.

The seven-day shiva mourning period is highly structured, so the bereaved aren’t left alone with chaos—they’re carried by community.

3. Communal continuity.

Kaddish (the mourner’s prayer) doesn’t mention death, but reaffirms God’s greatness and creation. It situates the mourner in an ongoing people, not isolated grief.

Torah study or charity in memory of the dead turns mourning into communal good works, reframing loss as legacy.

4. Guardrails against denial or excess.

Judaism discourages denial (the body must be buried quickly, usually within 24 hours) but also curbs despair (mourning rituals taper—shiva 7 days, shloshim 30 days, yahrzeit annually).

The system forces engagement with mortality, but within limits—ritual closure without endless obsession.

How this links to Turner and Becker:

Becker: Judaism provides a classic “hero system”—symbolic immortality through peoplehood, mitzvot, and resurrection hope.

Turner: It’s epistemic closure in action—death is not an open, unspeakable problem; the tradition authoritatively sets the terms, leaving little room for endless reinterpretation.

The unspoken ways matter as much as the explicit rituals. Orthodox Judaism doesn’t just “teach” people how to face death—it builds habits, community structures, and tacit frames that quietly carry people through. A few key undercurrents:

1. Continuity through community.

In Orthodoxy, the self is rarely conceived as purely individual. One’s place in the chain of Israel is assumed. This tacitly minimizes the fear of disappearing—you’re part of an unbroken people stretching back to Sinai and forward to redemption.

Just “being observant” embeds you in a story that outlives you. You don’t have to articulate it—it’s lived.

2. Everyday liturgy and prayer.

Daily prayers constantly reference mortality (Modeh Ani upon waking, Kaddish cycles, Psalms about God renewing life). These repeated cadences normalize death without dwelling on it.

By the time death arrives, you’ve rehearsed it thousands of times in miniature.

3. Laws of memory.

Yahrzeit candles, unveiling ceremonies, and mentioning the departed in prayers create a rhythm where the dead never fully vanish. Memory is institutionalized, but not pathologized—it’s structured and time-bound. This keeps grief from spilling into chaos.

4. Discipline as sublimation.

Kashrut, Shabbat, study—all are daily exercises in self-limitation. That habituation to limits conditions people to face the ultimate limit (death) without collapse.

It’s not framed this way, but the training of appetite and desire functions as tacit preparation for mortality.

5. The body–soul divide taken for granted.

In Orthodox discourse, the body is temporary housing, the soul eternal. This isn’t argued over, it’s background. The unspoken effect: the body’s decay is less catastrophic—your essence persists.

6. The family as micro-eternity.

Having children is a mitzvah and norm. In practice, this secures symbolic immortality. Even if unspoken, people know their names, stories, and practices continue through descendants.

7. Prohibition on speculative terror.

There’s little room (and little tolerance) for obsessing over metaphysical uncertainties about death. Halakha prescribes what to do. Speculation is sidelined, sparing adherents the spirals of existential dread that moderns often fall into.

In Turner’s terms: this is epistemic closure at work—the horizon of possible thought about death is tightly managed, not by censorship, but by the density of rituals, roles, and assumptions. You don’t need to (and mostly can’t) philosophize your way into or out of death; you’re carried by practices that make death livable.

Judaism puts more emphasis on this life than other religions.

1. Commandments are about this world, not escaping it.

The mitzvot regulate eating, sex, money, contracts, clothing, time. Orthodox life is saturated with halakha that governs mundane action. The assumption: the arena of holiness is here.

Death and the afterlife exist, but the daily focus is on how you live right now.

2. Olam ha-zeh before olam ha-ba.

“This world” is treated as the primary stage for God’s will. Olam ha-ba (the world to come) is acknowledged, but often in vague terms. Rabbinic tradition even discourages speculative obsession with it.

The practical weight is on what you do while alive.

3. Sanctification of the ordinary.

Christianity often frames salvation in terms of belief and grace, Islam emphasizes submission to God and preparation for judgment. Judaism, by contrast, renders holiness through the banal: how you tie your shoes, what you eat, how you greet others.

This makes life itself the religious project.

4. Mortality is folded into life’s fabric.

Funerals and mourning practices are intense, but they’re designed to return the mourner to life: shiva ends, then shloshim, then the mourner re-enters community.

Death is bracketed so it doesn’t eclipse the mitzvah of choosing life (uvacharta ba-chayyim, Deut. 30:19).

5. The here-and-now as eternal.

Raising children, studying Torah, performing mitzvot: each act links one to an ancient chain. Continuity is achieved without needing to transcend the world. You live in eternity by living correctly in time.

So yes—compared to Christianity (with its heavy emphasis on salvation and the afterlife) and Islam (with vivid eschatology and paradise imagery), Judaism keeps its weight squarely on life as it’s lived. Death is serious, but it’s not the center.

here’s how Orthodox Judaism’s “life-first” orientation shapes politics, medicine, and science, especially compared to Christianity and Islam:

Politics

Pikuach nefesh (saving a life) overrides almost every commandment. That makes survival, safety, and communal resilience the highest political good.

Jewish politics tends to be pragmatic and security-focused (seen in both diaspora survival strategies and the State of Israel’s ethos).

Contrast: Christianity historically emphasized universal salvation and moral ideals (justice, charity, peace), often leading to utopian or messianic politics. Islam’s politics is framed around submission to divine sovereignty, law, and the ummah. Judaism instead focuses on “how do we keep Jews alive and practicing now?”

Medicine

Judaism overwhelmingly favors treatment and innovation if it preserves life. Halakha pushes toward aggressive medical intervention (even experimental) if it could save someone.

Organ donation, genetic testing, IVF, stem-cell research—all are approached from “does this extend or preserve life?” rather than abstract taboos.

