As is usually the case with The Onion, the headline is much funnier than the article. I got a chuckle out of the absurd headline, but the actual article made me roll my eyes.
There's been some recent drama at the NIH regarding funding grants from Black researchers that received worse scores than would normally be funded. The initial announcement was here:
I'm glad; in my opinion, it was a step too far. Although the grant application process has many problems, doing things like this won't fix any of them, and will just lead to resentment.
I don't know. The article quotes scientists on Twitter. Are there other scientists on Twitter they should be quoting? Is it possible the journalists are just lazy in the way most journalists are, and go to their standard sources?
I think it's fair. They make no attempt to explain why the NIH did what it did, and only talk about the "some" who were "dismayed" with it. It's kind of obvious why one would walk it back, so one does get a little suspicious why it's presented as apparently senseless and arbitrary.
>Now, three of NIH’s 24 grantmaking institutes are trying a more direct approach. In a recent notice, they are encouraging Black investigators and others from underrepresented groups to fill out a box that flags their application and brings it to a program officer’s attention. Then, even if the quality score that peer-review panels award the proposal falls outside the cutoff for most grants, institute directors may fund the project if they decide the applicant’s diverse background strengthens the research.
Of course, the NIH also does things like the "Diversity F31" (a separate version of the F31 with a higher funding rate). This sort of thing isn't new, but this would have been a big expansion.
>institute directors may fund the project if they decide the applicant’s diverse background strengthens the research.
If taken at face value, this seems like telling directors to be on the look out for applications in which an outsider or underrepresented perspective makes the project more valuable to the field than it might look under standard evaluation rubrics, rather than telling them to fund weaker applications.
Critics may not believe it's possible for an application to be stronger based on providing outsider perspectives, but, critics should at last be acknowledged what the beliefs and intentions of the people behind this are, rather than assigning them a different motive that makes more sense to the critics.
> If taken at face value, this seems like telling directors to be on the look out for applications in which an outsider or underrepresented perspective makes the project more valuable to the field than it might look under standard evaluation rubrics, rather than telling them to fund weaker applications
I would be okay with that, only if they were also allowed to do the same with projects which went the other way.
Like, "This project is pretty borderline, but I think that a straight white male perspective on this particular problem is really needed"
My argument is basically, yes, because in order for that to be true at any meaningful scale, we'd need to live in a society where white men were a small and oppressed class, in which case all the norms about which views are underrepresented and who diversity initiatives are aimed at would be different.
Like, yeah, in a society where white male voices are basically never underrepresented anywhere, we don't have mechanisms explicitly for boosting them, and trying to build such mechanisms looks weird and suspect. That's a pretty normal thing, in the same way that stocking up on antivenom kits for black mamba bites in a kindergarten in the US is something we don't do and might look weird and alarming if we saw it. That's not really a problem.
I noticed this “less charitable explanation” bias that your comment flagged within me. (I’m not convinced it’s entirely bias because this may warrant legitimate criticism, but there’s some emotion/heuristic there, too) I find the best tool to separate this out is some effort to understand, so let’s say you’re right:
>If taken at face value, this seems like telling directors to be on the look out for applications in which an outsider or underrepresented perspective makes the project more valuable to the field than it might look under standard evaluation rubrics, rather than telling them to fund weaker applications.
What would be an example of this? I’m thinking maybe research into housing / poverty but there’s probably a lot of legitimate cases.
That said, I feel cautious given that I’ve seen “the power of diversity” claimed to enhance all sorts of research in various fields (esp in stem) where it doesn’t belong at all, and I think this is what makes me skeptical. I doubt that the grants which are funded based on “diversity” will be publicly flagged or indicated in some way, but this seems like an important step to allow verification that diversity *actually* lends itself to a particular grant and not just “we’re finding this even though it’s weak.” (I haven’t read up on this; please let me know if this is being done and I’ll be much more supportive.)
Well, female voices might be underrepresented in, say, reserarch into cervical cancer, and black voices might be underrepresented in attempts to balance populations in vaccine research. There are many other obvious examples, as well as many examples where there's no obvious connection.
There is a margin of error associated with the rating system for potential research. It is an estimate of the value of the research. If the "diversity delta" is markedly smaller than this expected error then the change is unlikely to have much impact on the overall quality of funded research.
Basically, if you are just rolling dice anyways, I think this isn't a horrible place for this kind of investment (If that is the kind of investment the organization wants to make).
Obviously not. On the other hand, if black slaves were freed while white slaves were allowed to remain slaves that would indeed be racist discrimination. I guess you would argue otherwise?
My initial post was a bit inaccurate; it's not just Black researchers who would be favored, but anyone who fits the NIH's diversity criteria. In practice, this means "not White or Asian". Technically one can qualify as a White or Asian person by having 2 or more criteria of family disadvantage, but this is relatively rare.
For these kinds of things, I'm always waiting for someone with an Ancestry DNA kit to try and test them and see if they are willing to go far enough as to define what counts as various racial groups.
Given that society in general has no hard-line standard for that question, why should the NIH be expected to have one? Seems like an isolated demand for rigor.
Very few institutions are giving out money based on your race, and any that are, I'd ask for similar rigor. Mostly because I find the idea to be immoral.
"I think this 'floating city' proposal needs some hard numbers."
-"You don't expect society at large to justify every statement with hard numbers! Isolated demand for rigor!"
"Well, yeah, but most statements don't have the context of 'if we get this wrong, a vast amount of resources are misappropriated'..."
The last response I would expect at this point is "YEAH THAT'S TOTALLY ISOLATED OMG". Is it really? Isn't the entire point of the above response that it ISN'T isolated, that the same standard would be expected from any proposal that actually allocates resources to people on the criterion of race?
I think I've even read definitions of the term that specifically require that an I.D.f.R. must lack justifying details; didn't Scott's post about it note something similar? I dunno — in any case, it doesn't seem *isolated* here, at least.
While we're at it, we should adjust the quality scores given out by peer-review panels based on the genetic makeup of the reviewers.
I don't think it's fair that a professor who comes from a long line of misanthropic, skeptical curmudgeons should be allowed to pour cold water on a grant proposal with the same authority as an ordinary well-adjusted peer.
I just read the first notice and I saw nothing indicating that these grants would be awarded with lower scores than other applications. Am I missing something or is that an invention of critics?
It was a notice encouraging researchers to include their underprivileged background on their applications.
Grantmaking institutes already have the discretion to do things like that, because the NIH are formally committed to increasing diversity among researchers. (imho, correctly; we could get into a political argument, but the main benefit is the downstream effect whereby research lines relevant to specific health concerns of minorities get attention) This would have been one more method of making it explicit and taking some of the guesswork and arbitrariness out of it.
Of course, sometimes being explicit backfires, because some dissident panelists will under-score minority applications to counteract the pro-diversity policy. And so it goes, much as in the world at large.
Each NIH Institute has a certain amount of funding for each round of grants, and grant paylines help us allot that funding. These paylines are cutoff points for funding applications, and are typically based either on overall impact score or relative rank percentiles, driven primarily by peer review of the grant's scientific merit. Generally speaking, at NINDS if your percentile score is better than the payline, your grant will be paid unless there is some serious flaw; otherwise, it will not be funded. But we also have some flexibility to consider other factors and choose to fund applications that fell just beyond the payline, called “select pay.” That flexibility could be allowed, for example, because a project involves an under-funded area of research, or a strategically high priority research area. This is something pretty much every [NIH] institute has available to them. For example, we may give bridge awards to investigators without other significant lab support for whom we think sustaining their research program is important to our mission.
How does the new criteria ensure that the NINDS is bringing in more diverse representation and interests?
The category of diverse perspectives that strengthen the science is one of those areas where we would also consider applications that fall into the select pay zone. The new NOSI will help us to identify grants that bring in those diverse perspectives and inform, in a holistic manner, our funding decisions for those applications. As an agency of the federal government, we cannot make funding decisions based on race, gender or other identity classifications, but we are allowed to include diverse research perspectives as something that informs our consideration of meritorious applications that might not have met the payline. But I want to be clear we are also ensuring that the research is rigorous and that it aligns with the NINDS strategic objectives.]
This was from, to quote the second Science article, "Michelle Jones-London, chief of workplace diversity at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)".
Thanks, this pretty much shows what I think is just going to remain the ideological break that people are falling into here.
To me, what this says is
1. Lots of programs with these scores get funded already for a variety of reasons, so this is not funding something with a score too low to get funded otherwise, it's adding it to the already large category of reasons why something might get funded with that score.
2. They are not funding based on race but based on an empirical belief that broadening the breadth of perspectives and experiences of people in the field has actual benefits to the overall quality and advancement of the field.
By "empirical belief", I think you mean something like "a belief rooted in empirical observation", but I'd like to see that Orwellian-sounding phrase die a quick death before it spreads into the culture at large.
"1. Lots of programs with these scores get funded already for a variety of reasons, so this is not funding something with a score too low to get funded otherwise, it's adding it to the already large category of reasons why something might get funded with that score."
Well, specific proposals that would not otherwise get funded will get funded, because of racism.
"2. They are not funding based on race but based on an empirical belief that broadening the breadth of perspectives and experiences of people in the field has actual benefits to the overall quality and advancement of the field."
Well they want their racism to stand up to legal challenge, so they have to come up with a fig leaf. But since it is within a larger attempt to discriminate against white and male scientists, this seems pretty transparent.
If the notice was one favoring white and male applicants and the reason given was that minority scientists are subject to a lower bar for admission to college, graduate school, etc. and therefore likely to have lower performance, would you accept that?
I am in favor of this kind of, diversity increasing, thing. I don't actually know the details of this particular one and don't feel like engaging in an argument about it's merits.
However, if your grading system for has enough resolution, then by definition, including another factor as a positive, means accepting grants with lower scores. I commented earlier in the thread that if the predictive power of your scoring system is imperfect (it is) then that reduces this impact.
What I mean specifically here is that grants with these scores are already being accepted - the articles mentions studies that focus on questions the institute is interested in, or on currently underfunded topics. So it's not 'accepting lower scores', grants with scores these low are already being funded.
If you are not granting all proposals above a given score then that means the resolution (number of decimal points) of your scoring system is inadequate. If you are granting all proposals above a given score, then in granting proposals based on some non-scored factor means, by definition granting lower scored proposals.
It has been 20 years since The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language came out. It's remarkable how much uptake it has enjoyed in some communities and how little it has had in linguistics. If you've heard about or used it, what are your thoughts?
Consider this review from a co-author of *A comprehensive grammar of the English Language* (1985): "Every so often, there appears a book which is important enough to fill the reviewer with something like awe. Such a book may be a brilliant ground-breaking book such as Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures. A different but no less awesome production is the present book, whose strength lies more in being a consolidation and synthesis of existing linguistic theory and description. But to suggest that The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is backward-looking in any sense is misleading, as it also contains a great deal that is new, if not daringly provocative, in its reworking of the well-tilled territory of English grammar. The depth and richness of detail, as well as the breadth of coverage, are extraordinarily impressive, so that there is scarcely a topic that grammatical old-timers like myself cannot read without fresh insight and understanding."
I've used A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, which is based on CGEL. I think it's an excellent textbook; it's given me enough understanding of general features of grammar to be able to study another language. The descriptions are lucid and economical. Having said that I have nothing to compare it to other than the a priori rules people invoke when they see red over some perennial issue that turns up in English; invariably this is a low hanging fruit dispute about whether a word belongs to a particular lexical category.
I'm curious to know more about where it has enjoyed uptake and why it hasn't within linguistics?
I've used this as well, and it's fantastic. It helped me think about and make sense of English grammar in ways I hadn't before. I found it very useful and referred to it often when teaching English as a foreign language.
Brett, I didn't realise you were one of the authors of the latest edition of ASITEG! I look forward to buying it. Geoffrey Pullum told me about it earlier this year when I emailed him about some prescrptitivst foaming at the mouth over something I'd written.
From an email I got from a reader, in response to a discussion of a Chomsky (I would share his name but I'm unsure if he would be cool with it):
"The poverty of the stimulus argument says that there isn't possibly enough information to learn a grammar from the amount of speech children hear. This is true, and relevant; if we are supposed to emulate a language's grammar precisely, we cannot unless there is a dedicated substructure of the mind set up for it. But, as we realized theoretically in the 00s, and demonstrated empirically with GPT2 and 3, we don't need to; approximate learning of a grammar can be done with zero knowledge and a modest training corpus, and it asymptotically approaches perfect learning. This implies that the grammar of each person's "idiolect", the personal dialect reflecting how that one person uses language, is subtly different from every other speaker they know. Grammars are "never fully mapped", because there isn't a fact of the matter; many of the tiny intricacies will give different answers depending on who you ask, even if you're asking, say, identical triplets, who learned the language under conditions as uniform as you could ask for."
I hear this more and more and it may be relevant to Cambridge's project - you can't map a grammar because a grammar is emergent rather than fixed. But I'm not qualified to have a real opinion.
Your reader is right that each of us has an idiolect, but the variations in syntax within an adult population are typically tiny and extremely difficult to detect, while the similarities vastly outnumber the differences. A map of a grammar is going to be very useful despite such some change and individual variation in the same way that a land map will be despite tides, earthquakes, and road construction.
I think it's maybe a coastline-of-Britain sort of argument. There are a vast number of those tiny variations in syntax (as with pronunciation, vocabulary, semantics, and pragmatics) which are particular to a small group of speakers, either in a geographical area or in some other kind of affinity group: a community of practice, a social class, a religion, an ethnic group, an employer. These may have arisen as idiosyncrasies of a particular person's idiolect and then spread throughout the group, sometimes as shibboleths.
To give one particular example, in psychology research "high" and "low" are standardly used as adverbs to produce the comparatives of adjectives, resulting in constructions such as "the high nurturing group" and "low aggressive men were found to use...". In my idiolect, these are ungrammatical utterances (unless equivalent to "the nurturing high group" and "aggressive low men", which they are not), but plausibly a complete account of English grammar would include these novel comparative constructs, in the same way that it would include the habitual-aspect be-construction of AAVE.
But surely, GPT2 (let alone GPT3) doesn't suffer from a poverty of stimulus, it is based on a vast corpus of text, far more than any mortal human will ever consume. It doesn't seem tricky to figure out the rules of grammar from a GPT-2 sized training set.
I don't think GPT-2 and GPT-3 represent an empirical demonstration that approximate learning of a grammar can be done with a modest training corpus. Childhood language acquisition may, since even children suffering severe neglect usually acquire language successfully; a focused and competent teaching effort is evidently not needed in most cases for basic linguistic competence. But GPT-2 and GPT-3 are, by contrast, trained on enormous training corpora.
Chomsky's main target, as I understand it, was the (self-evidently absurd) behaviorist argument that people don't actually have minds, and were instead Markov-chain stochastic text generators with classical conditioning (reinforcement learning). By showing that at least some internal state was necessary to explain observed features of grammar, an arbitrarily large internal state in the case of a CFG, he destroyed the scientific plausibility of these fundamentalist forms of behaviorism.
(On reading _Atlas Shrugged_, incidentally I realize that these forms of behaviorism were also among Rand's targets; some of the ridiculous positions Rand's strawman villains take were real behaviorist tenets, the same tenets Chomsky was attacking.)
But I'm not sure if that's the poverty-of-the-stimulus argument?
One thing that's wrong with the "poverty of the stimulus argument" is that it ignores that language is an attempt to describe an existing external reality, so it needs to map onto that reality. If you give that "the brain has a Polish notation built into it", then much of early grammar falls out quickly as a description of external reality. And even amoung adults things that don't have obvious observables, like, say, ethics, tend to have radically different meanings. There's also a lot of pattern fitting that happens after the basic part of grammar is in place.
For this reason I assert that a system that really understands language will need to be emboddied. And for it to understand human languages, the body will need to react to the external world more or less the way human bodies do.
FWIW, I'm not an expert in the field, but I've thought about this stuff for (off and on) for decades.
My impression is that linguists are very happy with this work. But that is because it is the first ever work to treat the English language dispassionately as an object of linguistic analysis, much as Thai and Quechua and Hawai'ian have been analysed by Western linguists. As such, it doesn't have a lot to say about linguistics per se; from a linguist's perspective, it's just something that needed doing.
I learned of CGEL after Pullum referred to it several times on the Language Log. Although Pullum's posts often annoyed me, I was hugely impressed by the breadth and the meticulousness of CGEL. I don't know if there's anything like it for other languages (or English for that matter). The only other comprehensive descriptive grammar I've used is the Russian Грамматика-80, and it is not nearly as well-written, clear and comprehensive.
I've looked things up in particular chapters of CGEL perhaps a dozen times over the years, just when some interesting or dubious-looking construction in English held my interest.
Why do you think CGEL did not receive enough uptake in linguistics (not that I can tell one way or the other, not being a linguist)?
Why does a carbon tax, pegged at the cost to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, not just completely solve the climate change problem? You directly target the source of CO2, for example taxing coal, and let the rest trickle through the economy
There are a few subtleties that can be addressed.
1. Carbon taxes can be very regressive. We solve this by making sure that all proceeds from the tax are used to alleviate other taxes on the poor (for example making income tax more progressive by cutting it for lower income brackets).
2. Imported goods will miss this tax. To deal with this you need to tax an imported good by how much CO2 went into producing it that was not taxed at the source.
I like this solution because it is incredibly simple and easy for people to understand, seems fair, and seems price things correctly. I don't know why activists aren't pushing for it more.
They have, but it's a hard sell politically because the costs are so upfront (although a few countries have them). In the US, Washington state tried to do a carbon tax twice by referendum, and it failed both times - the first time would have been revenue-neutral, the second time would have paid for stuff.
One problem is that we don't know what the net externality from CO2 is. We don't even know its sign, although many people are sure they do.
The second problem is that the political mechanism is very unlikely to produce anything like optimal rules. I had an exchange with Greg Mankiw, an economist who supported carbon taxes, on this, pointing out that our best estimate of what would actually be done was the cap and trade bill that passed the House but died in the Senate. My side of the argument is on my blog, along with a link to Mankiw's:
"One problem is that we don't know what the net externality from CO2 is. We don't even know its sign, although many people are sure they do."
This is technically true, in the same sense that "we" don't know if evolution is real if you use the word "we" for a group including some creationists.
But all the people who study it seriously do in fact know the answer, and the fact that some intentionally ignorant and intentionally dishonest conservatarians are still trying to find excuses not to believe them doesn't mean that this isn't a deeply deceptive and misleading summary of the current state of knowledge.
I think the word 'net' was miscommunicated in this sentence.
I would agree that the greenhouse effect is almost certainly negative. But one of the externalities of CO2 is energy. When you account for the energy, it becomes harder to tell.
I suspect, from the forcefulness of your reply, that you think you're arguing against people who think warming will be good for the planet. (Even that is far more controversial than I think you suspect, Scott wrote an essay about deaths from the cold vs the heat just a few days ago and found that even that question was almost impossible to answer.)
I do, in fact, think that climate change might on net be beneficial. There are positive and negative externalities and the size of both is too uncertain to sign the sum. That was my (published) conclusion almost fifty years ago about population increase, which had about the same role then in public discussion that climate change does now. Then too, many people believed that everyone informed on the subject agreed. The predicted catastrophes didn't happen — indeed, the changes that occurred from then to now were in the opposite of the predicted direction — which makes me less impressed by the current consensus.
Defending my view would be a long argument. If you are actually curious, I have a considerable number of blog posts on the subject over the past fourteen years or so. This link should get you most of them — you can try other keywords for more:
Would you agree that warming, say, six degrees over 1000 years would be more positive than warming six degrees over 100 years?
I do agree that signing the sum is hard for the long-term effects from total warming; I think the effects from warming rate (i.e. climate refugees) are much more obviously negative.
That's the same mistake as saying that public education is justified because it makes people more productive. That's an argument for a subsidy only to the extent that the benefit of being educated isn't reflected in the wage the educated person gets.
He personally was unable to answer it. That doesn't make it almost impossible to answer. He particularly didn't seem to understand that cold temperatures induce fat loss and potentially lessen the risk of diabetes, for example.
We also don't know what the sign of the externalities are for enforcing U.S. laws, for joining WWII to stop Germany, or for forming NATO. Nonetheless, most people agree that the obvious medium term benefits suggest they are were the right things to do.
In this case the claimed benefits are in the very long-term, although a lot of the rhetoric obscures that. Some of the estimates show a net benefit for the first degree or so, becoming a net loss only later.
At present, every time some bad climate event happens it gets blamed on climate change, despite sea level rise being less than a foot so far, warming a little over one degree. Nobody says "we didn't have a bad cold wave this year, thanks to climate change." Nobody says "the glaciers haven't started south yet, thanks to climate change" — although in that case the anthropogenic climate change was in the distant past, at least if you accept Ruddiman's hypothesis.
For large temperature changes the medium term externalities are pretty clear.
I don't want to have a debate about it. I was just making an unserious reply to your unserious assertion that we don't know the sign of the externalities.
My assertion was not unserious — I have been arguing it on my blog from time to time for about fifteen years. It is the same assertion I made with regard to population increase nearly fifty years ago. We still don't know the sign of the externality from that but we know it could not have been nearly as negative as the orthodox opinion at the time held, because what has actually happened since then is the opposite of what that opinion predicted.
I don't know what you count as large temperature changes, but if the medium term is forty years the projected temperature change is a degree or so, possibly two.
A. It's pretty unpopular and hard to implement politically, and B. a lot of activists are not solely motivated by trying to solve the issue they're being active about as efficiently as possible.
In addition to the point about it being politically unpopular, there's the difficulty of finding out what price level is appropriate. Ideally, if you can set the price of carbon at the marginal social cost of marginal emissions, you can get the socially optimal set of emissions reductions. But the problem is that it's hard to figure out the marginal social cost of marginal emissions.
Additionally, I would guess that this marginal social cost changes depending on what the total level of emissions is (and perhaps on how other technologies change). So you might have to frequently update the price (higher or lower).
The idea is to peg it at the current cost of sucking out CO2 from the atmosphere. If someone figures out how to half that cost, then the tax will half.
Given the political motivations to find that cost high to fund pet programs or low to cut taxes, I'd guess the odds that it would wind up anywhere near the accurate level (let alone that it would quickly track changes in CO2 reduction costs) are extremely low.
I guess that this, i.e. immediately forcing net-zero emissions, would be prohibitively expensive.
However, setting the tax at any level would be more efficient to achieve some amount of reduction than achieving the same amount of reduction through the various ad-hoc rules we use today. Then gradually increase the tax until the desired reduction in net emissions is reached.
" Then gradually increase the tax until the desired reduction in net emissions is reached."
Why do you assume that there is a desired reduction in net emissions? If it turns out that your tax produces less reduction that's evidence that the cost of using less carbon is greater than you thought, which implies that the optimal amount of reduction is less than you thought.
What's the optimal death rate from traffic accidents? We can reduce it to zero by banning automobiles, but it doesn't follow that we should.
In both cases you are looking for the optimal balance between costs and benefits, whether of reducing traffic deaths or of reducing CO2 output.
that’s politically untenable. You aren’t targeting the greatest carbon users with a carbon tax anyway. Take flying.
In terms of flying a bbc report from 2019 showed the top 1% take 10% of flights, and the top 10% take 50% of flights in the previous year. 47% of people didn’t fly in 2018. although most would have flown at some stage.
The carbon costs of the prolific flyers are probably higher than this because the rich and business classes who fly frequently certainly fly long haul more often. Or fly private jets. It could be that the top 10% of flyers use 70% of carbon. These are the people least likely to be affected by a carbon tax.
A better solution towards carbon reduction for flying would be a voucher system.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is fungible; there's no benefit to targeting specific generators beyond their amount of generation. Also, vouchers are equivalent to quotas which are inherently less efficient at achieving a particular outcome than taxes/tariffs.
What does atmospheric carbon bring fungible have to do with what I posted? Who doubted it?
The second part of your statement is provided with proof (although it also states the obvious). Any economic proof wouldn’t matter here anyway since we are surely, trying to cause the greater polluters to desist, which isn’t the same as economic price mechanisms. Any carbon tax that stops the 47% of people who didn’t fly in that year from flying in that year would reduce 0% of carbon on that year.
A mechanism that stops the top 10% of flyers from taking 50% of flights would be useful, but carbon taxes will have little effect here.
That price assumes that the socially optimal amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (emitted by humans at least) is zero. While figuring out the actual value is hard, it is for sure not zero. That would cause problems in the opposite direction as fossil fuels would become overpriced instead of the current under priced situation.
Using fossil fuels is a bad idea. Period. If it's kept really limited, then it's not a real problem, but it hasn't been, and permanent carbon storage is a real problem. One of the "remove CO2 from the atmosphere" plans to offset it's costs by converting the CO2 into "natural gas". (I assume that means methane.) Then they plan on selling it as fuel. So that's not really not carbon removal, merely carbon recycling. Better than adding new stuff, but not optimal.
The "olivine beaches" that was mentioned above actually is a fairly permanent removal, but is slow. I don't trust plans to "pump the CO2 back down the well-head shaft", as those things can be expected to leak. (At least one of them claims that there's rock at the bottom which will absorb the CO2 in a chemical bond, but that's going to be hard to check.)
Better is to just stop using fossile fuels wherever possible. Then carbon capture can start making sense. (FWIW, it's my personal estimate that due to lag in various cycles, like absorbtion of heat AND CO2 by the oceans, we are already committed to a 2 degree rise in temperatures. And we may be committed to more, as the Arctic seems to be releasing its stored carbon both by fermenting under the remains of the permafrost and as massive forest fires, which no longer die out over the winter, but instead burn under the snow in a dried out layer of shed debries. ... Look up "zombie fires".)
What we can do now is minimize the future impact, by not making things worse.
Cheap, accessible energy is literally the reason for the first world today. We are slowly replacing it with better options in some places, but that will not be a complete replacement for some time. If you could wave a magic wand and replace every single fossil fuel with a renewable energy source tomorrow, overall welfare would be worse because energy prices and reliability would go down. Climate change is a real and serious problem, but access to cheap, reliable energy saves lives and improves QOL. We need to be shifting ourselves to a sustainable future as quickly as is reasonable, but "reasonable" does not mean "immediate 100% transformation". Everything has tradeoffs and energy is the same.
It doesn't actually need to be a complete replacement...but it needs to be net-negative. Yeah, this means lots of investment in solar, wind-power, even tidal-engines in a few places. And lots of additional storage facilities. That solar has gotten as cheap a coal, and cheaper if you need to build the plant, is really good news, but it's not sufficient.
I left out nuclear, because that one's got too many thorns in it. I really hope that the molten salt reactors prove out, and that they actually CAN process the "spent fuel rods" into power, as some claim. But there's a lot of proving that needs to be done. If we had been developing "advanced nuclear fission power plants" actively for the last few decades (developing, not building; I'm talking research and pilot plants) that we'd have grounds to throw nuclear into the mix, and perhaps it would be the best option. But we did what we did, so now it's solar, wind power, and a few other approaches in particular cases.
I'm all in favor of cheap power, but that should be almost orthogonal to the carbon cycle problems.
I feel like there's a problem with that formulation: isn't the cost of removingCO2 marginal, ie it gets more expensive to do the more you remove (because there's low-hanging fruit that only works in some places/etc)?
So, say that we need to remove 1000 tons of CO2 to meet our goal, and say that if I wanted to remove 1 ton of CO2 right now, it would cost me $100. But if I wanted to remove all 1000 tons, it would cost $500,000, because the last tons are really hard to get at.
If I charged everyone $100 per ton emitted, I'd only raise $100K, a fifth of what I'd need to solve the problem.
This seems unlikely, at least in the ranges you are talking about. Eventually you might reach a point where you had removed 50% of all CO2 from the atmosphere and thus you needed to pump 2x as much through your process. Until that point though you just need to pull it out at a rate (#/hr) low enough to allow the wind to cycle new air into the neighborhood.
If "removing CO2" literally meant "take air from the atmosphere, filter it, and release it without the CO2", this would be true, but I haven't heard of any carbon neutrality proposal that worked like that. If it was something like planting forests, or improving existing power plants, you'd run out of opportunities to do it much sooner than that.
You can't filter one gas from another but instead need a chemical process to extract it. A plant (or tree) is such a chemical process. I believe all CO2 extraction requires a fair amount of energy. In the case of plants it requires light.
If you are concerned about square footage of real estate, you could plant inside skyscrapers with artificial light, plants on every floor and fans to keep pushing CO2 laden air through. Obviously you would need clean energy to produce the light.
Biochar sequestration does exactly that (use fast-growing plants to take CO2 from the air, harvest and pyrolyze the plants to turn them into charcoal, bury the charcoal, lather, rinse, repeat). Olivine sequestration can do exactly that, pulling CO2 from the air and turning it into carbonate rock, which is then buried). And there are brute-force physiochemical approaches that have been proposed, though they are probably more expensive.
I've pointed this out in the past as a problem with carbon offsets. Al Gore can claim that he makes lots of CO2 and buys enough carbon offsets to prevent the damage, because not a lot of people buy carbon offsets and so he's getting the cheap ones at the top of the heap. This doesn't generalize--if everyone followed his example, carbon offsets would get much more expensive.
You certainly don't want to remove *all* the CO2 from the atmosphere, as all the green plants would die, which would be a bad thing. Current CO2 levels are about 0.042% and pre-industrial levels according to the most skeptical estimate are about 0.028%. So if you wanted to return the Earth to pre-industrial levels you'd want to remove about 1/3 of what's there now.
Kenny, why would we care about the optimal price? Presently, in the U.S. the government is funding clean energy research (mostly solar). This has largely brought solar and wind to parity prices with carbon based energy.
In my mind, a carbon tax is just a way to accomplish this same, leveling of the playing field, without the government explicitly paying and without the delay while you wait for technology to develop. It is ok for the tax to be too large, so long as the proceeds are used to cushion it's impact.
From the perspective I'm thinking of, there's no particular interest in achieving parity of prices. What you want is for each thing to be priced at the level that equals the sum of the harms it causes others minus benefits to others, together with the opportunity cost of whatever resources were used in producing that thing. At that price level, people will burn fossil fuels only when the good they can produce by doing so is greater than the harms they cause by doing so, and similarly for operating solar panels or windmills or whatever. If every price reaches these values, then an economy full of people who do things only when they are willing to pay the price will end up with the greatest total welfare of all people. For a certain kind of utilitarian, it is axiomatic that this is optimal, and that any deviation from it will be a problem (though some will be worse than others).
Under standard pure market pricing, prices reflect the opportunity costs, but they don't reflect the harms or benefits they cause anyone other than the two parties to the transaction. Thus you tend to get an oversupply of things that cause net harms to others (like burning fossil fuels) and an undersupply of things that cause net benefits to others (like shade trees over the sidewalk and well-educated voters and so on).
Price parity between fossil fuels and alternatives *might* be the socially optimal price - but it probably won't precisely be, and so would still result in either an oversupply or undersupply (perhaps not as bad an oversupply as the level we have with current prices).
If the price is too large, then we get an undersupply, in the sense that there are some situations where the benefit to people of some marginal additional fossil fuel use (whether in economic development of some low-income country or whatever) is greater than the harms to the environment, and yet we aren't doing it.
That only solves the problem if you actually use the proceeds of the tax to fund carbon removal. So you can't sell it as a revenue neutral change. Any changes to make income tax more or less progressive are a policy conversation to have on its own merits, but orthogonal to a carbon tax whose proceeds are used to build and operate enough carbon removal to reach net zero.
You don't actually need to use the proceeds of the tax to fund carbon removal, unless the goal is to get immediate net zero carbon emissions. If the goal is rather to get the maximum social welfare (where some things that increase social welfare on net do still result in additional carbon emissions) then all that matters is that the price on carbon emissions be higher than the cost to social welfare of the carbon emissions. The money doesn't need to be spent on emissions reductions in order to get optimal social welfare - it just needs to be the case that the only net emissions that exist are coming from activities whose social welfare gains are greater than the welfare cost of the emissions, and the tax ensures that these are the only ones that are profitable. The tax proceeds can then just be rebated to everyone uniformly, or weighted towards the poor, or spent on anything that increases social welfare.
The usual way it is used in economics, where it is the sum total of well-being. Not the way it is usually used in political discussions, where it refers to a particular class of government institutions and payments.
Ok. That still doesn’t clarify much about how we estimate “social welfare gains that are greater than the welfare costs of the emissions”. Anyway as I argue in other posts this is political suicide. A pricing mechanism will in many cases end post war prosperity for the middle incomes but keep the rich in luxury.
I think it is difficult or impossible to get a precise estimate of the social welfare impacts of carbon emissions, which is one very big problem with trying to use a carbon tax. The fact that carbon taxes are extremely unpopular is, unfortunately, also a big problem.
There's no reason why a pricing mechanism would end postwar prosperity for middle incomes, provided that the carbon taxes are rebated universally, or to the lower income brackets.
People respond to incentives. If you raise the price of emitting carbon, people will do less of that.
If you insist that any policy to address climate change solve 100% of the problem, you will find no solutions which fit that criteria. Incrementalism is key.
This is exactly what Citizens Climate Lobby advocates and has done so for years. They are very active but aren't in the news as much as the Sunrise Movement.
Because it becomes immediately politicized. In Canada everyone loves piling onto the Alberts oil sands - but miraculously /s the auto industry in Ontario and the aircraft industry in Quebec are exempt. That is because the federal government in Canada is effectively elected by Ontario and Quebec. Climate change isn’t about the climate - it is about Big Green and it’s enablers empowering themselves. If the earth stopped cooling - and that was widely reported in the media - they would just move on to some other end of days bullshit.
Yeah I not totally sold on a carbon tax, but if I were to implement one I would set a quantity not a price by selling X tons of emissions rights per year with X decreasing over time and then and then rebating the entire proceeds on an equal basis to every citizen.
Taxing coal sounds great, but what about low-income families whose home heating source is coal? They end up freezing in the winter while the big concerns can switch to something else, pay off fines/carbon offsets, or lobby government to give them exceptions.
There's been a successful campaign in Ireland to move to smokeless coal/get rid of coal fires in homes altogether, but that came via people moving to home heating via oil. Now oil is problematic around carbon, what next? Electricity? But we've seen large price rises due to problems with supply there. When the public gets hit in the pocket, or ends up shivering in the cold, because they can't afford home heating - then the top-down policy initiatives don't sound so good.
Carbon emitting consumptions becomes more expensive relative to other consumption encouraging people to substitute away from carbon intensive consumption.
People are still incentivized to change their behavior because the amount of UBI doesn't depend on the amount of carbon you use (it only depends on the average over the whole population) whereas the tax does depend on the amount of carbon you use.
This is why the sorts of proposals that everyone in the comments here are giving usually involve collecting a tax on these fuels, and then rebating all of the money collected in a way that is evenly divided, either among all people, or among the lowest income people.
(Also, are there really still people in Ireland heating their homes with indoor coal?!)
Yes, although it’s been smokeless for years. Why would you not use a chimney? My parents only use it at Christmas though, for decorative purposes.
Ireland has your proposal already - a winter fuel allowance. It was increased this year. Nobody wants the old and poor to freeze. This means that the energy use stays the same.
Sure, but if the whole idea of a carbon tax and rebate is "push the power generation companies to use green sources of energy generation, give the customers the rebate to cover the cost of increase in their heating bill", then that still doesn't cover "I heat my home with an open fire, now I have to change everything over to electric heating" which is a big enough cost if you're on an old age pension or low income.
Yes. I agree with that. It doesn’t even encourage the energy plants to stop producing coal from their coal plants because that’s what the plant does. And as I said before we can’t, as consumers, pick our energy sources.
Energy providers can be encouraged with carrot, not stick, to move to wind. That’s happening, if the wind blows then wind takes priority. Wind farms are given cheaper loans and subsidies.
Coal plants will be shut down when there’s an equivalent stable base load.
Grants can be given to upgrade houses. A carbon tax on its own would be a disaster.
It’s also not likely to even change behaviour in heating a house that much. I’m keeping the heat on this winter like it was last year because to don’t want to freeze to death. The 20% extra that costs me will be saved elsewhere.
For all kinds of reasons carbon taxes are weak ways to police carbon usage, on their own.
-"we can’t, as consumers, pick our energy sources"
Some people somewhere decide on what energy sources to build. Yes, once they have built a coal plant then that plant cannot be used for anything other than coal. But if coal is taxed then they will be incentivized to build other types of plants. It doesn't matter much whether the tax is applied at the consumer or the producer level, because the producer can always pass the cost on to the consumer.
It doesn't mean that energy use stays the same unless all energy is currently being used to prevent the old and poor from freezing. If there are *any* other sources of carbon emissions that are at *all* price sensitive, then the carbon price will reduce total emissions, even if a rebate means the old and poor generate just as much carbon emissions.
I mean that's Econ 101, sure. In reality when talking about electricity the prices for consuming electricity vary by company but not by fuel mix.
When a fuel becomes expensive, as gas has become expensive in Europe, then the price is applied by the electricity companies regardless of what their fuel input is.
I imagine electricity generation is one that tends to react more slowly to prices, since a lot of the changes involve changing the generators, rather than changing total use of electricity. But a carbon tax whose value is known years in advance (and perhaps whose price phases in slowly over several years) is the sort of thing that gives utilities the incentive to make the plans needed to change their mix of generators.
There aren't a lot of them here, but eastern US, still see a fair number of coal-heated homes. A good friend of mine still uses one as well. There's a distinct smell in the air when they are burning.
That's why the leading proposal includes not a tax rebate, but a flat dividend for all Americans, regardless of where they get their energy from (i.e. the revenue turns into a UBI). Since UBI is inherently progressive, it balances out the regressive aspect of the carbon tax, while still making cleaner energy cheaper & more incentivized.
I’m still confused -,if the flat dividend covers the tax it will have no effect at all. If carbon taxes add $500 to the cost of heating, flying or driving on average then giving people $500 won’t affect behaviour.
If you are saying that above middle income people will be penalised more than $500 because they use more carbon ( more flying, bigger houses to hear, bigger cars etc) and the $500 won’t help compensate so much, you still have a regressive tax. Somewhere up the income level carbon taxes, unless really really high, won’t matter. I don’t think doubling the cost of flying by raising carbon costs on fuel will affect a billionaire with a private jet, and it won’t affect most frequent flyers either.
That’s the first time you mentioned making cleaner energy cheaper. But where I live I can see that the grid is providing 70% renewables today and that won’t be reflected in my bill. In fact my bill has increased by 20% this year even as wind power increases in the mix.
And of course I don’t really get to control where the electrons come from, the wind is blowing or it isn’t.
Still there might be more political support for more wind farms if the public could be convinced that electricity prices might come down because of renewables. One way to do that would be for governments to allow different prices for different fuel mixes.
The input costs here that are forcing the providers to increase prices are driven by gas shortages, if the retail unit prices were higher for gas, and lower for wind the public might come aboard more in renewables. And that reflects wholesale costs.
As it stands the winter could be very windy, or not windy and the energy providers can make off like bandits in the first scenario.
There’s very little joined up thinking in any of this.
I think the piece you're missing is that the tax is mainly meant to incentivize *energy companies* to reduce their carbon emissions, or alternatively punish fossil fuel companies and reward renewable energy companies.
Sure, the tax will get passed on to the consumer, and the dividend is meant to mitigate that. And it's true that consumers don't typically have much choice in where they get their energy from, but sometimes they have some choice, and this will make it a better deal more often to go with the renewable option.
I’m not missing that. If you deincentivise someone (which your proposal seems to do) then it can’t affect a coal burning electricity plant. The grid either needs that energy or it doesn’t. The plant can’t magically become a wind power plant. And the user has no choice either.
So no one has any choices, we're all just doomed to keep on feeding the grid with dirty energy till we suffocate on the air we breathe, huh?
It's true that the tax wouldn't by itself set up better options for energy companies and consumers. The point is rather to create a more favorable environment for green energy initiatives. It does this by increasing the marginal cost of carbon.
If you increase the price of fuel and give people cash to compensate, why wouldn't they economise on fuel and keep some of the cash for other purposes?
Yes with a rebate - even if you end up paying the same amount on net with the rebate (or even less!), the marginal cost of using more "dirty" energy (and reward for using less) goes up. This pushes people, and more importantly businesses, to be more energy-efficient and switch to cleaner energy sources if possible.
Plus it won't feel like nothing's changed to the consumer - their energy bill won't stay the same, it'll shoot up, and then they'll separately get this check in the mail. People will still want to find a way to reduce the energy bill so they can enjoy more of the check.
People will want to stay warm. If they get money from the government that can keep them warm and heating costs have gone up then they will use the money to heat the house. Plenty of studies show that’s a priority ahead of everything else except food (except in dysfunctional situations where the extra money is spent on drink etc).
As for switching to cleaner suppliers that only works if the price of carbon free energy is cheaper. A carbon tax on coal will, on its own, just percolate to the consumer in his bill. Electrons are fungible. If your provider needs the electrons produced by a coal plant they will use them. There’s no billing system that I know of that charges less per unit depending on the fuel mix that billing period.
What do you mean by "needs the electrons produced by a coal plant"? If alternative energy is available then the provider can use that instead, and as long as the price of alternative energy is less than price of coal + the tax, it will be worth it for them to do so.
Carbon tax combined with subsidies for the poor does change the incentives significantly - e.g. with the home heating example, if the fuel cost doubles but you get extra money to cover that, it's *not* the same as suddenly the tradeoffs for various carbon-reducing mechanisms (different types of heating, more efficient heaters, better insulation, smaller heatable space) become much more attractive.
I don't think that is the idea. I think it's just to raise the money needed to undo the negative externalities. If a billionaire wants to burn coal to heat an empty house and then burn more coal to cool it down again, but he pays the tax to cover the cost of removing all that CO2 from the atmosphere, then we're happy with that.
So what’s happening with a carbon tax is that the billionaire can “burn lots of coal” ( fly a private jet) which is many multiples of the cost of “burning small amounts of coal” (flying short haul) because he can afford it. The short haul flyer is priced out.
The rebates only balance out over the entire population, not over individuals. So an individual still has incentive to reduce consumption, because then their tax will be smaller but their rebate will be (almost) the same (because it is averaged over the entire population).
If you believe in capitalism, then you have to believe that a second company will come along and eat the coal power companies lunch if it fails to produce clean energy under these conditions(massively increased profits).
There is this huge population of customers out there paying 3x the production cost for coal electricity(2x is refunded tax 1x is actual cost). If you can produce solar electricity for 2x the cost of coal then 100% of the customers will switch because they can keep that extra money.
Capitalism is what got us into this mess. And carbon taxes are government interference, so if they work at all it won’t be capitalism.
I’ve explained more than once that the customer doesn’t, in any billing system I know of, get a rebate for the provider using cheaper fuel in the mix. If it’s a windy month, or a calm month the cost is the same.
Without that there’s no demand side incentives. Supply side incentives exist to move to cheaper renewable fuel (ie the taxes are lower) but they tend as much to depend on the subsidies for renewable producers to build out the solar or wind plants to begin with. If we had left it up to capitalism we’d be using oil, gas and coal until they ran out.
It's capitalism because you apply an incentive and let the market adjust. It is a Right wing solution to the climate change problem in the same way that Obama Care was a Right wing solution (Heritage Foundation) to the health care problem.
I don't see how you are not understanding. The government collects a tax from carbon based energy suppliers. Let's say it is enough to triple the cost of carbon based energy. The refund the collected taxes to users of energy (possibly just a progressively scaled credit to all people in the US). The refunded money ensures that nobody freezes to death while the market adjusts.
Now, coal and gas powered companies can continue to sell energy but that energy costs 3x as much as before (the companies take no additional profit and pay their taxes). There is now a massive opportunity for any technology to produce clean energy at any cost up to 3x the competitive cost previously.
This is very similar to the government paying the solar/wind companies to produce energy (but market based).
In general, at least in the US, there's zero political will to do anything to reduce externalities, as I'm reminded every time some bot abuses my phone number for purposes of advertising. This effective denial-of-service attack is good for business, and what's good for business is good for (political) America. Those of us who exist to buy the products and work the unpleasant, less renumerative jobs are welcome to get stuffed. We aren't politicians (unless we're exploited campaign flunkies with no policy input) and we generally can't afford lobbyists or the kind of huge campaign contributions that buy access to political ears.
Like a lot of policies: yes, if we actually implemented a pure, hard-nosed version of the policy without exceptions or loopholes or carve-outs, and if it was enforced diligently and vigilantly and evenly, and no one was able to evade it on a large scale, then yes, it would largely solve the problem.
But few policies survive implementation in such a strong form, so it's good to diversify our solutions and follow many paths at once.
I searched for cost of CO2 removal. Numbers are all over the place... but currently ~$100 to $600 per ton. A gallon of gas makes about 20 lbs of CO2, so 100 gallons of gas makes a ton of CO2. Your proposed tax would add something between $1 to $6 per gallon of gas.
You seem to be considering a local carbon tax rather than a global carbon tax. Plausibly such a local carbon tax would push some economic activity outside its ambit. For example, steel is relatively carbon-intensive, so maybe if you imposed it in the US Caterpillar would move its bulldozer manufacturing and GE Transportation would move its locomotive manufacturing to Mexico. Caterpillar bulldozers and GE locomotives imported into the US from Mexico would still be taxed on the carbon emissions from making the steel that went into them (assuming USMCA is abrogated in order to impose your proposed tax), but most Caterpillar equipment is sold outside the US. (Maybe GE is globally competitive too, but I'm less sure of that.)
The result would be that, among other things, earthmoving equipment and railway transportation would be more expensive inside the US, which means that factories and supply chains inside the US would be more expensive. This, in turn, would gradually increase the price of goods manufactured inside the US. While you could tax imported goods on the carbon implied by their steel content, there's no remotely plausible way to tax imported goods on the untaxed carbon footprint of the earthmoving equipment used to build the factories they were manufactured in or the untaxed carbon footprint of locomotives used to ship the raw materials for those goods around.
Of course, it's possible that these effects are too small to matter much because the tax would be very small, but I think it's likely that they would be very significant for certain goods.
If the effects are very small, how would they plausible motivate behaviors? My understanding of carbon taxes is that they are only intended to change behavior. If they are too small to do that, then they aren't effective at all.
You could imagine a case where the carbon tax would add 1% to the price of a bulldozer, but 10% to the price of a liter of gasoline; in that case it would motivate even end-user behaviors to conserve gasoline, but probably not to relocate bulldozer production to Mexico.
