2019-12-20
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Here's a quote from:

	Conversations with Tyler -podcast

	with

	Masha Gessen and
	Tyler Cowen

	Published: August 14, 2019 

	https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/masha-gessen/
	
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   COWEN: Why is it that so many dissidents came from the
   Soviet worlds of math and physics? There seems to be a
   correlation. What's causing what?

   GESSEN: I don't know the answer. I can tell you my
   personal hypothesis. My hypothesis is that for people
   who are both trained and inclined to think in
   rigorously logical ways, it is particularly difficult
   to adapt to the Soviet system of doublethink. When we
   talk about this inclination now, I think we talk about
   people being spectrum-y or being neurologically
   different and, therefore, having difficulty with the
   illogical, irrational ways of life.

   But I think we can retroactively diagnose a lot of
   dissonance with that because, basically, what we're
   talking about is, there is the conditions of not just
   survival but of being reasonably comfortable while
   living in the Soviet Union were the conditions of
   doublethink. You had to be able to live inside
   untenable contradictions all the time. The opposite
   option was to confront those contradictions, but to
   basically be thrown out of society, to be in extreme
   discomfort.

   Think about the type of person who would prefer the
   discomfort of being completely ostracized to the
   discomfort of living inside the tension. I think that
   that goes some way to explaining why so many people
   came from math and physics and the exact sciences.

   These days, when I look at Greta Thunberg, who I was
   actually, I'm pretty sure, the first American
   journalist to interview her -- the now 16-year-old
   Swedish girl who went on school strike and has started
   this worldwide climate change movement.

   She is diagnosed with autism, and she's very, very
   clear about talking about how intolerable she finds
   life with the way that adults are not acting
   rationally in the face of climate change and how, for
   her, it is an absolute necessity to confront it. I
   really recognized that spirit of Soviet dissonance.


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