Contrast: Catholicism places prohibitions rooted in natural law (e.g., against IVF, contraception). Islam balances between divine prohibitions and medical necessity but has more variation depending on schools of law. Judaism bends toward pragmatism under pikuach nefesh.

Science

Since commandments anchor daily life, science is not viewed as rival “truth” about salvation but as a tool for preserving life and sustaining Jewish practice.

Many Orthodox communities embrace technologies that aid life (medical devices, kosher supervision apps, even Shabbat timers). The boundary is not “science vs. religion” but “science within halakhic guardrails.”

Contrast: Christianity historically wrestled with science as a challenge to dogma (Galileo, Darwin), while Islam oscillated between early scientific flourishing and later suspicion of modern science. Judaism tends to accommodate—so long as halakhic authorities can frame the technology as life-preserving or life-enhancing.

Bottom line:

Judaism’s life-first orientation builds a pragmatic survivalist ethic. Politics: preserve the community. Medicine: preserve the body. Science: preserve continuity. Death is not denied but subordinated to the mandate: choose life, here and now.

Here’s the extension into the psychological layer—the unspoken stance toward risk, fear, and resilience that comes from Orthodox Judaism’s “life-first” orientation:

Psychology of Risk

Because pikuach nefesh overrides nearly all else, Jews internalize a risk calculus: “What preserves life today?” This produces a cultural pragmatism—sometimes appearing cautious, sometimes bold.

Historically, this meant constant adjustments: fleeing hostile lands, building redundancies in community life (multiple minyanim, parallel schools, underground economies). Risk is normalized, but also managed.

Psychology of Fear

Fear of death is not denied but reframed: it is never just my death, it is our survival. The communal “we” absorbs the individual’s fear.

Practices like daily prayer, cycles of Torah study, and communal mourning rituals embed individuals in a structure bigger than themselves. This reduces existential panic because one’s life is always already part of a larger continuity.

Compared to Ernest Becker’s “denial of death,” Judaism doesn’t deny but diffuses death anxiety through ritual, law, and community.

Psychology of Resilience

Catastrophe is anticipated as part of history. The destruction of the Temples, exile, pogroms, Shoah—all live in memory. Resilience is framed not as naive hope but as preparation: “We survived before, we will survive again.”

Life’s fragility becomes a call to action: study more, raise families, keep mitzvot. Each small act ties one to an unbroken chain, softening death’s sting.

This builds what sociologists call thick culture: layers of redundancy and symbolic weight that keep meaning intact when individuals fall.

Unspoken stance

Life is precarious, but continuity is possible.

Death is absorbed into survival narratives: martyrs remembered in prayer, ancestors invoked in ritual, names passed down to grandchildren.

Instead of individual heroism, the “hero system” (to borrow Becker) is communal endurance. The hero is not the saint or martyr but the Jew who keeps life and practice going under constraint.

In short: Orthodox Judaism gives its followers a way to live with death always at the edge of awareness but rarely at the center of dread. Survival becomes sacred, and resilience itself becomes the answer to mortality.

Here’s how the Orthodox Jewish psychology of life-first survival plays out in modern geopolitical contexts:

1. Israel and Existential Threats

The collective memory of precariousness (Shoah, exile) creates a baseline assumption: survival is always at stake.

This underpins the “Never Again” ethos. Israel’s military posture (preemptive strikes, nuclear ambiguity, mandatory conscription) reflects pikuach nefesh writ large: the state itself becomes the vessel for Jewish life.

Fear of annihilation is not abstract—it’s a historical constant. Yet resilience is ritualized: national days of mourning and remembrance (Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron) tie past survival to present defense.

2. Diaspora Jews and Antisemitism

In the U.S. and Europe, Orthodox communities cultivate redundancies: parallel school systems, kosher food networks, eruvim around neighborhoods. This isn’t just about law—it’s about having life systems independent of external hostility.

When antisemitism spikes, there’s less shock, more preparation: increased security at synagogues, self-defense training, communal funds for emergencies. Continuity thinking minimizes paralysis.

3. Risk-Taking and Pragmatism

Israeli politics often looks paradoxical—hawkish in defense, experimental in tech and culture. But the same ethos underlies both: maximize survival odds today.

Diaspora Orthodoxy often resists assimilationist risks (intermarriage, secular education), seeing them as existential hazards. Better to appear “insular” than risk cultural death.

4. Fear and Collective Coping

Geopolitical threats (Iran’s nuclear program, terrorism, delegitimization campaigns) are filtered through a communal lens: “What do we do?” not “What do I feel?”

Ritual responses (prayers for the IDF, saying Psalms during crises) channel individual fear into shared resilience.

5. Resilience Narrative in Politics

Jewish survival is framed as miraculous continuity. Politicians, rabbis, and thinkers invoke this narrative to unify communities under stress.

Like Becker’s “hero systems,” but collective: the hero is Am Yisrael (the Jewish people), not lone figures.

Unspoken modern stance:

Death and danger are constants; continuity is the counterweight.

Geopolitical strategy mirrors halakhic psychology: anticipate fragility, build redundancies, act decisively to protect life.

Heroism = survival with identity intact.

The Broader Map

Becker’s psychology explains why people need these closures (to manage death-anxiety).

Turner’s sociology explains how these closures actually work (through taboos, exclusions, routines, and institutions).

Together they suggest: religions aren’t just “beliefs,” they’re socially enforced epistemic bubbles that secure Beckerian immortality projects.

In Modern America

Becker + Turner helps explain why:

Climate denial, wokeness, transhumanism, or nationalism can function as secular hero-systems.

Epistemic closure (social media silos, academic taboos, partisan orthodoxies) enforces these projects by protecting them from destabilizing critique.