Also, though, the effects on other parts of the value chain might be much larger. Spitballing, maybe a bulldozer costs US$200k and weighs 40 tonnes. Maybe it contains 30 tonnes of steel, costing US$60k, but that steel accounts for essentially all of its carbon footprint, US$2k out of those US$60k, which is 3% of the cost of the steel, big enough to make the difference between profit and loss for the steel mill, or maybe to get Caterpillar to switch to recycled steel from a minimill instead of virgin blast-furnace steel. 3% might be an incentive big enough for the steel mill to maybe gamble on these newfangled hydrogen reduction processes and see if they can solve the embrittlement problem.
There might be other things in the bulldozer's value chain (food web?) whose carbon footprint accounts for an even higher fraction of their price, and perhaps their carbon footprint can be reduced more easily. Maybe that the arc-welding used to build the bulldozer frame gets most of its cost from its electrical energy use, and maybe the carbon tax doubles the cost of coal power. Buying that energy from a solar farm instead of a coal plant is as easy as submitting a web form to your power distributor, if it'll save you money. The cost of the bulldozer won't go down detectably but the guy in charge of purchasing energy at the plant might get a nice bonus.
The benefit of markets is that it multiplies this kind of decision-making power by 7 billion.
I would say there are a few ones. First off is the one on merits vs cap and trade. A carbon makes the polluters pay for the cost of the externalities, but in most schemes (especially with some sort of UBI rebate) it doesn’t do much to limit total pollution. If you’re one of the people who believes that our children will only see the ashen remains of trees if we don’t cut our emissions in half within 10 years, then a tax isn’t enough. And while serious researchers may not lend credence to that morbid future, I think enough of the donating base for climate change has such concerns to draw off lobbying for climate change.
Secondly, in America at least, having a politician tax you more is frowned upon. If you’re on the right you probably want everyone’s taxes to go down, and if you’re on the left you probably want to tax the uber-rich and corporations. But one thing both sides can usually agree on is that they don’t want to be taxed. And the carbon tax would effect enough constituents that I suspect that puts a chilling effect on it.
There's not really a reason to believe that the cost to society of one additional unit of CO2 in the atmosphere is equal to the cost of removing one unit of CO2 from the atmosphere. If I understand correctly, this would be the case if there were an efficient market of CO2 emission and removal, but since the costs/benefits are basically entirely externalities, there is no such thing. Since there's been a lot of optimization pressure on carbon-producing industries and very little optimization pressure on carbon removal, I suspect that the latter is overpriced. Therefore, your proposed tax may be far too high. (However, it's also possible, say if you think that climate change is a significant X-risk, that your tax would be far too *low*.)
I found out recently that Halloween comes from All Hallows Eve, which itself is part of a three-day holiday from the Early Middle Ages that celebrated the dead (it's also the inspiration for Day of the Dead in Mexico). Amusingly enough, Christmas used to be more like it - the Christmas equivalent of going door to door asking for treats was called "Wassailing", and the early 19th century push to reshape Christmas into a more family friendly festival was in part a response to Christmas in the city being a rowdy affair with wassailing and drinking.
I'm thinking the reason Day of the Dead isn't a bigger holiday in the US is because we already have Memorial Day. Plus Americans just don't seem to do Two-Day Holidays besides Black Friday after Thanksgiving.
I think we often treat Veterans Day and Memorial Day as two copies of the same holiday (though only Memorial Day gets barbecues). And notably, Veterans Day is just a week and a half past Day of the Dead/All Souls Day.
Colonial Boston celebrated their wassailing/trick-or-treat/mandatory drunken redistribution day on Guy Fawkes' Day, in which the drunken guests demanding figgy pudding or what have you also burned a big pope in effigy. I suspect but cannot confirm that this evolved out of people going "I want to do all the fun Christmas stuff, but Puritans say Christmas is too Catholic, so let's do it on the most impeccably anti-Catholic holiday around."
"Christmas is too Catholic so no fun" by the Puritans and Calvinists/Presbyterians meant that ironically, the big end of year celebration in Scotland was moved to a pagan (in origin) festival, Hogmanay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogmanay
As well as traditions of Mummers, which comes more from the English side and is celebrated up North), there is the St. Stephen's Day (day after Christmas Day) custom of "going on the wren": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Day
Like Hallowe'en, children and adults would dress up, go from house to house to sing and dance and collect goodies and money.
There's also the Straw Boys, which are more in the south-west and west of the country, and are more elaborate costumes made of straw:
I'm not sure which North you mean. Philadelphia has a very lively Mummers tradition-- it isn't about collecting candy, it's about adults with complex costumes and big competitive displays.
Fun fact: All Hallows Day is a public holiday in Bavaria (Germany) and presumably some other places I haven't bother looking up. (I know this because I work in Bavaria, but I *live* in Schleswig-Holstein, so I have tomorrow off, but all the shops are open for me. Convenient!)
XD! Yep. I'm glad we're working from home at the moment. I'm moving at the end of November. No more public holiday cheat codes for me then, alas! (Well, in all fairness, I do actually intend to visit Schleswig-Holstein frequently if I can arrange it, with work from home arrangements for week chunks -- because getting from work to home takes about a day of travelling, so "just visit over the weekend" is basically not feasible.)
Some of France, too. We got stuck in Crozes-Hermitage (yes, the wine region) on Nov. 1 and the only thing open was a small cafe. Fortunately we were on a cruise so we didn't have to find dinner, but lunch was a pizza and some local wine :-)
Memorial Day and Halloween have nothing to do each other. Halloween was a result of Catholic immigration, especially Irish. Memorial Day was due to the Civil War and was originally explicitly a political holiday. Half the country celebrated a version remembering the Confederacy, half the Union. It was only turned into a generic holiday in the late 19th/20th century through a complicated political process.
Also, back when wassailing was a thing Christmas wasn't as big a day. Epiphany and Epiphany Eve (also called Twelfth Night) was the big deal. Twelfth Night was the big day for wassailing and the like, though there were some Christmas celebrations.
They still have the tradition of mummers in Newfoundland at Christmas where people dress up in costume and masks and go door to door asking treats. The hosts have to guesss who they are.
Halloween is cultural appropriation. First, because we are appropriating it from the English, and second because they appropriated it from the Irish who called it Samhain.
Much of Europe has appropriated American Halloween during the last few decades, though I think "cultural imperialism" is a more common term than "cultural appropriation" when US culture is the source.
American Hallowe'en is a very different beast from traditional Irish Hallowe'en, which has been supplanted by its transatlantic successor. I think Hallowe'en as it is now celebrated in societies which never before had it (including European countries) is a product of general American cultural export. You see it in movies and on TV, you want to copy that too. Native customs are too old-fashioned, associated with the boring past and being rural and backwards. You want the brightly coloured, fun, modern celebrations you see coming from America!
Since we now too have "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" sales, I am half-expecting us to start celebrating Thanksgiving as well within a few more years.
This National Museum of Ireland video on Hallowe'en is *terrible* (honestly, the way she mangles "the haloed/hallowed ones" and seemingly has no idea that "hallowed" means "blessed") but it's something about it, at least. She doesn't mention that the home-made masks were called 'face fiddles' (half-English from "aghaidh fidil" or "false face") and people used to resort to such primitive methods as blacking the face with burned cork but eh, about what I'd expect:
I kinda feel like things will have gotten where they really need to go when it becomes impossible to tell the difference between cultural imperialism and cultural appropriation 😄
A Samhein-like festival was celebrated by Celts across Europe before the Romans (and Germanic tribes) rolled over them. And don't tell Mexicans this, but Celts in Spain may have indirectly influenced the way they celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico—anthropologists have noted some striking similarities between the two—so, from Iberian Celts to Roman Spanish to Christian Spanish who colonized Mexico but who also acquired their indigenous traditions. I love the idea of a Celto-Aztec hybrid holiday!
The English haven’t celebrated it until recently - because of American influence. There’s always a column or two bemoaning it’s arrival to the “U.K.”, but it’s been celebrated for centuries in the Celtic parts.
By the way, Halloween is a bonfire day in Ireland.
I remember as a kid in Germany (which did not celebrate Halloween as such except on American bases -- one of which I visited, and with an American bedsheet I managed to score a quantity of candy I would never before have dreamed of!) we celebrated All Hallows by the less raucous method of praying with a rosary in order to earn time-off from purgatory for our deceased ancestors.
Memorial Day in the US isn't especially about the dead even if it's supposed to be. I think Day of the Dead is gradually infiltrating the US. Partly because there are more Hispanic people and partly because it's a cool holiday. The movie Coco is also a possible influence, and I wouldn't be surprised if it has some influence on customs in Mexico.
Because the Southwest of the USA used to be Mexico, it is not just a gradual infiltration, it has been part of (part of) USA culture for over a hundred years. My niece painted some nice calaveras (skulls) in San Antonio, Texas:
In the Netherlands, it seems that the festival where children go door to door asking for treats is St. Martin's Day (November 11). However, this is more of a thing in the Protestant north of the country, because in the Catholic south November 11 is the traditional start of the Carnival season.
This means that Halloween (which is an American import) seems to be more popular in the south where there isn't an existing similar festival for it to compete with.
People who got introduced to Effective Altruism a couple of years ago, and who have been seriously involved for some time: how do you feel about the trends within the movement? How credible do various organizations and cause areas seem to you now? What do you think about EAs in general? How do you envision the most likely future of EA in 5-10 years? How has the involvement changed your attitude, fundamental values, beliefs, and priorities?
Uhh I haven't noticed much in the way of trends but what I have noticed seems... good. Probably I'm not involved enough to notice as much as I should. I have a day job.
I believed in donating 10% before joining EA/GWWC, but it has focused me toward giving to the most effective charities. Except I still don't make enough time for analysis, so I take shortcuts, and in particular: donating to things that other EAs think are effective, that also seem plausibly effective to me.
I don't think EA itself changed my beliefs or terminal values, but since I discovered it after leaving my religion, EA and rationalism may have influenced some of my post-religion beliefs.
Wait, there is one thing: EA views on animal suffering influenced me. I became a reducetarian.
I've been following reactions to Dave Chappelle's latest special, The Closer, pretty closely. I'm a big fan of stand up in general and Dave is my favorite comedian. My best friend, also happens to be trans, and she, like a lot of progressives, believes Dave is transphobic. While I've seen plenty of responses to The Closer from people on both sides of the argument, I have failed to find anyone who seems genuinely interested in convincing those with whom they disagree. There is an abundance of name calling going both ways here, and seemingly very little interest in persuasion.
So my question is: How would you go about convincing someone that a cis person who makes jokes about trans people isn't necessarily transphobic/bigoted etc? More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?
If you disagree with me on this, you are welcome to try and change my mind, but I'm not particularly interested in debating that point here, and would prefer you shoot me an email at emwjazz@gmail.com if you'd like to discuss that instead.
> More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?
I think you should have hard data on jokes not increasing bullying, crimes, discrimination. If you don't have that, it's going to be hard to convince them because they will be right by default in a way.
I don't think that's true at all. I'm fairly certain that some people would change their minds depending on the data. Maybe they are not a majority, but they still exist. And if the data confirms that jokes increase bullying, crimes, discrimination, why would you want people to stop being outraged by that?
> You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into.
Why do people keep saying this? Surely I can't be the only person who has had the experience of having an emotional reaction to something, then either stopped to consider it or had something I was overlooking pointed out to me and changed my mind.
If anything, I'd expect reasoning oneself out of a conclusion one didn't reason ones way into would describe a sizable fraction of all reasoning that gets done.
While I recognise the experience you describe, I think most people would say that from an external perspective causative bit is whatever calmed you down to let you use reason over emotion - once someone is calm you often don't need to add any additional info or reasoning beyond what they themselves come up with, but getting someone calm enough to think in the first place can be challenging and is fundamentally an emotional task, not helped much by facts.
I'll also note that most anyone commenting here is likely to be much more biased towards reason than the average member of the general population, though obviously I don't know you personally.
> And in the unlikely event that such data exists, why should I trust the people who are collating -- given that just about every scientific institution is all-in on social justice advocacy being more important than sober pursuit of the truth?
If that's what you think we can't really talk about anything, there's no point.
I mean, at a very high level, different cultures have different beliefs and norms -some cultures are more or less racist, transphobic, sexist, etc. than others. Since a genetic explanation for those differences is a non-starter - kids raised in a different culture from their biological parents adopt that culture's norms - the causal factor must be cultural.
Sure, it's not like we can say exactly what percent of those cultural differences are caused by a particular set of jokes, or a particular book written by an elite, or the particular platform of a particular political party, or whatever. But all of that is a part of the same cultural milieu that we know causally produces those cultural differences, so it's not weird to assume that each has at least some contribution to make to the whole.
>some cultures are more or less racist, transphobic, sexist, etc. than others. Since a genetic explanation for those differences is a non-starter - kids raised in a different culture from their biological parents adopt that culture's norms<
Wait, what? How do we know it's a non-starter? I'm not an expert on this, but I'm given to understand that personality differences between individuals (including things like homophobia, as well as political leanings) are partly genetic, so why couldn't it be the same between cultures? E.g. say, people from group A have a greater genetic tendency towards homophobia than people from group B, *and* group A has a strongly homophobic culture while group B has a much more gay-accepting culture. And then, if children from group A are adopted by adults from group B, they are *shifted towards* group B's more gay-accepting culture than they would have been if raised by group A adults, but *on average* they are still more homophobic than group B children raised by group B adults.
I'm not saying that that necessarily *is* the case in any given circumstance; I just don't understand what rules it out a priori strongly enough to call it a 'non-starter'.
I think this misunderstands the average person's relationship with data in an unfair way.
While I would agree that the average person gets sucked into opinions largely by emotional appeals from elites and by the consensus of their 'side', I think their willingness to that that is based on an underlying belief that their elites and their 'side' is right on the data, and that the data would support their beliefs if they bothered to look it up and were competent to understand it.
I think for the average person - maybe not the very-online-zealot, but most people - if you could get them to coherently express 'what data must be true for your belief to be true', and then truly convince them that the data says the opposite, they would feel a strong impetus to reform their belief.
Right. Presumably someone who is trans has salient recent memory of being ostracised to some extent for being trans, and it is reasonable to worry that if becomes ok in the mainstream to make fun of trans people in a comedic way then the ostracism will come back. I think in response to the OP you should try to listen to what your friend is upset about. Lots of people just blindly follow the media/"moloch" and get scanalized about "the right things". I think this describes a lot of the reaction to the Closer. If that's the case for your friend, better to not engage until the media hype moves on to the next outrage. However if your friend is at least partially afraid of this contributing to bullying and ostracism or some other defensible reason, you should engage with their strongest argument, show you understand it, and either leave it at that or try to explain your counterargument (for me this would be something to do with how humor is important and societal holy cows are dangerous)
Even before ostracisation, constant "jokes" are really tiring, especially when people don't understand when you tell them to stop, or don't understand how you could be offended by a joke. Receiving one joke a week is not the same thing as receiving multiple jokes a day. the.jazzhole also seem already convinced that their point of view is the right one ("So my question is: How would you go about convincing someone that a cis person who makes jokes about trans people isn't necessarily transphobic/bigoted etc? More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?"), which isn't a great way to start a conversation.
Even one joke a week can be irritating if it's always the same obvious joke. My context is medieval cooking so not as touchy as trans issues, but still annoying.
yeah, especially since transphobes have had like one joke - 'I identify as an attack helicopter' - for about 15 years now, and every trans person has probably heard it about 10,000 times. It's just hack comedy and unoriginal, if nothing else.
I'll take your word about the attack helicopter, but wouldn't have been confident of it before, given stories of googlers seriously identifying as "expansive ornate buildings" and "yellow-scaled wingless dragonkin":
As a more, uh... ahem, moderate trans supporter, it's actually a pretty funny joke that can be endlessly remolded and remixed to new forms, the namesake form dates back to c. 2014 (so barely 8 years) and it was originally created to mock the kinds of bizarre genders that tumblr users create, the ones about the weather, fairies and colors.
The number one thing not to do about a joke, no matter how annoying, unfunny or - very debatably- "hateful" it is, is react violentely to it. For an actual bigot doing it to harm, the sound of offended screeching is music to the ears. Nobody ever derives pleasure from eye rolls. For the moderate or even supporter doing it in good-hearted mockery all people give to and receive from each other, an offended group is a permnant mark of outsiderness, the One Group Nobody Is Allowed To Talk About, and so they don't talk about, or to, that group. Problem solved, to the loss of everybody involved.
And you might want to be careful calling people who identify as helicopters bad names, it can be seriousely harmful to some genders. https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Heligender
I've seen Chappelle's special. It has offensive jokes. But I really believe it will *decrease* bullying, crimes, and discrimination against trans people in viewers, possibly more so than any other show on Netflix.
The crux and emotional climax of his show is about Daphne Dorman, a trans comedian and friend of Chappelle's who died by suicide. He spends the last 12 minutes or so talking about her. There's one quote from Dorman that Chappelle particularly emphasises:
> I don't need you to understand me. I just need you to believe that I'm having a human experience.
And I think that's a powerful message for anyone who is a bit transphobic. Because they're not going to understand being trans; not easily anyway. But they can understand that everyone is having a human experience and deserves to be treated with kindness.
Look, transphobic people probably don't follow a lot of trans people on Twitter, or subscribe to trans-rights-promoting newsletters. Progressives can talk all they want about how discriminating against trans people is bad, but they're probably neither reaching nor convincing their target transphobic audience. (You could argue their real target audience of these blogs is people who already agree with them, but lets ignore that as it's not particularly relevant to my point.)
But transphobic people might watch Dave Chappelle. And he reels them in a bit by espousing some views they agree with (e.g. "gender is a fact"). But then he ends with talking about how special Daphne Dorman was and about the importance of respect and compassion. A lot of viewers will relate to Chappelle. Some probably admire him. If this special going to shift their opinion at all, it's going to shift it towards compassion.
> I think you should have hard data on jokes not increasing bullying, crimes, discrimination.
I don't even see why such data would be relevant. Jokes are not an incitement to violence or discrimination any more than any other form of legal speech.
Furthermore, even if jokes were associated with increases in bullying or crimes, that does not somehow entail that the joke-maker is hateful or bigoted.
Well, first of all, since Chappelle refers to himself as "transphobic" and a "TERF" several times in his act, you would need to formulate a convincing argument that these statements are ironic or facetious in some way. I've written a somewhat deep analysis of his set which makes this point (among others) - https://nealzupancic.substack.com/p/dave-chappelle-and-the-cancellation - but the short version is that he's trying to make the very point that you are trying to make: that it isn't actually harmful to make "transphobic" (or misogynist, or whatever) jokes as long as everyone is clear that it's a joke and that you aren't actually treating trans people badly in real life.
I also pointed out in that analysis that his transphobic jokes, at least in The Closer, are far, far tamer than his misogynist jokes, which people mostly give him a pass on. This won't be convincing to someone who thinks that comedians shouldn't do any offensive jokes, but it might convince someone who thinks that regular stand-up comedy is in bounds but that Chappelle's trans jokes are somehow outside the purview of normal comedy. Again, Chappelle's set itself functions as an argument that trans people shouldn't get special consideration (that is, over and above blacks, Jews, women, Asians, gays, or lesbians) so it might be worth 1) making that point and 2) pointing out how Chappelle makes that point. Again, his argument is sophisticated and I think 99% of people arguing about it on the internet are missing his point entirely, because you kind of need to watch the whole thing, with an open mind, and think about it, in order to understand how it all fits together and how the various seemingly unrelated pieces (like the "space Jews" jokes) contribute to the thesis.
"More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?"
This is unfortunately just a matter of personal preference. Offense is deeply personal and it's somewhere between difficult and impossible for one person to move the needle on how offended another person is by certain content. Like, there are some people who will never, ever, ever be able to enjoy a comedy set in which women are referred to repeatedly as "bitches" even if you explain that Chappelle means it ironically or something.
There are jokes I am offended by and other jokes I'm not offended by and a lot of it just has to do with my personal life experiences. I think the best you can do is convince someone that when something offends them they should just try to tolerate the fact that some people will enjoy it anyway.
I wonder what it is you are trying to accomplish, though, because I'd say the advice in the prior paragraph applies equally in the opposite direction - if you notice that someone is offended by something that you enjoy, the best approach might be to just try to tolerate the fact that some people will be offended by things that you enjoy.
I personally would never try and convince someone that they, individually, should not be offended by something. As you said, taking offense is deeply personal. The proper (in my opinion) argument is that a) giving offense, especially in the context of comedy, is not problematic and b) even if it was, someone being offended is never an adequate argument for any action beyond "don't interact with the person thing which caused you offense anymore".
Now, both of those opinions are getting pretty close to base level beliefs which do not have (nor need) any justifications. I could make arguments in support of them, but are not very far from values that I think are important just because they are, and it's hard to convince anyone to change basal values, since there is no objective morality/set of values that can be in-arguably decided upon.
The most obvious argument for b) is "there is no state of affairs that is universally non-offensive, at least unless you butcher half the population". Technically, this does rely on the listener valuing the lives of those they disagree with, but most aren't *that* far gone.
I have a pretty strong prior that if we did kill half of the population (and somehow didn't create offense doing that!) we would instantly find a new host of issues to become offended about. I consider offending people to be a fully intractable problem, because anyone can be offended by a potentially limitless list, regardless of their upbringing, profession, friends, etc. They can even say that they are offended by things that they are not offended by, or create new offenses from nothing.
The only solutions are to 1) stop being offended by things - tough sell there, or 2) learn to live with each other even if we are offended by things said or done.
I mean, I did say "at least". I also was going for a much stronger claim than "IRL, people will get offended"; I was claiming "there are issues where group X will be offended if A and group Y will be offended if ~A, so even magically handwaving pragmatic considerations and assuming you can manufacture any world-state, someone will *still* be offended".
I can imagine that you could assemble a reasonably-large group of people who have at least non-contradictory utopian visions (as opposed to complete agreement on every detail of realistic policy; that's in "three can keep a secret if two of them are dead" territory)... but nowhere near everyone.
He starts the special saying he was molested by priests as a boy and would cum on their face. I don't think you need much more analysis to argue that just maybe he can be ironic or facetious.
Certainly we know comedians can say things that aren't true as jokes. But that doesn't man nothing they say is true, nor that an informed audience can't do a pretty good job telling the difference.
Dave is clearly trying to make an overarching point in this special which he thinks is true and important, and the audience knows that and can interpret his statements accordingly.
You still need to discuss particulars - was X particular claim ironic? Was it well-executed enough that the ironic intent was clear? How likely is it that someone might miss or misinterpret the irony?
If Chappelle's fans hear Chappelle describe himself as "team TERF" and don't interpret that ironically, and then a bunch of people become TERFs who otherwise wouldn't have, and those people - as TERFs do - pass laws making it hard for trans people to access medical care or public restrooms, then the Chappelle's intentions didn't matter as much as how he pursued them and how people interpreted them. And then the fact that Chappelle himself said not to make laws restricting bathroom access gets lost in the shuffle - and who's to say that wasn't the ironic part? Who's to say that wasn't just setup for a joke?
Chappelle made a bunch of contradictory statements and arguments and we need to think critically about them to figure out what he's actually trying to say and whether or not he said it in a way that was likely to have the intended impact. You can't just say "well sometimes he's facetious" as a way to selectively dismiss any claims about Chappelle that might paint him in a bad light.
He didn't say "can't", he said "shouldn't" - specifically, "no American should have to show ID to use a restroom". He also specifically said that it was "mean" to restrict bathroom access, and also dismissed concerns that trans people might somehow be dangerous to families. He's making a moral case against bathroom restrictions, not a practical case.
Can you describe a comedy act that meets this criteria while still being funny? I feel like the only outcome of this approach is to kill all or almost all comedy, as comedians will be unable to tell actually funny jokes. It would instantly destroy any kind of shock comedy, which I would consider a pretty bad loss.
I'm not super attached to Chappelle or any particular jokes, but if you start making "offensive" jokes taboo, then instantly almost every possible joke is gone. I guess they can still make fun of white cis males, but that would get stale in about 2 seconds, and would also have no shock value to add to the comedy.
I'm extrapolating from the implied requirement that jokes must be legibly ironic to pass muster. If it is not obvious that the joke is ironic, the implication of your post is that it's problematic and therefore must stop.
Jokes that signal their irony don't sound terribly funny to me, at least is they have to do so enough that it's clear no one can be offended by it. Chappelle went pretty far to show that he cares about, even if he doesn't understand, trans people. He could have just told some trans jokes and moved on, like he used to do. Apparently even with the attempts to signal "ironic" he failed. Toning it down further sounds impossible, leaving us with "don't tell jokes involving trans people or issues" and that's where my last post comes from.
> if you notice that someone is offended by something that you enjoy, the best approach might be to just try to tolerate the fact that some people will be offended by things that you enjoy.
I agree it's probably futile to convince someone not to be offended by something, but I personally consider a high capacity for personal offense indicative of many deal-breaking character flaws. So I no longer attempt to "tolerate" people who are easily offended on any subject. Rather, I don't associate with them at all.
I mean, honestly, yes? The vast majority of people of all races are pretty racist, and Chapelle certainly doesn't strike me as the kind of person who is unusually _un_racist...
Could you refine what you mean by "racist"? Because I've seen that used for anything from "believes that all races are equal" to "believes that there are behavior trends in racial demographics" to "wants to genocide other ethnic groups" to the point where just calling something "racist" is now pretty close to noise.
So, I haven't seen the special in question, but I'm familiar with a lot of other of Dave Chappelle's jokes about trans people.
I'm trans and Ill try to weigh in.
I think fundamentally your point is true, being cis and making jokes about trans people isn't _necessarily_ bigoted. But there's a real fine line to walk here, and if someone in particular just keeps coming back to this trans thing and really defending their desire to make jokes about trans people, you should be suspicious.
"People should not be offended by jokes" is both not true and not really what you believe. Some jokes really are just offensive and people should be offended.
Broadly speaking, I likely agree with you that the _current_ equilibrium is too sensitive, and trans people especially are sensitive. But just because the current equilibrium is too sensitive doesn't mean we should be supporting all jokes being okay.
Separately, Dave I'm quite sure is just a transphobe. I remember one special in particular where his "joke" essentially just becomes a screed that being trans "reeks of white privilege" (direct quote!). And again, it's suspicious that he _just keeps coming back to this_. And, also importantly, he's not shy _at all_ about the fact that he finds it gross and confusing. So like... There's really not much to misunderstand here.
And the jokes he makes about trans people just.... Aren't funny. They're not well done jokes. Half of them don't even really have punch lines, it's the equivalent of saying "the trans people", making a funny face, and waiting for the audience to get the cue.
Not every joke is like this, there's a few good ones. The "beyond pussy, impossible pussy" is a joke that I think a lot of trans people would find offensive and realllllyyyy skirts the line but it is just funny and I can easily picture a trans person or someone like James Acaster delivering that joke and it being totally fine.
Part of the reason this hits trans people especially hard by the way is that it's so close to the main way we experience bigotry on a daily basis - getting laughed at, humiliated, called gross, and in the bad cases sick/perverted/dangerous. Thats part of the _daily_ experience of being trans. So sitting down and enjoying a comedy show for it to take a turn into that feels very "ah shit here we go again"
And really it's just - lazy. Or bad writing. Like I agree with him 100% that being trans is objectively a funny predicament. But there's a difference in laughing with someone and laughing at them and we always seem to be the butt of the joke.
As to how should you convince someone they shouldn't be offended by a joke - there's 1 of 2 scenarios, depending on whether _youre_ the butt of the joke, or _they_ are.
If _you_ are the butt of the joke, it's pretty easy you can just reassure relying on personal experience.
If _they_ are the butt of the joke, you seriously risk coming off as a patronizing asshole and really should reconsider whether you're absolutely certain you're right. If you are, and you want to risk it anyway - come from a place of compassion. It's about understanding why they're upset, reassuring it's all in good fun and they're NOT being kicked to the bottom of the status heirarchy and you then compromising by agreeing with them that some things are too far and you won't go there.
Furthermore, I think that while us trans people are a bit jumpy about this stuff (to say the least), it isn't without justification. One only has to observe the trajectory of things in eastern Europe to see how anti-trans (and LGBT in general) legislation can follow from the spread of anti-trans (and LGBT in general) rhetoric. In Africa, new laws are being put into place to allow persecution of LGBT people, again following in the wake of similar rhetoric.
In the UK, you see the same pattern, almost the entire media running poorly supported stories pushing a narrative that trans people are a threat to women on nearly a daily basis, with further anti-trans action primarily hindered by the existence of fairly strong legal protections for trans people that would have to be undone, and perhaps Boris Johnson himself not actually being a transphobe.
And of course in the US, there's also been a deliberate refocusing of the religious right from gay people onto trans people, directly followed by an enormous salvo of legislation in every Republican-controlled legislature designed to hinder trans people's participation in public life, some of which passed and became law. Nearly every right-wing outlet runs poorly-researched stories designed to paint trans people in a bad light (the recent coverage of a rapist in Loudon school district, for example) as frequently as the UK media does, and a lot of centre-left outlets love scare stories about detransition and social contagion.
The upshot of this entire environment leaves one feeling rather vulnerable, that our many supposed powerful allies (the ones Chapelle rails against and claims make us the privileged ones, the orgs that Red Tribe culture warriors love to hate for their love of Diversity™) will disappear the moment the prevailing winds start to shift against us, the moment demonizing us becomes more profitable than at least verbally supporting us.
I find it really hard to believe that characterizations of Chapelle's special as "anti-trans rhetoric" are in good faith when one of the final, and most heartfelt, emotional, statements in the entire thing was him saying how a trans person was a human, having a human experience, an deserving of empathy, even if wasn't possible to fully understand that experience. I'm not trans and can't pretend to know what it's like to be trans, but I can know, without having to understand their lives, that they are humans and are deserving of human dignity and respect. That's the message that I think Chappelle would have wanted someone to take. Yes, he made jokes, and yes some of those jokes were directed at trans people, just like he makes jokes directed at women, and white people, and black people. But he made it very very clear, to the point that misunderstanding it almost has to be deliberate, that he thinks trans people deserve dignity and respect, just like everyone else. That they are not lesser.
I totally agree, people who think he is spouting anti-trans rhetoric are working hard to misinterpret him. But in the interest of being charitable, I think people who view him as transphobic are of the opinion that the consequences of his jokes result in hurting trans people's feelings, and that his intention is not the only thing that matters. That said, a lot of people adamantly state that his intentions are far from good, that he's using Daphne as a token, that she wouldn't have wanted him to make those jokes, etc, so that really can't be said of people like that.
>I find it really hard to believe that characterizations of Chapelle's special as "anti-trans rhetoric" are in good faith when one of the final, and most heartfelt, emotional, statements in the entire thing was him saying how a trans person was a human, having a human experience, an deserving of empathy, even if wasn't possible to fully understand that experience.
We have all seen every racist saying 'but I have black friends' in the news for the last 50 years, to the point where the phrase itself became a joke and a mockery of how weak an argument it is.
It turns out you can say and believe horrible things about a group while also thinking individual members are nice people. It turns out you can actively undermine the rights and dignity of a group while also reminding your audience that they deserve respect as human beings. This is well-trodden ground, and those who have watched these tactics from opponents of past progressive movements are familiar with them.
The bit in question isn't a dashed-off exculpatory statement along the lines of "some of my best friends are trans", it's arguably the heart of the entire performance, even the point of the entire special.
>It turns out you can say and believe horrible things about a group while also thinking individual members are nice people. <
This ... doesn't strike me as a problem, as long as the horrible beliefs are true (or at least plausible enough on currently-available data that a reasonable person could think them true). Take, for the most radioactive example, the IQ claims of the Horrible Banned Discourse - as far as I can work out, it would be well within the bounds of what a reasonable person could believe on present evidence, for someone to think that the tentative consensus of intelligence researchers is probably correct, and still be friends with people from all the groups concerned.
I live in an area which has some serious white supremacists still in it. I have, in fact, interacted with those white supremacists. And I have heard from them that they have a "black friend" or a "hispanic friend" or what have you. What I've never heard is them make a plea for the basic humanity and dignity of their minority friend or minorities as a whole. This comes off like you're deliberately trying to dismiss anything positive Chappelle did in the special while not joking as lip service while pointing to his humor (no matter how cruel you deem it to be) as proof of his true, secret agenda.
"Nearly every right-wing outlet runs poorly-researched stories designed to paint trans people in a bad light (the recent coverage of a rapist in Loudon school district, for example)"
Reading up about that particular case, the school board, the DA, and the trans activist parent and their ginger group all managed to cover themselves in the opposite of glory, and it's only the right-wing outlets who were covering it. Everyone else was happy to go along with the line that there were no sexual assaults in any of the schools and this was all anti-trans/non-binary prejudice.
Until it came out that the 'non-binary/genderfluid' boy accused committed two assaults and then suddenly the same people were all referring to him *as* a boy, not the genderfluid student. No True Scotsman in full rearguard action. But the students in the district organised a walk-out, parents are pissed-off, school board members are resigning, and it's even a live issue in the governatorial race. A father angry that his daughter was raped in school and losing control and being confrontational and even violent at a school meeting is not a good thing, but it's even worse to deny that any rapes happened and call the cops to drag him out, then have the DA push for a jail term for him. People reading that are going to be on the side of the father, not the trans rights woman telling him his daughter was crazy or lying.
"Painting trans people in a bad light" is going to happen when things like this happen, until the trans activist movements face up to the fact that when fusty conservatives like myself were asking awkward questions about "but have you considered what might go wrong with a blanket policy of inclusivity?", we were not invoking the slippery slope fallacy, we were acknowledging basic human nature where bad actors take advantage of well-meaning idiocy.
When the general public sees story after story about things like the Wii Spa, criminals convicted of sex abuse and child abuse suddenly coming out as trans so they can be sent to women's prisons, and Ruby Eby-style cases, then until trans people figure out a policy to avoid the crazies and the perverts jumping aboard the "you're trans if you say you're trans and anyone questioning you is a bigot who should be facing legal penalties" train, then the view of the general public will indeed be "trans people bad light".
This is pretty much true and it's a huge problem that I've been trying to think about a lot. I find myself so frequently loathing The popularly-understood trans activist movement because damnit 9/10 times they make things worse for us by being idiots.
I don't agree with the whole "the second you identify as trans you're trans and a woman and get full inclusion". It's not surprising to me that that gets taken to the extreme - one of the things, maybe THE thing, trans women most crave is validation and acceptance, and so the movements instinct is to be extremely generous with it but it leads to obvious problems like the above and ends up making everyone hate us. So there _has_ to be (also, just empirically... Is) some qualifying line, some kind of distinction, you can't just say you're trans. I've had a lot of thoughts on that subject, maybe one day I'll get around to making a blog for it.
Mostly, he seems to pretend they don't exist. Which is a whole other kettle of fish, but not uncommon for black people in the US, painting being LGBT as a "white" thing.
That's like saying Chappelle seems to pretend the Uighurs don't exist because he didn't mention the prison camps in China when he did his Asian coronavirus joke.
Chappelle was complaining about his treatment by white LGBT activists. Black trans people aren't white LGBT activists, so why should he bring them up?
There's a segment where he's talking about a gay white guy calling the cops on him. He specifically says that a gay black guy wouldn't have called the cops, because the cops adopt a "kill'em all, let God sort'em out" attitude towards black people. He uses this to make the point that white LGBT people can easily fall back on their white privilege when interacting with authority, whereas Chappelle can't rely on his straight/cis privilege to protect him from being brutalized by cops. One could charitably assume Chappelle would apply the same line of thought to black trans people: that he would assume they'd have racial solidarity, at least in the basic sense of not using white authority to tear down another black person, and thereby be outside the bounds of his complaint.
"White privilege" isn't a point, it's a concept. For it to be a point, there would need to be some sort of claim or proposition about white privilege.
Chappelle's main point is that LGBT activists should show more consideration and solidarity towards other minority groups and individuals, because suffering is part of the human condition and does not exempt us from the duty to treat each other with empathy and care.
I don't _necessarily_ think Dave's intention was to moderate transphobes opinion on trans people. But if it was, he scarcely could have done any better. He demonstrates his non-woke credentials by making a load of trans and race jokes... then he goes on to scold his audience for supporting bathroom bans, and has a very heatfelt story about how we should respect a specific trans woman's "human experience."
Sure, he could have stood up and not mentioned trans people at all, or also only said positive things about trans people. However I don't think either of those things would have persuaded as many people as what he actually did. (Again: This isn't an argument about Dave's intentions, just the effect)
> And, also importantly, he's not shy _at all_ about the fact that he finds it gross and confusing. So like... There's really not much to misunderstand here.
You seem to imply that this means Chappelle is a bigot or transphobic or something, but I'm not clear on how that follows. Is it really outside the realm of possibility that Chappelle might think that trans people should have all the rights they're due, that they should be able to use the facilities and services of their preferred gender and live a life of dignity, while still being confused by them and having this strong aversion to dating a trans person? Are these thoughts mutually exclusive somehow?
I know there is debate in the trans community about whether an aversion to dating someone trans makes someone transphobic, and exactly what constitutes "valid" reasons for such avoidance. This strikes me as falling squarely into that scenario, and it's not at all clear that Chappelle expressed honest bigotry. He definitely crossed that line for the sake of a couple of jokes, but crossing taboos is exactly what he does for the sake of humour (laughter response as tension release). It always seemed clearly delivered in jest from my perspective, although I understand how sensitive and personal topics might bias someone to different interpretations. I'm probably more charitable than most when interpreting intentions, and I disagree emphatically with the seemingly common view that intentions don't matter.
> And the jokes he makes about trans people just.... Aren't funny. They're not well done jokes. Half of them don't even really have punch lines, it's the equivalent of saying "the trans people", making a funny face, and waiting for the audience to get the cue.
Jokes aren't only funny because of their content, but also their delivery and the context in which they're delivered; that's why great comedy is art. A overly-narrow analysis of any joke like you just did is probably going to completely miss the funny part. For instance, assuming Chappelle even did something so trite, it could have been delivered as a joke showing how stupid the thought it is, like "eww, girls have cooties", and the surprise that a grown man would even think or utter silly or outrageous thoughts so openly is the funny part.
So, as I mentioned I'm my top comment, I had not seen the new special in question and I am delighted to hear about his message at the end and it's definitely much better than I was expecting and I have updated on him, I no longer think he's a transphobe.
I want to take this chance separately to say, that I do not think it is bigoted _at all_ to not want to date a trans person. Genitalia preferences are absolutely valid and okay. And most trans women feel this way. I small but vocal minority of very-online weirdos has set the tone of the discourse in an outsized way.
Separately, I believe my analysis of the jokes in question was absolutely fair. I just went and rewatched a compilation video of his jokes from previous specials and I maintain my case.
And lastly, despite not thinking he's a transphobe anymore (probably), there's still some jokes he makes that are too far, and I can absolutely fairly think he's an asshole, even though I don't think he's a bigot.
I don't want him to get cancelled. I don't really care if he in particular gets "fired", he's a comic in a unique position, where his whole thing is saying things people like. If enough people decide what he's saying is stuff that they don't want to listen to, or if his sponsors decide it's not the message they want to publish, that's their purview and Dave is no martyr he's a schmuck.
> And lastly, despite not thinking he's a transphobe anymore (probably), there's still some jokes he makes that are too far, and I can absolutely fairly think he's an asshole
Haha, I think Chappelle would totally agree with labelling him an asshole. I even think being a bit of an asshole is his intent, as I don't think you can break taboos without being an asshole to somebody.
I personally don't think joke compilation videos are representative. I think everyone knows that spliced videos that cut out important context from political interviews aren't representative either, for instance. As a comic, Chappelle in particular weaves a whole narrative throughout each special, where the jokes are all interwoven with stories, themes and moral arguments, and the surprising jokes he sprinkles throughout to break tensions can easily be taken out of context. He's still totally an asshole sometimes though, no denying that.
Yep, he has a bit where he's in a dance club and gets all offended when he's surprised to be dancing with a trans person, then the punchline is that he goes to bed with them anyway
I watched The Closer with my uncle, a trans man. Some of the jokes didn't hit with him, but overall he laughed a lot and teared up a bit at the end. He's been excitedly telling all his friends about it since. He's quite thrilled that the most popular comedian in the world is paying attention. It wasn't long ago that you couldn't even talk with the average person about trans issues. After that the conversation was dominated by insufferable people on twitter. But two average people still wouldn't talk about it. He sees Chapelle as the tipping point where the entire population can now be involved. And that is a good thing.
I think stories like his are going to be much more convincing than any argument. He's not overly concerned whether Chappelle is transphobic or not. There is something much more important going on.
The problem I see with Chappelle being people's intro to talking about trans shit is that he's really blinkered. Like the conversation about trans people is already full of dumbass cis people deciding they know everything about us and being incredibly wrong, we don't need more of that.
A lot of the show was demonstrating a deep and meaningful relationship with Daphne. He recognized her humanity. He made people really feel for her. I doubt there has been a single piece of media, ever, which made more "dumbass cis people" sympathize with a transperson. I think that's important.
Sure, he made some dumb trans jokes. He also says he came on a priest's face as a kid. The average person is able to separate the jokes from the deeper message of the story he's telling.
And yet he doesn't respect her enough to not misgender her in death (yes it's a "joke", but that doesn't mean it isn't still super shitty). Seriously, you have NO idea how much being remembered for who we are and not continually being shackled to how we were born matters to us, and neither does he if he makes that joke without her permission. Nor does he understand her very well if he thinks that dumbass people on Twitter being assholes are why she might have killed herself and not much more substantial real-life issues, like the custody of her children and access to healthcare, which her closest friends talked about but he completely skated over in favour of something that was ultimately focused on him and his need to be validated as a good person by her defence of him.
You're speaking as if you were close to them and knew the intimate details of their relationship. Come on. You don't know anything about it. Neither do practically all of the other commentators. Why are so many people doing that?
Exactly, and that is the real problem here. It seems you (Naamah) feel confident enough to speak for her because she was trans, but really you have no idea who she is or how she felt about things like this because the fact that she is trans is completely inadequate in explaining who she was as a person. This is the problem with your argument, and it's the same problem that lies at the core of identity politics--an individual's membership within groups based on immutable characteristics is weighted as more important than their character.
Because Dave is doing the 'I can't be racist, I have a black friend' thing: speaking for someone they know to say that their relationship is ok and that person doesn't think they're bad, so by extension it must be wrong for anyone like that person to think they're bad.
The implication is that Daphne being ok with his rhetoric should generalize to all trans people being ok with his rhetoric, and that the ways he treats his trans friend are ok ways for everyone to treat all trans people because his trans friend was ok with it.
But trans people have their own lived experiences, and know that these standards and ideas do *not* generalize to themselves, and that the assumption among the cis population that they do is actively harmful to themselves.
Dave is trying to use his relationship to Daphne as a synecdoche to smuggle in arguments about the relationship of mainstream culture to trans people in general. And the people objecting to that are treating it in the same way, in turn.
It's a dishonest maneuver on both sides, but Dave started it and they're kind of forced into matching him if they want to argue the point.
I agree that his usage of her story did seem a bit like he was using it to cast a kind light on himself. However, he was he friend and he knew her and her sense of humor (whi ch seemingly was such that it was controversial with other trans people), so I would not male assumptions about whether or not she would be offended or find his joke hurtful if she could have heard it. He likely felt he knew her enough to make a joke that he thought honored her sense of humor. He might even had made a similar joke to her while she was alive and knew she thought it was funny. It's all supposition but my sense was that he had real affection for her. Comics don't generally speak of people in their acts unless they admire them (unless they're tearing them apart, which he was clearly wasn't doing). Among comics, it's an honor to joke about someone after they've passed, that's their method of eulogy.
You're absolutely right--stories like your uncle's are going to help change minds. And your point about his special resulting in more cis people sympathizing with trans people than just about any other piece of media is also really fantastic, though people who are bothered by his special aren't likely to see it that way. I really feel that a lot of his critics fail to engage with his discussion of Daphne. Clearly, she was the impetus behind this special, and many of Dave's jokes in The Closer stem from Daphne, her experience, his experience as her friend, and his goals in making comedy more inclusive.
Except that's not what I've seen happening. What I've seen is legions of Chappelle fans going after anyone criticizing him and crapping on trans people in general. Maybe the more thoughtful parts do change some minds, but I think he at a minimum made a mistake and didn't consider how his other words would undermine that message for a lot of people.
Twitter is not representative of the wider population, it's an amplified slice of the extremes of humanity. Don't mistake what you see there for how most people are taking the special.
I'd say that you can make jokes about trans people that aren't minstral show level garbage; Dave just isn't doing them (all the time, I'd say his impossible meat joke was pretty damn good).
That's the difference between his race jokes and misogynist jokes; they come back around as jokes about Dave's lived experience.
To give an example: his jokes re. Poor White People Are Stupid and Also Trash, are ultimately sympathetic to their experience. He's pointing out their bullshit, but then saying they're still people and come by it honestly, and you should treat them as such.
(Some of)His jokes about trans people are about how they are whinny bitch baby crybullies and you should feel SO SORRY for him, a rich celebrity, for being "Canceled" into n+1 Netflix specials.
> I'd say that you can make jokes about trans people that aren't minstral show level garbage
Putting it into a broader context, though. From the perspective of most people, the trans* movement has come out of nowhere in a very short space of time and suddenly established a whole new set of "Things You Used To Believe But Can No Longer Say". Ten to twenty years ago it was taken for granted that okay, a man can cut off his penis and take a bunch of hormones but he's still a man (even if we choose to humour him and pretend he's a woman), but now that's the kind of thing that will get you fired from your job and banned from twitter. I'm not sure where the point was where everybody changed their minds, but I must have not been paying attention at the time because I missed the compelling argument in favour of it.
Sometimes, for a lot of people, it feels like there's been an alien invasion, our new rulers have green skin and bug eyes, and everyone is too afraid to mention it because nobody else is saying anything.
In this social context, there's a huge market for someone, anyone, to stand up and say "Hey, what the fuck happened with that?" It doesn't even matter that much whether the jokes are good, the audience laughs because they're relieved that someone finally had the guts to stand up and say "Hey, has anyone else noticed that President Grragghblar walks on six legs, what's up with that?"
This is a big deal, because for most Americans, that 10-20 years feels more like less than five. There are bubbles around major cities and "Progressive" areas that feel like it's been a full generation or more, but they are insulated away from rural areas as well as conservative areas. This goes well beyond conservatives who actively reject the ideology, but to a majority who wonder how and when things changed. It's a big deal that your more woke boss might get very upset with you for believing something that 90% of your coworkers also believe and you thought was common in society (which it is).
