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Comment by anbop | Hacker News Reader

What is “noopolitics”?

Is a fancy-pants neologism from political theorists about how the world supposedly works these days. From 'noos', meaning knowledge. One thing I find funny, given the construction, is that nobody outside of political theory seemingly knows about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noopolitik

Now we know. Thanks for sharing.

How do you pronounce it?

Gnupolitik.

Do you have a source?

I can't find one, but have seen at least one instance with an umlaut over the second o, suggesting something more akin to "new-o-politik" to my mind, which would fit somewhat with long o ancient Greek stuff I remember from taking Greek in college long ago and far away.

Very sorry, was making a silly joke, not providing useful pronounciation.

Thank you.

Is one of those words I have almost never heard pronounced. And on the rare occaisions I have, it is by people who are similarly unsure of the correct pronunciation.

But you probably have heard similar words, such as nootropics. That word gets pronounced "new-o-tropics."

Classic Greek "long o" is literally a long o. The sound is drawn out at length.

So it seems likely to me this is pronounced similar to nootropics.

My personal guess, but not an informed one, was to just rhyme it with 'moo'.

To be fair, asking for the "source" for "Gnupolitik" (GNU/Politik?) is a great reply, even if you didn't get the joke.

I still don't get the joke. Feel free to explain if you are feeling so inclined.

The joke I'm imagining is based on a mental association I have with the acronym "GNU", which is used by The GNU Project:

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html

The group behind that project support the idea that people who use software should have access to the source code of that software, and therefore requesting the "source" is an action they would encourage.

They are also responsible for individual pieces of software with names like "GNU Emacs":

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

Hopefully this information proves interesting and useful to someone, and I haven't merely made a silly joke less funny by explaining it.

Genuinely surprised you've hung out here so long and haven't picked up on GNU/open source software talk.

This should leapfrog you in that specific direction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_free_and_open-sourc...

I know what Gnu/open source is. I got that it was a reference to that.

That doesn't really clarify "the joke" for me. I don't see how that's a joke.

new-o-politic, or no-o(h)-politic both would be good.

Nu-oh-politics.

(Snobs will spell it noöpolitics)

no-oh-politics (or no-os-politics).

Like the term of yore, no-o-sphere (the sphere of the mind/intellect) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

I thought it was a fancy contraction for 'no-op politics' where at the end of your term, the org/country would stay where it was before you :-)

>From 'noos', meaning knowledge.

Etymologically it means intelligence (and used literally, it meant "mind").

True, however Arquilla and Ronfeldt, who coined it while at RAND in the late '90s, defined it as 'the network based geopolitics of knowledge'.

It's newspeak for realpolitik. Around the turn of the millennium a lot of political words got reinvented as the power of influence became more and more outsourced to corporations and less about networks of back room deals. (Why waste years building influence when you can just buy an influence package from a "think tank.")

But a consultant can't sell his company's services using 1800's words like "realpolitik," so new words were invented like "noopolitics."

"Political consultants" became "policy wonks," but thankfully that term pretty much died after the Clinton administration.

Also, "casual sex" became "locationships" in campaign circles. I think that term should have lasted longer. At least longer than noopolitics.

> Political consultants" became "policy wonks," but thankfully that term pretty much died after the Clinton administration

Political operative is making a comeback.

> became "policy wonks"

"Policy wankers" would fit better.

I'd say it is quite distinct in definition from realpolitik as it focuses on the role of information on power games, rather than the practice of utilitarianism in power games.

I don't think it's a standard term but you can extrapolate from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere. Maybe "the sport of influencing opinion at mass scale"

Has been a standard term for policy wonks and polscis for a while now.

seems to have a wiki too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noopolitik

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