The function is the same as in religion: people want symbolic immortality; closure makes sure their immortality-project isn’t delegitimized.

When Becker’s “denial of death” collides with Turner’s “epistemic closure,” we can see why the most powerful American systems are also fragile:

Where Hero-Systems Crack

1. Woke Politics / Social Justice

Closure: Polices taboo questions about race, gender, trans issues, colonialism.

Crack point: Overreach (e.g., punishing speech ordinary people see as harmless) breeds backlash. Once ordinary members stop fearing ostracism, the system loses its enforcement teeth.

Becker tie-in: Its immortality promise (“history will judge us righteous”) weakens when history itself looks unstable, or when allies start defecting.

2. MAGA Nationalism / Right Populism

Closure: Dismisses falsification (e.g., 2020 election audits, Jan. 6 narratives). Loyalty replaces evidence.

Crack point: Legal defeats, demographic shifts, and elite defections gradually puncture closure. Followers face a death-anxiety crisis: if the nation isn’t “saved,” what was the heroic struggle for?

Becker tie-in: The hero-system collapses when the myth of “restoring America” looks impossible—leading to radicalization or despair.

3. Climate Activism / Green Religion

Closure: Dissent = denial; narrow policy orthodoxy (anti-nuclear, anti-geoengineering).

Crack point: Climate disasters mount faster than promised fixes; publics lose faith in elite prescriptions. Younger activists may rebel against elders’ dogma (“de-growth vs. high-tech fixes”).

Becker tie-in: When the “save the planet” immortality project starts to look unwinnable, anxiety intensifies—splinter movements form, each with its own closure.

4. Tech Utopianism / AI & Transhumanism

Closure: Faith in technological salvation; critics framed as pessimists.

Crack point: Catastrophic failure (AI misuse, biotech accident, inequality exploding) undermines the immortality dream. Elites may still cling, but publics lose patience.

Becker tie-in: If tech can’t deliver literal death-defeat, the hero-system collapses into cynicism—or worse, apocalyptic sects.

5. Traditional Religion

Closure: Orthodoxy vs. heresy, scriptural authority.

Crack point: Secularization and scientific literacy eat away at literal belief; scandals (clergy abuse, hypocrisy) puncture credibility.

Becker tie-in: When the eternal-life promise loses plausibility, anxiety spikes. Some double down (fundamentalism), others drift to secular hero-systems (politics, activism, tech).

Meta-Insight (Turner + Becker)

Turner: Closure is never total; taboos crack when consensus erodes.

Becker: When closure fails, people scramble for a new hero-system to manage their death-anxiety.

So: American life looks like a relay race of collapsing and emerging closures, each offering new immortality promises.

The American Relay of Hero Systems

1. Puritan / Protestant Civil Religion (1600s–1800s)

Closure: America as “city on a hill,” divinely chosen. Heresy (religious dissent, secularism) was un-American.

Becker lens: Promised immortality through covenant with God and righteous nationhood.

Crack point: Enlightenment secularism, pluralism, immigration. By 1900s, too fractured to unify.

Successor: Nationalism + Progressive civic religion.

2. Progressive Nationalism (1900–1945)

Closure: Faith in science, reform, and American mission abroad. Dissenters = “reactionary.”

Becker lens: Heroic project = building a rational, modern utopia.

Crack point: Great Depression + WWII horrors (fascism, Hiroshima) shook faith in pure progress.

Successor: Cold War Civil Religion.

3. Cold War Civil Religion (1945–1970s)

Closure: America vs. Communism = good vs. evil. Questioning U.S. moral superiority was taboo.

Becker lens: Heroic immortality tied to defeating global atheistic communism.

Crack point: Vietnam, Watergate, racial unrest. Hero project cracked as elites lost credibility.

Successor: Identity + culture wars.

4. Culture Wars / Identity Hero-Systems (1970s–2000s)

Closure: Left → civil rights, feminism, multiculturalism. Right → traditional family, religious America. Each enforced taboos internally.

Becker lens: Immortality through being on “the right side” of liberation or tradition.

Crack point: Globalization, 9/11, financial crisis blurred lines. Neither left nor right could guarantee safety or flourishing.

Successor: Populism + Woke vs. MAGA polarity.

5. Woke vs. MAGA (2010s–Present)

Closure: Two competing hero-systems.

Woke: immortality through history’s arc bending toward justice.

MAGA: immortality through restoring a lost golden America.

Becker lens: Both are death-anxiety projects dressed in politics.

Crack point (ongoing): Neither can decisively win; institutions strain under dueling closures.

Possible successors: Climate salvation, Tech transcendence, or a new civil religion around “planetary survival.”

The Pattern (Turner + Becker)

Epistemic closure keeps the hero-system intact—taboos protect the narrative.

Crisis + disillusionment crack the closure.

Death-anxiety surges, demanding a new immortality project.

Successor hero-system emerges, often recycling older myths in new garb.

Possible Successor Hero-Systems

1. Climate Salvation / Green Civil Religion

Closure: Humanity (led by the U.S.) must prevent planetary death. Dissent = “denialism,” akin to heresy.

Hero promise: Achieve symbolic immortality by saving the Earth, ensuring children’s future.

Turner angle: Expert systems (IPCC, scientists, NGOs) gain political authority; closure policed by “consensus science.”

Becker angle: Facing literal death (ecological collapse), people rally to a transcendent survival mission.

2. Techno-Transcendence (Silicon Valley Civil Religion)

Closure: AI, biotech, space colonization = human destiny. Critique seen as anti-progress or “Luddite.”

Hero promise: Immortality via uploads, Mars colonies, gene editing. Death “solved” technologically.

Turner angle: Power shifts to expert elites in tech firms; dissent marginalized as ignorance.