Data shows its more like 35-40%, not 10%, who feel that way. Its not nearly so overwhelming as you believe.
I grew up in conservative areas (rural NC) and my family and their friends are all religious and conservative. I remember when I first came out things were a little rough there - but my experience with those people has overwhelmingly been that seeing and knowing me has changed a lot of hearts and minds.
I hate that a tiny minority of loud weirdos has become the voice and face of the trans movement. Most of us are just out here living our lives, not trying to knock over innocent social conventions.
There's a big difference between knowing that trans people exist, and the current push for widespread inclusion at the cost of a person's place in society, including their job, if they are not fully "accepting." "Accepting" can mean a lot of things, some more reasonable than others, and some, in my opinion, that are completely unreasonable.
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate the discussion in the replies. It is making me update from "Chappelle is the latest target of a censorious media mob" towards "Chappelle is probably transphobic on a visceral level and a trans person with the same aesthetics/politics as myself would probably find his latest special annoying". It kind of sucks because I like Chappelle and dislike censorious mobs, but it feels good to be able to have this discussion and update. Thank god for ACX.
Not everyone can be a perfect shining god on every issues.
I think the thing that bothers the more thick-skinned, edgy SJW's among us (me!) is less the jokes, and more the double down and air of martyrdom he's assuming.
It worked last time when he fucked off out of showbiz, it works less well this time when he ffo dekcuf back INTO show biz, as it were.
Can I push back a bit on the misuse of the suffix "-phobic" to describe someone who has disdain, rather than fear, for something? It smacks of an unfair attempt to shame a position rather than describe it.
Whatever you may think of the underlying issues, I think that in the interests of rationality we should support the use of neutral words to describe positions, rather than words picked by one side in order to make an end run around the question at hand.
Agreed, though I'd take it further to say that we should push back on the misuse of the suffix "-phobic" to describe someone who has slight issues with something, or even someone who broadly accepts something except wants to be able to discuss it in a logical way.
Agree, I was going to say that the first problem with this question is that no one is even going to agree on what "transphobic" means.
The dictionary definition I just googled says "an irrational fear of trans people". So then we can argue about what type of fear is rational versus irrational.
And many people who either don't like trans people, or have neutral feelings about them but don't like the current metaphysical and political views they're advancing, are not in any manner fearful of them. Others have something much more close to disgust or aversion than fear.
It is interesting that the designation "phobic" is only applied to forms of discrimination that invoke some aspect of sexuality. We call people racist, sexist, or misogynist, not "female-phobic" or "black-phobic" or whatever. Though in some cases that may be closer to the truth. Homophobic I believe came about as a term because of the proposition that many straight men who opposed gay rights were secretly afraid of their own homosexual tendencies. So it may have been a political slogan in and of itself to imply that anti-gay men in particular were secretly gay themselves -- whether or not that is or was true, it's clever marketing.
I am fairly certain no one described as "transphobic" is secretly afraid that they might be trans. There are certainly some females who feel threatened by and are afraid of transwomen. There may be some parents who are afraid of their children being influenced to be trans. But I don't think it's an accurate description for most people who are not on board with current pro-trans politics.
And even if we remove the "phobic" element, it's still not clear what the term means, because it seems to be applied to everything from someone who believes trans people are sick perverts who should be locked away in mental institutions to someone who fully supports and loves trans people but doesn't quite get on board with 1% of their current political theories (which seem to change almost daily, so this is probably everyone). By some of the broadest usages I've seen, there is likely not a single person alive who isn't "transphobic".
"Homoist" and "transist" don't quite have the same ring to them. But I agree, "phobic" is used way too loosely. Cleaning out cobwebs doesn't make you an arachnophobe, but staying out of a room because you saw a spider there does.
As far as Dave Chapelle's situation is concerned, I think it's basically a case of taste vs. morals. There's a difference between, "I don't care for this kind of thing", and "this is a BAD thing that should never be consumed by anyone." I'm starting to think more and more that the latter statement needs to die, whether it comes from moral busybodies on the Left or the Right. If a piece of art or product is offensive enough for most people to say "I don't care for this kind of thing", then it will die a "natural death." But if even a handful of people say, "this a BAD thing" and try to convince as many people as possible, that it is indeed, a Bad Thing that no good person should appreciate, and the person who produced it is a Bad Person, then you've got Cancel Culture. And I don't think that's right. I can understand parents wanting to control the media their children consume, and being allowed the tools to do so, but adults should be able to make their own entertainment choices based on their tastes. And of course, broad cultural tastes do change, but I think it's best when such changes occur organically, rather than being forced. For example, regarding the tweet about Jack Albertson above, did blackface fade out because a bunch of people said loudly enough that it was bad? Or did it fade out because general attitudes towards black people shifted?
I would also say -- as someone who is a hardcore stand-up comedy fan and has met and had close relationships with professional comics -- that the ability to joke about EVERYTHING and ANYTHING is about as close to a fundamental, iron-clad belief and moral as you are going to get with stand-up comics. So when you tell one that they are not allowed to tell jokes about something, it is for most of them the most offensive possible thing you could do. You are violating their moral code in and of itself. The way they joke to each other is far worse than what you'll see in public too, as it's part of their moral framework that comedy is an important art precisely because (1) it respects no sacred cows, and (2) it has the ability to transform what is dark and painful into levity and joy. Amongst themselves, they joke about the death of their loved ones, suicide, their biggest insecurities and darkest shames, everything that normal people find scary and untouchable. There's sort of an inversion of sacred values. Call it a defense mechanism if you like, but if you can joke about something, it loses some of its power to hurt you.
Of course, that's why people hate for things they think are important to be joked about.
I interpreted The Closer as Chappelle truly being offended that he was being pressured not to joke about trans issues. His closing line about "leave my people alone" made that perfectly clear. He is literally and truly offended on behalf of the comic community. Take whatever statement would be the most offensive possible thing to say to a trans person and how it makes them feel...outraged, indignant, threatened, disrespected. That's how a professional comedian feels when you tell him he can't joke about something.
I believe that Chappelle is doubly offended because he has made fun of literally every other category of people throughout his career, and this is the one group that is apparently so untouchable or protected that he's received blow back. He made it blatantly clear that he's upset that black people have been fighting for their rights for centuries, and trans rights have only become something that most people are aware of for maybe 5 or 10 years, yet he's been allowed to make fun of black people with impunity and what he perceives as this new group is suddenly so protected by society that he's being told they're in a sacred class that you can't touch. Now, arguably that's not true because norms have changed across the board and maybe he wouldn't be allowed today to make all kinds of jokes he freely made about other groups 15 years ago. But I think that's his perception. He blatantly says he's envious of how fast LGBTQ has made progress.
So I guess if you want to make an argument to a trans person to not try to fight against the special, it would probably be best to make it on a tactical and practical ground that telling a comic what they can't talk about is just going to piss them off, you'll never convince them of the moral position because the idea of not being allowed to joke about something is fundamentally immoral in and of itself in their calculus, and it just adds fuel to the fire and will make them want to make jokes about the topic even more. If you want to neutralize the threat, the best tactic is to make jokes that are even edgier and make fun of yourself more than anyone else could. That's what Chappelle himself did with racial jokes (though obviously he had some ambivalence about that). And that's how his trans friend won him over...not by telling him not to joke but by being willing to joke about herself.
Otoh, you can certainly scare the rest of society into pretending that they think certain topics of humor are unacceptable. Though if you're scaring them with shaming, you're not actually convincing them, you're just creating a pressurized issue that is subject to blow open at the first leak. And you're NEVER going to convince the actual comics on that point. The whole point of comedy is to be subversive and transgressive. And I don't have data on this, but I strongly suspect that comedy is probably the single most powerful tool in getting people to actually change deeply help and emotional beliefs. It's a cliche, but I truly believe Will and Grace did more to advance gay rights than anything the activists ever did. So if trans people want to change hearts and minds, they would do better to drop the thing where they require people to recite mantras or scare them into not saying what they think, and try to promote more comedy and laughter. Sermons about "punching down" may seem morally correct but isn't ultimately going to help the cause.
Well said. Like you, I'm really into standup and feel that absolutely everything should be on the table, and what really matters is whether or not the joke is funny. The vast majority of my friends feel similarly, and your arguments are certainly intuitive to us. However, for people that can't tolerate certain jokes, arguments like yours don't seem to dispel the belief that those offensive jokes are wrong at a fundamentally moral level. That's the crux of my problem here. It generally feels impossible to convince someone of this sort of thing if they see themselves as a victim, or as someone trying to protect someone who they see as a victim.
Something my friends and I have observed is that people (like us) who were bullied growing up tend to have a very high tolerance for offensive jokes. Maybe this correlation is meaningless, but it seems like anecdotes like this reflect reality to some extent. If your hands haven't faced much wear and tear over time, they're probably gonna be soft. Why should it be any different with egos (or whatever you want to call it)?
You're right, it seems to be impossible to get this across to people who don't have the same intuitive understanding of comedy. For one thing, most people simply don't respect comedy...they think of it is as, basically, a joke. Not something important or respectable or difficult or weighty. Whereas I consider comedy to be probably the most important art form and place a lot of value on it....to me it is a realm of the mind that allows all kinds of possibilities that are almost divine in nature, and the best comedians are also good philosophers. I don't expect to convince many people of that, but that's my view.
People are very invested in the concept of punching up or down, when that entire idea is totally illegitimate to a comic. There is no such thing as a topic that can't be joked about...rape, murder, child molestation, nothing. And I think to a lot of people, that just means comedians are amoral jerks. But that's not it. There's an actual moral code and set of values there. Comedy forges bonds and turns dark to light and is the only tool I'm aware of that can suck away power without physical force or violence. Any topic is open for playing with because all humans are ultimately absurd and no human is sacred or powerful enough to take that away from someone else.
So any group saying "you're not allowed to joke about us" will strike a comedy lover as deeply immoral and imperious. Being self-serious enough to elevate oneself above comedy is a sin in and of itself. And any group with the power to prevent certain topics from discussion or joking reveals the lie that they're "down" on the totem pole. Progressive people have created an upside-down status hierarchy where particular groups and categories that they deem oppressed are given extra privileges -- specifically, the right to talk about certain things and say certain things that others can't. It used to be that only the kings and CEOs and patriarchs could speak freely, and everyone else better keep their mouth shut or risk getting their head chopped off.
Now we're in a weird world where the supposedly oppressed are the ones most free to speak, and everyone else has to shut up. And to a comedian, who doesn't respect authority or status (which none of them do), this is just nonsense because in making the claim that you're oppressed enough to not be talked about, if anyone listens to you, you're inherently proving that it isn't true. I mean, who were people not allowed to tell jokes about? Kim Jong Un, Saddam Hussein, Louis the VI, and....trans people? In the comic view of the world, everyone is equal, anyone with power should be taken down a peg or two, no one deserves to be sacred, and anyone with enough power to prevent people from telling jokes about them is precisely who needs to be made fun of.
And I take your point about learning to take the punches. Many cultures that have historically been crapped upon have robust traditions of comedy (Jewish people, black people). I guess some people view that as a result of emotional scarring or a defense mechanism, but I view it in a more positive light than that.
I'm not sure that your bullying correlation holds up with my experience - yes, it can lead to thick skin, but it can also lead to an emotional open wound that's extremely sensitive, and I think that most people who are truly aggrieved by jokes are ones that bear the wounds of past bullying.
Having said that, I think it's possible to make "laughing about" type jokes for any topic, and the potential problem is "laughing at" jokes are just cheap tribal signalling - and there my issue is more with how much humans love shitting on the outgroup, lazy comedians are just a symptom.
I think my main problem with the state of trans-sexual discourse is not so much that it doesn't tolerate jokes but that it doesn't even tolerate legitimate, polite and thoughtful philosophical disagreement.
Some fabrics I found distractingly itchy when trying to focus, so I developed an aversion to them. This was essentially rational behavior _at the time_.
I figured out later on that it wasn't the fabric that was the actual issue; I have a mild reaction to some detergents. (Not actually really a problem. Just enough to be distracting sometimes.)
However, I kept the lingering now-irrational aversion, even though the actual issue has nothing to do with fabrics. I am well aware it is irrational; it isn't particularly harmful, and I have more important irrationalities to focus on.
To the best of my knowledge none of this is based in fear.
I suspect that most irrational aversions (at least ones that aren't fear-based) fall into this same general bucket of things that were rational once upon a time given the information at the time, and are no longer rational given additional information but still linger.
This is interesting. Something caused you to itch, an unpleasant experience.
You located the cause of the itching erroneously and avoided that thing. Later you figured out that something else caused the itching but for some reason kept your aversion to the original- now innocent - thing.
What emotion do you attach to the idea of not wanting to itch?
> I think "phobic" has gone into casual use to mean any sort of irrational aversion
"Irrational aversion" seems way too fraught a definition. Many of our preferences are irrational in some objective sense.
An argument can be made that cis men have an irrational aversion to handling other penises. I mean really, what's the big deal right? But wouldn't your definition thus imply that all cis men are necessarily homophobic?
It would imply that any one who has an irrational aversion to touching another man’s penis is acting in fear. Not all cis men having an irrational aversion to that. Some are doctors some are healthcare aids, some just don’t care.
Seems like a dodge. I could easily tweak the dial on the knob to exclude those scenarios, like "all cis men have an irrational aversion to handling other penises in a sexual context".
It started off as political tactic re: gay rights; call opponents "homophobic" and talk about "homophobia" because they wanted to cement the idea in the minds of ordinary people that "no, there is no principled opposition or reasonable disagreement here, it's all irrational and slightly unhinged".
Naturally, since it worked for gay rights, the trans rights people took it over. "You don't have a neutral basis for saying what you say, you are just speaking out of irrational bigotry, and if you let yourself be persuaded by the Science, then of course you will change your mind!"
I say we go much further, and reserve the word 'homophobic' exclusively to its literal sense, to refer to people who are irrationally afraid of things that are the same :-P
Eh, descriptivism has pretty much won the day at this point.
'The root Latin suffix here means something subtly different from how it is commonly being used, this is wrong and must be stopped' just has not been a winning argument for a very long time, and pretending that people are wrong for using words in the way they are typically used is just begging to create *more* miscommunication, not less.
Yes. There's nothing "rational" in pretending that we don't know how language works or that words can only mean what they supposedly meant at some other point in history, rather than what we know damn well the user intends them to mean.
So you back the change to "per say" or even "percy" as I once saw it, from per se? Or "I could of" for "I could've"? Where people have only heard the word said, don't know how to spell it or how it is derived, and give it their best-guess go which is incorrect - for now, but if we follow usage, we'll all be "could of per say that rouge tracker".
It's not about 'backing' anything, any more than you 'back' fire not being caused by phlogiston. It's just about noticing the reality and accepting it as truth, like any empiricism.
Whether or not I "back" the change is irrelevant. If someone types "per say" or "could of" I know exactly what they mean, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Unless doing so allows me to make a dad joke.
I have no idea what "that rouge tracker" is supposed to indicate, but perhaps with context I would.
Language changes all the time, and that includes spelling, grammar, and meaning. It changes whether or not we "back" it.
I don't go around objecting to people telling me "goodbye" on the grounds that I'm an atheist and therefore I don't agree that God will be with me, because I understand that people no longer use that term in its original sense.
My willingness to accept that "-phobia" can denote a dislike, disregard, or hatred in some contexts, rather than an irrational fear, is based on the same logic, just applied on a shorter time span.
The idea that it's "rational" to spend hours arguing semantics even when we know exactly what the person using a term intends to communicate with that term is very prevalent around here and I find it utterly baffling. It seems to be based on some kind of idealist view that we gain knowledge through pure reason by just constructing an endless series of syllogisms in our heads from first principles and so it's of primary, utmost importance to get those first principles exactly right, and if we do, then we can call the output "knowledge."
But if I say "well technically 'transphobia' means an irrational fear of trans people, and Dave Chappelle isn't afraid of trans people at all, therefore he's not transphobic" I have contributed exactly zero knowledge to the discourse and settled the question being asked - whether Chappelle's attitude towards trans people is negative and potentially hurtful - in the minds of exactly zero people. So it what sense is it "rational" to insist on this type of rhetorical gambit? It strikes me as a huge waste of everyone's time.
I'm with you on this. And also want to add, that another term _was_ added. TERF. Which wasnt even a word we made, theyade it themselves. But now it has nearly the same vitriol attached often times.
I'm not attached to using -phobe either. But it's just the word that's in common usage. If I were to say Dave Chappelle is antitrans instead I think that's be incorrect. He's not against trans people, he just finds us kinda gross and confusing. And if I made up a new term, I'd have to explain what I mean every time. So transphobe for the moment is what we've got, but when there's something new I'll use that instead 🤷♀️
I would normally agree with this principle, however, I think this is one area where in fact there is NOT understanding or agreement on the way these words "are typically used" or what any given user "intends them to mean".
Words and concepts surrounding trans discourse are entirely new to most of the public and were rolled out recently with little (or in some cases no) explanation, and even when there is explanation, some people don't understand it or if they do understand it, some of them don't accept or agree with the usage, so there really is not a common understanding of what is meant by a lot of those words. I'm fairly certain if you were to survey, say (1) progressive leaning cis Boomers, (2) conservative cis Boomers, (2) trans people over 50, (3) trans people under 25, (4) progressive cis Zoomers, (5) Gen X, or any other number of demographic groups, and asked them for a definition of the following terms, you would get completely different answers, many of which would be contradictory and unreconcilable, and in some cases (like with "cis") most people are likely to have never heard of them at all: sex, gender, gender identity, man/woman, transwoman/transman, trans, non-binary, gender fluid, cis, transphobic.
And what is understood to be the common or intended meaning of any of those words among the educated, urban, younger demographics is probably entirely different for others, and I think there's profound confusion when talking about these topics. Read any comments on, say, NYT trans-related articles and it becomes clear that even among educated progressive NYT readers who consider themselves trans-supporters, they have all kinds of misconceptions such as that transwomen can't be sexually attracted to women, or have male genitals, or that sexual orientation and gender orientation are not the same thing, or that the meaning of cis is unrelated to sexual orientation, such that it's accurate to use the term "cis gay man".
Even in Chappelle's own special, he obviously mixes up gender and sex at least once and says "gender" when what he means is "sex", but in other instances says gender to mean gender. It's not at all clear to me that people understand each other on these topics (and sometimes very obvious they don't). So while perhaps on ACX we can assume everyone shares a common understanding, that's an extremely narrow slice and when people are talking about convincing or talking to third parties, who knows what they may understand or how to convince them of anything.
I was rereading a part of Gender Trouble the other day and it struck me immediately how much the language has changed even since I first read that section back in 2006. So yes, of course, in cases when a word is not well-understood, we have to acknowledge that and address it.
But in this specific scenario, that's not what's going on.
One thing about natural language communication is that different words and contexts reinforce each other.
If someone says "I don't think Dave is transphobic because he talks a lot about a trans friend who he liked, and also he says he supports trans people's right to use the bathroom of their choice" then we know what they mean by "transphobic": a transphobic person is someone who doesn't like trans people and/or opposes trans rights.
If someone else says "I think Dave is transphobic because he misgendered his dead trans friend and says he's 'team TERF'" then we also know what this person means by "transphobic": someone who misgenders/disrespects trans people and aligns themselves with anti-trans movements.
If these two people have a debate about whether Dave is transphobic, they're not really debating the meaning of the word "transphobic". They're debating whether Dave is a good person who we should affiliate with, or a bad person who we should distance ourselves from, based on his actions and attitudes towards and about trans people. They're debating which evidence deserves more weight, which actions have which consequences and how meaningful those consequences are, etc. etc. etc. At no point is anyone confused over what "transphobic" means - in this context, it's a stand-in for this debate over Dave's moral standing in the community.
We know that natural language operates on the pragmatic level as a stand-in for these types of ideas and questions, both based on empirical anthropological and linguistic study of pragmatics, and on the theory that human language evolved precisely to navigate these exact types of social relations involving someone's status in a community and the rightness or wrongness of an action. We know instinctively what it means, and what's at stake, when people debate whether or not to apply an epithet like "transphobic" to a person. Trying to devolve it into an argument over semantics is, therefore, rightly seen as derailing - as an attempt to evade, rather than clarify, the object question.
There are people in these threads who are using "transphobic" to describe Dave in ways other than you are using here. They are not disowning him or saying that they think they should distance themselves from him. They are agreeing with the term, but not your meaning behind it. That sounds pretty distinctly like the term is not communicating well.
Again, I take your point as a general rule, and certainly do not like when I think someone is being pedantic about semantics.
Though I'm a lawyer (sorry), and our first rule of ANY argument is that you have to agree on your defined terms, or no argument can be had. So this one is hard for me. I can't understand how anyone could ever get to the point of determining whether someone or something is bad if the people in the argument don't even remotely agree on the basic terms being debated OR the concepts that underlie them.
And I maintain that the "trans issue" is really very different from virtually any other culture war type issue involving the struggle to advance the status or rights of a certain group, because it directly involves completely changing people's understandings of certain foundational words, in a way that is just totally different than any other struggle I can think of. So much of the trans argument is *directly* about words and language (and the concepts that underlie them), not just as a secondary or rhetorical matter, but as the actual meat of the argument.
I suppose it's possible to not define terms, and have a bunch of people who completely disagree on the definitions of "trans" and "gender" and "man/woman" and "transphobic" just post memes at each other of rolling-eyed gifs that convey their mutual dislike and "you're a bad person" opinion. And arguably that better reflects natural communication. But I can't see that as a good thing.
BTW, I read your article and thought it was quite good and a nice close read. Though I found your interpretation of the Space Jews joke interesting, because it didn't even cross my mind that the joke was intended to be about Israel or Zionism, I interpreted that joke very differently.
> Eh, descriptivism has pretty much won the day at this point.
Except, apparently, when it comes to pronouns, because a million linguistic prescriptivists seem to come out of the woodwork to tell me I'm wrong every time I call a trans-woman "he".
That's not prescriptivism. That's people disagreeing with the idea behind your word choice, not the usage of the word itself.
They're not saying you're mistaken about the meaning of "he" - they're saying you're mistaken in your belief that trans women are ontologically masculine-gendered, and probably also saying that you are rude for promoting that belief, knowing that it is offensive to the people in question.
Possible Melvin is not using the word 'he' to refer to ontologically masculine-gendered people, but to refer to *biologically male* people (that is to say, Melvin uses the term to refer *both* to biologically male people who believe that they are men, *and* biologically male people who believe that they are women).
...Or, more likely, to refer to people who *appear to Melvin* to be biologically male - a sufficiently convincing trans woman would presumably elicit a 'she', and a sufficiently convincing trans man would elicit a 'he'...
That use of the word is less accommodating of the wishes of transgender people than the alternative of using it to refer to people who are ontologically masculine-gendered, but I'd bet it's still a very common usage of the term - certainly common enough to be recognised and understood by people who take a descriptive approach to linguistics.
Descriptivism is not "you can call anything anything you want" it's "the purpose of language is communication- if everyone knows what you're talking about, your usage is correct in the only way that matters."
If you see some early transitioner and make an honest mistake and say He, I hope people do the proper thing and politely and kindly remind you.
If you insist on calling any trans woman he, then not only are you being an asshole, but you're also being non-descriptive. A huge proportion of trans women (myself for example) do not get mistaken for men in public. If you call us he, people _will_ be confused.
Latin? Probably someone who thinks "phobos" is Latin has a lot of misconceptions about how English has grown and changed so far and the social processes that have affected this.
>So my question is: How would you go about convincing someone that a cis person who makes jokes about trans people isn't necessarily transphobic/bigoted etc?
I mean, to start, you'd probably have to get them to accept your base moral framework and reject their own, which is a big ask.
My observations of this type of debate - who or what is or isn't racist, transphobic, etc. - has been that the right generally sees it as a virtue ethics question, where someone is only racist/transphobic/etc if they hold specific beliefs and intentions in their heart, while the left is generally more consequentialist, defining someone as racist/transphobic if their actions lead to greater inequalities or greater oppression/difficulty/suffering for minorities/trans people/etc.
A virtue ethicist and a consequentialist can't really have meaningful moral discussions with each other until they acknowledge this difference and carefully frame their arguments in those terms, because otherwise they're using the same words to mean entirely different things, and will just talk past each other forever. That's probably a lot of what you've seen and been frustrated by.
So yeah, to convince them he's not transphobic, I think you'll first have to convince them to stop being consequentialist on this subject, which... good luck.
Of course, even if you convince them of that, you'll still have a ton of convincing to do - I think it's pretty clear he harbors enough resentment and contempt and disregard in his heart that I'd still call him transphobic on virtue ethics grounds, but that would at least be an evidence based argument we could have - but you can't even start the conversation until you agree on the definitions of terms.
>My observations of this type of debate - who or what is or isn't racist, transphobic, etc. - has been that the right generally sees it as a virtue ethics question, where someone is only racist/transphobic/etc if they hold specific beliefs and intentions in their heart, while the left is generally more consequentialist, defining someone as racist/transphobic if their actions lead to greater inequalities or greater oppression/difficulty/suffering for minorities/trans people/etc.
Yes, this is precisely what's going on! Usually in discussing this with people who disagree with me, we get to this point where we mutually understand that one side believes that the deciding factor is intention and the other thinks it's the outcome, and that's where we get stuck. Usually we don't bother with the terminology of virtue ethics vs consequentialism, but the outcome pretty much the same.
Since you seem to have a perfect handle on the disagreement, I would love to hear your best argument(s) for and/or against consequentialism in this instance. I'll give arguing my position a shot here, though the entire reason for the original post is that I don't feel my argument is as convincing as it should be. This is an argument against consequentialism in this case, but not really an argument for virtue ethics. For what it's worth, I consider myself rule utilitarian.
I am almost certain that there exists some fact, which if a prominent public figure were to articulate, the direct net impact would be that people behave worse towards one another than if the figure had refrained from stating the fact, or had made the opposite claim. Should stating that fact be immoral? My intuition is that saying a fact can be an incredibly dumb thing to do in certain situations (eg, "Sorry ma'am your recently deceased child isn't in heaven because heaven doesn't exist"), but that saying so is not immoral. There is another layer here though which blurs the line, because to some extent, the speaker's knowledge of the outcome matters (eg, outing a gay person in Saudi Arabia). I would call that immoral in some ways, although the real crime lies with the people who directly harm the gay person, and that makes me really unsure as to whether or not stating a fact of that nature is immoral, or simply really, really stupid.
I guess the nice thing about conseqeuentialism is that you don't have to quibble about the differences between evil, immoral, bad, stupid, wrong, bigoted, etc. when making decisions about what to do.
If it has bad outcomes, you shouldn't do it.
You can fill in whatever post-hoc adjective you want to that - don't do it because it's evil, don't do it because it's stupid, whatever - but consequentialism is blind to all those distinctions. 'don't do it because the consequences are bad' is all it has to say on the matter.
If you convinced me that Dave Chapelle's act was merely stupid to do instead of immoral to do, without changing the consequences, that wouldn't make me more in favor of him doing it. It might b an important distinction for other reasons - do I want to be his friend, how best to convince him not to do it again, etc. - but ti doesn't change the equation regrading the show itself.
In cases like this, I think it's dangerous to have a situation where the same action with the same consequences either should or should not be done based on whether you can argue yourself into believing that the motivations behind it were good/bad. In terms of psychology and motivations and other social things that are not directly empirically measurable, you can always argue yourself into believing anything if you try hard enough, meaning you can always excuse or encourage causing harm and having worse outcomes with the right argument.
So I'm pretty firmly behind using consequentialist definitions here. We might have some *other* dialogue about what he believes in his heart, but I think terms like 'transphobic' and other morally-charged signifiers should be use consequentially to keep the moral discussion socially productive.
>I guess the nice thing about consequentialism is that you don't have to quibble about the differences between evil, immoral, bad, stupid, wrong, bigoted, etc. when making decisions about what to do.
If it has bad outcomes, you shouldn't do it.
Yeah, that is pretty nice. The awful thing about consequentialism though is that nobody is perfect at predicting the future. In really simple and direct circumstances (eg, 'should I tell this nazi that there's a jew hiding in my basement?'), I'm cool with consequentialism. But for things like public figures making jokes and wondering what the net impact will be on society and to what extent can their words directly cause people to do bad/good things rather than being completely misinterpreted/misunderstood and then doing good/bad things, I don't believe anyone is equipped to do the math. That's why calls for data on the results of people's jokes strike me as ridiculous. 1, it would be pretty much impossible to get that data, and 2, we can't assume that the outcome would be the same for a similar, but different statement. So that approach is so inapplicable so as to make consequentialism useless here, and having a simple and consistent rule like "it's okay to joke about whatever you want" is so appealing to me.
I don't deny that hueristics can bee a useful part of consequentialist praxis, but I just think you're miles away from being correct about how easy or hard it is to know the effect of something like this.
We've got trans people in this thread here saying that they get regular abuse from definite transphobes based in the same types of logic an rhetoric that Dave uses in his special; we've got states around the nation and countries around the world actively passing laws to restrict trans people's rights and access to civil life and medical care, an the people proposing them use the same talking points Dave does in his show.
I don't think it's hard to understand that every culture has it's own milieu of thought and opinion and norms about various topics, and that everything in the culture ads to that milieu in inter-connected and mutually causal ways. I don't think it's weird to believe that the people who are affected daily by hateful rhetoric and dehumanizing thought on a topic can recognize that rhetoric and those thoughts when they see them, and testify accurately about the effect they have on their lives.
'you can joke about whatever you want' might be a good hueristic, IF you are aware that when someone says something to an audience and the audience laughs, 'telling a joke' is just one of the many things that person on stage is doing with their speech act. They may also be building a personal brand, fulfilling a contract, setting up a running gag, insulting someone they don't like, trying to convince the audience to believe something or stop believing something, or - and this is the big one - pushing an ideology.
We can recognize when an ideology is being pushed on us, and whether the speech act that does so takes the form of 'a joke' or 'a screed' or 'a rational argument' has little to do with its effect on people and the world. Pretending that some speech acts can't affect the world in negative ways because they are in the category of 'jokes' is just miles away from a good understanding of how human communication works, and I don't think it takes any complicated calculation to confirm that.
Like, was George Carlin 100% neutral on the topic of whether or not God exists, had no intention to influence his audience one way or another on the topic, would b totally surprised to learn some people thought he cared about that issue, because everything he said on the topic took place during a standup special and was therefore 'a joke'? No, of course not, come on.
I think you're putting words in my mouth. I never said jokes can't lead to negative outcomes in the world. Of course they can. I never said comedians are only ever joking and not making claims or pushing an agenda. Of course they do.
The question is, is it wrong to say a given joke. You are quick to recognize some ways in which jokes can have a negative impact and you are certainly correct that they do have those negative impacts *to some extent*, however you failed to acknowledge positive impacts. 1. Jokes make people laugh, and laughter is good, and it's impossible to correctly weight just how good that laughter does the world. 2. There are people who enjoy being joked about. At least one anecdote of somebody was brought up in this thread alone, and I've found 4 or 5 prominent trans people on youtube who have commented on Chappelle's special saying that they thought some of the trans jokes were really funny and that it was a good thing that Chappelle told those jokes. And I'm positive Dave has hundreds, if not thousands of trans fans who stand by his latest special. 3. As another commenter pointed out, Dave talking about Daphne and echoing her words, "I don’t need you to understand me. I just need you to believe that I’m having a human experience," will probably do a lot to humanize trans people and create more sympathy for them among cis people.
If you only look at the bad, consequentialism is easy, but if you actually attempt to do the math, it becomes impossible nearly instantly. For consequentialism to work in practice, you have to have at least good estimates for the value of good and the value of bad that directly comes out of the situation. For consequentialism to work in principle, you have to have perfect estimates for the value of good and the value of bad that ultimately comes out of the situation, ie, you have to be omniscient. Simply noting that bad things happen is entirely insufficient, you have to be able to weight them too, and you have to repeat the whole process for the good stuff too.
This is interesting, because I think you make a very strong case for consequentialism and most of your points are correct.
Except this one, which I think is just SO wrong: " I think terms like 'transphobic' and other morally-charged signifiers should be use consequentially to keep the moral discussion socially productive." I would say that it's the insistence on using terms that previously held morally-charged, intention-based meanings, and applying consequentialist understandings to them (rather than coming up with a NEW term that conveys the consequentialist understanding) is exactly what fuels a majority of the culture wars and is socially unproductive.
People get so upset about, for instance, racial discourse today because "racist" is thrown around and applied to people who have always understood it to mean "morally bad person with hatred and animus in their heart" when the usage today is "person engaging in conduct that contributes to disparate outcomes regardless of intent or animus", and that makes them offended and defensive. If instead of co-opting an existing word and changing the definition, a new term was used, I think conversations would be massively more productive.
Though I imagine that this technique is somewhat purposeful, in that the new usage is intended to import the emotional reaction and righteousness that the old usage prompted, while applying it to far broader scenarios that might not result in the same sense of moral outrage if a different/new term was used. I can see the point in that, but it still seems unproductive.
I don't think I agree with this framing. When my friends on the left say that Chappelle is transphobic, they don't mean "Chappelle did a thing that was harmful on balance". They mean "Chappelle is a bad person who thinks bad thoughts."
I don't think you can handwave away the judgmental way that people are talking about Chappelle by saying that they are only judging or reacting to his actions. "Dave Chappelle is a transphobic asshole" is nothing like "Dave Chappelle did something morally wrong".
It may be true that people are looking at the balance of Chappelle's actions - at what he said in The Closer, in Sticks and Stones, in other specials and at other times - and coming to the conclusion that all of these things add up to "transphobic asshole", and I'm not even going to try to debate that. But to say that isn't an indictment of his character - the basis of virtue ethics - is to play some kind of weird rhetorical game.
I agree that in this debate the left will tend to cite consequences and the right will tend to cite intentions, but I do not agree that these things actually form the basis of their judgments. I would argue rather that these are simply post-hoc justifications for moral judgments made on the basis of moral intuition and group affiliation. The left wants people to take the claim seriously so they point to the harmful real-world consequences and ground their arguments in empiricism. The right wants people to excuse Chappelle so they center an unfalsifiable claim about what's in someone's heart. Flip the script and make it about bathroom access and suddenly the right is very consequentialist, talking about predators in bathrooms raping kids, the destruction of families, ROGD, and all sorts of other apocalyptic "destruction of the West" nonsense which is nonetheless based on claims about consequences.
I think you also have to acknowledge that there is also a debate as to whether each particular joke or statement is or isn't transphobic, and again these debates do not really fall cleanly on consequentialist/virtue ethical lines. For instance, opinions seem to be divided on whether "impossible pussy" was transphobic. Consensus here seems to be that it wasn't, but on twitter it's "he compared our genitals to artificial beef, that's as transphobic and offensive as it gets" all day long. I would struggle to believe any claim about the consequences of the "impossible pussy" joke *other* than that some trans people were offended - because I have seen such offense, and understand why that joke would be offensive - so the question then becomes whether offense counts as a consequence that's bad enough to warrant calling someone transphobic - and I don't think consequentialist ethics has a convincing answer for that. Do we want to accept a moral system in which anything that offends anyone is ethically wrong? I don't. Sometimes there are things which are offensive which are nonetheless important to say. "If it has bad outcomes, you shouldn't do it" simply doesn't cover this scenario as neatly as you are representing here.
And that brings me to the classical liberal/libertarian consequentialist argument which is something like "if we give comedians too much pushback on joking about sensitive topics, the consequence will be a chilling effect which will interfere with the right of comedians to do satire and perform an important function as social critics". If we "cancel" Chappelle then it will also contribute to an environment where non-comedians feel afraid to state their opinions. Where academics (like Kathleen Stock) get pushed out of jobs for wrongthink. Where writers (like JK Rowling) get death threats just for expressing an opinion. The whole opposition to "cancel culture" is argued in explicitly consequentialist terms. And since you've already agreed that everything in a particular social milieu adds to that milieu in mutually-causal ways, I think you can see how that could lead to deeper forms of repression of speech - and other liberties - by the radical woke left. In fact, Chappelle himself in The Closer has pointed out that this tendency has already hurt people like Da Baby and Kevin Hart who don't even have Rowling's white privilege to fall back on. And - wait for it - if the consequence of cancel culture ideology is that black stars are hurt disproportionately by cancelation as opposed to white stars, then by consequentialist definition the people who criticized Da Baby, Hart, and Chappelle are therefore racist - hence Chappelle's exhortation to "stop punching down at my people".
I do not endorse (or repudiate) any of the arguments here - my point is only that consequentialist arguments are used by both sides, to varying effect, and that sticking to a consequentialist frame does not alleviate the problem when both sides can simply point to consequences that disadvantage their side as evidence of moral shortcomings on the other side. And as you said, "In terms of psychology and motivations and other social things that are not directly empirically measurable, you can always argue yourself into believing anything if you try hard enough". Consequentialism offers virtually infinite degrees of freedom for people to find consequences, good or bad, which suit the narrative they've chosen to adopt.
From my point of view, those jokes add up to, "I think you're ridiculous, and if you don't accept being told you're ridiculous, you'll be socially punished because I enjoy telling you you're ridiculous".
I remember the sixties, when it went without saying that women were ridiculous. And now I see a social shift where (at least in some large circles) it goes without saying that men are evil. I'm opposed to that, too.
Quite apart from the opinions in those circles, anyone who would try to publicly suggest that women are ridiculous these days would face plenty of social punshment himself in the much larger circles, and the trans stuff is certainly headed in this direction. It seems obvious to me that acceptable targets for jokes in any culture could be either those of suffuciently low status, because there's no cost for offending them, or sufficiently high one (but not too high), because they aren't in apparent danger of losing it. Culture wars, in the main, are wars for the redistribution of status, which is zero sum, or close enough.
Doesn't match my memory. Who was more ridiculous on "Bewitched," Darren or Samantha? You could say Tony and Jeannnie split it 50/50 on "I Dream of Jeannie," maybe. Further back, I don't remember June being any more ridiculous than Ward on "Leave it to Beaver".
Maybe people just didn't take their identities so seriously then. Practically everybody was a vet and that didn't seem to stop them laughing at Gomer Pyle or the bulk of McHale's Navy.
>More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?
I don't think you can or should try to do this. Surely offense is a matter of personal taste. "That's offensive to me" is a statement of fact, not an invitation to debate.
There seems to be a misunderstanding. Stand up comedy is an art form. Other art forms you may be familiar with include literature, music, painting, poetry, film, etc. If an author writes a book that includes someone innocent getting murdered, would we say that the author supports the murder of innocent people? If a musician sings a song about a parent who beats their small child, would we say the musician supports beating children? If a writer writes a script about a racist man that degrades a black person, would we say that the writer is a racist? Hopefully the answers to these questions are not controversial. Of course not, it's an art form. A comedian that says a joke about a trans person is not "transphobic" anymore that the author or musician. It's art. Could someone that tells a "racist" joke happen to also be racist themselves? Of course. But the fact that they told the "racist" joke gives you absolutely no information either way on that question.
Is anybody up to date with the most promising trends in "psychosomatic health"? I am especially curious about the affordable biofeedback devices, novel supplements, and therapeutic modalities that substantially help people suffering from various bodily discomforts, fatigue, and somatic complaints that seem related to a struggling with a combination of depression, anxiety, sleep problems, etc. I have met many such "broadly psychosomatically dysregulated" people in the last years, and they don't seem to benefit much from the mainstream advice (first line treatments, healthy lifestyle, etc).
Presuming that their issues are psychosomatic seems like it's rather rude - just because mainstream advice isn't that useful doesn't mean their issues aren't the result of physical causes. My first guess for arbitrary patients (since you haven't exactly been specific here) would be issues with gut microbiome, that would probably necessitate a combination of short term treatment and long term diet changes. Next option is sleep apnoea, which is usually relatively obvious if your looking for it but is nevertheless massively undiagnosed, and will lead to chronic fatigue and mood issues, along with slowly accumulating permanent damage if it goes untreated for many years.
Howdy. I'm getting an early start on my New Year's resolutions, namely weight loss! [Alternatively --- and sadly more accurately --- I'm getting like a 2 decades' late start at controlling my morbid obesity, with some timely extra motivation coming from an upset stomach caused by pre-Halloween candy binging. 🙄]
Anyway, my question regarding weight loss: **Does anybody have a deeply informed opinion they want to share --- or failing that, a mildly informed opinion or personal anecdote they want to share 😉--- with the _commercially available gut microbiome tests_?**
Most pertinently: do they really produce anything *both* actionable and novel? Or do they, in the end, seem to give advice that... oh I don't know... ends up just being Michael Pollan's motto: "Eat [minimally processed] food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Quick searching of this substack as well as its subreddit and bulletin board as well as LessWrong.com didn't bring up any posts directly talking about the commercially available options (as opposed to aspects of gut microbiome science generally).
The most credible-seeming source of information I found through quick Googling and such was this: Episode 51 of the podcast "The Quantified Body": https://thequantifiedbody.net/microbiome-labs-richard-sprague/ . Alas, I'm pretty sure dates from 2018. Also, I'm a little leery of taking it as truly indicative of the expert consensus. I mean don't get me wrong: the interviewer and interviewees involved seem proper, postgraduate-degree scientific folks IMHO, and certainly the website design gives off IMHO awesome vibes of the sort "Behold my laudably well-curated info dumps that will satisfy even the most insatsiably curious of you, my gentle readers and fellow infovores!" (e.g., full transcripts and annotated bibliographies and such). So, that's a definite plus IMHO. On the other hand, there's the ye olde problem that the most voluminous content on the internet on on any given non-mainstream issue, even if it's written with rational-ish vibes, is probably written by people wayyyyyyyy too enthusiastic about the given non-mainstream issue to use it a simple proxy for "yup, this truly the expert consensus".
In case you want more specifics of what I'm imagining (i.e., feel free to skip):
Well, I'm under the impression many commercial gut microbiome test companies advertise with the notion that there's actually a substantial-and-personally-very-much-worth-knowing heterogeneity across the human population to how much various foods spike one's blood glucose, putting forth hypothetical scenarios where some invidividual has gut microbiota that aren't adapted (alternatively, are hyper-adapted) to extracting sugar in the presence of dairy fats so that such a person can indulge in full fat ice cream with a lot less of a blood glucose spike than the average person (alternatively, should avoid full fat ice cream as if it were utter poison)?
Is the overall notion that such heterogeneity exists right?
Even if it exists, is it really a key modifier of one's weight loss strategy for any significant portion of the population?
And even if that, can you trust these microbiome tests' generally qualitative recommendations in and of themselves, or do you have to go full biohacker and, say, wear a continuous glucose monitor for awhile to quantitatively calibrate these microbiome tests' generally qualitative recommendations?
I don’t have anything helpful to say about microbiomes, unfortunately, but I’ve been working hard at losing weight for the last two years and have found one truism: you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet. You probably can’t microbiome your way out of it either.
I work out like a madman, and made substantial healthy changes to my diet, and not too much happened on the weight end after some initial good results (though I’m in great shape from working out and eating way healthier). I lost about 15 pounds and then it just stalled. The remaining weight didn’t start coming off, unfortunately, until I just forced myself to eat much less. WHAT I was eating didn’t seem to matter that much. I just needed to eat less food.
The upshot (for me, might be different for you) is that if I’m going lose weight, I’m going to be hungry, and there doesn’t seem to be any way around that.
On the good news side: this probably doesn’t apply at the beginning. I got myself down from 210 to 195 just through a healthier diet and more exercise. Everything past that, though, has been a huge struggle.
That works really well for me. It’s just so temporary though - i find it impossible to maintain. I’m trying for something more permanent (which definitely involves way fewer carbs)
I tried the all meat diet. I did not lose much weight, but my sleep and complexion dramatically improved. If the all-meat diet doesn't give you the results you want, then you should try vegan low-fat/oil, which gives similar results by going the opposite way.
As with all diets, the only way to know if it works is to try it for yourself.
I agree with this, I had a similar experience. It's really frustrating! I'm exercising way more than I ever did before, and I'm pretty sure it's having almost completely 0 effect! Why do people push cardio as the solution if it seems like it does nothing? For context, I've been doing 25 minutes of moderate to intense cardio on an exercise bike 5 times per week, which I think is quite a bit more than the recommended amount. Is it possible that I've neglected my body for so long, that my metabolism is shot, and there's no amount of exercise that'll really work to burn off weight? The only thing that's ever worked for me is eating way less, and like you, I basically have to be hungry much of the time in order to maintain.
I've lost weight with cardio exercise, but at a significantly higher level than what you're doing. I would run 6-8 miles over hills at about 10 min/mile, or swim about 3500 yards, 2/3 freestyle, 1/3 butterfly, every day. So heart rate at about 135-145 for about 75 minutes a day, with multiple 2-5 min intervals up around 150-155. That works. Takes up a lot of time, though.
Sure. But try it 3 times as long 7 days a week. My son played competitive water polo in high-school, and that was like 3 hours of hard swimming 5 days a week. He ate like a starved wolf and still lost weight at the start of the season.
In short, it's certainly not impossible to lose weight by sheer aerobic exercise. It's just way harder than most people think, and it takes a much larger investment in time than most people want to put in who aren't already competitve athletes.
I guess I'm generally feeling like I don't want to spend all of my time exercising. I really really hate doing it. Everyone always says exercise makes them feel good, their body starts to crave it. I don't believe it for a minute, and I've never felt that way no matter how much I've done it. It's a considerable struggle to do what I'm doing now, which is way more than what I've ever really done before. I don't see why the amount of exercise you do shouldn't scale linearly - do I have to spend 75 minutes exercising per day to get any benefit out of it? 25 minutes a day is far from nothing, so I'd think I'd at least see SOME benefit!
No I don't think it scales linearly, and I'm not sure why it should. For one thing, hard sustained exercise does considerable damage and that must be repaired, which takes considerable energy (and raw material). General adaptation takes energy and materials, too. Metabolism also becomes significantly less efficient when power output near one's capacity must be generated.
I would hate exercise, too, if I did it in the form of riding a stationary bike indoors. Maybe you should try some other forms? I quite like swimming in an outdoor pool. Doing 100m butterfly sprints burns a fantastic amount of energy but (when you're in the groove) feels great, because you feel (and actually look) like some kind of awesome sea creature, a killer whale surfing Waikiki rollers or something. I also enjoy trail running, and am fortunate enough to have some fairly hilly and wild terrain right near my house. Even getting on a real bike outside might be an improvement -- the wind in your face, bombing down a curvy hill leaning waaay over, feeling the triumph of cresting some tough hill and taking a welcome swig from the water bottle. There are often riding clubs that can make it a blast socially, too.
