The Moveable Feast

Power gives politicians an incentive structure to do crazy things.

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Remnant regular Tevi Troy returns for some of the rankest punditry you’ll find this side of the Mississippi. It’s a freewheeling kind of episode that begins with a shameless plug for Tevi’s new leadership program, transitions into a discussion of the GOP presidential primary, and ends with a few musings on how AI could change the world of writing. Tune in also for ruminations on how politics became so childish, whether CPAC can be redeemed, and why Trump can’t find a good nickname for Ron DeSantis.

Show Notes:

– Tevi’s webpage

– Tevi’s course: “1600 Lessons: Leadership Lessons from Our Nation’s Chief Executives”

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Comments (15)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Kurt Caton

    I always enjoy Tevi Troy as a guest. But I thought the audio today was less than optimal. I could understand Jonah just fine, but Tevi sounded really "echo-ey". And maybe it's just me because I haven't seen any other complaints in the comments.

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    Matt Sherman

    I don't blame Jonah on bouncing hard off of Picard as season two was terrible. So far season three is significantly better than two. Still trying to decide as they are doing some things that riff off of more akin to the TNG era stories which are neat, but the characterization still feels weird when you compare it to the original shows. Talking like Picard was some kind of violent cowboy. The whole feel of the era of they are running with Picard is just so dark and depressing and dour that it feels very off compared to the shows that came before. Do love seeing new ship classes though, which most of them seem to be take straight from Star Trek Online if I was reading things correctly. Jonah is right though that Strange New Worlds is really hitting the right tones, would highly recommend Lower Decks as well. Sure it is a comedy, but it really gets Star Trek in a way that a lot of the other recent shows haven't. Would also suggest checking out the Orville for a Trek like show, it also started off as a loving Trek parody but within the first season started becoming a true trek like show, and the third season was excellent.

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    Theirnscott

    Really enjoyed this conversation. I did "roll my eyes" at one point.

    Tevi said something about politics filling a vacuum due to reduced religiosity contributing to our inchoate and rude political discourse. While I guess you can make this argument with the secular left it doesn't explain the right. Lack of religiosity and adoption of politics as our religion is not a good explanation for debasement of our political conversations. The vast majority of Trump supporters are supposedly evangelical Christians. Once upon a time Christians and conservative Christians in particular supported quaint ideas like manners and kindness.

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  4. Ackemma1

    I give Trump credit for knowing (or at least having heard) the word "sanctimonious". That's a lot of syllables for him.

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    Anne W (Raw5254)

    I enjoyed this, Jonah. I always learn something from you and your guests.

    What I really want to know is how many subscriptions do you and John Podhoretz have to all the shows you watch on TV? Do you get a deal? I’m just curious because it seems like there’s nothing that isn’t available to you guys, and there are lots of separate streaming companies.

    And, along those same lines, how much time do you think you spend watching stuff? It’s obvious that you do a lot of reading. You have dogs, you travel, you write, you hang out at cigar shops. When do you have time for TV?

    I don’t expect you to answer, but I am curious.

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    George.Skinner

    BTW - have been watching Picard Season 3 with my Trek-addicted daughters. Unfortunately, not feeling great about the main storyline 2 episodes in, but Worf is fantastic.

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    George.Skinner

    The increasing use of insults as a substitute for political debate worries me not just because it indicates the debate is getting dumber, but because it's going to continue to *make* us dumber. Partisan insults aren't exactly new, but they tend to lead to a caricatured version of a politician or policy in the minds of the utterer. Pretty soon, they're not engaging with reality, just their imagined version of it.

    I've also been told that one of Trump's strengths is that he communicates with an 8th grade vocabulary. The problem is that being limited to an 8th grade vocabulary tends to limit the complexity of ideas, dialog, and analysis to what can be expressed with that vocabulary. When that becomes the baseline for political discourse, we're making ourselves dumber. A strong communicator can explain things in terms suitable for their audience, but the fact that Stephen Hawking can explain the physics of black holes in a popular book like "A Brief History Of Time" doesn't mean that you can truly understand those physics or make advances in the field without being able to use advanced tensor mathematics.

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    Kurt S

    On the topic of presidential advisors & confidants who later, er, lost a step, my thoughts went to Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis & Clark fame), who lived at the presidential mansion as the private secretary to Thomas Jefferson. Lewis was later appointed governor of Louisiana Territory following his famous expedition but apparently struggled with depression and other issues and took his own life at age 35.

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    Michael Garrett

    I could use a transcript at about 2:53. I hope the pitch read “Climate clock adds gender PARODY lifeline…”

    But I fear that’s not really it.

    Also, I have no complaints against ads in the Remnant. Just that today’s was (I hope) serendipitous. Right after Jonah and Tevi mentioned the erosion of religious involvement and how that vacuum is being occupied by politics, I heard a spot from JPMorgan Chase touting their support of small businesses and how that contributes to “building communities.” I am eager to dispute the premise.

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    Alex Mudd

    If AI will ever challenge the positions of opinion writers or journalists it will probably be a ways off (and very likely will never happen). However, it can already be used to replace underperforming contract writers and marketing freelancers (I know because I've done it). One thing I don't hear mentioned all that often when I listen to or read academics or journalists discussing the potential threat posed by ChatGPT are some of the basic realities of the platform's limitations and SEO.

    For example, as far as I know ChatGPT is still working off of 2021 data, meaning it's incapable of actually generating newsworthy content. Google has explicitly said they consider the use of auto generated content for the purpose of manipulating rankings to be a violation of their spam policy. They reward original content that communicates something unique (something ChatGPT cannot do) and of value to searchers.

    That being said, anyone who has spent more than 10 minutes looking for a product or service online understands the repetitive nature of marketing content, and volume does in fact rank. Most words published on websites and blogs for marketing purposes are not written by industry experts and thought leaders. They are generated by copywriters who are simply pulling facts from other articles, competitors' websites and blogs, then restructuring the information.

    That's exactly what ChatGPT does, even if it is formulaic and clumsy enough to be easily detected by a number of plugins and free tools (which is also why academics shouldn't panic). And despite Google's alleged critical stance on AI (which is a legitimate concern from a user-experience perspective) it's still not clear whether Google has the desire or resources to filter the internet and actively penalize websites that publish AI content.

    AI content generation is of value if you use the right prompts, and it is capable of replacing entry-level marketing writers when in the hands of fast editors who understand its limitations, but it should not be viewed as a turn-key solution for content generation. Even if the technology does improve significantly, there's still a chance (probably a good one) search engines will begin to actively demote or even delist websites that flagrantly rely on AI-generated content.

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