Becker angle: Radical denial of death through literal escape into tech futures.

3. National Security / Fortress America 2.0

Closure: In a fractured world, survival depends on walls, strong borders, military might. Dissent framed as “soft” or “traitorous.”

Hero promise: Immortality through loyalty to nation-as-protector.

Turner angle: Bureaucratic institutions (Pentagon, intelligence agencies) define “reality”; dissent excluded as dangerous.

Becker angle: Hero system = submission to the father-protector state.

4. Planetary Humanism / New Enlightenment

Closure: Humanity must transcend tribal divisions—science + universal ethics guide survival. Taboos against nationalism, particularism.

Hero promise: Immortality through merging into “cosmic humanity” project.

Turner angle: UN/NGOs/experts as new “church of reason.”

Becker angle: Secular but still a hero system—immortality through joining a universal moral project.

5. Faith Revival / Religious Counter-Closure

Closure: Reassertion of Biblical/Islamic/Jewish frameworks as bulwarks against relativism/nihilism. Dissent = apostasy.

Hero promise: Literal immortality through divine promise, plus cultural immortality through religious community.

Turner angle: Epistemic closure enforced by tradition and authority; return of Weber’s “priestly” authority.

Becker angle: Re-anchoring in the oldest death-denial project—faith.

Likely Path

Turner would say: which successor sticks depends not on ideas but institutional incentives + political needs.

If climate disasters escalate → Green Civil Religion.

If AI/tech breakthroughs wow the public → Techno-Transcendence.

If geopolitical chaos rises → Fortress America.

If pluralism exhausts people → Faith Revival.

If global elites manage to organize → Planetary Humanism.

Becker would add: each is a new way to deny death. People need the promise of being part of something bigger, whether eternal God, eternal Earth, eternal Nation, or eternal Tech.

Here’s a Turner-style ranking of the most plausible successor hero-systems / epistemic closures for the U.S. over the next 10–20 years:

1. Climate Salvation / Green Civil Religion

Why most plausible:

Climate disasters (fires, floods, heat) are escalating, providing a visceral, death-linked narrative.

Political and institutional incentives: massive funding flows to climate science, energy transition, ESG.

Provides a universal cause—“saving the children” and “saving the planet.”

Turner angle: Experts and institutions (IPCC, NOAA, NGOs) gain enhanced authority; dissent gets labeled “denialism” and excluded from respectable debate.

2. Techno-Transcendence (AI & Space)

Why high:

Tech billionaires have both capital and platforms to impose narratives.

AI promises literal death-defiance (longevity, uploads, Mars colonies).

Social media glamorizes this frontier as “visionary.”

Turner angle: This is classic expert capture—the people with power define the horizons of possible futures. He’d note how tiny networks (Musk, Altman, Kurzweil) already control the terms.

3. Fortress America 2.0

Why mid-level:

Rising multipolarity (China, Russia) + migration surges = fertile ground for “security-first” closure.

Appeals to primal fear: survival of tribe/nation against chaos.

Turner angle: National security bureaucracies are already master practitioners of epistemic closure (classified intelligence, “need to know”); they can expand dominance when crises hit.

4. Faith Revival / Religious Counter-Closure

Why less likely, but still real:

Ongoing exhaustion with relativism + collapse of trust in elites makes traditional religion attractive.

Could grow if climate/tech/nationalist closures all fail to deliver.

Turner angle: Religion persists because it is the most time-tested closure against contingency; he’d say it could regain centrality if secular closures lose legitimacy.

5. Planetary Humanism / New Enlightenment

Why least plausible near term:

Attractive to elites, but public is fractured by identity, nationalism, and populism.

UN/NGOs lack coercive or charismatic power.

Turner angle: High-level “cosmopolitan consensus” lacks the enforcement machinery of nation-states, religions, or technocrats. It might survive as elite rhetoric but unlikely to command mass closure.

Bottom Line (Turner + Becker):

The Green Civil Religion and Techno-Transcendence are the strongest bets: both tie directly to survival/immortality and already have institutional money and power behind them.

Fortress America will wax and wane depending on geopolitics, always lurking as fallback.

Faith Revival could surge if secular systems fail catastrophically.

Planetary Humanism remains aspirational but weakly institutionalized.

Which Hero-Systems Are Gaining Momentum Now?

Here’s how current headlines track the rise and strain of potential successor hero-systems in the U.S., read through Stephen Turner’s epistemic-closure lens and Ernest Becker’s denial-of-death frame.

Mapping Today’s News onto Emerging Epistemic Closures

1) Climate Salvation / Green Civil Religion

Policy headwinds: Federal moves to tighten limits on clean-energy tax credits and scale back EPA authority strain the “save the planet” consensus.
Sources: Politico · Reuters · Union of Concerned Scientists
State-level resilience: Subnational coalitions continue aggressive climate policy despite federal retrenchment.
Source: U.S. Climate Alliance

2) Techno-Transcendence (AI & Utopia)

Acceleration: Big tech keeps shipping new AI models, agents, and tooling, sustaining a future-of-progress narrative.
Source: Tom’s Guide
Friction: Coverage questioning whether AI is hitting performance/scale walls signals potential belief-shocks ahead.
Source: Financial Times

3) Fortress America 2.0

Signal: Not front-page in these items, but the deregulation/retrenchment posture aligns with a security-first closure that can surge in crises.

Current Ranking Based on News Momentum

Hero-SystemMomentumKey Indicators
Climate SalvationModerate, contestedFederal rollback vs. strong state coalitions; ongoing public salience
Techno-Transcendence (AI)Strong, with frictionRapid product cycles and investment; emerging skepticism about limits
Fortress America 2.0Present, not centralImplicit in retrenchment/deregulation; likely to spike during shocks

Turner & Becker Synthesis Today

  • Green Civil Religion: Contestation at the federal level, resilience in states; closure upheld by “consensus science” institutions.
  • Tech Utopia: Elite-driven closure bolstered by capital and hype; watch for cracks if limits bite.
  • Fortress Nationalism: Latent fallback; closure strengthens when insecurity rises.