Well, it sounds like you don't think I've been working at this for a while. Rest assured I've been trying to find an exercise that works for me for upwards of 15 years. This is the ONLY thing that I've EVER been able to keep up, both in terms of sustained activity for more than just a few minutes, and in terms of doing it almost every day. Running outside makes my muscles scream and I can never do more than 5 minutes of it before deciding I just can't do it. I tried that for a long while. Biking outside is fine, but it's inconsistent and I can't tell how much effort in putting in, and also it's inconsistent in terms of the fact that I'm at the mercy of the weather. Believe me, if you hate exercise this much, you'll look for any excuse to not do it. That's why indoor biking is the only thing that works for me. It's controllable and predictable and does not hurt quite as much as other things so I can't excuse myself from it, which, believe me, I would find any reason to if I could, when I'm in the moment and in agony, or dreading going back to it fearing the agony. Not to mention I watch media that I would otherwise be watching anyways, so I feel like it's less of a waste of time then being outdoors, where I would simply be bored.
I do feel like what I'm doing is near my capacity, I don't think I could do any more and keep it up. And I do think I'm doing hard sustained exercise, I don't see what basis you have to say that I'm not. My heart rate goes into intense exercise territory and starts that way for 25 minutes. How is that not hard sustained exercise?
Exercise (unless you are doing a massive amount of it) won't make you lose weight, but it will make you fitter: helps tone up what muscle you do have, you can walk distances without getting breathless, etc.
That's why diet and exercise go together: eat less (often drastically less) so your body just doesn't have the same calories and should start burning fat; exercise for your heart and lungs and muscle tone.
I tried Thryve’s gut microbiome test and have a couple of personal anecdotes. First, they’re mostly trying to get you to subscribe to their probiotics after you take the test. Second, the recommendations were so granular that I concluded that they’re BS. It was stuff like don’t eat spinach, eat kale, don’t eat red lentils, eat green lentils. The whole thing seemed quite overengineered.
If you’re primarily concerned with losing weight, I think tracking macronutrients on MyFitnessPal or similar tools is going to get you much further than microbiome analysis. IMO, the key is to build good habits and stick to them for the long term.
My comment does not answer your microbiome question, may not be what you want to hear, and may even be unhelpful, but I notice you have a very quantified outlook on this thing. Morbid obesity seems to have a significant psychological aspect as well, in particular wrt a history of trauma: (see e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16713630/).
If this is the case for you, then getting the perfect microbiome may be curing a symptom rather than a root problem. Leaving the root unresolved risks setting yourself up for relapse, and all the attendant pain, suffering, and disease that relapse entails. Therefore, it could be worthwhile to consider (if you haven't already) spending just as much or more energy addressing the psychological side of your problem as you are on the biological side.
Nothing on the microbiome, but as for losing weight:
Calories in, Calories out is not 100% of it, but it is a thing.
I help control my diet by mandating that I may NEVER buy sweet prepared food from the store. I can eat as many cookies as I like, as long as I bake them myself from scratch. It's way more sustainable for me that way.
Personally, I've gotten permanent results by building lots of muscle, then doing some amount of aerobic exercise every day and reducing calorie intake, while still maintaining muscle mass.
Also, being really strong is fucking GREAT. It is incredibly satisfying to be able to trivially left heavy things, or push a stuck car or whatever.
That said: Pay attention to your body and your joints! Pain in your muscle meat can be satisfying, pain in your joints and especially your back is NOT GOOD.
Nothing on the microbiome, but I can report on the two things that help me hold my weight down. Whether they would work for you I don't know.
1. Intermittent fasting. For other reasons I adopted a rule of no eating for sixteen hours between my last meal of the day and my first meal of the next day. I don't know if it works for the reason I adopted it, but means I can't nibble in the evening or morning, which makes controlling my weight easier.
2. Reward/punishment. I imposed a rule on myself — I am only allowed to eat ice cream if my morning weight is no more than 164 pounds, which is about what I think I should weigh. That brings my short-run current utility maximizer self in on the side my long run self supports.
I have also had success with intermittent fasting (also known by its less fashionable name, "skipping breakfast").
Losing weight inevitably leads some degree of hunger, but I find it's psychologically much easier to concentrate all your hunger into the morning hours rather than to remain low-key hungry all day.
Agreed on the snack. 16 hours fasting for me is 6-7pm to 10-11Am, preferably earlier. I like to get some food around mid morning. If I started a fast at 8pm it would be noon.
However I have often skipped breakfast in the past, that's not too hard. Not snacking between 6pm and 12pm was suprisingly hard, but I am good with it now.
The only thing that worked for me (until I fell off the wagon) was reducing my carbohydrate intake.
The usual advice: cut out all the junk, restrict or avoid starchy foods, plenty of vegetables (but again, avoid starchy ones like potatoes), cut out sugary foods, snacks, treats, drinks.
So, on the one hand, getting your microbiome in order is going to be hugely important -and if you're obese it's almost guaranteed to be out of sorts. One the other, it's mostly going to come down to "Avoid processed food, eat lots of vegetables, avoid excess carbs (aka any food you think of as "carbs", vegetables are fine if you're not aiming for ketosis)", probably combined with taking some standard probiotics. If you are American, my limited experience there as a tourist is that absolutely everything in stores has added sugar, so even things that should be healthy won't be if you don't make them yourself.
My experience with gut microbiome tests is due to chronic illness, so it'll differ from yours (I'm actually persistently underweight :( ); I'm also in Australia, so I probably can't recommend any specific brands. I will say that almost all the tests will need expert help to interpret the resulting reports, so if you don't have a doctor or naturopath or similar that you trust they'll be of limited use.
If the monetary cost isn't an issue, it's arguably worth doing anyway in case you have a specific overgrowth that needs treating, which would alleviate other symptoms you might have - eg. acne, acid reflux, gas. It'll also be an alternate metric to measure your progress, like how waist measurements are, since if you're also stepping up your exercise then your weight will hopefully be somewhat confounded by muscle growth.
Thanks everyone for the replies. I should've clarified that while I'm 100% agreement with all those who mention mental health as a key --- if not THE KEY --- thing for overcoming morbid obesity, I'm interested in all this gut microbiome stuff since I worry mental health issues might be in some ouroboros-y, self-sustaining/exacerbating, vicious feedback loop with some yet-to-be-understood hormonal/neurological pathological "ratcheting" of my appetite and "metabolic set point". In this regard, I'm thinking of Scott's 2017 rundown of informed speculations of such things in regard to anorexia nervosa -- https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/26/anorexia-and-metabolic-set-point/
That's the main clarification I should've raised. I hesitate to make my secondary clarification since it may just sound like an aggrieved snort of "Hey, buddy! This ain't my first rodeo. It ain't even my second, third, fourth, or fifth!" I don't mean it that way. After all, I was the one who in quite potentially misleading fashion opened with self-deprecatory schtick, namely:
"Alternatively --- and sadly more accurately --- I'm getting like a 2 decades' late start at controlling my morbid obesity... "
So, attention conservation notice, folks... feel free to cut out here... but if you like reading personal tales of woe (perhaps leavened by some degree of mighty struggle against said woe) in your Substack comment threads that you pay for with your hard-earned $$$, well keep on reading! You're about to get your money's worth! 😄
==== Utterly Optional and, indeed, Kinda Self-Indulgent Secondary Reply to All Who Replied ===
"Controlling" was the operative word in my schtick "... I'm getting like a 2 decades' late start at controlling my morbid obesity..." For all that 2 decades or so, I've been mightly *struggling*. Indeed, every 3 +/- 1 years, I have had 6-9 month periods of significant "success" with everything from:
a) 12-step programs,
b) outpatient behavioral health clinic programs run by MDs that think 12-step programs are cults, [so given these first 2 items (a) & (b), I'm100% agreement with all those who mention mental health as a key --- if not THE KEY --- thing... of course mental health issues might be in some ouroboros-y viscious feedback loop with some weird, pathological biochemical "ratcheting" of my appetite and "metabolic set point"... I'm thinking of Scott's rundown of informed speculations of such things, especially in regard to anorexia back in 2017 -- https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/26/anorexia-and-metabolic-set-point/ --- indeed, this is why I'm most interested in whether commercially available gut microbiome assays give any useful information],
c) measuring everything I ingest or imbibe down to the gram or mL (even when I'm not eating healthily),
d) doing the complete opposite of that on psychiatric advice that that such measurement an is eating disorder unto itself,
e) going very low carb,
f) going very low fat,
g) going very high meat (though never full carnivore... which, sidenote, sounds utterly insane to me in the absence of, say, blood tests every 6 months to ensure you're not --- at least by the standards of traditional MDs --- eliciting truly pathological blood chemistry... don't get me wrong: please enlighten me with references, but I know of no pre-industrial societal groups that ever did a 100% meat diet... seems to me just like a massive biohack... perhaps a useful medium-term kick to ye olde system, but very, very biohacky).
But alas! All these things (a-g) [which, come to think of it, weren't mutually exclusive and probably should've been enumerated differently... oh well 🙄] ultimately led only to many, many "yo-yo's" in my weight. My compliance inevitably dropped off after 6-9 months of successful diet / "lifestyle change". My problem eating then returned, and thus then my weight returned with a vengence (i.e., built beyond my previous baseline, often by a 20-40 lb increment)
And, not to go all the way into territory occupied by Bob Dylan's "lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale", suffice it to say that I didn't indulge in all that yo-yo-ing because there were no stakes. To the contrary, I messed up a marriage to a truly great woman with all that yo-yo-ing. (I also messed up some nice jobs and job opportunities.. but that vocational stuff is a distant second to me messing up my True Looooooove with --- what's that antiquated Massachusetts divorce legal-speak that sorta amusingly-if-mordantly applies to me? --- ah yes "gross and confirmed habits of intoxication". BTW, "intoxication" here in my case was solely from food, and not booze or other drugs On that note, did you know that taking *reasonable* amounts of opium was NOT grounds for divorce in 19th Century Massachusetts? It was only taking so much opium you demonstrated "gross and confirmed habits of intoxication" that allowed you to cite your spouse's opium use as cause. Oh, how times change! Though one thing that doesn't change is my mental defense mechanisms inclining me to digress into overeducated, intellectual trivia in a vain attempt at humor when I start recollecting certain life f@$kups a little too keenly. 🤪 😭 🤔)
Oh right, I said this would be "leavened with mighty struggle against said woe". So here's the silver lining to the above succession of clouds. In my struggle with my weight, I've become what I dare say would be a Massachusetts-state-record-setting, 45-49 age group powerlifter in the 105kg (231.5lb) weight class (well, in a drug-tested federation like the USAPL, mind you!... I couldn't compete with the untrammeled PED crowd). It's just that I'm --- alas! --- weighed down by literally 90ish extra kg (200ish lbs!) of fat. (Yes, I'm 430ish lbs). Thus, I can't compete in the 105kg weight class, but would have to compete with the "super-heavyweights"... who, mordantly hilariously IMHO, are everyone >120kg (>264.6 lbs) which, for me, is a level of svelteness of which I presently can only dream. [On that note, 100% wholehearted agreement with all those who say you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet... even if you develop amounts of muscle mass that are substantially more than the average... and even if you supplement your powerlifting with a nontrivial amount of aerobic and anaerobic endurance stuff. Oy!]
Anyway, to anyone who read that wall of honestly-somewhat-aggrieved-but-trying-to-sound-cool-and-rational-and-informative text, thanks. Writing over-verbosely bere on Substack at a fine blog like Astral Codex Ten beats screaming into the void (i.e., almost the entire rest of the internet 😉).
I noticed that you didn't mention weight loss surgery. It's *definitely* not for everyone, but it's certainly an excellent solution for some (including me. I lost 100 lbs from my high and have kept it off for 7 years).
For me, it was an ideal tool. I was morbidly obese simply because I really enjoyed food and I wanted to eat a lot of it. That was honestly it. I have no trauma. I wasn't depressed. I was in a good, contented mood most of the time.
But I just wanted to eat yummy stuff and it was really available, so that's what I did. I occasionally attempted diets with little success. Going months of eating less food or annoying food just made me hungry without seeing any satisfying results. And I wasn't motivated to diet and exercise even harder or longer because...eh...I can do that later!
But weight loss surgery is SURGERY. It physically changes the body's capacity for volume, and certain surgeries change the capacity to enjoy sugar/carbs.
My pre and post op diets (which were necessary to have a successful surgical outcome) were so restrictive I eventually lost all cravings for my formerly favorite stuff, and then having a smaller stomach capacity where eating a lot made me *physically* miserable meant I *couldn't* overeat the things I liked anymore. One post-surgery experience of eating too many steak nachos felt like I had an Alien chest-burster...in my stomach. It was so unpleasant that "one extra bite" (or five) never felt worth attempting again.
In addition to making eating too much and eating the wrong foods acutely uncomfortable, weight loss surgery has another psychological advantage: because the volume of food is so much smaller, and there's a lot of blood testing nutritional stats, there's a lot more motivation right *now* for eating maximally nutritious foods and saving junk food for "later." (The great trick of it is there often isn't a "later.")
That said.
Many people manage to thwart their weight loss surgeries by imbibing high-calorie liquid foods (sugar soda and milkshakes, etc), or they just push through the pain of force-feeding themselves until their stomachs stretch back out again. The tool of weight loss surgery isn't powerful enough to fix their particular psychological issues. You absolutely shouldn't consider weight loss surgery if you think you might be incapable of complying short term with a miserable pre and post surgical diet and long term with a diet that prioritizes protein and fat, then veggies and fiber, then healthy carbs, and little to no sugar.
But IMHO, it's an *excellent* option for someone like me, who can be compliant with dietary and volume restrictions only when there are immediate consequences and much higher stakes than "heart disease 35 years from now."
My general advice would still be aligned with my other post, but reading a bit more about your specific situation...
Have you ever tried a 24 hour fast? I'm not suggesting this as a fat loss tool, but a psychological one. The idea is that you get hungry for a while, then the hunger goes away, and you realize that being hungry isn't a life or death situation. It may be helpful for appetite suppression, which seems like what you need long term.
Also, great that you're strong! Means you have something to look forward to as the weight comes off! Hopefully you won't get too worried about dipping strength as the weight comes off, the caloric deficit means you won't have the energy and the fat gives you leverage.
Thanks for your reply. It sounds like you are in a lot of pain, and struggling mightily against it. Keep fighting. It helps me to remember that everything beautiful is inherently difficult.
I too have recently lost true love on account of prior psychological baggage and my own poor choices, so you have company. I'm still going through it, but here are some resources that have really helped me along the way:
1. I tried MDMA in a relatively therapeutic setting and it revealed and brought up a lot of stuff that I had been repressing for quite a long time. The memories and events of the experience were objectively horrendous but I consider it the most therapeutic experience of my life, hands down.
2. I read "The Body Keeps The Score." The thing that resonated with me most from the book was that sometimes traumatic memories can't be accessed by the left brain (i.e. rationally-verbally-analytically), and instead must be processed in the right brain (i.e. experientially-somatically-holistically) because traumatic events will overload the Broca's Area, the part of the brain connecting the two. This helped me see (a) that (like you) I was using intellectualization as a defense mechanism (abstraction is dissassociation), but more pressingly (b) that intellectualization wasn't actually helping me understand what was wrong.
This is not to say intellectualization is bad per se, just that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. For me, less intellectualization would have been more understanding. Anyway, I recommend you read this book.
3. Sleep, Exercise, Meditation, Gratitude/Forgiveness, Reading Great books, and Journaling every day as my top priority. If you are religious go to church.
I’m a big fan of that book myself and subjectively I know it to be true as I am working through a lot of childhood early adult trauma and I’m now in my 60s. I spent a lot of time trying to think my way out of it with not much success.
Michael Polan should not be offering universal advice about diet.
Because you're right - it's pretty clear that different groups have evolved different digestive strategies, and it follows that finding your group's ideal digestive strategy and following it would optimize your diet.
Like, I don't know why this is really still even a question? Lactose and alcohol tolerance are the most obvious examples of digestive evolution, but consider also that the traditional Inuit diet is almost entirely animal-based (sea mammals, fish), as is traditional Mongolian herders (dairy), and traditional Maasai (dairy, blood, beef). I'm assuming we can agree there's a general consensus from decades of study that people of these cultures did well eating their traditional diets. It wasn't until a lot of Westernized food (generally defined here as processed cereals, sugars, seed oils, etc) entered the diet that they started to have diet-related issues.
But some people feel absolutely great and stay healthy eating a Westernized diet!
Some people get healthier when they eat a vegan diet. Some people get healthier when they commit to being carnivores. Billions of people thrive on eating an amount of rice every day that would make others morbidly obese.
What's the explanation, if not individual digestive adaptation that should be considered when thinking about one's own diet?
What I heard from Andrew Huberman is that the gut biome is real, and its effect on health is sizeable. But there is little idea of how to quantify that size or determine which interventions would cause which result. He suggested experimenting with
* Fasting
* Fiber
* Fermented Foods
And seeing if they did anything noteworthy.
But if you're looking to lose weight, I'd say ignore the mainstream and go straight to the bodybuilding community. They've been doing this for a long time, and know the practice.
On YouTube I can spend hours watching well done videos about any conceivable topic - how to cook the last meal served on the Titanic, the latest on the James Webb Telescope, a review of the Model S Plaid, what’s the modern equivalent to Mr. Darcy £10,000/year and on an on. All non-political topics. Politics certainly exist on YouTube but the algorithm doesn’t push them on me.
On the written internet, it seems every site has to include a political angle. This site is great as it has a lot of non-political content. But is there some other way to find an aggregator of non-political content? There is so much going on in the world besides clickbait political takes designed to get folks all riled up about nothing.
> But is there some other way to find an aggregator of non-political content?
You might want to take a look at hacker news (https://news.ycombinator.com). Its content is biased for tech stuff and startup stuff but there is plenty of other stuff there too. Politics are discouraged, and the moderation is pretty good.
Yeah, one solution would just be to try and find stuff that's actually and effectively moderated to discourage politics (the Less Wrong site does this as well).
I don't know if it's smaller, I think it's just less discoverable. Good text-based content is spread all over the internet, while video-based content is mostly concentrated on one site with a well-optimised algorithm designed to feed you stuff that you're likely to watch.
There's probably a good business idea somewhere around "youtube recommendation algorithm, but for the whole internet" (but there's probably far more bad business ideas around it than good ones).
> There's probably a good business idea somewhere around "youtube recommendation algorithm, but for the whole internet"
You just invented Google.
The market for text content is objectively smaller and has lower barriers to entry than for video. You might be right that the political bit is just an artifact. In particular, political news is probably more networked than (say) blacksmithing news. No great controversies on blacksmithing blowing up Twitter.
I really wish there was an option like /r/popular that, instead of removing just NSFW content removed all political content. I have removed over 100 subs from /r/all, probably half of which are political in one manner or another but new political subs get created seemingly every day. It's a sysiphean task to keep up with it all and I'm really tired of it.
Oh, and obviously my front page is free of political content, but I like having the ability to find subs that I never thought of or might not want to see everything they post, just things that get highly upvoted. My front page is great for keeping up with topics I am explicitly interested in, but not so good for finding novel stuff I wouldn't have thought of.
Instead of checking /r/all and manually pruning subreddits you don't like (a Sysiphean task *regardless* of what your criteria are), you might consider checking something like redditlist that lists rising subs.
I also quite like tumblr in that you follow people rather than topics without it being twitter. I have a personality and worldview bubble there (one deliberately created, that I pop out of every so often), but not a topics bubble.
I don't know of an aggregator but I usually will try to find newsletters focused on a particular topic or industry. And I'll find them usually through links in other news letters. Unfortunately I can't really remember how I found any of the ones I read. So I won't be much help.
Sound: the bubbles popping on the top of a class of soda right before all of them are gone. You get to a point where there is a single layer of very small bubbles and that seems to decelerate the popping to the point they make this really great woosh sound.
Scent: 1) The smell of the plastic that is used to make three ring binders. 2) The smell of rain approaching or just after on a hot day (I think its an ozone smell but I am not sure). Seem like this is popular - I wonder if there is an evolutionary explanation.
The others all change depending on mood, season, location, temperature, repeated exposure, what I have just eaten (or not eaten), etc.
I really like the smell of cut and crushed geraniums, the sound and feel of wind blowing off the ocean and up the face of a cliff, and the feel and sound of impact from working out with a rag stuffed heavy bag.
Previously I would have said my favorite tactile/audio/etc sensation was sitting under a heavy waterfall. I think the white noise/white tactility/etc either overloads or cancels out a bunch of sensory sensitivities I have.
But a while ago for work, I got to tour a facility that makes speakers, and they let us into their bass testing room. This is just a big room with hundreds of bass speakers, some of them 10 feet wide, playing different random patterns at maximum volume forever, to stress-test them. You need very heavy ear protection to go in, and it's an immediate tsunamis of deep vibration, thumping hard enough to physically push against you, and deep random (but rhythmic) noise crowding out everything else.
Everyone else in my party felt sick in their and wanted to leave immediately, but I wished I could stay for hours. Very soothing, while also focusing attention and thoughts.
Flavor - Costco's returning Hoody's Peanut Butter Chocolate Mix is probably the most intense food I've ever eaten.
Sound - Anaal Nakrath is like the auditory equivelant of the hugest peat bomb scotch you can think of, or of licking a 9volt battery with your ears. It took a solid month to desensitize myself to it, but its now my go-to when I need to overwhelm myself with audio input.
Tactile - warm flannel shirt and jeans, right out of the dryer.
Image - going against type, high-precision minimalist art. That includes a good technical drawing. Rachel Rising is a masterwork of showing the most complete scenes with the minimal number of pen strokes.
Image: Easily the hardest for me to rank. Perhaps the darkness of a thick forest during a sunlit day- verdant green, enormous details that blend into a harmonious semi-random background, diffusion of light and shadow...
Sound: I listen to music far less than all of my friends or relatives- I do not dislike it, and I greatly enjoy the *addition* of great music or sound design to a movie or video game- but rarely feel the drive to listen on it's own. I think perhaps it's that I get a lot more out of reading, or playing, or "audio-reading", or cinema, etc., and find those relatively incompatible with listening to independent music. (Similarly, I often find music distracting when I work) So! All of that given, I am perforce demanded to select some sound beyond music. Am I a sap if I say the sound of my wife excitedly telling me about her research or readings?
Tactile sensation: Putting aside the obvious, the feeling of radiant warmth from laying in sunlight when the air is just a touch cooler than preference, but the insolation makes up the difference- if a breeze picked up, you'd be too cold, but in the stillness you are perfectly warm.
Scent: Perhaps the smell of a mole sauce being simmered? Complex, chocolatey, spicy, savory... I find it difficult to even concentrate on other matters if the house smells too strongly of some scents!
Flavor: Most of flavor is scent, they say, but holding that apart I'd go with well-smoked pork tenderloin, with touches of honey, wine, garlic, and pepper- basically char siu. I eat vegetarian many days, but things like this prevent me from it more often.
Smell: The wave of fresh chilled air and ozone that flies in front of a thunderstorm. It's brings such a high, like the entire world is balanced on the top of a rollercoaster ready to dash down the other side.
The sound of the tiny wavelets around the bow, and the first hint of heeling, when finally getting a faint breeze and being able to set sail again after days of drifting at sea with no wind at all - Context is everything.
Has anyone noticed a political balance to opinions on continuing work from home? I have my thesis but I want to see if there’s data on this. Does anyone know if the red tribe / republicans or the blue tribe / democrats are more likely to want to continue working from home?
I’m not sure about politics but there sure is a gap between extroverts and introverts. You also get a biased view from internet commenters who tend to be more on the introverted end of the spectrum.
I think there's a few potential confounds (depending on what question you're actually interested in). Even before the pandemic, blue tribe jobs tended to be the kind that could be done from home, while red tribe jobs tended not to be. During the pandemic, an interest in working from home may have been picked up by people who were generally in favor of pandemic mitigation measures, and an interest in going back to workplaces may have been picked up by people who were generally against pandemic mitigation measures, which may have increased a blue tribe/red tribe correlation. But it's less clear whether either of these two things will continue as we move into the post-pandemic world, and it's less clear whether there is an additional red tribe/blue tribe association if you are comparing pairs of people that are matched on job and matched on interest in pandemic mitigation measures, but one is blue tribe and the other is red tribe.
This confirms my prior bias. My observation is that the key variable has more to do with age/years in industry/seniority than political party. Older people or those with more seniority tend to be more conservative because they are older and more wealthy so you get a small effect like the one shown in the article.
People who have been promoted to senior roles in a particular office environment typically like that environment and will want to maintain it. Firms that have been remote or remote friendly before the pandemic likely have selected for senior people who are comfortable with a remote environment. It would be interesting to see this data broken out by type of work environment these people work in currently and in the past.
Why does the provision of educational services have to be done by a government bureaucracy. Why not move to a free market.
Creating an educational endowment for each person and paying out annually when students attain an agreed level of mastery, using tests like the Texas STAAR, would change everything in a hugely positive way.
There has never been a better time to introduce competition into the K-12 educational system.
I propose creating an educational endowment for each student, with the money paid out only when that student achieves a specified annual level based on tests like the STAAR.
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Education funds are currently paid in at the top and are expected to be used properly to educate the students. That is often not the case. The worst failures are in poor areas where a good basic education is most needed. Our current system also leaves dropouts to fend for themselves.
Students should be seen as customers for educational services, not inmates in a government factory school system.
We should change all state level funding to an endowment at the individual student level. The money stays in the student account until each level is met, making poor students much more valuable to educators who can catch them up. For example, bringing a fifteen year old at the sixth grade level up to sophomore level would pay four years of compensation to the successful educator.
Instead of leaving dropouts to fend for themselves, the funds would remain on deposit indefinitely, allowing those who got their act together after some time in the adult world to get an education.
Troubled students would have teachers and mentors who had a financial stake in the outcome. The dramatic difference in quality based on differences in community income levels would end.
Opening educational services to the free market will see most students moving through material much faster than at present. This will allow for practical job related instruction, and college level courses, to be included as providers fight for market share.
Competition among educational providers will make full use of technology, will provide useful training for actual jobs, will deliver far more education for the same money, and will free the taxpayers from the grip of an incredibly corrupt and self-serving educational establishment.
Our factory government school system is a relic of the past. We need to insure that everyone is educated, but trying to reform the current system is a hopeless task. Without competition nothing will ever change.
I don’t know what an ideal system would look like, but we can all agree on the desired results, and competition operating in the free market will bring it into being. I have followed the educational system all my adult life, and what we have now is ridiculous. By focusing on the desired result, which is student mastery of the required material as measured by tests like STAAR, we can bring about immediate major improvement.
I have several associates in the Black Community, and the appeal of this idea to them transcends ideological boundaries.
If state level funds were used to set up student endowments, paid out only after educational accomplishment, if would start dramatic positive change.
That movement assumes that the money still goes into a bureaucracy. What is needed is to introduce competition into the process at the individual student level. Make the student the customer. Vouchers are still limited to traditional schools, and none that I know of withhold payment if progress is not achieved. Withholding payment for poor results is essential, and once that is understood the door is opened for far more competition and freedom from government intrusion than otherwise.
Parents are stupid because they were educated in government schools. As such, they cannot be trusted to educate their own children or even choose which private or even which government school their own children should be educated in. That's why we need people who were educated in government schools to choose which school everyone's children should be educated in.
I could see this working, but the incentives seem to be towards picking winners and avoiding losers.
I'd add: This only works if you can somehow reward schools for taking a poorly performing student and making them average; and not just taking and excellent student and leaving them alone.
For example, you take some random selection of the student population and assign them to a school, and the school needs to try to get all their grades as high as possible, rather than taking all the A students and letting them get A's.
"Troubled students would have teachers and mentors who had a financial stake in the outcome. The dramatic difference in quality based on differences in community income levels would end."
I am fascinated to see how that would work. Little Johnny is a trouble-maker who likes starting fires and hanging out on street corners with the local gang of petty criminals. Does Tutor Smith, whose pay is conditional on little Johnny becoming a solid citizen, have leeway to use any and all methods? If heartfelt pleading to change his ways doesn't work, can Tutor Smith return to the traditional methods of corporal punishment?
What if little Johnny honestly isn't academically able? Apprentice him to a plumber because tradesmen make good money? I think that is a good option, but once again - is little Johnny (like a real-world example I met) going to prefer smoking weed, go into the course teaching him how to become a plumber stoned, and boast about this in public in a phone call to a pal?
'Teacher doesn't get paid if the pupil doesn't shape up' is also a good incentive for the kind of "we've sold off the bus line and now the private operator only runs the three profitable city routes, leaving people with no access to transport" kind of result: if little Johnny is too much trouble, nobody will take him on, yet he has to be dealt with *somehow* and will probably end up in jail, an even more expensive result.
A huge problem with treating the education market as if it was just another kind of market where competition would help is that education does not work like a market.
The benefits of education are numerous, hard to measure, and visible mostly a decade after education has been completed. Creating any proxy for "quality of knowledge gained" such as multiple-choice exams we have now will lead to Goodhart's Law. Plus there is the danger of the same problems as private insurance runs into: if a system is open, there's adverse selection, so insurance will try to just skim the cream (as noted by Deiseach above).
All of this means that you need to have a system that MUST teach all students at least something for that system to be able to function. I think that the current system is deeply flawed, but I would prefer a solution as has been done in Finland to one like you propose. Privatizing healthcare, education, or police would all find themselves in similar market failures. Sometimes, the market failure is simply that much worse than government failure that it is best avoided.
The requirements to meet the annual minimum of academic achievement would be similar to what is now used, and almost all students would at least achieve the minimum level. What is new is that free market providers could deliver educational services at a dramatically lower cost than the current system. The amount of money per student in today's system is amazing.
As providers sought market share they would offer additional training as part of their basic offering, allowing training for skilled trades, advanced placement courses, etc. Specialized schools for troubled students with various problems would arise and go nationwide. Troubled students many times would have several years of catchup waiting to be used. Dropouts would also have several years accrued to be used.
The key is that payment must be only for performance. That removes the micro-management from government, and the unions, which are choking the system and will always be a problem. A free market is the only permanent solution.
But performance of education is very hard to measure. If it's standardized tests, you end up teaching to the test, removing the socializing part of education and not measuring the pleasure that students have while studying in any way at all. Current system at least allows Slack (opposite of Molloch) which creates the lovely moments that we actually remember from education.
It is worth noting that I'm from South East Europe, so I cannot comment on inefficiencies of US education - prices, especially of higher education are horrendous there. Here the government has little money and produces pretty good effects with the amount given I'd say. But they're unionized here too, and unions are often a force of good in free markets (a counterbalance to cartels and general higher bargaining power of firms compared to individuals ingrained in how employment works in the modern world)
"What is new is that free market providers could deliver educational services at a dramatically lower cost than the current system."
I dearly wish I had a tenner for every time I've seen this touted as a solution: "just privatise X, the free market can do it cheaper than the government!"
What does a business do? It exists to provide a profit for its owner(s), be that a private individual or the shareholders. Providing a good or service is the means whereby the profit is generated, be that selling turnips or educating children, but the main goal of the business is to generate profit. If selling turnips makes more money, they'll sell turnips. If there is a glut of turnips and prices fall, then they will teach children. If the children end up unable to read but the EduCompany plc makes a fat living off the government contract, then that is all to the good for EduCompany. And they set up contracts so that if the Department of Education comes along and says "hey, the kids can't read so we want to terminate the contract", it will cost a lot to do so.
The fact that the government is too incompetent at contract negotiation to successfully privatise things is not a ringing endorsement of the government, though it is a good does of reality as to the difference between a system we'd design here in the comments and the travesty of a law that would actually pass if it went through most currently extant governments.
Having said that, the dramatic cost hikes in education seem to be spent entirely on things unrelated to actual education - mostly administrators, buildings, and sports teams, if I understand correctly. Any given private institution can and will eventually succumb to bureaucratic bloat, but the advantage of privatisation is that schools can collapse individually - leaving plenty of alternatives for the students - whereas a government monopoly is "too big to fail".
The major advantage of private education over public is that it's just way more efficient. At my local public high school, only half the people on the payroll actually ever stand in a classroom. The situation is far worse in higher education: the nearest public university campus has 10,000 employees, only 600 of whom are instructors. These figures are completely unsustainable in the private sector, of course -- no parent would willingly pay to maintain them.
However, the *origins* of the efficiency are less clear than one might hope: one reason public education is *inefficient* is that it has a mandate to service everybody, so for example the public school system can't simply eject troublesome students, or not take handicapped students, the way the private school can -- it has to cope with them, and they are a very expensive burden indeed. Nor is it clear what alternative might exist in general -- unless you are prepared to bring back galley slavery, the workhouse, or exile for the most difficult young citizens.
How would you make sure that this neither drastically overpays for the education of easy students nor drastically underpays for the education of difficult students? I'd prefer skipping the endowment part and just making it an actual free market.
Someone being a good or bad student has a genetic and social aspect - both of which are outside of reach of a child. I consider it unfair to give less of a chance to a kid from poorer household, so I would not want them to be treated that different. But it depends on whether you consider education a right or a privilege - I know. But I've been my whole life working with students from very different backgrounds, from rural China to French Jet-Set kids and I can tell you they are alike more than different in how little power they have over what they do - it's all luck of the draw on who their parents are. But they're all equally human and deserve attention and a chance to develop and effort put into helping them discover themselves and this world of ours. A free market is hard to incentivise in that direction, and while I have ideas on how to do it I lack the funds and connections to pull it off, and even then who knows how it'll work in different markets. Education ties into employment market and is tangentally related to votes etc etc, it's all too hard to look at in a vacuum.
Apologies for perhaps a confusing post but it's late here, so I hope I got the main points across.
The average 85-IQ child is going to have less of a chance than the average 115-IQ child no matter how the system is set up (and likewise for other, less measurable, traits), so I'd forget all about equal opportunity and instead focus on allocating resources efficiently, which I think most people acknowledge that free markets are very good at, whereas planned systems tend to be horrible. I tend to think that most people, and especially that majority of the population that is not particularly intellectually gifted, would be better off with apprenticeships than with modern education. Apprenticeships are, naturally, something that the free market could provide at no cost to anyone except the employer.
NB. the employer will not provide apprenticeships if they're a net drain on the business - the two options there are to pay the employer, or to allow for contracts that lock in the apprentice's labour for some years after their training is complete. But this is a bit of a tangent....
Traditionally apprentices spent a lot of time doing scutwork rather than learning, in addition to being enslaved as you are suggesting, so their master received the apprentice's labor for some years during their training instead of after. This has the disadvantage that it's unskilled labor, but it also has the enormous advantage that it doesn't require slavery, which is bad.
The problem is that an education lasts a life time and employer will not want to pay to train a worker that won't give their whole working life to them. Either we then allow workers to sign life long contracts or companies buy off debt of workers from other companies - each of which is a dystopia in and of itself.
However, there are marked benefits from getting elementary education (forgot the exact TED talk on IQ test change through time showing that people without education lack abstract thinking for example) so even those with low IQ benefit from some education. While I agree we currently overeducated people (most should stop at High School and fewer should be getting PhD) - this too is a consequence of a free market of labor. Free market of education isn't the solution to the free market problems.
Employers already pay to train their workers without having any guarantees of life-time service, so I think you're drawing some pretty wild conclusions there.
They do for limited training - they will not teach employees basic math. They teach how to use the software that is used in this specific firm, but a lot of that is non-transferable. An example closer to what you are saying are the Big Four auditing firms which pay for CFA exams (usually two years of study, several exams and can be pricy) and they do so while binding workers with a four years after CFA contract, and if the worker leaves early they have to give the money back. Firms do not enjoy paying for positive externalities.
I am open to hearing counter-examples though - once again I am in Europe, perhaps things are different where you are.
There is an important factor to note, which is that in a free market model the student is not the customer, the parent is, in that it's the parent who'll ultimately make the choices. Thus, even taking the government out of the picture you're still left with a classic principal/agent problem. Now, most of the time a parent cares more about their child and knows more about their child than the state, but one must consider the subset of the population whose parents are apathetic or simply woefully ignorant on the topic of education. (Also actively abusive ones, but the need for a system for those is independent of your educational model).
Beyond that, working out the right incentivisation scheme seems very difficult, but your idea of paying per grade level achieved rather than by time in school is novel and interesting. I suspect an optimal solution is some combination of the two, especially considering that for younger students school is as much childcare as education.
Plenty of other commenters have mentioned the impossibility of getting current politicians to pass a law that resembles this, but that's a comparatively boring topic compared to "would it work if we could make it the law?", so I'll just leave this as a footnote.
The materials offered to home schoolers are an example of what the offerings would look like. What I have seen are excellent. I would expect education providers to use existing infrastructure, renting space, paying for student transportation using existing fleets of school busses, etc. In cases of apathetic parents the kids themselves would want to do what their friends were doing so they would find adequate providers. The payment annually only for minimal achievement would protect kids with apathetic parents. No provider is going to spend time and money without providing materials that educate students to the minimum level, but they will insist on orderly classrooms etc. which are not being provided by our inner city schools. They won't be filling the rosters with no show jobs by local Democrat operatives etc. I live in rural Texas south of Houston. The suburban schools are very good, the city of Houston schools are a disaster, and some of the black suburbs are endless sources of failure and disorder. Some of the strongest supporters of this idea are blacks in failed suburban schools in large traditional black communities.
With government schooling, you have a classic principal/agent problem where the agent is obviously going to nearly always be worse than a parental agent.
>Why does the provision of educational services have to be done by a government bureaucracy. Why not move to a free market.
Primarily principle/agent problems: parents are not expert enough to find the best school, schools are more successful by advertising to parents than by making a better experience for kids, some parents legitimately do not care and will go for the cheapest most convenient/accept kickbacks/whatever, many parents want religious schools that will not teach entire concepts, etc etc etc.
Isn't the principal/agent problem much worse for government-run education tho? Surely parents and their children have vastly better aligned interests than politicians and other people's children?
So, basically, the whole idea of having a democracy is to make it such that no, it isn't. Whetehr or not you think democracy succeeds here is an open and important question, but the *intent* is something like:
If a parent is making bad decisions for their child, likely no one outside of hte child and maybe close family knows about it, and absent actually child abuse, no one has a way to intervene. If a government agent is making bad choices for *all* children, everyone notices, we have a huge political debate about it, and they can be fired or not re-elected.
An individual parent probably knows little about education as a discipline and is ill-prepared to evaluate different schools, is very susceptible to advertising and marketing. A government agency can employ hundreds of experts to find the best answer, then apply that answer broadly.
If a parent is very religious, they may want to send their kid to a religious school that cripples them by only teaching holy texts for 8 hours a day; we outlawed religious considerations in government agents to prevent this.
A parent might get a kickback from a bad school to send their kid there, and this may be totally legal, or impossible to monitor for every single separate family in the country if illegal; it would definitely be illegal for a government agent making that decision, and they face a lot of personal scrutiny from reporters/opponents/etc to catch it.
Parents may care about using a school that's on their way home from work so it's convenient for them to drop off and pick up their kid each day, even if it's a bad school; the government agent doesn't give a shit about that, and is only being evaluated on choosing good schools.
And so forth. Basically, the idea is that by being distant from the situation and subject to public scrutiny and recall, the government agent has fewer reasons to go against the children's interests, and is easier to discover and remove if they do. you can make their job evaluation solely dependent on good outcomes for the kids and nothing else, so that all their incentives are aligned with the kids, in a way you just can't do to every individual parent in the country.
Of course, like I said, how well you think that system actually works is an open question. I think it's going to be better overall, especially because I've seen a *lot* of really bad parents over the years. Others may have different intuitions.
I've never heard of anyone getting a kickback from their school vouchers, and considering how many journalists there are that dislike private schools and the voucher system, I think I would have if it were even a rare occurrence. What I have heard of is people getting raped in public schools and the rapists not getting expelled and the politicians staying in power, time after time. A parent who treated their child that way would be an extraordinarily poor parent, guilty of child abuse – but when politicians treat children that way, it is just par for the course. Thus to me it seems impossible to believe that politicians' interests would be better aligned with children's interests than are the interests of the parents.
The parent has a higher incentive than any government agent to ensure that the child gets a well-rounded education. Doesn't mean they always will, but often enough to discard government schooling.
Well, first of all: the *average* parent does, perhaps, but certainly not *all* parents. Lots of bad parents out there, and I worry that it's primarily the people with good parents who are always up in arms about keeping the government away from kids. Some kids really need the government to step in.
But, second... I'm not sure how to phrase this idea, but: even a fairly good, informed parent may not be able to tell whether the school their child is going to is 5% better or worse than an alternative school in their area, they just don't have the data or knowledge to make that discrimination, and they have no felt incentive to make that decision correctly because they will never notice or be aware of the outcome.
But a government official who lowers student outcomes nationally by 5% will likely loose their job, and a government official that raises student outcomes by 5% nationally will become well respected and advance their career greatly. They have very strong incentives with real, tangible pay-offs.
So I guess I'm arguing about what it means to have 'aligned incentives'.
Yes, in the abstract, the good parents cares more about their child than the government official does.
But in practice, the *tangible feedback* that informs and guides behavior is, in some ways, more sensitive and responsive and impactful for the government official, meaning the *incentive structure they operate in' is in some way more aligned with the child than the incentive structure the parent operates in.
Like... take 1000 people who care a lot about the environment but don't really know much about it or have any unusual amount of time or resources to devote to it, versus one person who doesn't really care about the environment but is a domain expert with lots of knowledge and is in control of an institute that is charged with helping the environment and will get a lot of money and social status and career advancement if they help the environment. Which one is likely to help the environment more, in practice?
And who has better aligned incentives - the people who care a lot but don't know what they're doing, or the person who doesn't care but gets heavily rewarded for success and knows how to achieve it?
You are optimistic about the effect of government beyond any applicable data. Name a government official whose rewards are correlated with positive student outcomes or whose punishment is correlated with negative student outcomes. Look at Randi Weingarten, who is president of the AFT. She has demanded that schools be closed during the pandemic, and yet is now claiming that she wants schools to be open and always has. How is she being punished for that lie?
Essentially, you are saying that governments have a magic wand they can wave that somehow gives them better incentives and more information about students than the parents. That is .... unlikely. Google for "knowledge problem" and the scales will fall from your eyes.
This is an interesting comment because the full application of market logic would suggest an answer - there’s no private offering for education because nobody thinks that there’s profit to be made in it.
Our financial system is flush with cash and companies are getting funded everyday to fulfill all sorts of consumer services like delivering food and subscription exercise classes, but none of them (that I am aware of) are educational alternatives. I seem to remember some ex-Googlers starting a school in SF but that’s all I’ve got.
The optimistic interpretation is that there is a rich market opportunity to tapped - what pitch deck is complete without an outrageous TAM? The pessimist might take two tracks. The first is that massive government monopoly has sufficiently distorted the market that no profitable alternative is tenable. The second is that there is in fact no more profitable alternative to be had.
The realist thinks, under the present constraints, we are at equilibrium.
What might can change the present constraints? Hell if I know.
> there’s no private offering for education because nobody thinks that there’s profit to be made in it.
But there are lots of private offerings for education. E.g. in Sweden a quarter of high schoolers go to private (but government-voucher-funded) schools. In England, so called public schools (which are privately funded) still educate the elite.
It just occurred to me that there *is* a private offering for education - fee-paying schools. So now the question is, why don't they broaden their intake to encompass all students? And there are two possible reasons:
(1) They want the cachet of remaining exclusive. If any Tom, Dick or Harry can come attend JamNCream Academy for The Terminally Loaded, then why will oligarchs bother sending their kids there to mingle with the hoi polloi? And if they're being funded by taxpayer money (which is ultimately where the endowment student accounts get funding), then they can't charge the same level of eye-watering fees.
(2) Cherry-picking. They can cater to the rich and thick, in which case they get the eye-watering fees just for babysitting rich people's brats for five years or so, and the smart but less well-off via scholarships. They don't have to take the all-comers who range from the troubled to the intellectually challenged to the average to the really bright ones that public schools have to do, and since they can select the better students, they keep the aura of "JamCream Academy turns out the next generation of leaders, heads of state, and extremely wealthy tech entrepreneurs".
The half-way position on this - state funded but independently managed schools were the academies set up in the UK, and that didn't turn out very well (again, my point is that these are businesses first and education providers second, so as long as they are turning a profit, that is what matters to them):
I've been asking myself a similar question with respect to higher education: Why don't universities drop their SATs and their racial quotas and their legacy admissions and all that stuff and just admit the highest bidder? To me it would only seem fair that even if I was of the wrong race and I wasn't too good at the SATs and my high-school grades weren't all that great and I didn't have the right connections and I couldn't kick an American football too far, if I still thought I could be a good lawyer and I was prepared to pay for the chance to make a fool of myself trying to prove that, I should be given that chance. It looks to me like the universities are just leaving huge piles of money on the table here, so I'd like to understand why.
There are plenty of universities that will admit you, no questions asked, if you are willing to pay full freight. But what you probably mean is why don't Harvard and Stanford do that? The answer is: because they don't need to. They get only a small fraction of their budget from tuition, probably around 15% or so. (I vaguely recall Stanford toying with the idea of just dropping tuition entirely, or maybe it was for certain "low income" -- like less than $100,000/year -- families.) Big famous research universities make almost all their money from research overhead, licensing and patents, and assorted investments. They do instruction more or less as a hobby, and spend hobby-level money on it. And as long as they can fill up the hopper of undergraduates trudging through acquiring a lifelong long for alma mater, they really don't give much of a crap what the actual tuition they pay is. There's no especial reason to auction off 50 spots to the children of Hollywood stars who'll pay $250k instead of $75k for the privilege, the modest amount of extra money wouldn't be worth the PR hit.
Universities whose students are the highest bidders instead of the highest academic achievers certainly do exist, and some are even accredited, but they face a number of problems. They're subject to severe grade-inflation pressure (so the quality of feedback is low), they have a hard time recruiting good students (so the quality of classroom discussion is low), they consequently have a hard time recruiting good professors (so the quality of curriculum design and classroom instruction is low), and their degrees have minimal signaling value, perhaps even negative, both because getting admitted has no signaling value and because graduating (due to the grade inflation) has little signaling value.
And everyone knows there are better alternatives available, so the question arises of why your diploma is from a diploma mill instead of Harvard.
