Condominas spoke out against inequality and colonization and stood with American anthropologists in opposing the Vietnam War. An incredible storyteller and humorist, he was known to say, "Come on, courage, we’ll get them!" at the end of phone calls, but the “them” in question was never named. (3/3)

His famous book “We Have Eaten the Forest” recounted his stay with the Mnong Gar, from the Vietnamese highlands. Noted for its meticulous attention to detail and inclusion of traditional oral verse, the book stood out in its time for its fidelity to the villagers' lived experience. (2/3)

Ultimately, dandyism is meant to provoke questions on how identity and representation intersect with race, class, gender, sexuality, and power. If he hasn't already, I would very much be interested in @dieworkwear.bsky.social doing a breakdown on this fascinating political aesthetic.

The theme for the 2025 Met Gala was based on Black dandyism in the Western world. There is a lot of rich history here that I only scratched the surface of. The Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 are another example of BIPOC dandysim.

Racial discrimination has been opposed by Black dandyism. Famously, in 1917, the Silent Protest Parade featured over ten thousand Black Americans in formal wear, protesting slavery and the recent East St. Louis massacre.

Philosopher Thorsten Botz-Bornstein describes dandies as "an anarchist who does not claim anarchy," using life's conventions, like gender and socioeconomic norms, to oppose capitalism's demands for conformity.

However, in France, dandyism was seen as a political statement of jeunesse dorée (Gilded Youth) who used aristocratic style to stand apart from both the conformist bourgeoisie and the radical working-class sans-culottes (literally "without breeches”).

I also did not know about the rich history behind the word, but did some digging... “Dandy” was used to describe self-made men who imitated aristocratic style, regardless of class or social status, largely in late 18th and early 19th-century Britain.

What do these findings tell us? GPT-4, especially when personalized, could be more effective than other humans at shifting opinions in text-based debate. But the impact is modest, and the context matters. (7/7)

The authors note: it’s unclear whether the belief they were talking to a machine caused the attitude shift or whether persuasive arguments led participants to guess they were talking to an ML model. (6/7)

Why? One explanation is that interacting with a machine reduces ego defensiveness and perceived social judgment, lowering identity-based resistance to ways of thinking. Another may be that participants subconsciously attribute greater expertise or neutrality to ML. (5/7)

It is important to note that the actual magnitude of attitude change per person was relatively small (e.g., often less than one full point on a 5-point Likert scale). So, even effective arguments only nudged people slightly. (4/7)

Even when GPT-4 wasn’t personalized, participants who believed they were debating a machine showed a +37.4% increase in the odds of persuasion. (3/7)

In most human-human debates, arguing only makes people double down, aka the backfire effect. But when debating a minimally personalized GPT-4 (with access to basic demographics), the odds of being persuaded increased by +81.2% compared to human-human debates. (2/7)