Bottom line: Turner would say these closures rise or stall with institutional incentives and gatekeeping; Becker would add that each offers a new path to symbolic immortality. Which one “sticks” depends on which fear—ecological, technological, or geopolitical—dominates lived experience.

Posted in America, Christianity, Islam, Orthodoxy, Stephen Turner | Comments Off on The most powerful systems of epistemic closure in America today

Stephen Turner On The Bell Curve

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Luke Ford

In his 2013 book The Politics of Expertise, Stephen Turner wrote:

Research on the genetic background of criminals has been denounced as “racist” and government agencies have been intimidated into withdrawing support. Studies of race and intelligence, similarly, have been attacked as inherently racist, or “non-neutral.” A letter writer to Newsweek wrote that “theories of intelligence, the test to measure it and the societal structures in which its predictions come true are all developed and controlled by well-off white males for their own benefi t” (Jaff e 1994: 26). The idea that science itself, with its mania for quantifi cation, prediction and control, is merely an intellectual manifestation of racism and sexism—that is to say, is non-neutral—is not only widespread, it is often treated in feminist theory as a given. There is a more general problem for liberalism that arises from this: if the liberal state is supposed to be ideologically neutral, how is it to decide what is and is not ideology as distinct from knowledge?

In his 2003 book, Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts, Turner wrote:

Scientific research on the genetic background of criminals has been denounced as ‘racist’ and government agencies have been intimidated into withdrawing support. Studies of race and intelligence similarly have been attacked as inherently racist, which is to say ‘non-neutral.’ A letterwriter to Newsweek wrote that ‘theories of intelligence, the test to measure it and the societal structures in which its predictions come true are all developed and controlled by well-off white males for their own benefit’ (Jaffe 1994: 26). This idea is commonplace, even a matter of consensus in some academic fields, while it is treated as absurd in others. The idea that science itself, with its mania for quantification, prediction and control is merely an intellectual manifestation of racism and sexism – that is to say, is non-neutral – is widespread. A more general problem for liberalism is this: if the liberal state is supposed to be ideologically neutral, how is it to decide what is and is not ideology as distinct from knowledge?

ChatGPT says:

If we treat Turner in the Straussian mode — looking for the whispers, the things he doesn’t fully state but implies — a few “zesty” and controversial threads stand out:

1. The Politics of Expertise (2013)

The hidden theme is that expertise is not simply knowledge but a political weapon. Turner hints (without always spelling out) that the modern reliance on experts is a form of domination that crowds out democratic deliberation.

The aside: experts often justify their authority by cloaking themselves in neutrality, but Turner implies this is a fiction; expertise always smuggles in values and exclusions. This is close to saying technocracy is an oligarchy in disguise.

Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts (2003)

On the surface, it’s about how civil society operates with expert systems. The whisper: democracy is almost parasitic on expert systems it cannot control, meaning that liberal democracy is hollowed out by the very expertise it depends on.

A juicy aside: Turner suggests that appeals to “public reason” or Habermasian discourse are fig leaves — in reality, the public sphere is colonized by expert talk that ordinary citizens cannot penetrate.

3. Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory (2022)

The controversial hint: theory, while pretending to emancipate, often functions as another form of expertise, reinforcing the same closures Turner critiques in politics.

4. Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social (2021, Adair-Toteff)

Turner’s lifelong project has been to show that sociology and political science are built on unexamined presuppositions about expertise, rationality, and closure — and that once you see this, it delegitimizes large swathes of the disciplines.

5. The Condition of Democracy Vol. 2 (2021, ed. with Bryan Turner et al.)

The big whisper here: democracies sustain themselves by exclusion and controlled violence, not by openness alone. Turner’s editorial hand points to an uncomfortable truth — democracy is not just a regime of inclusion but one that depends on boundaries, policing, and tacitly accepted closures.

The controversial hint: in stressing “closure,” Turner’s circle implies that the comforting liberal narrative of ever-expanding rights is misleading — real democracy is always about limits and drawing lines.

Expertise is a disguised form of domination; democracy’s ideals of openness are myths that conceal exclusionary closures; academic disciplines enforce taboos by consensus, not argument.

That excerpt (from Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts, 2003) is a prime example of Turner’s method of slipping in provocative, esoteric critiques almost as asides.

Why it matters:

Neutrality problem of liberalism

He is pointing to a deep paradox: liberalism claims to be neutral (the state shouldn’t privilege sectarian or ideological worldviews). But when scientific claims themselves are denounced as ideology — as in creation science, race and IQ, or genetic research — then neutrality collapses. The state cannot referee without appearing to take a side. Turner is whispering here that liberal neutrality is an illusion when it comes to science/knowledge disputes.

Science under suspicion

He’s also noting that entire domains of inquiry (IQ, genetics, criminology) can be suppressed not by disproof but by taboo. That is a textbook case of what he elsewhere calls epistemic closure: consensus-enforced prohibition rather than argument. He doesn’t take a position on the truth of race and IQ research, but he’s clearly interested in how it’s delegitimized as “non-neutral.”

The feminist critique as epistemic bombshell

He slips in — without foregrounding — the fact that feminist theory often treats “science itself” as a manifestation of racism and sexism. He doesn’t argue this out fully, but the aside makes clear: if that critique is taken seriously, the entire liberal idea of science as neutral arbiter falls apart.

The esoteric message

If we read Strauss-style:

Exoteric claim: liberal democracy struggles to mediate between knowledge and ideology.