Abraham Lincoln became a good lawyer without ever attending a university. The way to retrieve that sort of equality of opportunity is not to have more diploma mills; it's to eliminate the requirement for a law degree to take the bar exam.
"Why don't universities drop their SATs and their racial quotas and their legacy admissions and all that stuff and just admit the highest bidder?"
Used to be done. Still sort of happens; some people go to university because their fathers and grandfathers went there and they go for the networking and to join the right societies and make the right friends. Not necessarily stupid, either, many of them are intelligent and get good degrees, but the piece of parchment is not the most important thing for which they are attending.
It used to be known as the "gentleman's third" (that is, a third or lowest class honours degree) because it was enough to pass and be awarded, but you weren't depending on how well you did at university to make a career (often because you were of independent means - a gentleman - or your father would make a place for you in the family business):
The (in)famous Bullingdon Club, getting its maximum publicity from the fact that several members of the British government were also members of this club when attending university in the late 80s, and that they did favours for and were cronies with other members in later life :
Anecdotally I have seen examples of both (1) and (2) - and I would add a third demand-side constraint. There are only so many jobs at Goldman and Google, Rhodes Scholarships, and first rate research positions out of undergrad, and I suspect that total elite university production will track roughly the availability of elite positions.
Second - per Carl's point below, there's a weird extent to which undergrad education in the USA is a public outreach program that encourages elite support of the academy as much as it is a system for education. Unless you go to a small liberal arts college or a state school without much graduate presence, the undergrad component is definitely less important to the administration than graduate studies, research, etc.
There is generally a small private offering for education because governments force everyone, whether child-ful or child-less, to pay for schooling, and they force children to be educated. Can you imagine any product worse than when everyone has to pay and customers have to use it?
Total Addressable Market - it’s typically presented as “our total market for product1 is $X billion annually and we believe we can capture y% for a mature revenue of $Z million”
It’s an easy way to get a sense for if a company would be viable in the space given competitor market shares and total spending on that category.
Probably the biggest problem in education is that we can't agree on the desired results - at any level at all.
Is education for vocational training? Is it to produce civic-minded citizens with an appreciation for how their government and society work? Is it to enable us to meet our human need for enlightenment and self-actualization? Is it to give parents a place to stick their kids while they're at work? Is it to instill the values and ethics of society? Is it to teach facts, or skills, or "critical thinking" (whatever that is)? Is it to give all children in society access to the same opportunities to "succeed at life" (whatever that is)? Is it to produce equality of outcome, correcting for historical discrepancies between groups? If so, which groups? Is it to promote social cohesion and unity? If so, does that involve addressing historical grievances, or papering over them? Is it to give children the skills they need to make our nation strong and competitive, globally, compared to other nations? If so, what are those skills? Is it to reach kids in dysfunctional homes or communities with social services they wouldn't have access to otherwise?
I doubt many people, when asked, would say that the desired results of education are to pass standardized tests. There isn't even widespread agreement on whether standardized tests are a good indicator of achievement, let alone what achievement we should try to test for.
The desired results I am referring to are functional literacy. Our inner city schools are not doing even that. The Texas STAAR tests functional literacy and has been successful at determining how schools are fulfilling that basic function. Most other states have similar tests. The idea behind my plan is to provide at least that before payment, but let the free market offer endless other attractive educational services to try to gain market share. The available technology is not being used in education as it would be in a free market. Gamification is being used successfully in job training by business but is subject to endless studies paid with tax money in the educational morass, while simple orderly classrooms and attention to basic literacy and math skills is not happening in many schools.
One of the things that radicalized me was a recent experience with a tow truck driver. In the Army in the sixties my company had a group of black draftees from inner city Detroit. Our entertainment at that time was paperback novels, which were passed around, and the black guys read them effortlessly. I recently was towed by a nice twenty something black guy who had graduated from an inner city high school. He struggled to read the forms that had to be filled out after the tow and asked me to read some of it for him. That is an absolute disgrace. He was not dumb, but after spending twelve years in inner city schools he certainly was uneducated. My plan would end that incredible malpractice and misuse of educational funding.
The Army in the sixties tested draftees and only admitted the literate ones, so I'm afraid your example suffers from selection bias. (Although there was Project 100,000, where some illiterate or otherwise unqualified draftees were admitted and given remedial training to try to catch them up to their peers).
I'd want to see good comparative stats on literacy over time to believe that US literacy is worse now than in the 60's. I can't seem to find any, though.
Having spent a life around and operating machinery I was able to see that my tow driver was intelligent, I was also able to see that he struggled to read. I questioned him on his schooling and found it was a large inner city high school. I really don't think your criticism of the idea based on a misapplication of the Army example is valid. My tow driver was average or above based on his handling of his equipment. What I am seeking is to stop paying for non-performance, while at the same time open the door for use of technology and competition. The system is far behind what it could be if competition were allowed to operate.
Now and then, I float the idea of more work on adult literacy. I get no traction-- there's a common belief that if people don't learn to read in school, they can't learn later. I'm pretty sure this is false.
I'm pretty sure it is false as well. But I also think the problem isn't so much people who are totally illiterate even at the "see spot run" level, but people who stalled out at a fairly low grade level, have trouble reading much of anything targeted at adults, and no longer bother to try. And that may be a much more demoralizing problem, requiring a different sort of solution.
I agree it more likely that there are a lot of people who can read a little rather than a lot of people who can't read at all. There may be more people who can read their native language, but not English, though.
I've wondered about an adult version of Sesame Street. It turns out there was one in England for a while.
Agreed. As far as I can tell, American education (at least) mostly runs on habit, with no clear goal.
Another couple of possible goals-- teaching students to be entrepreneurs. And I've been told that the purpose of education in the Renaissance was to teach people to be able to represent themselves in court.
One problem with this is that the feedback loop takes years. Smart students, in particular, will keep learning even if their teachers, labs, and libraries turn to crap, and you'll *eventually* notice that they aren't learning as fast as they probably should have, but not in one or two semesters. And you weren't going to get quick miraculous turnarounds from the dullards either. But you are going to have to pay your teachers, and even more so your overhead expenses, in the meantime.
Another problem is that the current educational system combines financial and non-financial incentives. Teachers accept lower pay because they feel that they are performing a sacred duty for the public good - rather like how the U.S. Army can hire soldiers for less than half the cost of whatever Blackwater is calling itself now. You're going to have a hard time maintaining that if you explicitly monetize and market education, so at least initially any such proposal is going to cost more for the same quality education.
Neither of these are dealbreakers, but they are substantial risk and cost factors to keep in mind as we consider this proposal. Which we should, even if we ultimately decide against it.
It purports to find substantial differences between anti-depressants and, importantly, it identifies different anti-depressants as being better or worse within different (quite specific) subgroups (the best antidepressant had an average remission rate... 1.5 times higher than the average antidepressant... and 20 times higher than the worst antidepressant").
Strikingly, it has a neat web site http://hi.gmu.edu/ad where you can input your medical history and it will generate an individually-targeted recommendation for a specific anti-depressant. For example, the first time I tried it, it suggested that for people with my characteristics, fluoxetine had the highest remission rate (55%) and compared this to the remission rates for a bunch of other specific anti-depressants.
So far so good, although naturally I had some initial scepticism of subgroup analysis. Particularly since the medical history 'quiz' was taking a lot of quite specific information (not just age, gender etc.).
Unfortunately, when I retook the test a couple of times the wheels started to fall off. Some of the questions were a bit ambiguous (maybe they'd be clearer to a US audience). For example, it asks whether you've received psychiatric evaluation or had a gynecological appointment (does this mean *ever* or specifically in connection with your depression? would meeting with your General Practioner and discussing depression count?).
With slightly different answers on questions that do not, realistically, seem likely to be connected to massive differences in the effectiveness of different anti-depressants (as well as some different branching paths where the test will ask different questions based on your previous answers) the test generated totally different answers. In some of these cases (despite only very mildly different answers) it was explicit that for example, only one antidepressant had been used by people in that particular subgroup, so that was the recommendation. In one of these cases it also explicitly said "This antidepressant has a 3% chance of remission, but it's still the one we recommend!"
Suffice to say, this seems very dubious and it seems quite likely they are over-interpreting noisy subgroup differences.
I took it twice. The first time there seems to have been an error as there was no history and no recommendation. The second time with basically the same answers I also got fluoxetine.
I think they need someone with experience in survey design to rewrite the survey. Its a great idea, but the questions are not clear. I would like to have some examples to help me understand what they are talking about particularly when it comes to types of diagnosis and therapies. For example it was not clear to me the first time that when they said "remission" they meant my symptoms improved. I get that that is the correct technical word to use but its not very user friendly.
"Remission means that your symptoms will be reduced by 50%. We examined the experiences of more than 3 million patients, who took more than 10 million antidepressant treatments. Most of these patients did not match your age, gender, and key aspects of your medical history. Among 174 who did match you, 174 persons tried uncommon or multiple antidepressants.59% of patients who took uncommon or multiple antidepressants that we have not analyzed,experienced remission.Talk to your clinician. We think you need uncommon or multiple antidepressants but we are not sure which one."
Okay, second time around I went easier on it and it was able to find something for me:
"Remission means that your symptoms will be reduced by 50%. We examined the experiences of more than 3 million patients, who took more than 10 million antidepressant treatments. Most of these patients did not match your age, gender, and key aspects of your medical history. Among 110 who did match you, 110 persons tried Citalopram. No other medication was tried by the group that matched you. 51% of patients who took Citalopram experienced remission. We recommend you take Citalopram."
I have a snowball in Hell's chance of convincing a doctor to prescribe this to me, particularly given that it would interact with other medications I am on and is contra-indicated for my physical health condition, but at least I have some kind of suggestion there.
"Did two or more of your previous depression episodes end with remission?"
uh....if they *ended*, that would be remission by definition, would it not? The only other way I can think of a depressive episode ending would not be terribly conducive to my filling out a survey about it.
COP26 starts today. What are peoples views? It’s been billed as the most crucial summit on climate change since the Paris Agreement, as countries are expected to have submitted new plans to reduce emissions.
Do you consider it a crucial summit to prevent climate change? Or is it just another UN summit, like the now forgotten COP25?
Personally I guess from the China presidents no show this will just be another talking shop but progress will be made toward countries agreeing stronger emissions targets. It will take another year though for the politics to be worked through.
Interesting - I hadn't realized that Paris was COP21! I had assumed it was the most recent one. But on looking up the list of these conferences, I do see that the Paris agreement had been worked out over the previous five conferences, in what is called the "Durban round" (which is a term I do remember) named after that fifth conference before the Paris one. Looking back at the list, I see that Kyoto back in 1997 was an important one, and it looks like there were one or two others that were particularly important, though all of them probably played a role in getting to the position for the big ones to happen.
It looks like the COP25 was particularly problematic because it had first been scheduled to happen in Brazil, until Bolsonaro pulled out, and then Chile, until other protests there caused that government to cancel, and it was moved to Madrid relatively last minute.
Glasgow had been scheduled to occur in late 2020, but covid moved it to this year. I'm guessing that it will be one of the more significant ones for several reasons - first, having been billed as such will tend to make it more significant one way or another (either living up to that significance or being seen as failing); second, if this really is when the first updates to Paris are scheduled to happen, then that is an important test of Paris; third, since there's been a longer gap since the previous one than usual, and the previous one had problems, there may be a backlog of activity that occurs.
Xi's absence will certainly cause some difficulties.
I don't think any of it matters because the main sources of emissions in the developed world are mostly supported by governments (building roads, zoning policies which create suburban sprawl, heavy regulations on nuclear energy which make it unfeasible, subsidized agriculture that creates artificially cheap meat and distorts land use, etc.).
Hard to have solutions for the developing world until they are developed and I don't think anyone has found any way to actually accomplish that from the outside. The best the developed world could do would be to drastically increase migration from poorer, developing countries to richer developed ones but that's a big bag of political impossibility right now.
"The best the developed world could do would be to drastically increase migration from poorer, developing countries to richer developed ones"
From an emissions standpoint, wouldn't that be among the WORST things to do? The average American has a carbon footprint four times larger than the average Mexican.
Are you referring to repatriation or to some kind of colonialism? I think colonialism would risk increasing prosperity in the colonized countries, which would lead to increased emissions.
I would replace the tax system with a flat $20,000-per-annum fee in all first-world countries. It's like a "country as country club" approach.
For productive people this would be a much lower tax burden than they currently suffer, while for non-productive people it would be unaffordable, forcing them to move to cheaper countries.
Oh, I've had the same idea. I think that fee is much too high, though. The first-world country I live in currently has tax income of approximately €10k/inhabitant, and that's with a costly welfare system. If our politicians got their hands on even more money, I can't imagine what silly and dangerous things they'd do with it.
However, I don't think there's much chance of such a system, where poor pensioners and cripples and so on are thrown out of their own country, ever being implemented, for obvious reasons. But I wouldn't be too surprised if some country added a flat-fee option to their tax system, as a means of attracting the right migrants.
Question 1: do you simply open the border and shove the poors over it, or take all their stuff on the way out as compensation?
Question 2: how do you get the poors to the border? Do you give them a period to sell up and move out, or do you just auction their stuff off for them and put them on a special train?
Question 3: who mows Mr and Mrs $20,000 p/a's lawn, or serves them coffee?
*This conference is the first time that parties are expected to commit to enhanced ambition since COP21. Parties are required to carry out [to increase commitments?] every five years, as outlined in the Paris Agreement, a process colloquially known as the 'ratchet mechanism'.*
My view is that global warming isn't that big of a deal and these summits probably won't have much of an effect – presumably we'll keep using fossil fuels as long as they provide cheap energy no matter what. The previous summits don't seem to have affected my life at all – I can still fly across the continent for €20 – so presumably this one won't either, and I'll just view it as yet another cocktail party for our rulers, of no concern to me.
I am concerned about AGW and I have low expectations for COP26. I am hopeful for the future because human fertility is dropping rapidly. I spell out my thoughts here:
Hadn't heard of it. My prior for any climate summit is that it will have negligible effects on climate change, unless it somehow convinces the US or China to go nuclear (which I think is a fairly unlikely outcome).
Interesting! I'm somewhat skeptical that this is a consequence of climate summits (as opposed to simply being a promising economical way to generate power), but to be fair I haven't looked into it.
What are the reasonable lifestyle options for people with a very low well-being (e.g. due to genetics, external circumstances, resistance to most treatment options, lifelong imprisonment) who don't want to or can't undergo euthanasia/commit suicide?
I was curious if frequent lucid dreams and deep meditative states (such as 6 hours of jhanas or metta per day) could serve as satisfying coping strategies.
It depends on if you're merely incapable of much productive activity - in which case pray you find a loving relationship with someone who can support you, and focus on your partner and family - or if you're also in constant pain, in which case that shit really sucks and drugs or, if those fail, euthanasia become very plausible options.
I know plenty of people in the first category who manage to lead lives that are happy overall, though obviously things would be better with good health. The only person I know in the later category is pursuing every possible means of maybe curing the pain, at almost any cost, and I don't know what he'll do if he runs out of options....
If you're after more prosaic advice of how to kill time when unable to leave the house of exert yourself, videogames are literally optimised for providing feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment, and many of them have substantial communities to provide a social network! I also recommend gaming to healthy people, it's just fun :)
Cleanthes was below average intelect (allegedly, I have my doubts), lived below the poverty line, had the kind of job that made the ancient Greeks say "wow that's a tough job" and his hobby invovled breaking bones in his hands and face. My life is way, way cushier than his but his Stoicism seems to have worked for both of us.
For the last decade America has been depolarizing around race and repolarizaing around class. To be clear, it's still more race polarized than class polarized. But that's been changing. The Democratic Party has been bleeding working class voters to the Republicans. The Republican Party has been bleeding middle and upper class voters to the Democrats.
The issue with that is that the working class outnumbers the other two classes. If the process is completed then you'll see the Democrats representing 20%-33% of the population and the Republicans representing the rest. For now, the Democratic Party is staying afloat (more or less) on the fact that minority woring class voters are still Democrats. But that's increasingly shifting.
I think that political parties tend to know where their bread is buttered. They see these changes and I expect them to react. The question is what the Democrats can do to prevent becoming a permanent minority. Electoral reform won't do it. It will give them a boost but they're genuinely losing vote share. It might even accelerate the process by forcing the Republicans to appeal to non-traditional Republican groups more. Likewise, it's increasingly looking like non-voters are leaning Republican so the Democratic focus on general turnout like automatic voter registration isn't likely to help. (Both are good things for democracy but not the party. Also, politically, the major reforms the Democrats want are unlikely to happen anyway.)
So where do the Democrats go from here? Do they find some kind of new working class politics? Can they afford to alienate their elite, cosmopolitan donor/volunteer base? Can they reform the actual people who make up party leadership to look like their base? The Republicans, for all their other flaws, have politicians, donors, and staffers demographically similar to their base. The Democrats don't. Do they (ironically) need some kind of affirmative action? Do they become an increasingly tyrannical minority and turn on democracy as a concept? (They haven't so far but how much of that is contingent on the fact they're getting the majority of the vote? It's easy to be pro-democracy when you're winning.)
My idea (which is half baked) is that we're heading for something like Britain got in the 1930-60s. The Democrats could collapse and be replaced by a more openly socialist, consciously working class party. They'll stay on as a rump like the Lib Dems who represent the OxBridge set but don't have enough vote share to do anything. The question is whether the Democrats can course correct and absorb the nascent movement (like they did in the late 19th century and 1930s) or not. Though an argument against that is Labour has increasingly become, like the Democrats, a non-working class party too! The British working class is increasingly voting for the Tories, which is admittedly easier since the Tories have a longer history of working class engagement. So there's some kind of general political shift going on here throughout the west.
Or is this not a problem and the realignment will stop before it necessitates any kind of response? Will the Republicans just fail to pick up the $20 on the ground because they're too married to their form of class politics? Place your bets, I guess, but I'm curious to hear what people think.
Isn't this roughly the same thesis as Scott's `modest proposal?' I agree with your diagnosis of the way things are trending. I don't have confidence in what this implies for the future (besides, realignment of political coalitions, but realignment into what exactly?)
Roughly, yes. I'm asking for people to place their bets, as it were. Personally, I'm between a 1930s-Britain style realignment and a late 19th century American Progressive style realignment. But I'm curious to hear what people think or to have holes poked in my thoughts.
I don't understand American politics at all, so forgive me if this is a very naive view, but from the other side of the Atlantic (France), the way we present things is that Democrats are social-democrats, while Republicans are more conservative, and we heavily insist that Republicans consists mostly of old, rich, white people. So I was under the impression that Democrats were on the side of the working class. But that doesn't seem to be the case. So what do the Democrats represent? Cosmopolitan, city-dwelling elites?
I think this would have been a roughly correct characterization circa 2000, say, but the parties have evolved a lot since then. Read Scott's "A Modest Proposal" for a primer. Erusian's thesis (with which I agree) is that the Democrats are evolving to be the party of the patricians (roughly, of the college educated), and the Republicans to be the party of the plebians (roughly, the working class). The thing is, a pure sort of this form is unstable, because there are a lot more plebians than patricians, and the American political system more or less guarantees (on the national scale) two roughly competitive parties, so the political coalitions have to realign somehow. The questions is, how exactly? I don't know. I can imagine multiple scenarios, but don't have very high confidence in any one.
There are more plebians than patricians, but college educated at present includes a lot of people who are not patricians — consider school teachers, for example.
I don't know, I'm defining patricians and plebians in terms of class, not income, and I would say school teachers are patrician class (as are baristas with advanced degrees in fields ending in`studies')
There are obviously multiple sub-tiers within each class. But college educated vs non-college educated seems to be trending to be the major fault line in our politics. Labelling the two groups as `patrician' and `plebian' respectively is just me being whimsical. Feel free to suggest alternative terms.
In principle this is true. In practice, I tend to assume voters vote in what they see as their best interest, and that thus if group A votes for party X, then the policies of party X must actually favor group A, regardless of who they are claimed to support. Of course, voters may weight other factors than purely economic calculations into their assessment of which party supports `them.'
If group A votes for party X it means that group A *thinks* that party X's policies will favour them, but whether it actually shakes out that way is another story, and party X knows that too.
Favour isn't necessarily monolithic. The party that favours you in some ways will disfavour you in others.
In the US I think it's often a choice between the party that actually serves your interests better and the party that flatters your social status and tells you that yes, _your_ group of people are the people who really matter.
If you're a member of the white lower-to-middle-middle-class then maybe the Republicans aren't _actually_ going to serve your interests best, but they are going to tell you that you matter and are important and are precious and special and are being listened to. Similarly if you're a member of one of the Democrats' many client groups then the Democrats might not be your best bet either, but they are definitely going to tell you that you matter and are important and are precious and special and are being listened to.
"In principle this is true. In practice, I tend to assume voters vote in what they see as their best interest, and that thus if group A votes for party X, then the policies of party X must actually favor group A, regardless of who they are claimed to support."
This would only follow if voters could accurately deduce what was in their best interests, which is clearly not even close to being true.
I said what *they see as* their best interest. They could of course be wrong. In a one off election being wrong may even be probable. But I don’t find it very plausible that tens of millions would repeatedly and consistently vote against their interests because they are too stupid to realize it. Probably they are just working with a different utility function.
Observe that there are tens of millions of pairs of people with virtually identical economic interests but one of whom votes Republican and the other Democratic.
Given this, we don't even need to ask which of them is right - we have already demonstrated that lots of them are voting against their own economic interests.
Now, you've been very careful to talk about "interests" without specifying "economic" throughout, and I'm intentionally moving the goalposts slightly - my suspicion is that your response will be "ah, but some of those people want to live in a world governed by right-wing social policies and others want to live in a world governed by left-wing social policies". And I acknowledge that there's an element of truth to that, but I also claim that in most cases one of the most important things making them vote the way they do is the belief that it's in their economic interest to do so, and that half of them are definitely wrong about that.
And given that, I also think it's farfetched to assume that people can reliably work out what's in their own interests in other ways (see, for example, the large number of people who were convinced that legalising gay marriage would have terrible consequences for straight marriage).
Why do you tend to assume so? I would think that voters vote for what they consider the common good. After all, a person motivated by selfishness shouldn't waste their time on voting in the first place.
I think most people define `the common good' as `that which is in the best interests of me and mine.' However they define mine (may not be blood relatives), and however they define `best interests' (probably not purely economic).
On economic issues, the Republicans support big business and the Democrats half-heartedly support the working class. (Half-heartedly because they've been taken over by cosmopolitan, city-dwelling elites. Biden and Sanders are old men from before that takeover.)
On other issues, the Republicans support the white, rural working class, and white suburbanites who think of themselves as rural working class. The Democrats support everyone else.
Economic policy is how Democrats win, and it's a serious failure of the current party leadership to lose sight of that. Conventional wisdom says that Biden won because he's a boring moderate, but I think he won because he's a relic of the old working-class Democrats.
Interestingly, although Sanders himself is from before that split, his big surge in 2016 was mainly due to him becoming the candidate of the highly educated diverse urban social class (though perhaps particularly the lower income fraction of that higher class set).
That was a witch, at least if you ask her opponents. Nobody *hates* a dead horse, or a broken toaster. It's just sort of there. And if it's only *mostly* dead, it can still sign legislation passed by a friendly Congress, appoint judges from the approved list, and generally fill the office in a way most people would prefer to having that office filled by someone they actually hate.
Hillary Clinton, lots of people actually hated. Likewise Donald Trump, so the election came down to who people hated more. And we know how that turned out. But very few people really hated Joe Biden, which is a significant advantage over Trump or Hillary.
It's fair to say the Democrats are social democrats and the Republicans are more conservative. Likewise, the unions tend to be Democrat. But the Democrats are also historically the party of urban areas, the Northeastern, and Southern elites, and the college educated elites. They've also been the party of minorities since the 1970s or so. Historically, this led to weird things like the Democrats being the pro-segregation AND the anti-segregation party.
The Democrats have been losing the working class since the 1970s. This was stopped somewhat by the Democrats moving to the right (as Clinton I did) and by the fact the minorities used to be solidly Democratic regardless of their class. In the last ten years this has been less and less true. Working class minorities are increasingly voting Republican and working class union members are increasingly voting Republican. In short, the working class is increasingly resembling each other regardless of race in voting habits. This has led to a joke that the Republicans are building the broad, working class coalition the Democrats always wanted.
Now, minorities and unions are still majority Democrat. But less and less so. Meanwhile, educated white people (even in business positions like Wall Street types) are increasingly Democrats. The Democrats do have vote share trending upward among the college educated. Especially the elite ones, less so people at trade colleges. But they're losing vote share among most other demographics.
As Appleby says, this is unsustainable because the college educated aren't a broad enough coalition to win. They know this. I know this. Everyone knows this. The question is what they're going to do about it.
It's a bit misleading to say "working class minorities are increasingly voting Republican" or "Republicans are building the broad, working class coalition the Democrats always wanted". The first claim is literally true, but I think because Republicans are now getting something like 40% of the Hispanic vote rather than 30% (i.e., back to the level they were at with George W. Bush, rather than McCain, Romney or the first Trump run) and are getting something like 20% of the Black vote rather than 10%.
The trends are moving in a direction such that, if they continue uninterrupted for a decade or two, the Republicans might be winning a majority of working class minorities. But that's still a ways from now, and these sorts of trends only sometimes continue uninterrupted for that long before the next trend begins, which might be orthogonal to this one.
I've repeatedly brought up the possibility the trends could be interrupted and that majorities still vote Democrat. I don't think it's at all fair to say I'm being disingenuous.
I'm not claiming you're being disingenuous. I'm just clarifying because I know that some other people in the thread indicate that they are unfamiliar with the details of the American situation, and someone could easily get the wrong idea from your post that Republicans are *already* winning close to half of working class minorities.
"They've also been the party of minorities since the 1970s or so."
1930s.
"The Democrats have been losing the working class since the 1970s."
Nixon v. McGovern was in 1972, and it was far more of a modern election in its voting patterns than most late 20th century ones, so I suppose that's true.
"The question is what they're going to do about it."
The Democrats have not lost ground in the national popular vote. They've lost some ground in the electoral college, but this seems temporary, as Georgia, Arizona, and Texas swing toward them. There are far more safe Dem electoral votes than there are safe GOP electoral votes.
This was when the shift from Blacks being solid Republicans started. They only became solid Democrats a bit later on, during the Civil Rights era. You also see Black Republicans (mostly older) surviving into the 1950s. You're right it's the start of the shift but it took a few decades.
> The Democrats have not lost ground in the national popular vote. They've lost some ground in the electoral college, but this seems temporary, as Georgia, Arizona, and Texas swing toward them. There are far more safe Dem electoral votes than there are safe GOP electoral votes.
Not yet but if current trends continue they will. Plus the next few years look to be an electoral bloodbath because of how the map's drawn. Maybe the pattern won't continue! I don't know and I'm perfectly willing to hear it won't. I'm just trying to figure out because I have a feeling we might be heading for a new party system.
The cities will turn red? That's what happens when people move from one place to another. They take their politics with them. Or are you suggesting they're all going to die off?
Also, a fair bit of the red shift last election was working class/minority communities in cities. Again, not enough to make a difference. But enough that if it continues the Democrats will have a problem. My question is what political actors will do to respond to that.
It made a huge difference. The Dems lost two Senate seats they expected to win, and all of the stretch seats they thought they might have a chance in. They lost a bunch of House seats they hoped to win. The result is no filibuster reform, no statehood for Puerto Rico or DC, no national voting standards, and no change to the Court.
Instead we got a decent economic bill early on, and we *might* get a bit more here in a few weeks. Or, you know, maybe not. The red shift already dashed most Democratic hopes for this last cycle before we go into the wilderness.
Because we have, essentially, two parties and not many smaller ones as is common in Europe, the two parties are not monolithic. Each one has lots of smaller factions with in it. Some parts of the Democratic Party support unions, some are cosmopolitan, city-dwelling elites. Some in the Republican Party are old and white, others are religious and non-rich and non-white, others are racists. None of the factions is in control 100% of the time. This is even more complicated because its plays out different at different levels of government (federal, state, local, etc).
The most accurate descriptions is that democrats are against republicans and republicans are against democrats. Thats really the only consistent behavior.
One issue is that with voter turnout so low, and voter turnout being so heavily correlated with education and income, it actually wouldn't be too hard for a party that gets the support of the 30% of the population with highest education and income to actually get more votes than the party that gets the support of the rest of the population. That is, under this new configuration, voter suppression will generally help Democrats, and making it easier to vote will generally help Republicans. The parties are definitely not operating in ways that reflect this understanding.
It also helps that by far the biggest source of funding for political parties these days is small dollar donations, which tend to come from the 80-90th percentile of the income distribution. The party of the upper middle class can be the party of a much smaller fraction of the population, and still get a majority of votes and the vast majority of political donations.
Interestingly, the Senate and Electoral College have very different biases than this set of biases. If this transformation does become complete, then it may coincidentally turn out that these structural biases cancel out with the voting and donating biases. But it will be hard to measure this, because the votes are much easier to measure than the preferences of the population as a whole.
The 2016 election suggests a natural fracture point - we ended up with the Clinton wing of the Democrats against the Trump wing of the Republicans, but we weren't that far off from ending up with the Sanders wing of the Democrats against the Romney wing of the Republicans. It didn't have to be the case that economic protectionism and anti-immigrant sentiment was in the same party with tax cuts for the rich.
This is a rather odd comment that asks 'how will the majority party stop from becoming the minority party?', which seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. You have an oddly doom-and-gloom look at the party who received 7 million more votes in the latest presidential election, and had a similar performance 4 years before that, etc. I don't see how one gets 'what the Democrats can do to prevent becoming a permanent minority' from there.
It's true that the Dems lost ground with some groups, but they..... by definition made it up with other groups, as their vote share remained the same or higher. Biden reversed several class & gender trends that Clinton suffered from, so obviously whatever 'trends' are going on are hardly inexorable. The non-college educated voted overwhelmingly for Reagan, then switched to Clinton, then Bush, then Obama, then Trump- they're clearly a swingy group, you're ignoring mean reversion of any present trends around education & voter share.
"The issue with that is that the working class outnumbers the other two classes"- The educated vote at much higher rates
"If the process is completed then you'll see the Democrats representing 20%-33% of the population and the Republicans representing the rest"- Mean reversion, the process will not 'complete'
I don't see how that's odd at all. "One party is trending towards the minority. Will the trend continue? How will they stop that if it does?" This discourse comes from Democratic strategists, by the way, not Republicans who tend to be doom and gloom too.
Except that Democrats /aren't/ trending towards the minority. If you put together a bunch of demographic trends in a particular, fragile, tendentious way, you get a semi-plausible reason why, in the future, Republicans might stop tending towards the minority and Democrats might start doing so, but that's a very different thing.
This isn't true. If the same trends of the 2016 or 2020 elections are moved all the way to 100% then the Democrats will be a tiny minority. That would mean that working class minorities and whites go Republican while suburbs and college educated folks go Democrat. And at that point the Democrats are non-viable.
Will they get there? I don't know. I think probably not. But I'm curious how that realignment will happen.
How does that follow? The trends for both elections is there Democrats get more votes. They've consistently gotten more total votes since 2008. In 2010and 2014 Republicans got more votes relatively speaking, but those were low turnout elections.
Democrats may have a motivation problem, but in terms of number of votes cast the trend has been in their direction for a long time. In the Senate, for example, Democrats represent 39 million more people than Republicans. In a parliamentary system it would be closer to 60-40 than 50-50.
Senate Republicans haven't represented a majority since 1996.
`people represented' seems like a red herring, in that you are counting all California republicans as being `represented' by Democrats, and all Texas democrats as `represented' by Republicans. (And remember, there are more Republicans in California than in Texas, and more Democrats in Texas than in New York). In a proportional representation system, the senate would be maybe 52-48 D (instead of 50-50), but not 60-40.
"The Republicans, for all their other flaws, have politicians, donors, and staffers demographically similar to their base."
I don't think this is at all true. Republican donors and politicians are for the most part quite rich and represent the Mitt Romney type. The Republic base is a non-rich, religious, white working class person. The GOP has historically been fantastic at using culture war issues to get non-rich people to vote for them, then making zero actual progress towards those culture war issues and in fact losing basically every culture war, but keeping the tax cuts for the rich going. Recall that the Republican establishment was initially absolutely horrified by Donald Trump and did everything they could to get rid of him....they wanted country-club, silver spoon Jeb Bush.
In fact, up until very, very recently, I would say it Democrats were far more aligned with their "base" than the GOP. The difference is that once the Republicans realized Trump was super popular with their base, they quickly got on board. Conservatives have far more respect for power and authority than progressives -- you wouldn't see that happen among Democrats. And still, plenty of the country club types bailed on the GOP over the populist vulgarity...David Brooks, George Will, Bill Kristol, etc.
Anyway, your point is correct that IF a legitimate party ever arose that was focused entirely on an economic platform for the working and middle class, one that just stayed out of the culture wars entirely for the most part, it should have the biggest base and be essentially undefeatable. But that is precisely why both the DNC and the GOP will make every effort to prevent that from ever happening.
Still, conditions are ripe, since Bernie proved you don't need the support of national legacy media nor big donors to run a viable campaign. And he almost did it, despite vicious opposition from the DNC power players. Plus most under 40s are not aligned with a party and there are now more independents than either Republicans or Democrats.
I can see two ways it happens:
1. The progressive wing of the Democrat party actually gets something economically substantive and majorly threatening up for a real vote -- Medicare For All or a major overhaul of the tax code or something like that. If this became enough of a threat, it's possible that all the affluent social progressives would freak out and leave to form an alliance with the moderate Republicans so that you essentially had three parties: right-wing Q Anon type crazy Trump people, affluent urbanites, and then working class social democrats. It's hard to see how this happens when the DNC is in power now and couldn't even get soak the rich policies into its big package.
2. The more likely thing I see happening is that the ultra woke identity-politics wing keeps alienating Democrats -- this is already a huge issue and I expect it to become moreso as the threat of Trump recedes, which was a unifying force for Democrats -- and moderates and normies abandon ship and strike an alliance with moderate non-religious Republicans. This would end up not with a working class party but with an extreme right, an extreme left, and a moderate party in the middle a la Bill Clinton.
The main problem with trying to just create a party directly for the interests of the non-rich is that the people most likely to go for that are either (1) young (since almost everyone young is broke and they are far less committed to or in interested in the parties, and (2) not young but poor or close to it. And those two groups vote in very, very low numbers. Bernie tried to do this in 2016 and came very close to succeeding, but the DNC -- in a somewhat brilliant turn -- managed to use identity politics against him to paint his movement as sexist and only for white bros. He tried to remedy that in 2020 by bringing in more identity politics and that made him slightly more popular with the urban progressives but less popular with everyone else.
You are misinformed about the demographics among other things. Specifically, you believe some stories that Democrats/Progressives like to tell themselves but aren't true. The median Republican politician is closer in age to their median voter, the same race as their median voter, the same gender, and only somewhat wealthier. The median Democratic politician is white when their median voter is not, the median Democratic politician is MUCH older than the median Democratic voter, and they're much wealthier.
There's been a ton of research into how specifically Democratic staffers and donors are HUGELY out of step with the median Democratic voter in their backgrounds, policy preferences, etc. Specifically, they're much MORE progressive than the average Democrat and tend to pull the party further to the left than is electorally viable. And how the problem is much less on the Republican side.
Both the median Dem primary voter and Dem general election voter in 2020 was White.
"And how the problem is much less on the Republican side."
Maybe on a one-dimensional political spectrum, but Republicans tend to take popularism to heart no more than the Democrats. Democrats have a trifecta, after all, despite running substantially to the left of the median voter.
> Both the median Dem primary voter and Dem general election voter in 2020 was White.
Good catch. That was a sloppy point though Democrats are less diverse than their base is true.
> Maybe on a one-dimensional political spectrum
Yeah, to be clear I mean "problem" in the sense of "selfish parties trying to win and it prevents them from winning" rather than some kind of moral absolute.
I thought you were talking about policy interests and ideas, not demographic stuff such as age and race. I've known plenty of GOP donors and I assure you that many of them could care less about the things the GOP base does (i.e. abortion, religion)...they just want the tax cuts. I'm also not sure those demographic things you mention are true in local and state politics, though obviously they are at the federal level.
As for the policy thing, TODAY Democrats are out of step, but that's a new thing, as is the whole education re-alignment. It was not even four election cycles ago that people with college degrees voted more for Republicans than Democrats.
I'm pretty sure that a large fraction of the Republican base (a group in which I considered myself when I lived in the US) is also just in it for the tax cuts, and not in favour of the culture war stuff, though.
People are policy, as they say. The issue is when the people making policy are alienating the votes they need to win. Though I'm not convinced that's actually what's causing the shift. That seems to assign too much agency to elites and too little to the actual people.
"It will give them a boost but they're genuinely losing vote share."
2012 election: Dem by 4, 2016 election: Dem by 2, 2020 election: Dem by 4. That's not losing vote share. Both of the parties are highly competitive and can win depending on economic and other conditions.
"So where do the Democrats go from here?"
They become a neoliberal party, like the Lib Dems, but with a much larger vote share. They win Hamilton County, IN, and Madison County, AL while losing ground in what is largely already red territory.
"The Democrats could collapse and be replaced by a more openly socialist, consciously working class party."
Why would they? The areas that swung greatest against Trump are precisely those growing fastest in population.
"Will the Republicans just fail to pick up the $20 on the ground because they're too married to their form of class politics"
Almost certainly. It's not impossible for either party to lose in a landslide, but, in this party system, it simply doesn't happen very often. Maybe it might in the next.
> 2012 election: Dem by 4, 2016 election: Dem by 2, 2020 election: Dem by 4. That's not losing vote share. Both of the parties are highly competitive and can win depending on economic and other conditions.
Agreed. My point is that if current trends continue they won't. We're not there yet and this is probably something they'll adjust to before it happens.
> They become a neoliberal party, like the Lib Dems, but with a much larger vote share. They win Hamilton County, IN, and Madison County, AL while losing ground in what is largely already red territory.
Totally possible. Do you have any evidence or signs of it?
> Why would they? The areas that swung greatest against Trump are precisely those growing fastest in population.
They wouldn't. But insurgents might. Or not! I tend to think American parties survive more than people give them credit for.
> Almost certainly. It's not impossible for either party to lose in a landslide, but, in this party system, it simply doesn't happen very often. Maybe it might in the next.
That's kind of my point. I think we might be heading for the next, for better or worse. And I'm curious what it'll be.
One problem with this view is that party allegiance changes very slowly, even long after party positions have changed. There were a lot of old white southerners who were Democrats well into the 90s because their fathers had been Democrats and their fathers' fathers and so on and they were damned if they would vote for a Republican even if the Republicans better represented them. In the same way, even if the Republicans come to represent working class black people better than the Democrats, I think there's at least another generation before working class black people start voting Republican en masse, and in that generation probably lots of other things will happen.
This is correct. Bill Clinton won West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Missouri. The Kentucky House only flipped in 2016, as did the last overwhelmingly White rural southern county.
Definitely. My parents and others I know of their generation consider themselves Republicans, but only because they still think it is the party of Eisenhower. On actual policy issues they are far closer to modern Democrats (as Eisenhower was). My parents just don’t realize how little the party of Trump has in common with what they grew up with.
Previous realignments have seen the death of parties (where are the Federalists? the whigs?) and the emergence of new ones. Such a process, if it occurs, could presumably short circuit the stickiness of party allegiance. It also seems clear that we are headed for a major realignment. Is it clear that the next party system will involve two parties with the same names as the current party system?
We've had a two-party system, with parties named Democrats and Republicans, for more than half the history of the Republic. I don't know what the parties will look like in twenty years, but I can tell you what their names will be.
That will merely delay rather than stop the phenomenon. Losing slowly is still losing. Though sometimes simply holding in place until the situation on the ground changes is valid.
More importantly, I think that washes out to be an argument for either a Democratic realignment or for the rise of a new left wing party like the Labour Party in the 1930s. Liberal Whigs weren't going to become Tories but plenty of them were willing to sign up for a new left wing party. Negative partisanship keeps you against the other guy, not for your guy.
I agree that's far more likely than some triumphant march to victory where we get to a one party state. The parties aren't filled with fools. They'll try to adapt.
Possibly related: as I understand it, Americans have been stably in favor of easy access to abortion in the first trimester, some gatekeeping for the second, and making abortion difficult in the third trimester. Even though this is the majority, it doesn't have political representation *at* *all*.
I'm not sure if there's any other issue where the politicians are that far out of step with the public, though access to recreational marijuana is vaguely in the neighborhood.
Well, this is the Roe standard though. Roe said that states cannot implement any restrictions during the first trimester, can have reasonable restrictions in the second, and can implement basically a full ban in the third. And I think the DNC position is basically that Roe should stand -- though you are probably right that most Americans don't know what Roe actually says. I think people might have the wrong impression and think that it just fully legalizes abortion or that it doesn't take into account length of pregnancy.
It was only slightly tweaked, by a few weeks with an option for a bit more tweaking if medical technology changes further. But Nancy's point remains. There is little active political representation for the view that abortion law should reflect either the Roe or Casey standard. There's a strong force arguing for "we must vigorously protect every abortion guaranteed by Roe/Casey, *and* allow every other abortion that Roe and Casey would theoretically allow us to prohibit", and there's another strong force arguing for "ban every abortion the courts will let us get away with banning; overturn Roe/Casey ASAP", and only a few judges standing in between.
Which, because the two sides are vaguely even in strength, maintains the balance. But it's weird that there are so few politicians arguing for "let's try to maintain that balance" even though it is the position of a plurality and maybe absolute majority of the electorate.
-"It was only slightly tweaked, by a few weeks with an option for a bit more tweaking if medical technology changes further."
I thought they also got rid of the distinction between first and second trimesters? Though I'm not sure whether this makes it a more liberal or more conservative law.
Do you think the working class will be generally opposed to Universal Basic Income? (If they are, god help them.) The Republican party is unlikely to support UBI.
I think UBI is pretty exclusively popular with a few left wing technocrats. No idea how that'll shift though I tend to think UBI is bad policy.
Regardless: you do realize the Republican Party is the only party to implement anything like UBI (in Alaska) and the party that invented just mailing people money as a response to the pandemic (Bush, Trump)? The Democrats are the ones who want to send money through institutional intermediaries.
My guess is the trend of working class minorities, particularly Hispanics, moving into the Republican camp will continue over the next decade, and The Democrats will take a drubbing in Congress over that period.
Where do The Democrats go? It will depend on where the Republicans go while they are in power over multiple cycles. Right now, a great strength of the new, Trump-reinvented GOP is that it is inchoate. Meaning it isn't burdened by a coherent ideology or perceived policy failures, and therefore working class minorities can imagine it differently from how working class whites might.
The Democrats will look for weaknesses in their opposition as they develop. If there's a major recession, maybe the Democrats go with the FDR playbook and run on an anti-free market platform in an attempt to win back the working class. In that scenario, current Wall Street Dems and other moderates rush back to the GOP.
If the economy stays strong for a decade, the Dems could twist in the wind, over which period perhaps the economic leftists divorce the woke leftists, each deciding the other side is the problem, with the Democratic Socialists forming their own party, which could emerge stronger than the old Dems whenever the next recession does come, since the Dem Socs might be in a better position to win working class voters than a woke Democratic party, leaving it a rump.
Or maybe the weakness in a winning working-class Republican coalition is that working class whites and minorities don't get along as well as they might hope to. I suspect many current Democrats believe the GOP, in its new populist guise, is in reality too white nationalist at its core for a large multi-race coalition to hold. If that turns out to be the case, The Democrats won't have to change much and can go back to being an Upper-Lower coalition.
Another possibility is the Republicans get sucked into a foreign war, say with China over Taiwan or Iran over potential nukes and the US suffers either a military loss (with China) or an Iraq-style unpopular war (with Iran). That would be an own-goal by the GOP, and perhaps the coalitions would more or less go back to how they looked in 2008.
Or maybe the Republicans lean heavily into Trumpist "America First" economic sloganeering and, in turns, becomes the more statist party, which enjoys picking winners and losers in the economy. Or perhaps just picking on winners. If that strategy failed badly, as in hurting the economy, perhaps the Democrats position themselves as the more free-market oriented party. What would the resulting Democratic coalition look like then? I don't know.
So, predictions. The TL;DR version is that I'm cribbing David Shor and you should just go read him.
Dems lose both houses of Congress next year, and the White House to a Trump revival in 2024. I think people who are saying a dead horse could have beaten Trump underestimate his strength. Tim Scott runs and wins in 2028 and wins a second term in 2032. The Scott presidency will complete a political realignment that leaves Black voters as Democratic voters, but with a 70-30 or 60-40 split, rather than the current 90-10. Basically, the black vote will end up looking like the Hispanic vote. At some point during the Scott presidency fatigue sets in, leading to Democrats getting the House, then the Senate, ahead of winning it all in 2036. What happens then? Depends on what kind of party the 2030s Republicans turn out to be.
I have two ideas for what the Democrats do in response. One - and this is the one I hope for - is that we shut up about most social issues and talk relentlessly about economic ones.
Aside - I'm from Missouri, which is now a red state. A few years back our legislature passed right-to-work legislation (for non-US people, this is considered very anti-labor by the labor movement). This has been a Republican goal for years, and it's been spreading state by state. But we still have (for now) a robust petition process and what's called the People's veto. For any law that's passed, if you get enough signatures objecting to it then it goes on the ballot and doesn't go into effect. We did that here, and overturned right to work by something like 2 to 1 against. The left has had similar, if less dramatic success, in other left economic goals here over the last few years - minimum wage and Medicaid expansion are the two I can think of off the top of my head. Which is all to say that a Democratic economic agenda is popular, even in a reliable red state.
So, getting back to my first scenario, Democrats, as 2024 bleeds in to 2026 and 2028 and the political wilderness stretches out all around us, shut up about most social issues. Not that we have to change our minds about them, but we stop fucking making them our main messaging, and refuse to do more than perfunctorily acknowledge them. Instead, we talk relentlessly about economics, where most people, by large margins if my red state is any indicator, agree with us. This leads us back into power sometime in the 2030s with a mandate to run a Bernie like playbook. I probably put more credence into this option than it deserves because it reflects my personal preferences.