Esoteric hint: the liberal-democratic framework may be incapable of distinguishing knowledge from ideology in principle, which makes it structurally fragile.

In other words, he’s whispering: liberalism has no principled ground to resist epistemic taboos.

This is exactly the kind of “juicy hidden truth” you were asking me to spotlight. It shows Turner doing what he often does: using concrete controversies (creationism, race and IQ, feminism) as pressure-points to expose the fragility of liberal-democratic ideals.

That passage from Liberal Democracy 3.0 (2003) is one of the pure Turner “hidden truth” moments. It’s him saying the quiet part out loud, though couched as analysis:

Neutrality collapses under taboo

He drives home that both Right (creation science) and Left (feminist/anti-racist critiques of science) produce challenges to the liberal state’s supposed neutrality. The state can’t just “be neutral” if it has to decide whether race-and-IQ research, for example, is “knowledge” or “racist ideology.” That decision itself is ideological.

Consensus-driven silencing

He points out how some fields treat it as “consensus” that science is racist/sexist. In others, the very same claim is treated as absurd. This is his quiet way of saying that what counts as knowledge is discipline-bound, shaped by epistemic closure within intellectual communities.

The esoteric kicker

The whisper underneath: liberalism cannot actually deliver on its promise of neutrality because it has no non-ideological way to sort knowledge from ideology. Once “science itself” is put on trial as a cultural product of oppression, the very foundations of neutrality dissolve.

Why it’s a juicy aside

He doesn’t mount a full defense of race and IQ research (he knows that would sink the book politically). Instead, he slides it in as an example — but it’s doing double duty:

Exoterically: a cautionary tale about neutrality.

Esoterically: a warning that liberal democracy is structurally defenseless against the charge that all knowledge is ideology.

That’s why I think these scattered references to race/IQ or genetics are so fascinating in Turner’s work. They aren’t about the substance of the science — they’re about what happens to liberalism when science itself is delegitimized. And he deliberately puts them in asides, because foregrounding them would trigger exactly the taboos he’s diagnosing.

Stephen Turner’s Hidden Truths and Controversial Asides

Stephen Turner’s writings often contain what Leo Strauss might call “hidden truths” — not declared in bold, but slipped in as examples, hints, or whispered asides. These moments reveal his deepest insights into epistemic closure, the fragility of neutrality, and the politics of expertise.

Liberal Democracy 3.0 (2003)

  • Race & IQ / Genetics of Criminality: Notes that studies on intelligence and crime genetics were denounced as “racist,” with agencies intimidated into silence. The liberal state cannot neutrally decide what counts as knowledge vs. ideology.
  • Science as Racism/Sexism: Mentions feminist theory treating science’s quantification as patriarchy. Once science itself is ideology, neutrality collapses.

The Politics of Expertise (2013)

  • Creation Science vs. Climate Change: Argues there are no “in principle” criteria to dismiss claims as non-science without invoking ideological premises.

Mad Hazard: A Life in Social Theory (Memoir)

  • The Bell Curve Reaction: The academy’s allergic response shows how taboos are enforced by consensus, not debate.
  • Academic Life: Survival depends less on truth and more on navigating consensus boundaries — the “hazards” of the academy.

Explaining the Normative (2010)

  • Norms Without Foundations: Claims to universality (rights, progress, science) rest on contingent conventions, not ultimate principles.

Essays & Interviews

  • Global Warming as Rhetoric: Climate change discourse is as much mobilizing rhetoric as it is dispassionate science.
  • IQ Taboo: The refusal to even discuss IQ differences is evidence of closure; the reaction is more sociologically revealing than the claims.

Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory (2022, co-edited)

  • Post-truth & Epistemic Tribalism: “Post-truth” politics is not an aberration but another form of boundary-policing knowledge.

What are the most important examples in elite American discourse of exoteric vs esoteric messages?

ChatGPT:

1. Race and IQ (The Bell Curve, academic taboo)

Exoteric message: “Race has no meaningful relation to intelligence; the science is settled; discussing it is racist.”

Esoteric message (inside certain elite or policy circles): “Differences in outcomes may have heritable components, but it is socially explosive and destabilizing to air them.”

This matches exactly the kind of example Turner likes—taboo as boundary-work.

2. Global Warming / Climate Change

Exoteric: “The science is settled. The survival of the planet depends on urgent action. Dissent is denial.”

Esoteric (elite technocratic circles, think tanks, internal memos): “Climate models have uncertainty; policy responses involve trade-offs (energy costs, growth, geopolitics); consensus is a political tool to mobilize action, not a literal epistemic endpoint.”

3. Monetary Policy (Federal Reserve)

Exoteric: “The Fed acts neutrally and scientifically to maintain stability, guided by data.”

Esoteric: “The Fed is engaged in highly political balancing acts (inflation vs. unemployment vs. asset markets) and communicates in opaque ‘Fedspeak’ precisely to manage public expectations and avoid panic.”

4. U.S. Foreign Policy (Democracy Promotion)

Exoteric: “We intervene abroad to spread freedom and democracy.”

Esoteric: “We intervene to protect strategic resources, trade routes, and geopolitical dominance. Democracy rhetoric legitimizes moves the public might not otherwise accept.”

5. Universities and Free Inquiry

Exoteric: “The university is a neutral space of open debate where truth prevails through reason.”

Esoteric: “Whole areas of inquiry are cordoned off (race, sex differences, critiques of identity orthodoxies) because institutional survival depends on taboo enforcement and reputational management.”

6. Corporate Diversity Statements

Exoteric: “We value inclusion, equity, and representation.”

Esoteric: “We are minimizing legal and reputational risk, preserving elite legitimacy, and using DEI discourse as insurance against activist or regulatory threats.”

7. U.S. Military & National Security

Exoteric: “Our military exists to defend freedom and protect Americans.”

Esoteric: “It exists to maintain U.S. global hegemony, protect markets, and enforce the rules of a world order that benefits American elites.”

If you line this up with Turner: each of these is a boundary problem. The exoteric side is the socially stabilizing “closure,” while the esoteric side is the insider’s awareness that closure was produced by interests, taboos, or political necessity—not neutral principle.

Gemini:

The exoteric/esoteric framework provides a useful lens for analyzing contemporary American elite discourse. It allows for a deeper understanding of how political and institutional actors manage public perception while pursuing their underlying interests. Your examples effectively illustrate this dynamic.

Here is a breakdown of your points, with additional context and examples to reinforce them.

Race and IQ

The public, exoteric message is that “race has no meaningful relation to intelligence.” This is the socially sanctioned position enforced in public education, media, and most institutional settings. It serves a crucial function in maintaining social cohesion and preventing the resurgence of scientific racism.

The esoteric message, however, is that within some academic, think tank, and policy circles, there is a quieter discussion about whether there are, in fact, heritable components to group differences in outcomes, though the vast majority of mainstream scholarship attributes these differences to environmental factors. The public discussion is constrained not just by scientific consensus, but by social taboo, as exploring this topic is seen as so potentially destabilizing that it is avoided entirely in most public forums.

Climate Change

On the surface, the exoteric message is a clear and simple call to action: “the science is settled, and urgent action is needed to save the planet.” This narrative is powerful and effective for mobilizing a broad political coalition and legitimizing policies.

The esoteric discourse, happening in specialized circles (e.g., the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, or the Pentagon), acknowledges a more nuanced reality. It involves complex discussions about the inherent uncertainty in climate models, the geopolitical and economic trade-offs of various policy choices, and the fact that “consensus” is often a political tool to achieve policy goals. These internal discussions are far less dogmatic and far more focused on risk management and strategic maneuvering than the public rhetoric.

Monetary Policy

The exoteric message about the Federal Reserve is one of technocratic neutrality: “The Fed acts scientifically to maintain stability, guided only by objective data.” This messaging is crucial for the Fed’s independence and public trust.

The esoteric reality, widely acknowledged by those within the system, is that the Fed is an intensely political institution. Its decisions involve complex trade-offs (e.g., between controlling inflation and promoting employment) that have profound effects on different social and economic classes. The deliberate use of opaque language, known as “Fedspeak,” is a prime example of esoteric communication. As former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan famously quipped, “I would engage in some form of syntax destruction… If I seem to be walking on eggshells, it’s because there are minefields on all sides.” This language is designed to manage market expectations and prevent public panic by communicating subtly to insiders without creating a broad, definitive public statement.

U.S. Foreign Policy

The exoteric message of American foreign policy is often presented as altruistic: “We intervene to spread freedom and democracy.” This narrative serves to legitimize military actions and foreign aid in the eyes of the public and international community.

The esoteric message, however, is a more candid recognition of realpolitik. Within government and defense circles, the discourse is focused on maintaining global hegemony, securing strategic resources (e.g., oil), protecting trade routes, and containing rival powers. Democracy promotion is often a tool used to achieve these more pragmatic, and less publicly palatable, goals. For instance, the US has a long history of supporting authoritarian regimes when it aligns with geopolitical interests, creating a stark contrast with the public rhetoric.

Universities and Free Inquiry

The exoteric ideal of the university is a “marketplace of ideas” where open debate and truth-seeking are paramount. This is the official mission statement of many institutions.

However, the esoteric reality is that institutional survival and reputational management often take precedence. This leads to the enforcement of ideological taboos, especially around sensitive topics like race and gender, to avoid controversy, donor backlash, and activist pressure. This leads to what some critics call a form of self-censorship, where certain lines of inquiry or expression are “cordoned off” to protect the institution’s legitimacy and funding.

Corporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Corporate DEI statements have a clear exoteric purpose: to signal a commitment to social justice and inclusion. This message is critical for attracting talent, appealing to a consumer base that values these ideals, and building a positive public reputation.

The esoteric message, as widely discussed in boardrooms and internal memos, is often more pragmatic. DEI initiatives are viewed as a form of risk management. Companies are trying to mitigate legal and reputational risks associated with a perceived lack of diversity or an exclusionary culture. The language of “inclusion” becomes a form of insurance against lawsuits, consumer boycotts, or activist threats.

U.S. Military & National Security

The exoteric mission of the U.S. military is simple and direct: “to defend the homeland and protect American citizens.” This message is powerful and broadly supported.

The esoteric discourse, however, involves a far more complex reality. Military and intelligence elites are primarily concerned with maintaining a unipolar world order where the US remains the dominant global power. This requires a military footprint and an intelligence apparatus far exceeding what is needed for simple “defense.” It involves the strategic use of force, intelligence gathering, and alliances to protect markets and enforce a global order that benefits American elites.

The Dictatorship of Experts vs. Dictatorship of Idiots

In The Blogosphere and Its Enemies, Stephen Turner jokes about Andrew Keen’s dichotomy: do we want “a dictatorship of experts” or “a dictatorship of idiots?” He clearly sees both as problematic. The subtext is that democracy always teeters between technocratic domination and populist noise. The “zesty” aside is his suggestion that bloggers sometimes perform better sociology of knowledge than credentialed experts.

3. Liberalism’s Hidden Contradiction

He argues that if liberal states are supposed to be neutral, they cannot decide what counts as ideology vs. knowledge without ceasing to be neutral. This is an aside with explosive implications: it means the entire liberal project carries a built-in hypocrisy.