Second - none of that happens but the young save us anyway. Democrats keep harping on trans stuff and immigrant stuff and abortion stuff and critical race theory and whatnot and keep losing, but the electorate changes under us and in our direction. The 20-somethings agree with us about these things in large numbers, and it turns out that they don't moderate on this stuff as they turn into forty-somethings, meaning that by 2036 having voted for a bathroom law is seen in the same light as having voted for one of the gay marriage bans is now. Dems sweep back into power on the wings of wokeness and proceed to focus on reversing the (I presume) considerable cultural and social standing damage done to various marginalized groups in the 2020s. Little is done economically, and the rich, who by then will have capital gains and inheritance taxes zeroed out after the long era of Republican triumph, will enjoy watching the little people fight over pronouns while their large fortunes, now not subject to any taxes, pass from generation to generation.
Third, like the second except that the young decide they're as annoyed about "birthing people" and "people who menstruate" as I am as they age, and they never become Dem voters in the large numbers we need to save a woke party. The Democrats scrap and fight about this, with some insisting on an economic pivot and other insisting that that's privilege showing and that we can't abandon a moral position just because it's a losing one. The Dems win an occasional election here or there, but basically become like the Republicans were during those forty years when they never won the House. Occasionally, due to one party fatigue or a good candidates, we break through and win one or the other of the House, Senate or Presidency, and maybe even once in a while all three, but we basically remain a minority party for a generation or so until the politics become totally different from the concerns of 2021. I don't really expect this. The incentives for finding the 50/50 point are too high. But I do think it's possible.
I think one weirdness of recent politics is that each party has been winning on the front it's voters care less about, and losing on the front it's base cares more about. The Democrats have been winning the culture war but losing on economic policy, and the Republicans vice versa, but the Democratic base cares more about economics, and the Republican base cares more about culture, so go figure. This is a large part of why I think the current party system is unstable - the parties have been consistently failing to deliver what their own base wants.
yeah I think if Trump is the Republican nominee again, he probably loses again. The Republicans need a standard bearer less toxic than Trump (but still able to energize the Trump voters)
Hard disagree. Trump had serious headwinds last time and still came closer than he had any business doing. If working class voters keeping moving his way, that will put Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and maybe Minnesota in his column. If Black and Hispanic men do as well, that probably forestalls the Georgia and Arizona losses from this time.
He'll probably still lose the popular vote - I don't think things are changing that quickly - but so what? Winning more votes only puts you in power in a democracy, and this isn't that.
Same, basically. Move Scott's run up four years. Not sure whether you get a four-year term on the backend from a Bush 1 style figure or not, but I think the shape of things to come stays the same.
I think there are a couple of ways this might be short-circuited. One is the new monthly tax credits for parents. It's the best Democratic policy since the ACA, and given how muddled and half baked the ACA is, maybe better even than that. Republicans hate it, and are already working on messaging against it, likening it to monthly welfare checks. So, IF Dems can get their act together and extend it at least another year, and IF the Republican congress of 2022 then cuts it, and IF Joe doesn't run again (he doesn't have the chops for a strenuous campaign anymore), and IF the Dems can find someone with decent charisma who can do anger well, THEN they have an opportunity. Something like, "There it is folks. They FINALLY met a tax cut they don't like. Cut taxes on rich folks? Sure! Bezos had his taxes cut from x to y. Cut taxes for giant corporations? Why not? Facebook had it's taxes cut from i to j! Hell, GE didn't even pay taxes last year, just like my opponent for the last decade. Trump and his Republicans *love* to cut taxes. Let people (well, rich ones) keep their own money. But you and me? Tax cuts for working parents? Tax cuts for people who can't afford yachts? No no no! That's welfare! WELFARE! That's a tax cut sir, it's our money, and we earned it! And we *also* know better than anyone else how to spend it, thank you very much." If the situation arises and Democrats know what to do with it, they could bring the working class back. If they pair it with someone who realizes in 2024 that they need to shut up about social issues, they could dodge the whole lost decade. The problem is, I don't see any prominent Dem who could pull it off. Maybe Pete, but I don't think he can do outrage. Maybe Booker, but outrage from a black politician has to be done very very carefully so as not to scare the horses, and I don't know that he's deft enough. And definitely not Harris, who's the presumptive nominee and who I think will actually manage to lose the actual vote, not just the election. And the incentives are all wrong right now. A candidate who tries to keep all his (or her) focus on economics and keep as quiet as possible about the social stuff probably can't get through the primaries in 2024. I think it will take time, and probably a lot of it, before that changes.
The second is even more speculative. The Court could go ahead and kill the Roe/Casey regime. I don't think they will do this. A lawyer friend of mine has convinced me that Roberts will maneuver it so that through a series of decisions the Court will gut the Roe/Casey regime, leaving it dead letter, but do it carefully do there's never a "No More Roe" headline. But if he's wrong and we do see that headline, that might be a game changer. This is mostly speculating from my own family, but I've got a mother, two sisters and a few other female relations who are all Republicans, or independents, but the kind that vote Republican. They're also all pro-choice, some staunchly so. One (that I know of) has had an abortion. I've asked several over the last several years how they can vote they way they do and still be pro-choice. I'm typically told that Republicans have to say those things because of the church people, but they don't really mean them. That they'd never outlaw abortion, because they know they'd lose every election until it was legal again. As long as the frog boils slowly, they'll probably keep these women, but if we get a "Roe Goes Down!" headline, they at least lose the women of my family, along with some of their husbands. If that trend is general, that would also override and negate the decade and a half in the wilderness I think I see coming. But I don't even know if there's polling that supports this, or if my sisters are just mistaken about other Republican women.
If someone were telekinetic, what's the least amount of force one could exert to kill a person? The obvious answer would be to squeeze on their brain, but I'm wondering if there's an even more efficient line of attack.
Agree. The heart is a strong muscle. Much easier to squeeze a carotid artery. Consciousness is lost in seconds. Squeezing both carotids simultaneously would be most effective.
I would think squeezing the vein leaving would require less force than squeezing the artery entering since the blood there is under lower pressure (having passed through all of the capillaries. Obviously the pressure would rise under constriction but it should still rise less than that of the incoming artery.
If there is no flow, there is no loss of pressure through a piping system. The loss of pressure is due entirely to frictional losses in the flowing liquid.
Christopher Paolini agreed that "squeeze on a blood vessel in the brain" was the most efficient way to kill someone, since magic in Eragon can't violate conservation of energy.
I think the true force-minimising answer involves something like "target a vital area of the body, and apply a miniscule force to each cell within it, individually, that will kill it". You can imagine puncturing each individual cell membrane, or pushing each cell's nucleus outside it, but I suspect someone more knowledgable about cellular physiology could suggest something even more gentle that would nonetheless be able to kill a cell with a tiny force by disrupting its action at a microscopic level.
I'm not sure whether your telekinetic powers are precise enough to allow you to apply millions of different atomic-level pushes simultaneously, but if they are then I think this is the right approach.
depends if you have crushing only or also a slicing type of deal - crushing is probably hitting a key blood vessel in the brain; if you can slice, though, going for the nerves seems much more efficient. Crushing nerves would be debilitating but probably not cause permanent damage, if I understand things correctly (conditional on the force not being extreme enough to pop the cells)
Are we talking about maximum force, in Newtons, or total work done, in Joules? The first is somewhat problematic to define for telekinesis, since you could apply arbitrarily large shears with a zero net force. However, interpreting things "in the spirit", and assuming you could only apply a unidirectional force on one particle at a time, but could alternate these force applications very rapidly, so that it looked like you were pushing on multiple things at once: I would guess pushing around individual sodium ions in neurons or cells that regulate heartbeat, to trigger some sort of arrhythmia. I would guess this could be done over the course of an hour, never exceeding piconewtons of absolute force applied.
Of course, you have to be able to "select" the individual atoms, being able to do which might be a cheeky assumption. I find this "visualization problem" to always the most underspecified part of telekinesis: do you have to know exact coordinates in some reference frame to apply the force? Does it have to be an object you see, or imagine? Does your imagination have to be predicative, e.g. "the 5,000,000th lowest sodium ion", or can it be impredicative, e.g. "the sodium ion blocking which would cause the most damage." Full impredicativity generally makes this kind of exercise a little boring, but it's hard to know where to draw the line. There should be a standard "psychic powers predicatvity clause", saying something like, "The power can be applied on any object whose coordinates can be identified by a team of two people armed with standard lab equipment in 30 minutes based on the thing I imagine/utter". But I digress...
JMS's Rising Stars includes a character that is telekenetic, but can only move very small things. Initially a CIA assasin that kills by squeezing small blood vessels but ends up doing something very different that I won't spoil.
It depends on how precise you could be, what the limitations of your secondary powers (telekinetic visualisation etc) are. The lowest-energy option is to break the chromosomes in a few spots in a few hundred cells and give them a virulent form of cancer. Thereafter I'd imagine that it would be something like working out how to put enough force on a few key neurons to induce an uncontrolled seizure.
I'm not sure we're allowed to talk about themotte culture war thread, if we aren't just delete this or something.
I've been posting on the motte for a while, and recently I had a feeling it was becoming useless as a space where I could have "good" arguments with people I disagreed with. Just to check, I made a couple fake accounts and posted a bunch of wedge statements, some racist/tradcon stuff and some woke/BIG COMUNISM stuff.
The most heavily heterodox right wing stuff got positive karma and no pushback (mixed societies have heavy drawbacks, Black people are low IQ, Democratic participation should be restricted), the mildest center left statements ("Diversity can have benefits") got neutral karma and some back and forth, and anything to the left of center (Global warming exists) got huge -karma and massive push back.
This extends to any scientific arguments the right doesn't like (Vaccines work, Covid is real, etc.) I'll admit it's not the most scientific test, but I also don't actually care that much, so I'll leave it at that.
It looks like the inevitable self sorting mechanism of internet communities has happened.
Seems like it just can't be avoided. Maybe it's just a feature of social groups.
I am going to have to tread *very* carefully here, since I don't want to cross the streams, but may I ask you:
(1) Are you intimating TheMotte has gone full right-wing/extreme right/even worse?
(2) Have you posted about this experiment of yours and the conclusions you drew over on TheMotte, because I do feel it would be a topic of interest?
(3) I'm.... sort of in the middle of a row over calling for... sanctions... of a particular poster... and I don't want to say anymore. But in their defence, everyone rapping my knuckles are fully committed to free speech and no censorship, argue it out and let the Devil take the hindmost. So your experiment may only show that "the most heavily heterodox right wing stuff" is treated as being heterodox but attacking it would be Censorship so no pushback, while topics such as climate change and the Covid vaccines are ones where everyone feels free to jump in and argue about.
Like I said, I'm heavily in disagreement at the moment with a few people over there, but I don't want to attack them. For what it's worth, I believe the people who are "what you are calling for is censorship" are sincere (even if that allows bad actors to take advantage of the platform afforded them) and I do find it a valuable place still.
(1) No, just that it has it has crystalized a set of "These are normal opinions, and opinions other than these are NOT normal opinions" that makes it less useful as a place for me to calibrate my leftist ass against.
It used to be I could get arguments on merits about crazy leftist things that even I'm not sure about, now I mainly just get poo-poo'd and called an irrational liberal.
(2) I did, it got downvoted out of existence and nobody responded. It might be different if I did up some better actual metrics about it, but I don't care enough.
I only did it to see if I was wasting my time on the community, and it looks like I was; so now I'm just gonna stop going and getting rage dopamine.
(3) This might be true, but I don't care. I'm not interested in fielding in good faith the views and opinions of people that can't agree with me on objective reality; or on core moral axioms.
I'm willing to argue with people who I think are making a mistake, but I've subconsciously shifted to thinking the majority on themotte are actually in conflict with me.
If I keep going there, I'm only doing it to satisfy my lizard brain need to fight the outgroup.
You could try posting on DSL instead. People there have been complaining about not enough left wing posters. I find the mechanics easier than here, since it will show you which topic threads have new posts and let you just read the new posts on the topics of interest to you.
You could, but I think you'll find most of the problems you have with themotte are also very much true there. ACX comments threads are a bit less bad, though.
I disagree. I think DSL hosts pretty good debate. There are some threads which are dumpster fires, and some posters who I prefer to avoid engaging with, but if you avoid those (and you can block them!) it's very good. Of course, it takes some time to figure out which threads to avoid, but avoiding anything with a culture war tag would make a good beginning.
Disagree. The latest top thread has the forum regulars mostly agreeing how nothing needs to be done about moderation policy, and if there is a problem, it is with anyone who has problems concerning the latest debate about three-dimensional interference pictures without unit of weight followed by corrosiveness without tic?
This is a wildly incorrect characterization. I voted for Biden, I don't consider myself right, much less far right, I've been on DSL from the beginning, and I've never so much as been warned, much less `run off.' Sure, there are a lot of right wingers on DSL. So what? There are a lot of right wingers in the country. Isn't it better to have a place where you can discuss with them, instead of sorting into disjoint bubbles?
No, it is not an incorrect characterization, and I'm certainly not the only one who thinks so. This was covered in one of the other open threads, the mods are stilted hard-right, and you're not allowed to play by the same rules as the RWE posters. If you're truly left, and planning to give substantive critiques from that perspective, expect to get snarking from them and then the ban hammer. I'd also note this type of censorship has been in evidence every place I've seen RW/Libertarian mods-only. The same people who whine about cancel culture promptly set one up for themselves.
And I am certainly not the only one who has noticed. If you're left of center, my advice is don't waste your time.
Assuming I have correctly identified the name you post on there, you have made 559 posts without being run off. It follows that you must be a far right extremist.
I responded to your post over there, and promptly got banned (no, I didn't call you names, accuse you of bad faith).
While over there, I saw these posts in one thread:
JB: I want to end nonwhite immigration to the US, end affirmative action, ....
######er: I consider this attitude far more toxic than JB's racism.
Left-leaning poster: I agree with JB that the presence of intelligent minorities makes things harder for people like him (racists).
right-leaning poster: (And just to be clear, I'm not defending JB, whom I consider an abrasive, tedious, humorless, racist crank.)
Paul Brinkley: AFAIK, we've never explicitly discussed the policy for it on DSL, but I'll venture the following ground rules as a reasonable Schelling point: you can claim someone's a racist, but it had better come with a lot of support
So 3 people called JB the "r-word". Guess which one got banned? #2easy
I'm an active leftwing poster and haven't been run off. It definitely feels like there's a right wing bias, but there's still enough of us that it isn't a complete echo chamber.
I definitely am of a conservative bent, so while I enjoy arguing with others over on TheMotte, I probably do feel more comfortable crossing swords with people ostensibly on the same side of the political left-right divide as myself, but who hold much more extreme or completely different views.
If I were a lot more lefty, or if I were myself on a very lefty site (which is why I avoid interacting over on TheSchism because I don't want to get into pointless fights), I imagine I would feel as you do.
Not even close to true. We had a long and moderately interesting discussion of evidence on whether masks or mask mandates work and the best single contribution was by Conrad, who went through the articles pretty carefully. Hasu, on the other side of the argument, has done a fine job of maintaining a civil discussion while being opposed by multiple people — even if his arguments are, in my view, weaker than he thinks.
I used to be a regular on the culture war thread and the motte. I think the motte trends more conservative and the lefties tend to give up more quickly and move on to other balieys. There were definitely a few hard-headed regulars that I didn’t care for, but the debate wasn’t totally useless. That said it got pretty dull to continuously read the same crap over and over.
For a while, there was a lot of attention paid to how much they wanted and appreciated the liberal voices, I believe it was basically charitable. But I think there were three factors that caused it to bleed liberal voices. One might be a general sensitivity that favors one side over the other and lefty types being, possibly, less loyal to a brand and more ready to head over to sneerclub or something. Scond there was an Overton window-type limitation on what got posted or discussed, it was pretty much “look at how bad these anti-Trump/pro-Woke articles are,” which, points at how bad editorializing is in the current media ecology, but also gets dull and pointless to defend. Which is the third reason it hemorrhages lefties: there’s little to defend in the debates that happen, so why stay?
The bigger problem and the reason I ultimately left is that the quality of everything on Reddit has gone down the tubes. Everything I was subscribed to turned into left wing brigading with the right-wing brigading happening on subs I never got into, usually the stuff where people die or get arrested. And everything that isn’t just weak political karma whoring has become this self-pitying MeIRL thing that’s so juvenile I simply don’t have time for it. The other thing is I’m pretty sure there’s some numbers manipulation going on there with Karma to the point I suspect foreign interference (Tristan Harris described some of this with foreign actors setting up karma farms and buying high karma accounts). It’s see a bevy if very specific types of posts getting very similar vote counts and similar comment streams. I never bothered to test any of this empirically, I simply stopped using it like Facebook and Twitter before it.
So, TLDR I stopped going to the motte because it was repetitive but stopped using Reddit because it sucks more than ever.
The left-inclined and those who felt driven off moved over to TheSchism instead, and that has a lot less posting and commentary. So that is something on the side of 'lefties tend to give up more quickly'.
I'm sticking with TheMotte (that reminds me, must go and see if I got banned for the latest kerfuffle) because in spite of the hard right talking point *some* (not all) of the commenters engage in, particularly hard right of the American kind, it's still interesting to me and worth engaging with.
At a slight but relevant tangent to this set of threads.
"Hard right" is an ambiguous term. It suggests to me anti-immigration, pro-protectionism, belief in the importance of HBD, probably anti-communism, probably but not necessarily support for an aggressive foreign policy. I am on the opposite side of a majority of those issues, yet people like me — libertarians — make up a sizable fraction of the DSL commentariat that JohnS and EHarding are complaining about.
We mostly share the conservative dislike of things we associate with "Wokism," which could make someone who identifies with the current progressive left uncomfortable and cause such people to lump us all together as enemies and feel unwanted, but that shouldn't be a problem for people with other kinds of left or center views. Or for woke folk who enjoy defending their position against criticism — think of it as a target rich environment.
I am an anti woke leftist ( or European centrist). I think in reality very few old school labour type parties in Europe are woke, and to me that's the left.
The people I'd consider ideological right libertarians (with whom I share most of my social views and VERY few of my economic views) represent 100% of the worthwhile disagreements I've had. I believe your politics are based on some level of empiricism. I mean, I still think you are wrong, but maybe you aren't and I'M the wrong one (I know, an impossibly ridiculous thought).
Unfortunately, 95% of my actual time spent reading/arguing is with people who I am 70% confident cannot be shifted from any of their viewpoints, regardless of truth. The types of people who confidently proclaim "The covid vaccine does nothing and has tons of side effects!", and then I spend 6 posts going back and forth, showing them charts and tables and arguments, before they sign off with a "Well, the coverup liberal media sheep shill leftist irrational geroge soros TDS!"
Maybe it's too cynical, but I've come to the conclusion the pessimists are right. Nobody can be convinced out of anything, no mater how baseless; people can only be shamed into pretending they never believed it in the first place
Reddit is designed to brigade. Losing karma isn't nice, so people self censor. To fix it I would put a cost on downvoting. Minus 5 if you downvote. If the post is banned or deleted you get it back. Maybe. Anyway there is a cost to downvote. You gain karma and you can be trusted to downvote.
( And maybe not 5 but a percentage of your karma up to a limit).
Such a system would perversely incentivise me to downvote, just to show that I cannot be bought off by "if you downvote you lose karma, and you don't want to lose karma, do you?"
It's a chicken and egg situation: if you have to gain karma to be trusted to be able to downvote, how do you gain karma? Well, the easiest way is to self-censor, only post the kind of comments everyone will go "How true" and other methods of farming positive opinion. Then we are back to the same problem of a popularity contest.
Yeah, the saddest part of the whole thing has been jut watching everyone there repeatedly congratulating themselves on being so open-minded and even-handed, as they consistently push anyone who disagrees with this diagnosis out of the community. I think the experiment can be called a failure at this point.
The Motte has failed to become one thing, but has become something else instead.
It hasn't managed to become a place where an even distribution of people from all over the political spectrum come to exchange ideas. Places like that are super rare, and valuable, and they never last for very long.
Instead it has succeeded in becoming an intelligent right-of-centre community. Places like that are slightly less rare, and still valuable, and they don't necessarily last long either. I don't read themotte all that much these days but I just popped in for a look; I think the quality of the discussion is still quite high.
Appreciate themotte for what it is, but don't be sad about the things that it isn't.
I honestly wish I could just get rid of karma. I think it has a bad effect on opinion diversity. Unfortunately, I can't, it's baked into the platform.
I think your analysis of what gets applause lights is accurate, but I also don't think that's really a damning analysis. I don't think communities should be judged on what gets applause lights, especially if those applause lights literally cannot be turned off; it would be like complaining about what got upvotes here before Scott got them to disable upvotes.
I'd be interested in seeing what posts you made; one issue we run into is that occasionally people show up and post things that are kind of half-baked analyses, and *in general* people argue with half-baked analyses they disagree with more than they argue with anything else. You're welcome to post links here or send 'em via modmail to TheMotte or send me a message privately or, y'know, just ignore this I suppose, whatever you'd prefer :V but I really would be interested.
We complained heartily enough (ha!) about the "hearts" that got them turned off, and I do think we're better off for it. I dislike the Reddit karma system, especially as it's all tied in to their monetisation efforts ("like this post? spend real money to buy a fake award you can send this person!") - Tumblr, for its many flaws, has resisted every effort Yahoo etc. have tried to make money off such things, to the point that people accustomed to being spoon-fed by an algorithm about "try this" are complaining that they have to - gasp! - look up and follow blogs of interest with their own manual efforts, like peasants!
I think karma has a bad effect, even when communities and mods are aware of it: it's very easy to be influenced, even if you think you are not, by "So-and-so has high karma and is thus respected or at least liked by the communities they engage in, and is thus respectable and should get the benefit of the doubt/slightly more favourable treatment". It's the Big Name Fan effect.
One big advantage that something karma-*like* has is that you can loosely tie it to moderation abilities; some kind of low threshold that means "you have contributed to this community without being banned, now you can report people, have fun". Slashdot does this to great effect; so does the ACX Discord.
Meanwhile, Reddit is like perfectly designed to ignore all the lessons of Slashdot. We can't even tell who reported something, there's absolutely no way for us to filter it for people who are good community members. I don't get it. They could literally have copied Slashdot and ended up with a better platform. Ughhh.
And yeah, everything you say about karma having a distortionary effect is true. I'd be okay with a tier system, something like "new user/established user/respected user", and then just . . . stop there, nothing more.
Anyway yeah I'm increasingly interested at the idea of moving off Reddit. Which is slow going. But maybe we could build a platform that does a better job of being what we're trying to be, if we weren't hamstrung by Reddit.
"you have contributed to this community without being banned, now you can report people, have fun"
That does not reassure me. I've eaten a few bans here and elsewhere in my time, and sometimes I've thought "Well, I don't see what I did was so bad", but them's the rules so do the crime, do the time.
That declaration of bias out of the way, and ironically enough since I argue felons should lose the right to vote, but I don't think "you were banned" is *necessarily* an indicator that someone is bad. Yeah, trolls and provocateurs and gadflies and plain nutcases get banned, but someone can have a bad day, post something inflammatory, and get a ban.
Tying "you have the right to report" to "dependent on never being banned" makes me uneasy. We all know that there are people who use reports as a weapon against their perceived enemies, and we all know people who carefully skate on *just* this side of being banned. I don't want to leave that power solely in their hands, whereas someone who is otherwise sincere got banned and is now debarred from reporting bad content.
I tend to be pessimistic, which is why I don't like explicit systems like karma, upvotes, etc. They easily turn into political campaigns to get Candidate X a reputation as Pillar of the Community, whereupon Candidate X can then get away with murder because they have a critical mass of supporters and general members who go "Oh, X? Yeah, they're big here".
Speaking of bans, it has been down to the kindness of other members of this community who interceded for me that kept me able to participate here, and I am very grateful and very humbled that they valued my contributions enough to do that for me.
I much prefer such interventions to a formal system of "you have a gazillion karma points". We have our resident Marxist, who divides opinion between calls for banning them and calls for leaving them be. Everyone has an equal voice in that. I would not like a system where it's "I have a gazillion karma points so I can spare a million to get them banned".
Oh, and it's also worth noting that "can report people" is not the same as "get people banned". In our current system, reports go to the mods, and we decide whether the report is valid, and I'd say 90% of the time we decide to ignore the report. In some hypothetical future system I'd still definitely run reports past a neutral arbiter; getting someone banned would require *at least* reporting them and then having a randomly-chosen-judge-out-of-generally-good-judges agree with it.
> Tying "you have the right to report" to "dependent on never being banned" makes me uneasy.
Keep in mind that I'm very much speaking in shorthand here :) This was "you have contributed without being banned so you can report people", but in a world where we have this power, I'm sure there would be an amount of positive contribution that counteracted a ban as well. This is mostly to deal with the fact that once in a while someone mentions a right-wing-but-innocuous thing, like "I voted for Trump", and we get a report saying "ban this [insert your favorite slur for the right-wing here]".
I can only imagine those people either don't understand the point of the community or don't care; either way, our lives would be easier if they just plain couldn't report stuff.
On the other hand, if there's someone who's been contributing for like a year with lots of positive contributions and who has a bad day and gets banned, yeah, alright, fine, that happens, I would not revoke reporting ability off that.
(practically this ends up being some kind of combined metric of "contribution count" and "bayesian-estimate of user's posting quality" and as long as those both stay above some reasonably low but still positive threshold, everything's good; that's at least my gut instinct on how I'd implement this)
In my opinion, Zorba is a mod of great integrity and consideration and I think the defenses given for the motte should be considered seriously. I find a lot of people are very quick to write off the discussion there as if it were typical right-wing something-or-other. That’s too simple.
I actually upvoted your post almost immediately after it was posted because it was a high-effort idea, but at the same time, I read it over and thought "this is not a very good plan, this is going to get torn to shreds".
I think you're confusing "good faith" and "agrees with me".
I very much appreciate your response in this forum. I have a request. Below I will copy the new synopsis. It's not long. Please read it and tell me what you think is the worst idea.
#######
The ZSS plan for Haiti in brief
Haiti has been much in the news in recent years, and for all the wrong reasons. Faced with a never-ending series of disasters, both natural and man-made, Haitians are desperately trying to flee their country and enter the US and other countries. Far better if they could live safely and productively in their own country.
We believe that Haiti is failing because of long-standing inequality, government corruption, and unrestrained gangs. In this plan we propose to eliminate corruption and gangs in the most distant Department (Sud) which has 5% of the population of Haiti. A functioning government in Sud could begin to address inequality. Success in Sud would provide a model for the other nine Departments.
The funding would come from the United States. Five year cost: $3.2 billion. About one-thousandth of the cost of the Afghan War.
The US would provide a small military force which would back up the Haitian police in Sud.
Eliminating civilian guns in the Sud is key to eliminating the gangs. (Have you ever heard of a gang with no guns?)
We propose to empower government employees (including the police) while eliminating corruption by pairing each employee with a Haitian (Creole-speaking) auxiliary. Government pay would be matched for those employees with auxiliaries. Auxiliaries would be hired and paid by the US.
By guaranteeing security throughout Sud, tourism would be greatly enhanced. The entire Department, not just tourist enclaves.
We propose to decentralize government funding and authority so that Sud can succeed even if the central government is failing. Value-added tax revenue would stay in Sud and would be used to fund basic services: security, roads, water, sanitation, electricity, and trash collection.
We propose to fund the project (announced in 2013) to expand the Les Cayes airport to international status. This would enable tourists to reach Sud without passing through gang-controlled areas in Port-au-Prince or taking a prop plane.
The offer to fund the airport expansion also serves as a bargaining chip to encourage adoption of the plan.
The short answer is that I think the entire process is insanely expensive and is unlikely to solve anything; you're basically saying "we'll eliminate corruption by hiring people to make sure nobody is corrupt" but this tends to not work out. You're also making the classic gun-control argument of assuming that gangs will cheerfully hand over their guns. It feels frankly naive; it's like the people who said "well, alcoholism is a problem and is wasting our nation's resources, so *let's ban alcohol*, that will solve the problem" and actually just made the problem worse.
You can't just come up with some ideas and assume everyone will play along, you have to assume that people explicitly *won't* play along; put yourself in their shoes, don't assume that they will put themselves in your shoes, because they won't.
What happens if gangs decide not to turn in their guns? What happens if they import guns from the rest of Haiti, which is literally next door? What happens if the corrupt government employee tries to pay off their overseer in order to look the other way? ("The overseer will report it" isn't an answer unless you know how to guarantee that, which you don't.) The airport is already underused; why would making it bigger change anything? How is any of this different from "we'll occupy the country and give them a lot of money in an attempt to reform them", which inevitably turns into "yeah, we left after ten years and now it's worse than we started"?
I keep running across this same fallacy, which tl;dr is "people think about the way their plans and ideas are correct, they don't think about the way their plans and ideas are incorrect" - longer version at https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/qmwsdg/dictator_book_club_orban/hjgwiki/ - and I feel like this is overall another example of the same thing.
And none of this is me saying I have a better idea. I don't. It's a really hard problem. I just don't think this solution is likely to work.
>Even if you were to convince me that guns should be banned, I simply do not think that's going to be an effective way to take gang-owned territory and remove guns from it.
Department Sud is not "gang-owned territory". I have been searching for evidence of gang activity in Sud (such as kidnappings) and haven't found any.
Now (hypothetically speaking) assuming you owned guns and lived in Sud, and the government made owning guns there illegal with a buyback period. Your options would be;
1) Sell back your guns for $50 to $500 per gun.
2) Keep your guns hidden and risk going to prison.
3) Fight a gun battle with the Haitian Police which is backed up by the US military.
> In this plan we propose to eliminate corruption and gangs in the most distant Department (Sud)
Now you're saying there's no gang activity. What's going on here?
> Now (hypothetically speaking) assuming you owned guns and lived in Sud, and the government made owning guns there illegal with a buyback period. Your options would be;
If I'm already a criminal, my choice is #2, because I'm already risking going to prison by virtue of being a criminal, and now crime is going to be easier because fewer other people will have guns.
> Now you're saying there's no gang activity. What's going on here?
Actually, I said:
"I have been searching for evidence of gang activity in Sud (such as kidnappings) and haven't found any."
You may have heard this before:
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
So in the absence of evidence, I make the conservative assumption that there probably are some gang members in Sud. I would give odds, however, that there are fewer gang members than around Port-au-Prince where there are thousands and daily news reports.
> If I'm already a criminal, my choice is #2, because I'm already risking going to prison by virtue of being a criminal, and now crime is going to be easier because fewer other people will have guns.
The police force just got doubled in size and they can call for backup from the US military. Anyone who knows you have guns can tip off the police anonymously and reap a huge reward.
If I were a criminal, I would take my guns and my skills and move to another Department.
> The police force just got doubled in size and they can call for backup from the US military. Anyone who knows you have guns can tip off the police anonymously and reap a huge reward.
How do they get a reward if it's anonymous?
Also, it's anonymous, eh? So I can tip off the police about those noisy neighbors I don't like, with no repercussions to me?
Or is it only anonymous to the people being raided? In which case it's *not* anonymous to the police . . . which means I just need a gangmember *in the police* and now I can go find and kill the guy who tried to snitch on me.
Also, I can bribe the police to ignore me. And the police don't want to be on the front line, so they're going to use the US military to do the dirty work . . . and now the population is starting to learn that the US military will raid them and take away their self-defense tools, so now the population hates the US military and we've got an armed rebellion going (with guns easily imported from, you know, next door, where they're still legal.)
You need to think like a black hat here. You need to think like someone who's trying to exploit the system, not like someone who's trying to make a system that they don't know of any exploits in.
>>Guns are a force equalizer, both between physically-strong people and physically-weak people, and between large populations and wealthy organizations.<<
I have read countless times about Haiti "The police are outgunned." (by the gangs).
Zorba, do you believe this is true?
Assuming you believe (as I do) that this is true, are you happy about this? Alarmed? How do you react?
Sounds like a pretty bad situation to be in, and one that should be fixed. How do you propose doing so?
Keep in mind that the gangs are already criminals and are unlikely to care about laws saying they have to give up their guns. Also keep in mind that any law you come up with regarding whistleblowers could just as easily be used to whistleblow *on gang members*.
Of course there are ways to convince criminals to give up guns. You can raid them. It's quite effective. It often comes with collateral damage, of course, and I don't recommend it. This ends up being the same solution as "dictatorial micromanagement of the population" and I don't recommend that either.
But "get rid of guns" isn't relevant. Guns don't matter; they are not an end goal when we're talking about gangs. The thing that matters is crime, and how much damage it does to the population. That's the thing you have to fix, and you don't fix it by hoping that gangs hand in their guns voluntarily.
I've already talked about my issues with your plan. You should take them into account when talking with me instead of attempting to convince people through repetition.
>Of course there are ways to convince criminals to give up guns. You can raid them. It's quite effective. It often comes with collateral damage, of course, and I don't recommend it.
In the US when a criminal resists arrest, does law enforcement typically just let them be because they don't want any collateral damage?
One of the guidelines of the plan must be "NO IMPUNITY". There must be no one person who is immune from arrest in Sud. There must not be ten persons who cannot be arrested. There must not be a thousand such persons. The only acceptable number is zero.
There must not be one square meter of Sud where the police are afraid to go. This is why a military force is part of the plan. Overwhelming force.
>But "get rid of guns" isn't relevant. Guns don't matter; they are not an end goal when we're talking about gangs.
The problem being addressed is "The Police Are Outgunned." Are we in agreement on that?
Are you trying to convince me that "get rid of guns" is not relevant to that problem?
> The thing that matters is crime, and how much damage it does to the population. That's the thing you have to fix, and you don't fix it by hoping that gangs hand in their guns voluntarily.
Sorry. That's not on the list. We have four goals:
Expand the Les Cayes Airport
Eliminate corruption in Sud
Eliminate gang activity in Sud
Eliminate private guns in Sud
Perhaps when these goals are achieved, the police can try to fix crime.
BTW, do you understand that according to this plan following the six month grace period, turning in civilian guns in Sud IS NOT A VOLUNTARY PROCESS. Persons in possession of a gun can either run (out of the Department) or go to prison. Or I suppose they could destroy the gun or give it to someone in another department.
>I've already talked about my issues with your plan. You should take them into account when talking with me instead of attempting to convince people through repetition.
Your issue with this plan is eliminating private guns. Since that is an integral part of the plan, there is no possible compromise between us.
You can continue to try to convince me that no amount of force will eliminate guns in Sud.
And I will continue to wonder why defense of private gun ownership IN ANOTHER COUNTRY is such a sacred issue for you.
Zorba, thank you for responding. I fear I have been overly antagonistic. I will try to watch out for this.
Let me diagram the relationship between the police, the police auxiliaries, and the US military (Rapid Response Team), as I envision it.
The Haitian Police (under the control of the Haitian government) are in charge. They make the decisions. If they are corrupt, of course nothing can go according to plan, so assume they are not.
The ZSS police auxiliaries (under ultimate control of the ZSS Command Council) take orders from the Haitian Police. (This is true of all ZSS auxiliaries. They take orders from their Haitian counterparts.)
At this point I assume the police auxiliaries are armed. Ideally these are Haitian-Americans with policing experience in the US. They MUST be Haitian. All auxiliaries must be Haitian and speak Creole.
The Rapid Response Team (RRT) is a US military force of size to be determined. They have helicopters, armored vehicles, and appropriate weapons.
The RRT never appears unless the Haitian Police and their ZSS auxiliaries declare an emergency. Technically the auxillary would make the call to the RRT.
After being called into action the RRT acts autonomously. As soon as the situation is under control, they give command back to the Haitian Police and return to base
P>There must not be one square meter of Sud where the police are afraid to go. This is why a military force is part of the plan. Overwhelming force.
This seems obvious to me. Do you disagree? Do you think it is advisable to withdraw in the face of gang violence?
Z> You're not proposing civic reform, you're proposing an armed imperialistic invasion force.
The Police are in charge. The RRT are in reserve. You call this an invasion. I'm not sure why.
> The problem being addressed is "The Police Are Outgunned." Are we in agreement on that? No. The police are outgunned in most places. The problem is that the police are outgunned by people who are opposed to the police.
I will try to say everything in detail.
THE PROBLEM IN HAITI IS THAT THE POLICE ARE OUTGUNNED BY THE GANGS.
Are we in agreement that is the most acute problem in Haiti at this time? I'm not particularly attached to how we solve this problem in Sud. The RRT was my solution. I'm open to yours.
What is not acceptable in my mind is ceding territory to the gangs. This must never happen (in Sud). I recognize that is the default state all over Haiti at this time.
The goal is to change this state ONE DEPARTMENT AT A TIME.
We can argue about the airport expansion etc. another time.
> If they are corrupt, of course nothing can go according to plan, so assume they are not.
This feels like the fundamental problem; you're saying "assume the police aren't corrupt", I'm saying "the police are corrupt, how do you want to deal with it".
Two, if the police *aren't* corrupt, then the problem is easy to solve: give the government over to the police and let them handle things.
Governmental corruption *is a core problem*, and you can't handwave that away. If you have a solution that works only if the government isn't corrupt then you have a solution that works roughly 0% of the time.
> There must not be one square meter of Sud where the police are afraid to go. This is why a military force is part of the plan. Overwhelming force. This seems obvious to me. Do you disagree? Do you think it is advisable to withdraw in the face of gang violence?
First, this seems overly optimistic to me. I'm not sure it's true in any country (except The Vatican, I suppose, though I think the mental image here is hilarious.) Even Japan, with its almost pathologically low gun ownership rate, has the Yakuza, and while I don't know the details on how the Yakuza work, I'm willing to bet that there are areas where the police just kind of stay out.
And that leads into "it seems unnecessary". If every country on the planet has areas that the police don't go, and *many* countries have perfectly functional governments, then it seems like your requirement is just not important. We don't have it, we probably can't have it, it is empirically unnecessary.
This feels like one of those "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough" issues. Your goal here isn't complete government dominance of everything and the total eradication of the underworld, your goal is to make life suck less, and given that humans build an underworld in five seconds no matter where they are, I'm pretty sure you cannot get rid of the underworld.
If your plan relies on something that is impossible, then your plan is impossible, regardless of whether the rest of it is good or not.
> THE PROBLEM IN HAITI IS THAT THE POLICE ARE OUTGUNNED BY THE GANGS.
This is a very different problem from "the police are outgunned".
If the problem is that the police are outgunned *in general*, then you can solve this by taking guns away from civilians, even if the gangs don't play along.
If the problem is that the police are outgunned *by the gangs*, then taking guns away from the civilians doesn't help and may even make things worse.
> Are we in agreement that is the most acute problem in Haiti at this time? I'm not particularly attached to how we solve this problem in Sud. The RRT was my solution. I'm open to yours.
I'm not really sure that's the core problem, honestly.
Gangs are fundamentally an economic issue, in the sense that gangs are expensive and wasteful, and something needs to be funding them. Traditionally, that's civilians buying contraband; the more you try to cut down on contraband, the more you drive people to give money to the gangs (see American prohibition).
The Internet suggests that the gangs are being funded by the government, politicians, and local corporations. That's where I would focus my efforts - as long as you've got major organizations dumping money into the gangs, you're not going to have an easy way to eliminate the gangs, and trying to crack down on the gangs without cutting off that money supply first is just going to result in warfare.
Now, *why* are those organizations funding gangs? I don't know. The Internet doesn't seem to know either. Some sites claim it's an extortion racket (how do you solve that one? maybe private security? maybe subsidize insurance as long as a group doesn't pay the racket?), some sites claim it's basically just looting warlords (find the nicest of them, intentionally elevate them into a local government, have people pay taxes instead of just looting stuff?) It seems like the drug trade is huge (this one's easy, at least: legalize drugs and it's dead.)
But I think this requires a lot of understanding of the motivations involved, because otherwise, killing one gang will just result in another one instantly springing up. Economic forces are a tidal wave; it gets into every crack and tears everything apart inexorably.
> If they are corrupt, of course nothing can go according to plan, so assume they are not. This feels like the fundamental problem; you're saying "assume the police aren't corrupt", I'm saying "the police are corrupt, how do you want to deal with it". One, there are literally UN investigations saying that the police are corrupt:
I was giving an example of how the Haitian Police, the Police Auxiliaries, and the Rapid Response Team interact. One example where the particular police are not corrupt.
I'm not making a claim about all the police in Haiti.
By generally interpreting my words in the most illogical way you are wearing me down.
I'm going to stop the dialogue now. Have a good day.
And yet, your plan has to deal with the situation where the police are, in fact, corrupt.
Remember where this conversation started; it started by you complaining that people weren't taking your plan seriously. I explained why people weren't taking your plan seriously and you turned it into a debate where you wanted to prove that your plan was good. Now, because you've been unable to do that, either because of an ill-defined plan or a badly-designed plan, you're leaving the conversation instead of improving the plan.
This is why people aren't taking your plan seriously.
> And yet, your plan has to deal with the situation where the police are, in fact, corrupt.
I assume you didn't read these parts.
###########################
If the situation is serious, the auxiliary could make a formal complaint to the ZSS Command Council. The employee could also file complaints to the Council. Complaints would be investigated and a resolution sought. Among the most serious complaints would be suspicion of corruption or complicity with criminal elements.
THE ZSS DOES NOT HAVE AUTHORITY TO IMPOSE CONSEQUENCES FOR CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR BY A HAITIAN EMPLOYEE. IF THE GOVERNMENT IN SUD FAILED TO ENFORCE THEIR LAWS, THIS WOULD BE CAUSE FOR CANCELLATION OF THE ZSS PROJECT.
...
Cooperating with the Haitian National Police (PNH) in Sud must be a careful process. A member of the local police force who refused to have an auxiliary would certainly raise a red flag. Gang ties should be cause for dismissal though that would be in the hands of the local government.
Assuming the ZSS can identify a trustworthy police force, we must consider the role of the auxiliaries. Certainly they would accompany their police officers everywhere. That's what auxiliaries do. Probably they should also be armed. Necessarily they must be ready to defend their officer and vice-versa.
...
Vetting the police force in Sud and establishing unquestioned cooperation with the Command Council should be a prerequisite to the ZSS Project. The project (and airport construction) would not begin until this hurdle was cleared.
A belated re-revisit, since I missed the initial publication due to a change in format. The 2020 FBI Uniform Crime Report is now available for download, which means we can finally evaluate the first prediction from You Are Still Crying Wolf properly. The prediction was: "Total hate crimes incidents as measured here will be not more than 125% of their 2015 value at any year during a Trump presidency, conditional on similar reporting methodology [confidence: 80%]"
The ACX revisit was written before the 2020 data was out, and initially listed this prediction as correct using the 'Total number of Incidents' metric. A commenter pointed out that the 2019 measurement was 125.03% of the 2015 value, and that it was thus false. While that alone might be sufficient, I also had the complaint that the initial ruling ignored that 2020 was indeed a year during a Trump presidency - using the same metric for 2020, 7,759 incidents gives a more decisive value of 132.6% of 2015 values. Reversing the evaluation would now require throwing out a minimum of 447 incidents (assuming zero issues with the 2015 values), up from merely 2 in 2019. That's a much more substantial epistemic cushion.
I can't think of a way for contesting the relevance of a prediction after the observation of the result to be less harmful for the predictor's integrity than simply taking it as a missed prediction. On an epistemic level, the ad-hoc use of an additional degree of freedom implies the existence of other degrees that were not used; this dramatically undercuts the statistical power of the entire exercise. On an object level, disassociating the nominal point from the metric chosen to evaluate it directly attacks the coherence of the original thesis.
Do I understand you correctly in that you think that Scott's prediction was incorrect, but in a way that does not provide significant evidence against his thesis?
I don't think it is hard to claim though that a different president on either side of the isle might have been able to dramatically curtail the impact of the BLM activities.
You may believe some (or all) of what you have said here but you can't possibly believe your comments will be persuasive. These won't either:
1) Its demands? BLM made demands? Through it's spokesperson at the front office in (city name)???
2) "wouldn't have made [it] less destructive" Do you actually think that not one of the millions of protesters might have been persuaded by anything the president might have done or said?
3)"Trump complained impotently..." Yes, he complained about how despicable and worthless the protesters were and challenged them with threats to send in the military. Everyone knows that incitement is the best way to calm a a mob. Maybe he was boning-up in preparation for Jan 6.
4)Literally any other president of either party would have had the sense to soften their rhetoric.
January 6th rioters didn't demand anything. If some of them had, I would have been accurate and said that some of them had.
I disagree that BLM as a movement wanted less policing. I am sure some percent of BLM protesters wanted that. I would guess less than half actually want that and more than half would claim they want that to annoy the other tribe.
The only statement about BLM as a movement that I would consider reasonable is that they wanted justice of some sort. I would feel pretty comfortable saying the same thing about Jan 6 protesters.
Nobody is "driving the BLM train." That is just BS. If Trump had said something to diffuse half of the protesters the ratio of cops to protesters would have doubled. If he had done this in the beginning it would likely have never gotten off the ground. A bit like slowing the spread of a virus...makes you think.
"He should have actually sent in the military." - YAWN
A different president, even one equally incompetent, but less paralyzed by his own ego would have made a marked difference. The guy just couldn't get out of his own way.
There was recently a thread on HN about post-SSRI sexual dysfunction ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024808 ). Are long-term side effects (even months after stopping the SSRI) really so frequent?
Someone wrote a comment about this recently: People start taking SSRIs while young and horny, take them for a couple of years and then stop. The natural decline in lust caused by aging is then attributed to the SSRI. Same reason for why almost all medication has "hair loss" as a listed side effect.
Dunno if this is true, I'm just aping what I've read.
Do most people with sexual side effects actually take SSRIs consistently for 2 years? If so, I must have been a remarkably unreliable depressive. I don't think I've ever kept them up for more than 4 months straight (Just long enough to get the current depressive episode under control enough to cope.)
Also, depressive episodes average about 6 months in length; there certainly are people who are permanently depressed and don't have episodes like that, but it's not the norm.
And if you're going on and off SSRIs somewhat regularly, you probably have a good idea of what side effects are the meds, and what are mood and current-age-driven. The med side effects aren't really subtle or easy to mistake for not being in the mood.
I had a question about getting into medical school.
I graduated from a top undergrad program though didn’t do the full pre-med courseload. But I do have clinical research publications at an Ivy, an MD mentor, a great GPA, relevant medical work experience, and of course a really strong desire to become a psychiatrist. My parents are both medical practitioners (MD, APRN) affiliated with Ivy institutions should that factor nepo-credentially.
What are my options here? How can I slide through this creaky old door? Notably, due to Covid many schools are waiving the MCAT for this academic year.
Alternatively I consider a PsyD, but I don’t want to “settle” with this life-long goal of mine.