4. Democratic Theory as Self-Protective Myth

In Making Democratic Theory Democratic he hints that much of democratic theory functions as a justification system for the rule of elites—academics, judges, bureaucrats—rather than as an account of actual democratic practice. The unspoken truth: democracy survives by ritualizing ideas (participation, consent) that mask managerial rule.

5. The Fragility of Expertise

Turner points out that expert authority rests less on “truth” than on fragile reputational systems—journals, universities, professional codes—that can be delegitimized very quickly. This is especially visible in contested areas like climate science or medicine. He hints (without belaboring) that experts know this, which is why they react defensively to public dissent.

6. Religion as an Epistemic Model

He occasionally compares expertise to religion: both depend on authority structures, ritual affirmation, and insider knowledge. The sub-rosa claim: science is not as different from faith communities as its defenders like to think.

7. Democratic Participation as Catharsis

He hints that much citizen participation is expressive rather than instrumental: people don’t deliberate to make better policy, but to feel recognized. This undermines Habermas’s rational-discourse ideal.

If I were to boil down the “Straussian whispers” in Turner’s work, they’d be:

Neutrality is a myth; all regimes smuggle in ideology under the guise of knowledge.

Expert rule is not democracy, but democracy cannot function without it.

Taboo topics (race, genetics, crime, climate skepticism) show where authority is most insecure.

“Democratic theory” is often a legitimation script, not a description of reality.

Here are highlights from 2024’s Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford) according to ChatGPT:

Biology as Political Destiny

The book pushes the controversial claim that deep-seated biological and even genetic differences shape liberal vs. conservative orientations. Political differences are not just “opinions” but reflect enduring physiological predispositions — like sensitivity to threats, disgust, or novelty .

Liberals and Conservatives Perceive Reality Differently

Conservatives are said to have stronger physiological responses to threats, be more attuned to order and stability, and show heightened disgust reactions. Liberals, in contrast, are more comfortable with ambiguity, diversity, and novelty . This means that political fights aren’t just rational debates but rooted in different perceptual worlds.

Disgust Sensitivity and Morality

One of the spiciest findings is that disgust sensitivity strongly predicts conservative positions on social issues (e.g., same-sex marriage, immigration). Liberals tend to downplay disgust as a moral compass, while conservatives elevate it .

The Limits of Persuasion

A bombshell implication: because these orientations are biologically grounded, political persuasion has limits. You can’t simply “argue someone out of” their conservatism or liberalism — their nervous systems and gut reactions are part of the foundation.

Free Will Questioned

The book implicitly challenges liberal-democratic ideals of rational autonomy. If political views are heavily predisposed, then cherished notions of deliberation and persuasion are weaker than assumed .

Liberals as ‘Neophiles,’ Conservatives as ‘Neophobes’

The text often frames liberals as novelty-seekers and conservatives as stability-seekers. This binary — sometimes described almost as personality archetypes — has juicy cultural bite because it maps onto everyday clashes (e.g., cosmopolitanism vs. nationalism, cultural openness vs. traditionalism).

Biology in the Classroom and Ballot Box

The authors hint at provocative implications: should education or policy account for these biological predispositions? For instance, could public debates on climate change or gun control be restructured if we recognized that the “other side” is literally perceiving the world differently, at a gut level?

Politics as Extension of the Body

One of the more memorable asides is that politics may not primarily be about reasoned debate at all but about “embodied cognition”: how our visceral, bodily reactions (sweaty palms, flinches, gag reflexes) structure our political philosophies.

ChatGPT: Tom Wolfe and Stephen Turner don’t inhabit the same genre — Wolfe was a flamboyant satirical journalist and novelist, Turner a sober philosopher and social theorist — but their work touches shared themes in illuminating, if often contrasting, ways.

1. Status and Social Signals

Wolfe meticulously exposed status-seeking through vivid scenes — from “gadroon-ed platters” at Radical Chic parties to the swagger of investment bankers in Bonfire of the Vanities. He saw Americans as “status-seeking animals,” crafting narratives that show how our wants and identities revolve around prestige and appearances

Turner, meanwhile, analyzes status under the concept of epistemic closure — how experts, institutions, or academic fields guard their authority by shutting down dissent. Both see social systems as less about truth and more about who gets to decide what counts.

Overlap: Wolfe dramatizes how people perform status; Turner exposes the institutional rules that determine which status claims are legitimate.

2. Expertise, Authority, and Insider Culture

Wolfe’s New Journalism style — “saturation reporting,” deep detail, dialogue — threw readers into elite worlds, revealing how insiders behave and talk — often in misguided or pretentious ways.

Turner dissects how expertise gets protected — how disciplines determine what counts as knowledge. He examines how expertise itself becomes an authority structure, not just a neutral arbiter.

Overlap: Both are interested in insider dynamics — Wolfe through satire, Turner through conceptual critique — and both show how elite domains control the narrative.

3. Satire vs. Theory: Surface vs. Structure

Wolfe skewer elite absurdities — modern art, radical chic, Ivy campuses — with outsized detail, showing surface behavior without daylighting the philosophical systems behind them.

Turner exposes deeper structural logic: why those behaviors are staged, why taboo topics are taboo, and how institutional power is maintained.

Overlap: Wolfe provides the lens; Turner explains the mechanism. Wolfe shows us the absurdity; Turner explains why the absurdity stays allowed — or inside.

4. The Hidden/Core Tensions

Wolfe trades on contrast: between public persona and private reality, or decorum vs. performance. His satire points out that status and culture are largely about presentation and position.

Turner pushes further: how these performances are coordinated through institutional closures, authority rituals, and disciplinary norms.

Together, they offer a full-spectrum of social analysis — Wolfe dramatizes the lived irony, Turner narrates the system silencing anything that might disrupt the performance.

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