On the very off-chance a medical school admissions officer or pertinent member of faculty is reading me, I would really cherish your input.
I should also add that some med schools are easing pre-med course requirements and instead accepting subject-area “competencies”, though after much reading it seems this change is dubious and performative to appeal to Equitable admissions; and so applying on this basis is discouraged. That’s what SDN says, anyway.
Thanks for reading my comment, everyone. This is very important to me!
I have no clue about the (I assume) American education system, but can you do the missing coursework at a cheap / non-famous institution (possibly online?), or as an external student (doing the exams but not attending classes)? I only mention this possible option because it should provide bureaucratic compliance without you needing to "settle", although it does come with non-trivial costs.
Hey Ana, your intuition is correct. This is an option and some schools even offer post-baccalaureate pre-med programs which are designed for prospective medical students to complete the courseload. Unsurprisingly they are expensive! and take 18mo+. In my case I am missing most courses.
It would be costly and the extra schooling overkill if I did somehow get into medical school. It’s been hard to justify tuition as is. A cheap or online school for this is appealing but has its time and other inefficiencies.
Well, another alternative that you haven't mentioned yet is to go abroad. Having an undergrad degree is completely overkill for getting into med school in Europe, or at least in my particular country (but this kind of thing tends to be standardized in the EU; don't know about the UK, but would guess it is the same). You would probably have a harder time later if you want to work in the US, though. You can look through old SSC posts to learn about Scott's experience (he studied in the UK).
It’s unbelievable that an undergraduate degree is overkill for medical school in Europe. Many premed students would cry at the notion.
As you say finding work and matching for residency in the US may be tough coming from abroad. I must look at schools in the UK and read up on the realities of that. I’ve read Scott’s posts from when he studied in the UK and really enjoyed them. I miss his insights from when he was doing his US residency, too.
Okay, children, before I break out the Wolfe Tones' Greatest Hits, Cork (UCC, where Scott studied) is in the Republic of Ireland, *not* the United Kingdom. Do you still refer to the USA as "the Colonies"? 😁
We had a teeny bit of a difference of opinion about this entire matter exactly 100 years ago, the centenary of which has just passed and which also involved a new teeny bit of a difference of opinion.
Two time failed medical school applicant here (15 years ago tho). So what exactly are you lacking? If MCAT, you can remedy that in about 6 months of part time prep, assuming good fundamentals. Same-ish with missing courses, which vary by school. If I were in your shoes, I’d pick my safe and stretch schools, see exactly what they want, and spend 6 months to a year trying to fill the gaps. I had to do something similar back in the day, as I did not do premed either.
However, get advice from someone else because as noted, I didn’t actually get in :-). Have you posted or browsed online forums specific to med school applicants? This one came up in a ddg search and seems legit enough: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/forums/pre-medical-md.10/
> If I were in your shoes, I’d pick my safe and stretch schools, see exactly what they want, and spend 6 months to a year trying to fill the gaps.
This is really good actionable advice. Thanks!
I am missing most courses except for like, biology, which means the time and cost of more schooling is heavy. And in my opinion, quite sub-optimal for really qualified candidates, which I like to fancy myself as.
you should definitely take the MCAT. I'm a US MD student. check out the wiki for /r/premed, it's mostly accurate and should give you a good starting map for how to apply. the aamc website also has good starting information.
MD here, started medical school in 1996, with a baseline pedigree much less impressive than yours. But I did do all the premed coursework, fairly cheaply on a post-baccalaureate basis at my hometown public university. It took two years, but I ended up really enjoying that side of things, and despite my intention to go into primary care ended up in a pretty physiology and pharmacology heavy specialty (anesthesiology). So I wouldn’t look at the science prereqs as a sunk cost, in my case I found them very valuable. I also took the MCATs twice, really nailing it the second time. It sounds like you’re impatient to get going, and I understand that, but I guess my advice would be to not look for shortcuts and do everything you can to make your application shine.
My other piece of advice would be to avoid private medical school if you can, and attend a reputable state school. The difference in price is just astonishing. I went to medical school at a top-tier public institution (University of Washington), and ended up with a bit over $100k in debt. My wife went to a mid-tier private medical school (New York Medical College) and wound up with closer to $400k in debt. Big difference, especially when you’re just starting your career, buying into a practice, starting a family, etc. (We both matched into competitive residencies and that’s where your real training takes place.)
Bringing these threads together, I firmly believe that putting together the most competitive application that I could got me into UW, netted me great opportunities, and saved me ~$300k. That’s a pretty good ROI for the two years I spent doing premed coursework and MCAT prep.
I'm glad to finally hear from an MD. Thanks for a well-informed answer as well as a positive review of the post-bacc. I'm often told it's terrible.
To my surprise, no one else I've spoken with has brought up the discrepancy between public and private school tuition, and that's uber-relevant. It's not the only consideration, but that will help narrow school criteria.
Hard decisions to make for a young person. And then there are these institutional barriers in place to triage large groups of people effectively. Indeed I am eager to start; if it's going to be my career for life, why not get a move on? But young people are unwise in ways we have yet to find out.
The connection of cold weather to cardiovascular issues got me thinking. Cardiovascular health and mental health are closely intertwined. Things that are good for cardiovascular health (like exercise) are also good for mental health. Perhaps temperature is an independent contributor to seasonal affective disorder (not only light). I thought back to a time last year when my shoulder was so severely injured that I couldn’t put on a shirt so I had the thermostat set to 80 degrees 24/7 for a couple of months. I felt I was sharper than usual during that time. So yesterday I ran a self experiment where I raised my thermostat from 70 to 76 and I felt a bit better after a day. (Maybe just a placebo). Are there any good studies yet of temperature-based interventions for seasonal affective disorder? I couldn’t quickly find any on google due to the results being flooded with irrelevant stuff.
That sounds great! I was about to recommend the tabletop game Zendo as fulfilling a similar role, but I see your review already credits Zendo as one of the inspirations for Understand.
+1 to that recommendation, I've played through about two dozen levels and enjoyed it a lot so far. Agree with the praise about the core skill being hypothesis generation and testing. I do wonder how much the skills generalize...seems at least plausible!
In 2010 an earthquake killed 220,000 Haitians. In 2016 Hurricane Matthew killed thousands more. In July of this year the autocratic President of Haiti was assassinated by a squad of Columbian mercenaries who were probably hired by other members of the Haitian government. In August another earthquake struck Haiti.
I live in the Dominican Republic with a Haitian family. I am always concerned about Haiti, but particularly so lately.
I have written (or quoted) over 7000 words on a plan to help Haiti. I want to make it as useful and realistic as possible. I am requesting feedback.
Please think of my request like an appeal for donations, except it will cost you time rather than money. If my ideas have some merit, an entire country might be helped. How much is that worth?
How much is that worth to you?
Almost anything you might say, positive or negative, would be helpful to me as I endeavor to improve the plan.
Basic criticism: a quick summary at the beginning of your proposal would improve it, I think. Maybe organize the information another way would help too, though I'm not good at that, I just see that the text feels less organized than some of the stuff I read online.
Nation building is hard and usually fails. Why would this plan succeed when so many others have failed?
* In the Zone Sécurisée de Sud (ZSS) plan we propose to start in only one department (Sud) which is 5% of Haiti.
* Sud is the farthest department from the corruption, gangs, and turmoil, and thus the easiest to fix.
* Building an international airport in Sud is both a huge bargaining chip and the key to economic success in Sud.
* 95% or more of the personnel paid by the ZSS would be Haitian.
* By pairing Haitian government personnel one-to-one with Haitian ZSS personnel, we both support the government and eliminate corruption.
* US military forces would be used only on occasion to back up the Haitian/ZSS police force. They would rarely be seen by ordinary Haitians.
* Because we are operating in only one distant department, it would be much easier for corrupt officials and gang members to move to other parts of Haiti than to stay and fight.
Why do this?
So that Haitians can go home to their own country and not be resented and persecuted in others. The enormous 3.5 million Haitian diaspora is both the motivation and the means to success for this plan.
Haiti has been much in the news in recent years, and for all the wrong reasons. Faced with a never-ending series of disasters, both natural and man-made, Haitians are desperately trying to flee their country and enter the US and other countries. Far better if they could live safely and productively in their own country.
We believe that Haiti is failing because of long-standing inequality, government corruption, and unrestrained gangs. In this plan we propose to eliminate corruption and gangs in the most distant Department (Sud) which has 5% of the population of Haiti. A functioning government in Sud could begin to address inequality. Success in Sud would provide a model for the other nine Departments.
The funding would come from the United States. Five year cost: $3.2 billion. About one-thousandth of the cost of the Afghan War.
The US would provide a small military force which would back up the Haitian police in Sud.
Eliminating civilian guns in the Sud is key to eliminating the gangs. (Have you ever heard of a gang with no guns?)
We propose to empower government employees (including the police) while eliminating corruption by pairing each employee with a Haitian (Creole-speaking) auxiliary. Government pay would be matched for those employees with auxiliaries. Auxiliaries would be hired and paid by the US.
By guaranteeing security throughout Sud, tourism would be greatly enhanced. The entire Department, not just tourist enclaves.
We propose to decentralize government funding and authority so that Sud can succeed even if the central government is failing. Value-added tax revenue would stay in Sud and would be used to fund basic services: security, roads, water, sanitation, electricity, and trash collection.
We propose to fund the project (announced in 2013) to expand the Les Cayes airport to international status. This would enable tourists to reach Sud without passing through gang-controlled areas in Port-au-Prince or taking a prop plane.
The offer to fund the airport expansion also serves as a bargaining chip to encourage adoption of the plan.
I agree with Lucas, a quick summary at the beginning would be very helpful.
Unfortunately I simply don't think that your plan is likely to work. If you've followed American military history recently, you'll notice that we are completely unable to rescue failed states that lack basic structure- it's just not something that we know how to do, or that anyone knows how to do. I am 100% sure that this proposal would receive bipartisan criticism in the US. And- I'm just being honest with you here- what would America get out of this occupation plan? A rich or poor Haiti, failed or successful, simply doesn't impact America very much either way. Why would spend time & money for an insignificant return? The mood is against more foreign adventures here
The estmated cost of the military part of the plan is less than ten percent of the total. If the plan is successful the military forces would seldom see action.
98% of the personnel involved in the intervention would be Haitian. We have never done anything like that before.
The advantage to the US is to eliminate Haitian refugees.
I have not read through the 7000 words yet. Here are some preliminary thoughts:
- There could be some interesting dialogue with the Charter Cities movement (e.g. Prospera in Honduras). In both cases, there is an attempt to build better institutions in a small portion of the country, rather than reforming the country as a whole.
- Some of the most effective US military interventions have been in the Caribbean: the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and the invasion of Panama in 1989. In Grenada, the invasion took 4 days and the next elections after the invasion were 14 months later. In Panama, the invasion took a little over a month and the next elections after the invasion were 4.5 years later. Both countries have remainded democratic since. It would be worthwhile to look at these two examples in detail to see why they succeeded more than other American interventions, including the invasion of Haiti in 1994.
In the middle of researching the background of multiplayer speedruns in Diablo 2 for one of those video essays on YouTube, I found one of the early organisers had “stashed” a quote from Elizier Yudkowsky in his post history back around 2010. So for the longest of shots: MFB from indiablo - do you happen to read these comment sections?
So what are the US fallback solutions if we can't defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion or blockade? Is there a way for America to punish China for the (presumably successful) invasion, while stopping short of a full naval engagement with them in the South China Sea? This is for the next 5-20 year time span (I believe that we could still defeat China's navy today, albeit at probably great cost).
The most common response is that America's blue water navy could simply blockade China, the world's largest trading nation, and brutally punish their economy by blocking imports & exports. (Somehow a landmass the size of China doesn't seem to have large-scale oil reserves, so they import a ton of oil. They do of course have a strategic oil reserve, but it would run out eventually). I guess I'm just a bit skeptical that the US could successfully blockade them for a long period of time. The world relies on trading with China, and a real blockade would seem to usher in a serious global recession. I'm sure global opinion would turn against China if it invaded Taiwan- I'm sure it would turn again against the US if, say, Europe & Latin America & Japan entered a major recession due to losing the Chinese market. Not to mention the effect on the American economy itself! Doesn't seem like a long-term solution.
Any other tools in the American toolbox? Some long-range bombing to flex muscles & look tough while not engaging in a full-on naval battle? Just seizing all Chinese financial assets on Wall Street under the Trading With The Enemy Act from the 30s? (How much cash does Alibaba, Tik Tok & Huawei keep in American banks, anyways?)
A Virginia-class submarine carries 25 torpedoes, then it has to sail back to Guam (or wherever) to re-arm. Also, by launching its torpedoes it will give away its position to Chinese submarines and warships so it will be in great danger immediately afterwards. Any sort of realistic amphibious invasion of Taiwan would involve many hundreds of troop ships, so submarines could only take out a small fraction, and would be better off saving their missiles for larger Chinese warships anyway.
The war would be won in the air, I think. Trying to move an army across the Taiwan Strait without air supremacy would be impossible, and defending the island against invasion if the Chinese have air supremacy would be impossible too.
The Long Lance, the Japanese type 93 torpedo in WWII, had an official range of 11 km, an actual range considerably longer than that. Not, of course, a drone.
Great reference. Add GPS guidance to that plus visual for the final leg. Then line a coastline with this type of torpedoes. A country becomes impossible to invade by sea.
We're just finishing up that debate on DSL, and no. "Dogfights", in the sense of close air combat maneuvering, were pretty much a thing of the past by 1940, though they cropped up a few times through the 1980s for various reasons. Even in World War 2, air combat was mostly done by hit-and-run attacks against an enemy that almost literally (and sometimes literally literally) never new what hit them.
But this sort of fighting absolutely depends on the sort of complex situational awareness that drones are nowhere near capable of dealing with. Obligatory XKCD is https://xkcd.com/1958/ , except in this context most people are stone-cold professional killers with teams of experts trying to figure out how to make them better killers. Drones will either never know what hit them, or be so paranoid that they'll spend all their time dodging or shooting at shadows, or both. There's no middle ground yet, and not likely to be any time soon.
Looking at the size of the Long Lance, one could have a dozen of those in a very small area. Excavate a launch chanber with sea access in a way that the surface is undisturbed. (Imagine burying into a rocky cliff. I suppose you could start the excavation from under water.)
After thinking about it a bit more, I think that the reason we don't hear much about shore-launched torpedos is that they are inferior to good old fashioned artillery, which gives you much more bang for your buck (in the most literal sense) than torpedos over the same sort of range.
Cheaper, faster, easier to move around, similar-to-better range, and probably not significantly less likely to hit the target, with no need for secret Dr No undersea bases.
The Samson Solution would never be in the best interests of Israel, and the entire theory behind MAD requires you to assume that both parties are willing to do something that would never be in their interests either. People are willing to put some pretty vigorous deterrents down and force the other party to call their bluff in geopolitics.
There's an oil pipeline from Russia to China, so I don't think the US could stop China from importing oil.
Looking at other invasions, we can see that what happens when the US invades some country is that the rest of the world does nothing about it, and what happens when Russia invades some country is that the rest of the world implements sanctions. If we consider China to be more powerful than Russia but less powerful than the US, we might expect the reaction to be somewhere in between, so some kind of mostly symbolic sanctions followed by an acceptance of the new status quo.
> There's an oil pipeline from Russia to China, so I don't think the US could stop China from importing oil.
Surely oil pipelines are pretty fragile and a few bombs dropped at strategic locations on the Chinese side of the border would make a mess that would take a long time to clean up?
"Is there a way for America to punish China for the (presumably successful) invasion, while stopping short of a full naval engagement with them in the South China Sea?"
Yes; sanctions, including secondary ones (similar to those on Russia). This won't be as effective as it could be for, say, Iran, though, due both to China's greater capabilities and the U.S.'s greater dependence on China.
"The most common response is that America's blue water navy could simply blockade China"
This will never happen, China makes too much stuff that the U.S. imports, and because Asia's economies rely too much on China. Same reason why China won't go to war with Japan.
"I'm sure global opinion would turn against China if it invaded Taiwan"
I don't think that at all. I think opinion will be divided as on the Xinjiang issue, with rich countries largely opposing China and poor countries largely in support.
Pretty sure that China would regard a general blockade of its ports, i.e. including sinking shipping entering or leaving, as a declaration of a general war and respond at the strategic level, e.g by nuking Pearl Harbor or something. The Chinese themselves might be thinking along similar lines:
I don't think the PRC's announced no-first-strike policy -- or anybody's -- is worth the paper it would take to print it out. I'm kind of gobsmacked that you *do* take it at face value. What's your reasoning?
If they were going to nuke us, why wouldn't they threaten to do so beforehand to get the benefits of deterrence? I agree they might change their minds and say "actually, we will nuke you if you keep doing the blockade (or whatever)" but I don't see why they would do it as an immediate response to the blockade.
This has been well-studied during the MAD era. You get greater deterrence by being ambiguous. That's *why* the US never had a "no first use" announced policy, and why we have been ambiguous about Taiwan since forever. Generally speaking, your enemies (if they are rational) have to plan for the worst case. *We* certainly did, during the Cold War. Despite the USSR having a "no first use" policy statement, we planned for how we would deal with a sneak unannounced attack. That's just sensible defensive thinking. So if you keep your enemies a bit in the dark about what the worst case actually is, this forces them to more costly and complex defensive measures. (It also raises strategic tension, of course, and the risk of accidental conflict, which is its major drawback).
As for why they would strike instead of bluster first: first, because the threat is not credible unless you have a history that way (which they don't), which means you're going to have to follow through anyway, and warning people first just give them time to soften the blow. You're also putting your credibility on the line on the details, e.g. if you say we're going to obliterate Honolulu but you only end up killing 500 sailors at Pearl, you look weak *if* you have announced your intention first, but not if you haven't. Second, the Chinese don't really do bluster, it's not their thing. They like action, and unannounced action at that -- this has been the history of the PRC for a long time.
To set against this, though, they also know the (recent) history of the US, which is that we have endless resolve and pride when it comes to to the short term, to a surprise like 9/11, but we don't have the stomach for any kind of protracted conflict even if low-level, e.g. in Syria or Afghanistan. So they will probably usually conclude the way to beat the Americans is to wear them down over time, take advantage of their short attention span and low stamina -- but at all costs do NOT do something abrupt and shocking that will cause them to rally themselves and do something drastic in the short term.
Interesting. Well, you seem to know more about this than I do. I am wondering though, why do you think China has a no-first-strike policy if as you say they would get better deterrence from an ambiguous policy like the US has?
I’m a bit confused, though. If nobody’s no-first-strike policy is worth the paper it would be printed on, then why would being ambiguous give greater deterrence? If everyone plans for the worst case, it shouldn’t matter what your (announced) policy is, should it?
I mean, it can matter for PR reasons, but why should it matter for military planning reasons?
The main deterrent for China invading Taiwan is that Taiwan would put up a strong defense all by itself, which would inflict substantial damage to the invaders. This has been the case since the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan. Yes the US obviously has military and/or economic resources that could turn the calculus, but also obviously a full commitment of such resources into a conflict against China would be likely to have massive downsides. Pretty much the same dynamic was also already played out in the 1950s battle over Korea.
The American "toolbox" for Taiwan isn't entirely empty, but the tools held by the direct players in the region are the most crucial ones.
I've been listening to things about China having really screwed itself with the One Child policy-- I'm not sure whether this means China is less likely to engage in military adventurism.
Is it "the army is irreplaceable workers, don't get them killed" or "unmarried young men, nothing but trouble"?
Per this argument, China is more likely to attack in the next decade precisely *because* they are a stagnating power, and that is partly due to the One Child Policy.
The bonds in graphite are stronger than in diamond. It is soft because the macromolecule is two-dimensional, and the different layers can move pretty easily against each other, and can be broken much more easily
Diamond's hardness has almost nothing to do with its regularity. Rather it's hard because its bonds are fully covalent: it's essentially one big molecule. Metallic bonds are not really covalent: rather, there is a sea of electrons that binds the nuclei together, that can only partially be modeled as covalent bonds. As a result metals are malleable (moving the nuclei a little is not that energetically expensive) while the nuclei in diamond are very energetically expensive to move. As a general rule, the heavier the element, the more metallic its bonds will be. So carbon, as the lightest element that forms four covalent bonds, forms the hardest macromolecule.
A moncrystalline piece of metal would be incredibly strong. However, metals are composed of many crystals, at different angles from each other and they also contain other imperfections. It's these imperfections moving around that lets the metal deform.
I think the difference is that particular carbon atoms in a diamond are bonded to each other, whereas metal atoms are held to each other via a soup of electrons which don't belong to any specific atom. Thus the meal atoms can slide around past each other.
This is incorrect: metals are stronger with a fine grain structure. This is because metals deform by moving dislocations and the dislocations get stopped at grain boundaries.
We use single crystal metals only for special cases: high temperature turbine blades in particular.
If you could create a metal crystal with no flaws--- no empty slots or other defects in the lattice it would indeed be very strong. However, thermodynamics is against this, so: not gonna happen.
From the atomic point of view, it doesn't. The two sources of the strength of the C-C bond are (1) C has 4 valence electrons (most transition metals, which is what most people mean by "metal", have 1 or 2), and (2) C is a much smaller atom (about half the size of a typical Period 4 transition metal), which allows for much stronger interaction between the C atom and valence electrons. Neither of these have anything to do with lattice structure.
Where the lattice structure matters is that it is relatively easy to prepare a macroscopic piece of diamond that is a pure crystal, because carbon isn't that reactive with oxygen, and because it is very finicky about the direction of its bonds, so it's quite difficult to generate grain boundaries (their energy cost is high), and relatively easy to avoid impurities, both of which tend to make a macroscopic chunk of material have far less than the theoretical strength its bond strength could give it.
Metals by contrast are not particular about the direction of their bonds, so grain boundaries are almost impossible to avoid, and they are very reactive with oxygen, so impurities are also common. But even a hypothetically pure and perfect metal crystal would generally not be as strong as diamond, because of the underlying difference in the strength of the bonding interaction.
Maybe I should add there's nothing special about C forming very strong bonds to itself, all the Period 2 nonmetals do, for the same reasons. However C (along with B) is different from the others in being willing to form extended chains of C-C bonds, which allows for the diamond solid allotrope. Carbon's neighbors to the right, by contrast, prefer to form multiple bonds with each other to satisfy their valence, and this prevents formation of extended chains. But the O=O or N≡N bond is just as strong, indeed much stronger than, the C-C bond.
I just bought an Oculus Quest 2 and have been experimenting with it. I'm not a gamer and was mildly skeptical about the recent "metaverse" buzz. But now I think this is going to be a huge deal, especially as the tech improves. And it's already pretty good.
I could absolutely see this turbocharging the work from home trend. Virtual conference room meeting will be like real life- miles better than Zoom calls. It could eliminate a ton of business travel. Hell, travel in general- if you're traveling to see the sights and talk with people. The VR tours they have of historic urban centers are already pretty amazing.
I've also played a bunch of ping pong on it. Not quite perfect yet, but pretty damn impressive.
Would be interested to hear other thoughts on the future of VR tech and the metaverse concept.
The headset isn't visible. There's no need for your VR avatar to be a photorealistic representation of you, but that will be possible before long too. You'll just take some photos of yourself and the avatar will be generated from it.
I think the other big issue is that I don't really have a burning desire to become more engaged or engrossed in meetings. I'd rather have a meeting happening on my laptop screen than get sucked into a VR world just so that I can look down and see my colleagues' simulated feet.
Not denying that a really good (and somehow non-nauseating) VR headset would have a lot of great uses, but I don't think that ordinary meetings are among them.
I can see the market being huge for porn and not much else. Maybe exercise, if the games are exciting enough and there's a way to do it without crashing around bumping into things and hurting yourself in real life. I'm not sure why anyone would want to sit in a virtual conference room for a meeting. The only benefit of Zoom is to see people's facial expressions, which you wouldn't on an avatar -- absent that, no one actually really wants to be around each other, do they? I'm having a hard time imagining that going to a fake national park or fake city would be that popular...you can already look at amazing photos of those places. The physical experience -- smell, temperature, etc. and being able to say you were really there is a huge part of it.
I guess in general I don't see it being popular as a replacement for actual experiences, whether positive ones (visiting a national park) or negative ones no one wants to replace (i.e. meetings). But for experiences that one has zero ability to experience in real life have...sex with a thousand gorgeous porn models who do whatever you want...then sure.
Exercise would require much less cumbersome equipment that gets a lot less hot than what is currently available. It would also need to withstand being sweat on repeatedly.
"Virtual conference room meeting will be like real life- miles better than Zoom calls."
So, all the real world disadvantages of having to attend yet another pointless meeting, with none of the advantages, plus I have to pick a suitable avatar (one thing I think Zuckerberg's 'Metaverse' video demonstrated is how damn foolish you can make yourself look, and I don't think a workplace meeting will tolerate robots and astronauts) and pay attention as some busybody will be prodding me about 'where are you drifting off to? the performance monitoring metrics show a lack of engagement!'
I mentioned this last time, but I'm now happy to share that my new podcast has officially launched. It's called "Rock Docs: A Podcast About Movies About Music". Every week we discuss a different music documentary. Episode 1 is about "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese". https://linktr.ee/rockdocspod
Anyone know some good original sources to get an insight into how the political elite of the European powers reasoned during the begining of World War One?
BYU's WW1 Document Archive is a fairly comprehensive online compilation of major primary sources related to WW1, organized by time period (pre-1914, each year of the war, and post-1918).
If you're also interested in secondary sources, I'd suggest "Dreadnought" by Robert Massie and "Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark. Both cover the diplomatic context of the lead up the the war, with an emphasis on placing the decisions of major actors in biographical, political, and institutional context, concluding with a blow-by-blow of the July Crisis. Massie focuses on Britain and Germany with a heavy emphasis on the Dreadnought race, while Clark pays a lot more attention to France, Russia, Austria, and Serbia and is more directly focused on the question of why and how the war happen.
Are there any parliamentary systems that don't have snap elections? As a committed anti-populist who's skeptical of too much direct democracy, I think presidential systems are maybe a bit too high-stakes (the US is currently in the middle of proving this old saw correct), and I'd like choosing the executive to be removed from them. However, as an American I find foreign snap elections & the constant coalition collapses baffling and fundamentally just weak, if I can be frank.
Could this system work at all- we have multiparty elections in the House and the subsequent winners form a coalition and select a Prime Minister, possibly with a Constitutional time limit (2-3 months, say) to prevent interminable negotiations. The House Reps serve for 4 years, and the PM once picked serves for 4 years with them. (I'm not sure whether to include a Senate here or not). There are no snap elections or dissolution of the government- if the coalition partners encounter issues after the fact, tough. The PM is there for 4 years, so you have to get along somehow.
This system would hopefully combine the strength & decisiveness of a fixed term with the anti-populist element of not directly electing the most powerful office. Would this work at all? Has it ever been tried?
1. Parliamentary democracies can easily wind up in the stable equilibrium of having just two parties of any significance; e.g. Australia. A situation like Germany or Italy where there are many parties is not a direct consequence of parliamentary democracy, it's... something else. A two-party system might well be the stable equilibrium that all mature parliaments will reach eventually, because once it's established then it's very difficult to dislodge.
2. In most parliamentary systems that I'm aware of, there's nothing constitutionally important about the office of "Prime Minister". The Prime Minister is just the person chosen by the largest party or coalition to be its leader, and has various other powers purely through convention or legislation. If the governing coalition decides half way through the term that they actually want someone else to be their leader, then there's nothing that can really force them to listen to the officially designated "Prime Minister" instead, even if you've made a rule that the Prime Minister can't be swapped out. They'll simply invent a new title like "First Minister", give all the Prime Minister's powers to the First Minister, and ignore the Prime Minister.
3. The idea of a parliament which cannot reach an agreement but also cannot be dissolved sounds a bit scary to me. It seems necessary to have a relief valve in cases where the parliament becomes so deadlocked that it can't do basic tasks like procuring funds. (Without a constitutional relief valve, that relief valve probably just becomes the army, who will raise a coup when their paycheques stop coming in.)
Re: 2. So my idea is that the PM here would Constitutionally be the Commander in Chief, have similar legal powers to our US President now, etc. It's not something that can be ignored or switched
3. I mean, that's how the US functions (or doesn't) now, right? Divided government is the norm, the two factions hate each other, but they still pass a budget and authorize the Defense Department separately every single year. I don't see how lack of a relief valve is different from current US politics, maybe that means the American system is doomed, I don't know.
Matthew Yglesias had a recent post entitled 'Secret Congress' which basically posited that, contra everyone's perception of America, the two parties pass a surprising amount of bipartisan legislation every single session. It's just the less partisan, less publicized stuff- once an issue becomes a partisan flash point, forget it
2. What parliamentary systems are those? I just checked four constitutions (Sweden, Malta, Finland & Germany), and they all spelled out an important role for the prime minister. I'm not, however, aware of any system in which coalitions play any important constitutional role (the word "coalition" is not mentioned in any of those four constitutions) – what particular majority of MPs happened to elect (or tolerate) the prime minister doesn't really matter.
I think a ruler that cannot be removed by parliament is typically called a president rather than a prime minister, and since the US president already fulfils the role of a prime minister, I don't see why you'd change the name; better to just have the president elected by the House of Representatives and be done with it. I think the likely result would be that elections would be treated by the voters as presidential elections (which they would essentially be), and nothing much would change, other than that the executive and the legislative branch would now always be controlled by the same party.
Does anybody know much about the International Phonetic Alphabet? Can it express the sounds of all the world's top thirteen or so languages by GDP (English, Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, French, Portuguese, Malay, Turkish, Korean, Italian)? Can it it be used to write specific accents? Is it worth me learning it?
1. yes, absolutely; 2. pretty much, at least insofar as the accents manifest in different sounds as opposed to e.g. modifications of length; 3. it won't really impact ordinary practical life for someone not in a related profession, but it's also not difficult to learn at all (at least for the sound inventory of your own native language). It can help slightly in terms of learning a second language (largely in terms of being understood when you're speaking), however you have quite a few other things you also need to worry about when learning another language - it is very much not the step to start with. But if you intend on being fluent in 5+ languages...
Yes to all your questions. Half the IPA is just regular Latin letters pronounced like they are in most languages, and the other half you can just learn as you go (like, you probably don't want to learn the clicks and implosives unless you're gonna use them, or all those weird central vowels).
I'm not sure it would expedite learning the world's top thirteen languages. I studied linguistics at university. IPA describes combinations of sounds from the throat, nasal passages, tongue, teeth, and lips – bodily sounds inherent to every language. As a previous poster mentioned, IPA can sometimes help with precise pronunciation when combined with an understanding of native accents. I would not make IPA a priority; internalizing grammatical rules for each language will help you speak and write spontaneously, so I would focus on these areas and make IPA an afterthought.
Only in the sense that you "die" when you fall asleep or unconscious - something that interrupts your conscious experience just as surely as being disintegrated by a teleporter does. Which the blogger, to their credit, admits is a possibility - "It seems that there has to be a difference between these two cases. But if there is no observable difference, then this just means we’re wrong in thinking that being yourself is continuous to begin with."
My take is that, since no outside observation can tell the difference between the Kirk who went into the teleporter and the one who came out, the only person that this problem could possibly matter to is Kirk himself - if he's okay with being disintegrated and doesn't consider it to be suicide, then who am I to tell him otherwise?
> the only person that this problem could possibly matter to is Kirk himself
Well yes. But if I'm Captain Kirk and I'm trying to decide whether or not to enter the transporter, I want to know whether my current conscious experience will continue down on the planet's surface, or whether I will die and never again experience another sensation, while a new being with all my memories pops up planetside. It makes no difference to any external observer or to New Kirk, who swears he just dissolved in one room and popped up in another, but to Old Kirk who is now dead it makes all the difference in the world.
Of course this might also happen every time you fall asleep (warning: thinking about this is an infohazard for those inclined towards insomnia!). I think the added complication is that it's easy to see how a transporter accident could result in multiple Captain Kirks (surely this has happened in some Trek episode, right?) Each of them remembers being the Captain Kirk that steps into the teleporter, but surely the consciousness of the Captain Kirk that stepped in could only be continuous with one of them. Since it seems ridiculous that your consciousness just goes to one of the copies at random, it's easier to assume that the consciousness of the Kirk who steps in really does end each time he does so.
With sleep you can reasonably assume that the fact your brain keeps ticking over during the process is enough to keep your conscious experience continuous. At least, you can assume that if it helps you sleep.
The answer seems simple: it is purely a matter of habit and common expectations. Everybody has been sleeping since before time they have memories of, so everybody is used to consciousness interruptions by sleep to such an extent that it almost never occurs to them to wonder about whether it "creates a new self" etc., regardless of philosophers' musings on the topic. Presumably a world where teleporters were commonplace and everybody used them would work similarly. There might be a phobia of first-time teleporter use ("null phobia" in Strugacki brothers' universe), like there is with parachute jumping today, but given a successful personal experience and an overwhelming common expectation that it's nothing special it should wear off quickly in most individuals.
> Each of them remembers being the Captain Kirk that steps into the teleporter, but surely the consciousness of the Captain Kirk that stepped in could only be continuous with one of them.
Why on earth would it be continuous with only one of them? If I pause a VM, make a copy (including memory and vCPU state) and resume both, identity and computational processes will be continuous from the original to both copies. I see no reason why duplication of a brain would work any differently (yes, I am a physicalist). Experience with near-death states involving a cessation of electrical activity in the brain supports this idea, and cryonics / uploading makes no sense without presupposing it.
Turning back to fiction, duplication of an individual involving continuity of consciousness to both copies is the main plot device in Clifford Simak's Goblin Reservation.
My point is that cryonics implicitly assumes physicalism. If people had souls that went to heaven/hell at death, say, what do cryo enthusiasts imagine will happen when a cryo-preserved person is rebuilt and revived? Will the psychopomp angel say "oops", fish the soul out of the boiling brimstone and throw it back into the sublunary world?
To all my responders: but what what does it feel like, even momentarily, while your body is being scanned and disintegrated? And since the transporter process is creating a complete picture of mind's mental state at the time, would you carry that momentary memory of the pain of being disintegrated into your new body? If this were the case, it seems like Kirk would need to be knocked out with some pretty strong anesthesia before he underwent the transporter process. ;-)
Also, if were able to obtain a picture of a mind with all its electro-chemical states, and its thought and memory patterns that they represent, at a particular time, could they be edited? This is not an original question. Charlie Stross used this idea as a McGuffin in his novel Glass House—which takes place in a future society recovering from the "Editing Wars" where state players and non-state players had inserted code to manipulate peoples' memories during the transporter process for political gain...
Keeping in mind that we're talking about completely speculative technology
> could they be edited
certainly they will be editable, although I bet that making enough sense of the "brain dump" to edit it is going to be vastly harder than scanning and reconstructing it. The relevant analogy is with genomes: with existing technology, a complete scan of a genome is cheap and very reliable, and complete synthesis from a digital copy is already possible for bacteria, but our ability to make sense of the data in the genome is sufficient only for the most rudimentary edits. Human genome is probably not globally intelligible by humans anyway.
Nerve conduction is a fairly slow process. If scanning/disintegration takes a few milliseconds, the brain will most likely not notice that anything untoward has happened. In fact, unless reliable and painless methods of shutting down brain activity prior to scanning/disintegration are developed, it arguably *has* to happen too quickly for nerve conduction to work. Otherwise, as you evidently agree, it will be an agony comparable to being hanged, drawn and quartered, which will definitely preclude the development of the kind of habits and common expectations I mentioned above.
I don’t think that outside observation doesn’t matter. The Kirk that goes in dies. His existence ends. The other guy will think he’s a continuation.
The best way to prove this is to understand that what’s been sent to the surface is information about Kirk, which is reassembled. There’s nothing stopping them creating a dozen clones, they have stored data about people. (The atoms don’t matter. )
Let’s say that a transporter accident means that (for whatever reason) Kirk is transported but also stays or reforms on the transporter machine. Since we are sending data that could happen. For a split second there are two kirks. You realise that you should vaporise him and so you do. He dies.
That’s what transporters do. They vaporise and kill you, then transmit a clone.
The fundamental contention here is, what is "you". Your argument implicitly assumes a reified, soul-like entity which has independent existence from the atoms its made of. The physicalist view of Candide III is that "you" is, in identity, in essence, the physical configuration of atoms in your brain. Your conscious experience is not a "consequence" or "product" of this configuration, it IS this configuration, with no indirection there, no independent thing that can "end" and then "restart". If the same configuration is restored, then it's the same "you". If it's copied 100 times, then it's still just one "you", subjectively indistinguishable, until the clones' sensory inputs cause their thoughts to diverge.
After all, if you go down to the timescale of quantum fluctuations, you could argue that the processes that make up your thoughts are noisy and discontinuous. Do "you" die then?
My ideology doesn’t believe in a soul at all. The idea that Kirk’s consciousness is being transferred to the surface however, does. I believe he’s killed and cloned on the surface.
From what I can gather from your comments, either your ideology believes in a soul, just calling it "consciousness", or you're mixing different levels of abstraction. Compare my comment about candle flame above. At the level where you talk about information sufficiently detailed to reconstruct Kirk, it does not make sense to simultaneously talk about Kirk as a single "thing" that "exists", can be "killed" etc.
I don’t believe in a soul at all. I believe the first Kirk has a consciousness that is clearly bound to that one body and mind - which is killed when he is vaporised. It’s the people who believe that consciousness is transferred who believe in a soul.
Yes. A useful analogy is a candle flame. It makes a certain amount of sense to talk about the flame as a single "thing" that starts and stops, as long as we're not paying too close attention to what it is. But if we think of it as a bunch of atoms moving around, it becomes difficult to maintain that it is a single "thing", and starting/stopping will refer to properties of sets of positions and initial velocities of atoms. If we were able to measure and instantiate such sets with sufficient precision, we could duplicate the flame and it would even flicker for a bit after being duplicated in the same way as the original - although not for very long, because the motion of gas in a flame is turbulent and Lyapunov exponents would magnify even small measurement / copying errors quickly.
This kind of argument doesn’t explain consciousness or death. If a living being is just a bunch of atoms it’s pretty much in the same state before and after death. Just atoms largely in the same place. And even after many years those atoms survive. So who is to say that anything actually dies?
I don't understand what you mean by *explaining* here, but note that "pretty much" and "largely" are doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. A pan of water conducting heat without convection cannot be distinguished from a pan of water carrying heat by convection by measurements of velocities of atoms in a given local parcel of water, because convection is a large-scale spatial correlation of minor deviations of the atoms' velocity distribution from Maxwellian. But it does not mean that convection does not exist or that we cannot tell if it is occurring or not.
I think canon transporters transmit the original atoms, specifically to forestall the "wait, aren't you just printing out a new Kirk?" question. But my answer remains the same - I wouldn't consider Kirk to be dead when there's an exact copy of him present, and if Kirk is okay with being vaporized then I should be too.
Also, I think the identity problems being posed have more to do with the ability to construct people than with teleportation specifically. Like, suppose there's no teleporting involved at all - Starfleet just wants to print off a dozen Captain Kirks because he's really good at his job and they want him to command their whole fleet. You'd still have the exact same questions - what status should those clones have, is it meaningful to say that "Kirk is dead" when there are a dozen other Kirks alive and kicking, at what point should they be considered their own person, which one ought to keep the identity of the original (such as the right to captain the Enterprise), etc. If you can arbitrarily construct new people, the fact that you can use it for teleportation is almost an afterthought.
"The original atoms" is not the hill you want to die on. First, because your body swaps out atoms *all the time* [epistemic status: very confident]. Second, because as I understand it physicists have determined asking which of two identical fundamental particles is which is meaningless [epistemic status: I read the QM sequence a few years ago].
I think that in the case of the teleporter accident where there were two Kirks for a split second, *both of them* would be "the real Kirk". They both have the same personality and memories as the Kirk that went into the teleporter, and I think that's what fundamentally defines the continuity of identity.
Hmm, it's not that one person is seeing out of two sets of eyes per se.... it's that there are now two identical people each seeing out of their own eyes. If they ever see or otherwise experience anything different (which they certainly will quite soon in any realistic scenario) then they will become two distinct people. But I don't think that either of them has a stronger claim than the other of being the "original". If I knew everything about Kirk before this experiment, except for which side of the duplicator he walked into, what experiment could I do to determine which was the real Kirk? (Let's say he was blindfolded when he walked in so I can't just ask him.)
One helpful intuition pump that influenced my thoughts on this matter is Yudkowsky's analogy of a species (the Ebborians, see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WajiC3YWeJutyAXTn/where-physics-meets-experience) with flat brains that reproduces asexually by splitting down their thickness. Each of the two resulting Ebborians has a brain with identical connections to the original. If Kal divides in this way, which of the resulting creatures is the real Kal? I think the correct answer is "they both are equally original".
I don't usually succeed in communicating this to people, but if there's any place worth trying, it's here.
In what sense is it different to get teleported, than it is to just advance a millisecond in time?
In both cases there is a clump of atoms you recognize as "I" somewhere in the universe. In both cases the clump has changed position in space, and also its relative arrangement in a meaningful way. The two states are not identical.
In internal terms, you experience the current arrangement, with both past and future existing only as mental constructs right now.
Did Kirk die? Well, not anymore than you did since starting to read this sentence.
Yeh, except I wasn’t vaporised a few seconds ago, which tends to kill you. What’s being sent to the surface is data - there’s nothing special about the atoms. Replicators can assemble anything and people have been stored as data. Since data is all that is being sent, the vaporised Kirk is dead.
(I also think the new Kirk is dead as it’s probably impossible to send and restore mind state).
Kirk goes into a transporter room to test the system. He’s is transported to another side of the room. Kirk walks out.
Test 2:
Kirk goes into a transporter room and he is analysed and transported first before being vaporised. There’s two kirks for a few seconds. The first Kirk is then vaporised.
Kirk walks out.
In the second case i am 100% sure the Kirk that walked in lost his life. In the first case I think the same but could be convinced.
> In the second case i am 100% sure the Kirk that walked in lost his life.
Both Kirks are Kirks that walked in. "The Kirk that walked in" doesn't specify a unique individual, and can't be said to have lost "his" life.
If the time during which there are two Kirks is extended such that they diverge enough to be meaningfully distinct that objection fails, but that assumes away the identity question entirely. You're left with a different, much easier problem. (Killing someone's identical twin is bad.)
Yeh? So so the first Kirk somehow only becomes a different Kirk to the cloned Kirk if he lives longer than a few seconds?
Let’s do a another thought experiment.
Test 3:
Kirk goes into a transporter room and he is analysed and transported first before being vaporised. There’s two kirks for a few minutes, and they have coffee together. The first Kirk is then vaporised.
Is the Kirk that walked into the room dead? Yes he is.
I much prefer the case (from Hofstadter's "The Mind's Eye") where you are digitized, transmitted, assembled, and then you can chat with your new self to verify that the transportation was successful.
At that point you have to press a button to destroy the original. Do you?
I'm not sure I really like the treatments of the problem that handwave in the obligation to destroy one instance, though. It feels like asking if I'd be willing to accept a billion dollar gift contingent on purchasing a billion dollar flight to Paris. The flight's not the interesting thing there, and you haven't really learned terribly much about how I value money!
For this discussion I highly recommend "I am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. He goes through a lot of transporter scenarios as well as the Ship of Theseus paradox. My own take on this is that I, despite being an atheist, am effectively immortal and my current body is only one of possibly many instantiations of my immortal soul (I don't remember if this was his own take).
Although I doubt he was aware of the Greek philosophers (but he may have been), Nagarjuna effectively put the Ship of Theseus Paradox to bed. If you can wade through his tetralemas (and they're quite challenging) he came up with an answer similar to Heraclitus, except Nagarjuna would say that the ship exists as a dynamic system of dependent arisings —i.e. carpenters constructing it from wood harvested by loggers, from trees growing, from the seeds of trees being scatterer, and so on backward—and going forward, the ship's existence is bounded by the elements gradually disintegrating it. So, the idea of the ship is a useful placeholder for what we perceive in a relative sense. But in the ultimate scheme of things it doesn't really exist, because all the components of the ship, and all the sub-components of the ship, and the sub-components of the subcomponents of the ship, down to atoms down to the underlying relationships between energy and matter—which he didn't speculate about other to imply that there's a substrate of reality that we cannot perceive—are all ultimately arbitrary arrangements dependent arisings—which we as the perceivers of the larger dynamic structure, cannot ultimately perceive nor comprehend (because we are also dynamic systems of dependent arisings that can only perceive and comprehend the world as abstractions of deeper processes that we don't have direct perception of). And from that perspective the ship does not really exist. (My apologies to Nagarjuna for mangling his elegant arguments!)
He may very well have been. There was much trade and exchange of information between India and the Hellenistic world, particularly Ptolemies' Alexandria. Greek mathematicians visited India and some have been conjectured to have emigrated there after Ptolemy VIII dispersed the scientists of the Library. Buddhist figurative art shows strong Greek influence, probably via the Bactrian kingdoms of the diadokhoi. Diogenes Laertius writes that the philosopher Pyrrho went to India with Alexander the Great where he studied with the gymnosophists, and Pyrrho would have known about Heraclitus. Pyrrhonism as described later by Sextus Empiricus shows very strong similarities with Nagarjuna's treatise - there is a Wikipedia page specifically about this.
Did Nagarjuna match these powerful deconstructive arguments (wherein I find nothing to disagree with) with arguments about why and when it still makes sense to talk about the ship as something that "exists"? His object presumably having been the achievement of nirvana, he might not have been concerned with that, though.
I think Nagarjuna would agree that there's something there that we would label a ship, but I think (if I read him correctly) he'd claim that calling it a ship is just a convenient label that hides a conglomeration of dependent arisings. ;-)
But does he have a theory of such labels and labeling or does he simply say something like "see, I've demonstrated that it's just a convenient label that hides a conglomeration of dependent arisings; there is no need for us to inquire into this labeling process because we have to reject the labels anyway on the way to nirvana"?
It would be the latter. The Mahayana philosophers wouldn't have gotten hung up on words being required to articulate thought — unlike various schools of 19th and 20th Century philosophy. And they'd probably chuckle at someone like Wittgenstein trying to attach reality to words. (Apologies if I'm grossly oversimplifying his TLP!)
I have written a brief explainer for the Bible; is it good? While writing it, I have noticed that listening to the Bible via audio is generally superior to reading it silently. https://eharding.substack.com/p/what-is-the-bible
Given Boris Johnson's recent claim that “When the Roman Empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration" (an arguably true, if definitely silly claim), I would also like to point out I have also written a brief explainer for the fall of the Western Roman Empire; I would also like to hear your thoughts on it:
The fall of France in 1940 was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration.
Arguably true, but definitely a silly way to relate events. The Roman example is far more complicated both historically and definitionally, but it's a comparable disconnect.
"It’s a sort of kudzu that parasitized already highly developed Roman civilization and helped contribute to the destruction of much of it, with obvious parallels to leftism today."
The first part of your Bible Explainer is a fun read that provides a nice historical/archeological framework for Tanakh. I wouldn't call it an explainer, though, because it's too high-level to understand the early Israelites' belief systems and their religious and political motivations in detail. I haven't gotten to your Christian Bible explainer, nor your Roman Empire explainer, yet.
The first story is something I hope would make Rod Serling proud, the second is based on the video game "Little Nightmares". Constructive feedback is welcome.
Dreams: does anyone else commonly have dreams that they are NOT in? In that either "you" is an entirely different person that is nothing like you, or "you" are not in the dream at all (whether as yourself or anyone else) and are just watching in an omniscient role like you do when you watch a movie?
This never used to happen to me, but the past couple years I am not in about half of my dreams. I fear this is from consuming too much media and my brain learning to be too much of an omniscient, outside viewer. Wondering how common or rare this is.
I occasionally have dreams that feel like watching an immersive holographic movie about other people. Sometimes, I can even control them to a certain extent.
Interesting. Mine are sometimes like that, sometimes just normal type. I too sometimes have lucid dreams I can control, but never considered those things to be related.
Absolutely. In movie-like dreams I can even pause and rewind sometimes. There's also book-like dreams with a narrator. I also sometimes have dreams that look like playing a strategy game.
Mine have never had pause or rewind functions, but they do have other movie-like elements such as soundtracks or, sometimes, the same scene is replayed but with new and revealing information like you might see in a movie with a plot-twist when shown from a different perspective.
I can't decide how to feel about this. On the one hand, given it took so long for this to happen after decades of "normal" dreams, it makes me think I've warped my brain by excessive consumption of media. On the other, I'm tempted to congratulate myself that I've graduated past dreaming of narcissistic emotional dramas and moved on to pure entertainment.
A third possibility is that I honestly just don't have many personal dilemmas or emotional issues to work out in my sleep anymore, since my life has become so stable...perhaps my brain is freed up to dream about more decadent and immaterial things. I noticed a huge increase in dreams I'm not in, once Covid started...maybe life just became more boring and problems were reduced, so no need to work them out in my subconscious.
Does the ACX community contain any aspiring playwrights, screenwriters, poets, or novelists? Are there are other literary types here who happen to enjoy STEM subjects and Scott's perspective?
I like to fancy myself a literary type, but I've only written privately and nothing published or even put up on fanfiction sites. Did do some guest posts on an Evangelical religious blog about Catholic practices and beliefs, but that's not the same thing 😀
Why not self-publish something? You write well, judging by your posting history on SSC, and self-publishing nowadays doesn't cost anything. It's unlikely to make any significant amount of money but it does put your writing where more people can see it.
I've seen a bunch of discussion of the Roman Empire, across ACX/SSC, especially when it comes to civilisational fall and inflation fears. At one point Scott (if I'm recalling correctly) worried in a post that the COVID debt we were taking on might be something like Roman coin debasement , and we wouldn't be able to control the resulting inflation - and perhaps whatever political destabilisation it brought along with it.
This became the personal research project that launched a thousand tangents, but a series of posts is finally coming out. Because deteriorating Roman economics is nothing like the common picture.
Because first up, Roman debasement, inflation, and political instability are centuries out of sync. They're not causative. I don't think we can even say they're related.
I enjoyed your article. I don't think modern economists like Paul Krugman would be surprised that Roman coin debasement didn't lead to sudden inflation. One couldn't hoard wheat and wine since it would deteriorate, so if there was an ample supply then even when the money supply increased it would not lead to inflation. You can hoard donkeys, but you have to feed them, so maybe that is why donkey prices were more volatile.
I'm so glad someone can think of a reason to explain the donkeys. I found their volatility both hilarious and bemusing.
No, I definitely don't think that proper economists would be much bothered by debasement. But this idea seems rampant in the popular discourse, even beyond ACX (and the people actually concerned with triggers for civilisational collapse). It's become a kind of pseudo-intellectual "gotcha" against high-debt, high-spending governments in crisis. Which is just. I don't think people understand what debt is.
I can think of one or two years where the wheat supply would have dropped pretty radically - there were some bad Egyptian harvests across the first two centuries - but I'm still looking further into them. Even if they led to briefly higher prices, they never kickstarted sustained inflation fears. And I do think you could store wheat pretty effectively, if you kept it dry - Rome had pretty impressive wheat stores to resist sieges, if I recall correctly. What kind of timeline are you thinking for wheat and wine consumption?
Kulikowski (in "Imperial Triumph") attributes the inflation starting at all to the end of the linkage between gold and billon leading to heightened money velocity. Could be true, but the fact that Aurelian's coinage was used so widely in the West until the early fourth century suggests he minted it in an overly large quantity. The emperors from Diocletian to Constantius II almost certainly used billon coinage for seigniorage purposes.
After the fractured period of the 3rd C Crisis, the re-integration of the empire under Aurelian could have sped up money velocity. I'm not sure about gold and bullion; I'll look into Kulikowski. I think Aurelian put other factors into play as well, both in his minting and in his clear lack of confidence in the existing coinage. Both the supply side and the psychological side might have had their effect.
That article on silver mining is great, much appreciated!
Great post - I think in general economic history requires a lot of Fermi-type estimations but is underutilized criminally in analysis. Homer and Sylla's History of Interest Rates is a pretty amateurish book in some ways but has some incredible data in it, for comparison.
The debasement vs inflation graphs have three big problems:
1. The silver content of a denarius doesn't seem to agree between the two graphs. The first shows a roughly linear trend with some bumps, while the latter shows pronounced stairsteps. This suggests to me that we have two different data sets for debasement of the denarius that broadly agree on a multi-decade scale but radically disagree on a scale of years or even single decades, making me suspicious of both data sets unless I know more about how they're derived and why they look different at first glance.
I can think of good reasons for divergence that don't impeach data quality. For example, the smoother graph might be based on the dates of the digs the coins were found at (as a proxy for overall debasement of the mix of old and new coins in circulation at any given time), while the latter could be the silver content of new-minted coins at any given time. If this is the explanation, we should probably weigh the former more heavily when estimating the effects of debasement on inflation.
2. The data should be plotted on a logarithmic scale. Using a linear scale implies to a casual observer that debasement of a coin from 90% silver to 50% silver should have the same effect on inflation (given a naïve hypothesis about debasement leading directly to inflation) as a debasement from 50% to 10%, whereas in actuality the former predicts 80% inflation while the latter predicts 400% inflation.
3. The data for purchasing power is incredibly noisy, varying by factors of 2-3:1 at the same time period. It's going to take a shit-ton (technical term) of inflation to show clearly through that much noise.
Quibbles about data quality and presentation notwithstanding, that was an interesting article. I'd independently arrived at the conclusion that the Crisis of the Third Century arguably represented a "Fall of Rome", with the Dominate better regarded as a successor state to the Principate than a reformed continuation of it. And the question of correlating debasement to inflation is definitely worth asking, and the author's attempt of answering it is a good first step if that's the best data that's ready to hand (I freely acknowledge that abominable data quality is a persistent problem in the study of pre-modern history).
Here's a game I invented in a dream last week, maybe someone here can tell me how many times it had been invented before and how complex and interesting it might be:
The game is played on a regular chessboard, with 31 black and 31 white pieces. At the start all pieces are on squares of their respective colors, save squares a1 and a8.
White starts.
A valid move is a skip over an enemy piece, like in checkers, only orthogonal (up-down, left-right), not diagonal like in checkers.
A piece skipped over is removed, just like in checkers.
Chain captures (jumping over several pieces in sequence) are allowed but not enforced.
To clarify: you can only skip, simply moving pieces is forbidden.
The player with no valid move to make loses.
I played a couple of games with myself and it seems interesting, but I'm very bad at strategy games so I'm not even "probably" but "definitely" missing a lot of basic stuff re. strategy and playability.
That's very similar to Kōnane, an ancient Hawaiian board game. I first heard about this game from the book "Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays", recommended if you like math and games. Differences are that in Kōnane the rules for setting up the board are different and chain captures can only be done in a straight line.
Insufferable snobbery around what is, in effect, chain store standard coffee, used as a marketing device by said chain to make it sound as if "We do REAL, PROPER coffee unlike the McDonald's drive-thru, so paying premium prices for our stuff is worth it" to appeal to the customer with the marketing/advertising imagery of being a sophisticated cosmopolite, who can easily imagine themselves sipping an espresso in a Roman café rather than buying roasted bean water made to a formula that doesn't vary no matter what part of the country you are in.
Also the trend to give retail workers fancy titles ("our associates", really? as if I'm an outside contractor working on a merger with you?) rather than better pay and conditions
Actually I think baristas bring some utility to cafes beyond making coffee. They clean the machines, clean the tables, make sure the milk and beans are in supply, and do the stream thing with the late. Some other stuff no doubt.
since somebody on min wage has to be there to do that then you might as well train them to be a barrista.
I did actually go to a cafe with a machine once, they had an employee selling cups, you then joined a line to the machine. Since it was a busy cafe (part of a golf club although I don’t play golf myself) this was slow and error prone. The line was only as fast as the slowest person at the machine, the buttons didn’t always work, the machine ran out of milk so you’d be forced to a black coffee, americano or espresso (or complain and hold up the line), and everything cost the same. Which was €3.
Oh, yeah, making coffee is a small fraction of the actual labor involved. They're security to make sure no one steals stuff and rowdy customers get removed, they're cleaning staff, they're emotional labor to boost the brand identity, they do inventory management, they take weird and individualized orders that we can't easily automate, etc. etc. etc.
Which is your common-or-garden retail worker, be it wait staff in cafés and restaurants, cashiers in supermarkets, or shop assistants in other stores who are also expected to do cleaning, inventory, stop people hoicking stuff out the door, represent the brand, etc.
Calling your workers "baristas" was meant to evoke the imagery of highly-skilled professionals along the same lines as sommeliers (or Apple Geniuses); these weren't your ordinary low-wage staff, these were reminiscent of European culture and expertise on blends and roasts and different methods of serving coffee. All a branding exercise.
I am reminded of a hair-raising incident at Sofia coach station a few years back, where they had a little newsagent/convenience store, with a coffee-dispensing machine near the front. I put my 2 leva or whateva in the slot, pressed the button, then, as it started to make mechanical noises, I realised to my horror that this was a coffee-dispensing machine but not also a cup-dispensing machine. Luckily the till attendant was used to this and came dashing over with a little plastic cup just in time before the machine could splurt hot coffee all over the floor, but ... surely that must have been a several-times-daily occurrance, and they should have put the machine behind the till where oblivious tourists can't operate it? Or do the Bulgarians just think that coffee needs to come with a dash of danger?
Because coffee machines still suck, they can't even replicate Starbucks-quality coffee, let alone good coffee.
There's three key tasks: pulling an espresso shot, steaming milk, and pouring milk. You'd think that pulling the shot would be easy, but it requires you to watch carefully for the moment the coffee reaches a particular colour, it's not just a goddamn timer. (Note: actually at Starbucks it is just a goddamn timer, which is one of the reasons that their coffee tastes so appalling.) I have trouble getting this right at home, but I'm better than a machine (or a Starbucks "barista".)
Steaming and pouring the milk properly requires you to react appropriately to what the milk is currently doing and rearrange what you're doing in response. This would be a much harder task for an AI, it requires an intuitive grasp of fluid dynamics.
The best machine-poured coffees I've had are from 7/11s in Australia, which are... reasonably drinkable considering the $1 cost, probably on a par with Starbucks, but definitely not something I'd drink when decent coffee is available for just $3 more.
I do think it would be possible to build a robot that could make decent coffees, but nobody has done it yet and nobody is likely to for quite a while because all the good robotics technology is in countries with appalling coffee and vice versa.
Has anyone seen a good discussion of sanctions? In fairness, I'll tell you that I tend to be anti, on libertarian principles.
Do they tend to work to achieve their stated purposes? How much do they hurt third parties or otherwise harmless people? Do targeted sanctions work to just hit specific people or organizations? If a sanction is ended, how long does it take for ordinary trade to resume?
Thank you very much. If I find more material, I'll post about it.
I wonder whether sanctions should be filed under purity culture-- they're an example of not getting involved in the messy business of conquest, and they're a way of detaching from countries the government doesn't like.
To the CIV players (or EU / CK): If an epidemic appeared with the stats: "fast, universal infection; killing 0.5% of population, 80% of which over 60 years." - would you consider any action or even start worrying at all? ( I did move the capital in CK2 when the bubonic plague came close). Would you close ports? Stop trade? Demobilize? - Sorry for sounding trolling-like. I really do wonder. And got vaxxed first weekend shots were open for my age group.
Don't think this is very analogous to the real world. In Civ you don't care that much about the life and happiness of your individual citizens. You only care so long as it helps or hinder you in taking over the world (or colonize space). In the real world lots of people don't even wanna take over the world.
Also in Civ you want the people in other countries to die and be unhappy, but in the real world most people don't want that.
You are obviously right. I try reframing, as just last night I read up about "dath ilani" and got Eliezer's story about Keltham https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cujpciCqNbawBihhQ/self-integrity-and-the-drowning-child - Keltham might have objected to "Lock down everything right now" on the ground that this leads to huge human cost (and giant economic losses tend to mean huge human losses, too). Instead: just "hammering down" on the "irresponsible side" of the argument. I was (and still am retrospectively) more of a pro-lockdown - but now after a nearly two years my town (tests, lockdowns, masks, vaxx, we really worked on it) had 477 Corona-deaths+/-. Same time 7000 +/- people died their usual other deaths. With full spread we would have likely maxed out at double covid-deaths (0.4 mortality). Was the difference worth the sacrifices? Really really? You CAN play CIV for getting overall-happiness-points in your people. I sometimes play CK "tall" - going for peace, prosperity, development instead of expansion. Would I have ignored such an epidemic for the better of my people? Clearly. - "Ignoring Covid 2020" could have meant: Let them bring the vaccine to the people asap. Asap was: March 2020. And let ppl take care about their life. (Most are still kinda careful now.) - I am fine though - losing my job let me to find Scott. His stuff is worth that. My kids though ... .
There's a very culture war topic I've been thinking about for a while, that I was hoping to get some thoughts on from this community. It's about vaccine mandates, and the purpose/drive behind at least some of them.
I'll say up front that I think that taking the vaccine makes a lot of sense, especially for certain groups (the elderly, people with comorbidities) and also that requiring a vaccine for a deadly virus is justifiable in fields where risk of infection and spread is of particular concern (nursing homes, hospitals).
It occurs to me that due to the divide between those seeking vaccination and those turning it down, and specifically that the divide breaks along legible political lines in many cases, it may be easier for Democratic leaders to insist on a vaccine mandate, and difficult for Republican leaders to allow it. In the least charitable interpretation, Democrats realize that they can get Republicans fired en masse from a wide range of professional positions, and pick a policy that allows them to do it. Also speaking uncharitably, Republican leaders like Greg Abbott of Texas see the same political ploy and therefore make a heavy-handed rule the other way (he outlawed vaccine mandates). Somewhat more charitable, it may not be an intended consequence, but more of a desirable side effect of a policy that would still be sought otherwise.
There are other political situations with similar intended effect versus beneficial side effect situations. Voter ID seems to fall into this bracket, where it may be good policy on its own, but at least some accuse Republicans of pushing it so that less minorities vote. Similarly with the SALT tax deduction caps from 2017, which create a weird inversion in politics due to how they tend to penalize rich Democrats from high tax states. Republicans raised taxes on the rich, and the Democrats are the ones who want to lower the taxes. I think the SALT situation is a much clearer example of the least charitable interpretation, and I think the least charitable version is the true version.
The overall question is not whether the vaccine mandates are purely to get Republicans fired, as that's unlikely to be the main motivating factor. What I'm curious about is the idea that certain policy choices become much easier when it benefits your tribe and/or hurts the other tribe. Arguably vaccine mandates do both for the Democrats, and may explain why Democrats seem so willing to push a mandate that would get people fired even during a major labor shortage. Nurses are extremely hard to find at the moment, for one example, yet they are also being fired from their jobs if not vaccinated.
Political tribalism poisons everything. And the more polarized society you have, the easier it becomes to design laws that hurt your opponents. Because even if on some level many people care about fairness, they are less likely to notice people being hurt if none of the victims is their friend or colleague.
The SALT limit is a particularly interesting one. It hurt the rich, a fact generally ignored by people describing the changes as Republicans helping the rich. It hurt rich people likely to be Democrats, which Republicans might like. But it also made non-tribal sense for those Republicans who really believed that too much government spending was a problem, because it reduced the federal subsidy to state and local spending, so could be expected to result in less spending by state and local governments.
The limit on mortgage deductions had the first characteristic but not, I think, the other two, so I'm not sure why it happened.
I know it's different people a decade apart, but I still find it ironic that Republicans were so keen to eliminate "double taxation" of dividends but to *institute* double taxation of state taxes.
I know a lot of people probably wont see this post so many days later, but I thought it was interesting that - in accordance with the least charitable reading of the vaccine mandate - government employees, including state and local (heavily Democrat leaning) and remote workers (also lean Democrat) are exempted from the mandate. The remote workers at least makes perfect sense to limiting the scope, but removing all government workers does not. It may be arguable that OSHA does not have the authority to mandate local governments (public schools, for instance, are not under OSHA to begin with), but that may just go back up a level to the decision to push the mandate through OSHA instead of the CDC or another government organization.
Again, not to say that this is definitely the reasoning, but it becomes more suspicious when the end results hurt the out group more than the in group, even if the underlying purpose may be legitimate.
I predicted the future well enough to make a lot of money on the stock market using superforecasting. I also used memetics to start a religion online. This are both fringe sciences that I've been dabbling with for the past 10 years in order to create mathematical rules that quantify group behavior.
A lot of people expect me to show the math. But I'm not an altruist and I don't work for free. I dislike the current power structure of society and I'd like to gain fame and money and power of my own which I can use to change our cultural norms into something more healthy. I am reiterating my offer that if anybody disbelieves me, all they have to do is put me in touch with a reporter or hedge fund manager. I'm willing to prove my claims in person to anybody who can help me obtain large amounts of either fame or money.
Until then, I plan to continue using my sciences exclusively to benefit myself while harming the elites in charge of our society.
You missed an important step on your way to world domination. You also need to create some more accounts on Amazon, buy your own book, and write positive customer reviews.
Ugh, the SEO part of this supervillain shit is so tedious! Thanks for the tip.
Ultimately I think that as long as I deliver quality advice, my results will speak for themselves, but I suppose every little bit helps. Have a good one!
Sorry, until I see your Minion, Henchperson, and Assorted Toadies, Lickspittles and Functionaries sample contract and conditions of employment, I'm not interested in signing aboard.
Well, this is an Open Thread, so I guess we can have fun with this as a thought experiment. If I *were* to draft such a contract, and wanted to craft it in such a way as to be game theory optimal to both of us, what conditions should it have and why?
Okay, I found the relevant posts and you appear to be claiming to be the author of QAnon. A completely unverifiable claim, since QAnon is, well, anonymous. Anyone can pretend to be him.
It does raise my belief that you are actively trying to manipulate people rather than simply delusionally claiming to control the world through the medium of internet shitposts. I just don't know if you're manipulating people by doing what you claimed, or manipulating people to read your blog by taking credit for random internet phenomena.
Well, I can easily prove some of it, that's why I'd like to speak to a reporter. Typically that is the approved method of distributing "Big News", unless I'm mistaken.
Do you think it would be easier to get a reporter's attention if you had some preliminary proof you could dangle?
Like, there are lots of people who claim to be in control of world events. There's a lady who claims to be Queen of Canada, for crying out loud. I don't think you're as crazy as her, but how is a reporter supposed to tell the difference?
Maybe you could do a smaller-scale demonstration of your memetic skills, like spreading an unusual phrase through a community. Can you make "fetch" happen?
Why don't you just make your portfolio public, reporting all your trades as you make them? If you're right, you should then soon become rich and famous.
I used to do it on Facebook too, but my annoying wife (and soon to be ex-wife) forced me to delete any posts that gave away too much personal information.
Those are both after the fact and therefore difficult to evaluate. What I would do if I wanted to prove that I had a superior trading strategy would be to simply use a broker that allowed me to automatically make all my trades public, or, if such a broker wasn't available to me, just post each trade as it happened (at least the same day) somewhere that people could trust that I couldn't tamper with the record.
When I look at one such site where portfolios are automatically published, I see that in a sample of 10k portfolios, over the past three years, 20 had returns >1000%, 80 had returns >500% and 301 had returns >250%. Looking after the fact, I am not convinced that any of those investors are skilled (i.e. I am not going to immediately start copying their trades), but if I started following one of those investors and their portfolio continued to perform on that level, I would consider that strong evidence that they had skill.
I spent much of the afternoon reading your blog. It was quite interesting. I believe your claim to have made money on the stock market and to have used many psychedelics. I am not sure that I believe your implicit claim to be Q, of Qanon fame, although I don't doubt you are involved with Qanon on some level.
You give the book you published as a reason for your credibility, but there are two problems with this. First, there is no proof that you are the person that wrote that book- nothing on the writer's amazon page links to your blog, for instance. Second, it is possible to update kindle books after publication, so even if I were to buy the book, I might be reading something you wrote after the fact.
You write in one of the linked posts that you knew the coronavirus pandemic would occur, but took no action to help others. You justify this by stating that you are discriminated against and consider this just recompense. I will point out here that if your intention is to build a better world, you must BE better than our current one. I don't doubt that our current world contains many people who would willingly sacrifice others for their own gain; if you are just another of them, you are of no help in constructing a world where people no longer take advantage of others.
Not only this, but you also claim in your posts to have mastered memetics, to the point of being able to manipulate American elections and start new religions. If I take your posts seriously, the only reasonable option for me is to run away from you as fast as possible. A person who has mastered memetics in this way and who also shows the lack of moral scruples you claim to have is a person who my life is better without.
I'm really saddened to hear that you think I have no moral scruples, because I am simply trying to better my position in society by imitating the most popular and successful people in America - people who have some quality that I admire.
The demagoguery? I'm just copying Donald Trump - after all, it seems to work out pretty well for him.
Positioning myself as a victim? I learned that from one of my favorite entertainers, Taylor Swift.
Insisting on getting full credit for my talent? That was something I learned from my other favorite musician, Kanye West.
A relentless focus on money and profit? That came from observing entrepreneurial genius Jeff Bezos.
Now obviously I can't hope to become EVERY bit as successful as these famous luminaries - that's the reason I call myself "Humblerando" instead of "Arrogantrando" but I don't see anything wrong with striving to emulate the behavior of famous and successful American icons.
I know, it's really sad. But you can't win a war without any collateral damage, and ultimately the end result will be good for them because they'll be able to live a life free of normie discrimination and persecution. It's kind of like how we could only eliminate slavery by fighting a massive civil war. Should we have decided that it wasn't worth freeing the slaves because the death toll of doing so would be too high?
Ultimately, there are some ideological principles that are worth fighting for no matter HOW high the death toll gets, and this is one of them. A society that treats people like me as second class citizens is a society that either needs to change or die.
Well then, it sounds like you're very much out of step with modern society. Instead of criticizing people like me who are more in tune with the cultural zeitgeist, you should work on changing yourself to fit into the new paradigm.
Excellent summary of Gain of Function research in this week's issue of Nature! The author discusses all the different ways viruses can be manipulated, and how the lack of a precise definition for "Gain of Function" can inhibit the development of regulatory regimes for viral experimentation (which I think is necessary on a national and international level). And as an aside, one researcher in quoted in this article pointed out that that creating a viral vector vaccine like AZT by splicing a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on a harmless Adenovirus backbone falls under the definition of Gain of Function (because it involves the creation chimeric virus that has new functional properties that the original Adenovirus didn't have). So, regulation of GoF and GoFRoC (Gain of Function Research of Concern) processes will require creating a more precise listing of the different techniques used to manipulate viruses.
Scott wanted to put out the survey without waiting for an outlyingly late meetup, presumably so the meetup experience would be fresh in people's minds.
I came late to the post mentioning intransitive dice (#10 at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-october), but I was curious whether anyone sees a link between these dice and Simpson's paradox (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox). A simple example of Simpson's paradox occurs when you are comparing two treatments, A and B, for two subpopulations, X and Y. It is possible for treatment A to be the more effective treatment both for subpopulation X and for subpopulation Y, but for treatment B to be more effective across the entire population X + Y. It feels like this phenomenon violates our intuitive expectation for an "associative property" of statistics in the same way that the dice violate our intuitive expectation for a "transitive property" of statistics. But I'm curious whether the mathematics behind the two paradoxes is similar at all.
Nitpick: you mean that it is possible for B to *appear* to be the more effective treatment across the entire population X+Y. In Wikipedia's kidney stone example, B only appears more effective across the entire population because doctors disproportionately prescribe A for larger stones; if you take a random person who hasn't yet been prescribed anything, then we should expect A to be more likely to be effective on this random person, even though we don't know which subgroup the person is in.
Hum... maybe because it's not cost effective? Most of these waste heat conversion to energy schemes are so expensive they will never return their capital cost.
Also, any heat-to-energy conversion system requires putting your converter across the thermal gradient, where (if you're adding it to an existing power plant) it will slow heat dissipation from the heat output of your power plant to the outside heat sink. This makes the rest of your power plant at least a little less efficient, since then your steam turbines or whatever have less of a heat gradient to work with.
This effect isn't necessarily a net loss if the power captured in the additional heat-to-energy conversion stage outweighs the loss of efficiency in earlier stages (c.f. triple-expansion reciprocating steam engines), but it can be a net loss in some cases, and in cases where it's a net gain it's often significantly less of a net gain that a naive calculation based on the power output of the added stage would imply.
^ These suggest that a 100mcg Moderna booster is ideal - not offered in the US today (boosters are 50mcg, additional dose, which is an altogether different thing, is 100mcg). 2nd best and almost as good, seems to be Pfizer.
Is this about the net conclusion reached by most folks ?
Expiration dates are yet another thing to be cynical about. As I understand it, they're either extremely conservative and/or rigged to push buying replacement meds. I'm not sure how you'd find out whether your meds were still good.
Well my parents both got COVID despite being fully vaccinated and very cautious about masks, etc. and they know a lot of others with breakthrough infections as well.
Either Delta's has partially escaped vaccines or immunity wanes with time, but clearly *something* is different now.
I have a platform to talk on a radio-ish/podcast-ish thing, about rationality and adjacent topics, to a college audience, in a location where there is only a small rationalist/EA presence. I would like topic suggestions, methods of approach, texts to just straight up read out loud, and any other miscellaneous thoughts you may have, including whether or not this seems like a worthwhile opportunity to take advantage of for reasons other than "it might be exciting for me personally".
Can anyone suggest a good discord for discussion purposes? The one linked to on this substack is admined by a pompous loser who seems to have have nothing to do with Scott anymore.
"Liberals and progressives had gone, thanks in part to the ACLU, Foucault, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, from advocating humanistic psychiatric care to opposing it. Part of the reason progressives demand proof of mental illness in the form of violent assault, murder, or suicide is that they have lost faith in our capacity to recognize it and at times even denied its existence."
Excerpted from "San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities" by Michael Shellenberger (Harper, 2021)
I remember slowly "waking up" at some point around 18-20 y.o.
I get a solid impression that I didn't have qualia and/or self-awareness for a long time.
I remember having emotions, experiences, but I don't remember *interacting* with them in self-aware way. It was all like autocomplete spewing out thoughts, words and actions.
Probably normal people can get similar realisation after finding meditation, and peeling off layers of illusion. That's how I was able to relate to that previous feeling. But I feel like I really has come from the bottom of not-being, even not-being a silent observer.
Obviously I am feeling like I'm a special snowflake, but maybe everyone has this, just doesn't talks about it much? Can someone relate to this?
Oh, fascinating, I'm kind of in the same situation - that is, it seems to me that my younger self was on autopilot without much (any?) meta-consciousness - and I've often wondered if this is a relatively rare experience or not. But I also wonder if I really didn't have this awareness or if I don't remember it, because, perhaps not coincidentally, I also have a very poor episodic memory, the one that records personal experiences, while my semantic memory is quite good.
I seem to remember someone on ACX describing a similar experience, i.e., developing self-awareness as a young adult. In his case, this development was related to a conscious effort he had made to develop his internal monologue, which he had previously lacked. Do you have one yourself?
Coming back to this, I feel that I just didn't have separation for self and world. E.g. I wasn't very popular, but was oblivious to that fact, and oblivious to the fact that it might be bad. I have always stuck to the "cool guys" even after they clearly make me understand they're annoyed.
Later, it was having zero empathy to other people I interact with. I have had a model of how you should behave, so I wasn't doing obvious bad stuff, but I wasn't registering others' feelings at all, and in corner cases it had shown.
Sometimes I worry that I still do this nowadays, it's just that I don't know what I am missing.
Anyway, this is a bit different from my original point, but it doesn't reduce to bad memory.
Thanks for your sharing, it's interesting that somebody has similar feelings. "being on autopilot" exactly describes what I remember
For the internal monologue, now I have one for sure. I think I always had it, because I was never bored alone. I think I might have even been talking about consciousness, brain, mind upload problems etc. Like a "qualia zombie" – I can say words out loud, but they're not connected to any inner experience.
I am not sure what actionable test can I have to check whether my claims are true. Obviously it's a bit easier than testing another person for being a zombie
My problem is that when I'm finished with a thing, I let it lie around, instead of putting it into its place. Like Prentice Mulford (or whoever) said, a place for everything and everything in its place.
E.g. I come home, take off the shoes, leave them in the middle of the corridor. Leave a book on the living room table. Leave tools somewhere random when done with them.
My son is even worse, and no amount of nagging can bring him to put the nail scissors always back to its place when he's done cutting his fingernails. (Which he does strangely often. If I need the manicure set, my best bet is looking for it on his desk, rather than the bathroom.)
So, we need some intervention. It drives my wife crazy, and I agree she is right and would like to change. But it's very hard to fight against my own absent-mindedness.
As childish as it is, I find arbitrary rewards based on performance can help. I was pathologically unable to remember to unplug the toaster after using it, and it really annoyed my girlfriend. To fix it, I made a deal with myself that if I did it 45 times in a row, I got a prize (3 guilt-free starbucks cookies). It took me about 3-4 months, but it's now second nature and I notice automatically if it's left plugged in, even if it wasn't me.
This technique is better at targeting specific behaviours, but if you target enough of them then presto, suddenly you're a tidy person.
Childish is good! Does a reward work better than a punishment? E.g. if I forget do clean something up, I pay some amount to a charity?
For something as concrete as your toaster example, I have also had good success with a reminder, e.g. putting a funny photo of Alfred Hitchcock on the wall behind the toaster, which would serve to remind me about the unplugging. But the messiness is all over the place, and I cannot put Alfred Hitchcock everywhere.
To me, rewards do work better. I can't really say why - I really beat myself up about mistakes, so theoretically I should learn to avoid them. I think rewards work because they tie happiness to the task, whereas punishment at best ties neutrality.
Also, if you add enough Hitchcock pictures then maybe they will be distracting enough that nobody even notices the mess?
This is interesting, because you learn that this is also true when educating dogs. And probably children, too. It's much more fruitful to reward good behaviour and ignore bad behaviour, although it's only human to get angry at bad behaviour.
Re Hitchcock, now I only have to teach my wife to enjoy Hitchcock's face... Also, a great conversation starter when we have guests!
Buy a floor-cleaning robot and schedule it to run automatically every day. This will force you to keep the floor clear enough for the robot to run.
Counters and tables are harder. The best I've figured is to annex regular maintenance for them to other tasks that have forcing functions requiring you to do them regularly. For example, I will tidy up the kitchen counters any time I cook something that has more than a few minutes of wait-time in the cooking process, and I'll generally combine loading the dishwasher, making my daughter's lunch for school, and tidying the counters together with washing up pots and pans from dinner.
Depending on how old your son is, your best bet for the nail scissors in particular is to buy him his own pair. That way, he doesn't have to steal yours, and whether he puts them in a drawer or leaves them on his desk is his problem, not yours.
Another idea is to put 15 min a day aside for "tidying up": Just looking for misplaced things and putting them in their place. And looking for things without a proper place (Mulford called them "nomads"... I can't find the English original; German here: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/mulford/unfugleb/chap011.html) and assigning them a place.
Your kitchen example is similar. I like cooking a casserole, because while it is in the oven, I have 20 minutes time to clean up the counter! Much more fun than doing it after dinner.
Wise solution about the nail scissors, sure, but that was only an example. And I can't duplicate all our household for him. Like, if I need a pen and don't find any, best bet is to go in his room and pick up half a dozen pens from his floor.
A question for people who know about "Dune" - How did the Atreides forces make the basic mistake of clustering all their forces in one place on the surface of planet Arrakis? Worst of all, their space ships were on the ground, parked side-by-side, making them easy targets for bombardment. Why wasn't some fraction of the fleet always parked in orbit to shoot down any enemy ships before they could land on Arrakis?
Also, how many Atreides military forces remained on planet Caladan after the expeditionary force went to Arrakis? Surely they wouldn't be dumb enough to leave their home planet unprotected. Why don't the forces on Caladan counterattack the Harkonnen planets in retaliation for the latter's attack on Arrakis?
I just watched the "Dune" movie but haven't read the books, and as a novice, I'm confused over what appears to be comically bad military strategy.
I haven't seen the movie, and it's been a long time since I read the books, but I think I basically remember them.
House Atreides only has one planet at a time: first Caladan, then Arrakis. They have to pick up everything and move to Arrakis, because the Emperor shuffles the houses around every now and then in order to weaken them. House Harkonnen is wealthier; they have more than one planet at a time. It so happens they keep their home planet in this particular shuffle.
None of the houses own their own ships. The Guild has a monopoly on space travel. So leaving troops in orbit isn't an option. Nobody attacks any ships, because if you piss off the Guild you're trapped on whatever planet you're on. I guess this is something they changed in the movie.
A while back a read a blog post with a military analysis of Lord of the Rings, arguing that the books make more sense than the movies, mostly because what makes sense doesn't always work on film.
The Guild had a monopoly on interstellar space travel, but not on travel within a solar system, right? If a government in the Dune universe wanted to set up a weekly space ferry from its main planet and its moon, would the Guild have to pilot those ships?
It's hard to believe a rule would have forbidden the Atreides forces from keeping some of their ships in orbit of Arrakis, where they could have been able to attack incoming enemy ships and less vulnerable.
This actually wrong, in the book it is established that the Guild has a monopoly on any and all space travel, and they are explicitly forbiding orbital sattelites around Arrakis, because of their deal with the Fremen. It is, however, also established that this monopoly is established by law, not because the Guild has a unique technological know-how needed for any space travels, since smugglers exist.
The emperor controls the guild and the guild controls space. No rebel house can ever threaten the emperor. The most they can do is take a planet into rebellion, and then, if he wants to, the emperor doesn't even have to fight the rebel, he can just drop rocks.
That is very much not how it works in the books. The Emperor, the Guild, and the great houses collectively are described as a "tripod" who share power because none of them can defeat the others.
The Emperor's army isn't big enough to beat the houses if they team up. But the houses aren't united enough to beat the Emperor. (The Emperor wants Duke Leto dead because the Duke is a potential unifying figure.)
No one can outside the Guild can rule over the Guild; they'll cut off anyone who tries. But the Guild depends on Emperor and houses for food and supplies, because they're the ones who control planets.
There's a fourth leg of the tripod. If you're an important lord or the Emperor, basically every woman in your family is a member of the Bene Gesserit, who tightly control their members and teach their members mind control, among other powers. None of this is secret, but it doesn't seem to occur to the men that Bene Gesserit are a major power.
It is imho worth noting that Dune was written before the moonlanding, so perhaps difference between interplanetary and interslellar travel did not seem as salient then as it seems now
Also, what is the approximate population of Caladan and of the Atreides family / loyalists / nation? Did the entire population of Caladan have to relocate to Arrakis?
Not nearly the whole population. Nobility, military, some other people. I'm pretty sure the Atreides family doctor moves with them, but their palace on Arrakis has local servants.
You know the bit about how at Pearl Harbor all the American fighter planes were lined up wingtip-to-wingtip because the American commanders were more worried about sabotage than air attack? Kind of that, except that here the Atreides *know* that the Harkonnen have spent years planting spies and saboteurs and suborning the civilian population.
Also, the Atreides have effectively impenetrable force fields that they can use to protect small areas, but not entire planets. So concentrating their military assets in a shielded base, occupied only by trusted insiders they brought with them from Caladan, would have been a reasonable decision except that they brought a traitor within them who sabotaged their main shield generator. Why Dr. Yueh was a traitor, and why that was a bit of idiot plotting on Herbert's part, we can discuss later.
Also also, there's not a whole lot of room to disperse their forces on Arrakis. There's the Arrakeen spaceport and citadel, which has a certain amount of room and can be kept mostly traitor-free. There's the rest of the city, more room but more traitors. There's the city of Carthag (not in the movie), with *way* more traitors - that was Harkonnen central while they ruled. There's the desert, where anything you park gets eaten by worms unless you have Fremen-level desert power. And there's the small rocky northern polar region, where you can set up bases given a bit of time but there's zero logistical support at the outset.
Also also also, if the Atreides distribute their forces, the Harkonnen distribute their attack accordingly. It was, particularly in the book, a massively overwhelming attack prepared years in advance and at ruinous cost, and again it includes lots of spies and saboteurs and traitors who can report on where the Atreides have set up their bases. I presume they didn't have literally 100% of their forces in Arrakeen, but we don't need to see the secondary attacks on secondary targets.
Ships in orbit, it's not clear whether they are any less vulnerable to surprise attack than ships on the ground. There's a shortage of detail on how space combat works in that setting. But in the books, the Guild has an explicit rule of no satellites over Arrakis, which would presumably rule out ships in parking orbit. Yes, Leto could order his own pilots to put a ship in such an orbit, but then the Guild would say "OK, no more interstellar transport for you, have fun starving".
The Guild does this, BTW, because the Fremen are bribing them with lots of spice. The Fremen don't want anyone to see how many of them there are or that they've started terraforming, the Guild wants a supply of spice that doesn't depend on the Great Houses or the Emperor, they'd both be happy to let whichever Great House is ruling Arrakis starve and be replaced in a few years by one more willing to abide by the "no satellites" rule.
And the Atreides were ordered to relocate entirely from Caladan to Arrakis; some other Great House is ruling Caladan now. Given a year, maybe even six months, Atreides would have made an alliance with the Fremen, rooted out most of the spies, built up their local infrastructure, learned desert power, and dug in for the long haul. I think in the book they got three months.
Dr. Yueh was a traitor because the Harkonnens had abducted his wife and threatened to torture her until he agreed to betray the Atreides. Secretly, he planned to betray Atreides and Harkonnens both, the former only as a means to the latter, but ultimately it comes down to "you will betray your lord because we've got your wife".
That was idiot plotting because "Is your wife in one of our enemys' dungeons right now?" is, let me check, the second question in section 13 of my last SF86. And they don't just take people's word on it. It's not something Thufir Hawat would have missed.
But, OK, the Dune Universe has something called "Imperial Conditioning", which has been trusted for thousands of years as an absolute guarantee against people ever becoming traitors, so Dr. Yueh can't be a traitor and everybody trusts him. It's only because Baron Harkonnen figured out the extra clever way of beating that conditioning that he was able to slip a traitor into a position of high trust among the Atreides. That extra clever trick being...
"Do what we say or we'll torture your wife"???
Really, people were going to explore every variant on that one within a decade of "Imperial Conditioning" being a thing. Including the false-flag and double-treachery versions where you let the traitor think he's really going to be pulling one over on the villains who kidnapped his wife. If "Imperial Conditioning" doesn't absolutely cover the "even if they torture your wife" contingency, people like Hawat are not going to trust it and Yueh is not going to have access to the Atreides inner circle and/or shield generator.
For the first bit, I hadn't heard that, but I haven't read the Brian Herbert books or the Dune Encyclopedia. (I'll probably read the DE at some point.)
For the second bit, there's an early scene in the book where Leto and Jessica meet in the Arrakeen great hall, and discuss the new household servants, and she asks if anyone from Dune can be truly safe, and Leto says "Anyone who hates Harkonnens." Later, Jessica and Wellington meet, and he tries a number of tricks to keep her from guessing what's really agitating him. One is that he restricts himself to literal truth, because he knows she has a limited ability to detect lies. So he tells Jessica a bit about his wife Wanna, but he breaks down before he says what the Harkonnens did to her, and Jessica fills in the blanks incorrectly. In a later scene, after Paul stopped the hunter-seeker, when he and Jessica are in the conservatory and discussing the multiple hints that there's a traitor, Paul asks if it could be Yueh, and Jessica tells Paul "I can assure you he hates the Harkonnens as bitterly as we do." But Thufir only finds out what happened to Wanna when Jessica confronts him after Duncan gets too drunk.
This reminds me of a couple of other things that bothered me about the books:
Soldiers wear force fields called "shields" that stop anything over a certain speed, making guns ineffective. So everyone fights with knives. But why knives? Why not swords? And why does no one wear anti-knife armor under the shield?
If you shoot a shield with a "lasgun" (laser gun), it explodes with a force comparable to an atomic bomb. (It's not clear which device explodes; maybe the blast radius is so big it doesn't matter.) Everyone's takeaway from this is just "don't use lasguns". No one uses a lasgun and shield to make a nuclear-strength IED.
Yeah, in the movie they at least used shortsword and I think I even saw some half-spears in there, which was more reasonable. Proper phalanxes would have been a better response to the stated limitations. And maybe when Herbert said "knife" he was envisioning shortswords as well, but I still think he started with the desired end result (fancy hand-to-hand combat that fit the neofeudal setting) and did a half-assed job of coming up with technobabble to justify it.
Shield + lasgun, they both explode unpredictably, sometimes but not always with nuclear-equivalent yields. It's mentioned in the book that doing this with your own shield and lasgun in a single package, looks enough like a nuke that people generally avoid this for fear of triggering MAD. People do occasionally use lasguns, so presumably "Harkonnen ornithopter and Atreides outpost simultaneously explode a kilometer apart" is a thing people will recognize as the Harkonnens having been a bit overeager.
And, most of Arrakis being a no-shield zone, it's mentioned in the books that both sides have started bringing out some of the old weapons, artillery and surface-to-air missiles and the like. That might make it into the second movie, but they probably won't spell it out.
The dictionary entry in the back for "kindjal" is "double-bladed short sword (or long knife) with about 20 centimeters of slightly curved blade."
20 cm is roughly a Ka-bar or bayonet. 20 inches gets into gladius range, and starts seeming more like a shortsword to me. But people talk about strapping them to their calf, which makes 20 cm sound like what the author had in mind...
And yeah, group combat seems to be on the level of "devolves into chaotic melee". Shield walls seem like they'd be a great idea. Maybe even phalanxes, although I think there might be problems with too many shields in close quarters, something about ozone and oxygen interchange? Although the Sardarkaur apparently have a practice of fighting in groups of 3, back-to-back-to-back, so it can't be *that* much of a problem.
I could see this if the military units involved were small, like what a "War of Assassins" implies. But a legion is defined as about 30,000 soldiers, and I just find it hard to imagine getting that many soldiers fighting hand-to-hand in the same place at the same time, without some sort of formation, and tactics and weapons that make use of that formation.
They use rapiers plus knives in the early training session with Paul and Gurney. But why no one carries swords, or wears light body-armor on a regular basis, I have no idea. Maybe it's "just not done", or would be seen as a sign of weakness? It's a very static, conservative society, and in modern terms it seems like there's lots of opportunity for disruptive innovation.
As for lasguns and shields, the book says both explode. Early on, the Atreides capture a Harkonnen shipment of lasguns onto Arrakis, and someone brings up the possibility of the Harkonnens attaching a mechanical timer to a lasgun aimed at the house shields. The conclusion is that this would be indistinguishable from an atomic explosion, which would be a violation of the Great Convention, and therefore the Harkonnens wouldn't dare to do it. Which I think implies that the retaliation by the other Great Houses would be so great as to make it a suicidal gesture.
Later in the book, one of the Atreides notices that the Harkonnens are sweeping the desert with lasguns, so they leave a shield out there. Boom. So I guess that's the sort of thing you can get away with when you have nothing left to lose? :-/
Overall, this strikes me as part of the world-building that seems implausible; it's just too unstable to last for thousands of years. Eventually some nutjob is bound to get their hands on a lasgun. But the book was written in the height of the Cold War, and one of the currents back then seemed to be that some people really wanted to believe that MAD could work long-term. *shrug*
So yeah, I agree that one of the secret ingredients in breaking the Imperial Conditioning was getting Wellington to want to kill Vladimir himself, and Wellington thinking that he might actually have a chance at it. Vladimir was a bit of a narcissist, and of course he believed that he managed to do something that no one else had ever done, and didn't realize that the process involved putting himself at significant risk (if Leto had been set up a bit further from the Baron's private door, if the Harkonnen HVAC hadn't been quite as good, if Vladimir had turned off his shield briefly to hear Leto's mumbling...). And given Jessica's assessment of Piter's attitude toward Vladimir, I'm inclined to suspect that Vladimir got lucky and that the only reason he lived out the year was that two of his blind spots cancelled each other out.
The other secret ingredient seems to be something to do with Wanna being Bene Gesserit. I think there's an implication that something about that made Wellington care more about her than normal; maybe it's one of the hints about mind-blowing Bene Gesserit sex that lurks in the background of the first 4 books. Or possibly it's that the training she had been giving him had cancelled out some of the Imperial Conditioning. (Just how common *is* it for Bene Gesserit spouses to train their loved ones??? Paul, Wellington, Hasimir... I think the only ones mentioned who don't are Gaius Helen and Irulan, and they both seem like natural exceptions.)
More broadly, yeah, it's hard to understand why Thufir wouldn't have picked up on this. I've been re-reading Dune and re-attempting to deduce details about galactic society. My impression is that Thufir's investigation may have stopped after confirming that the person calling himself Dr. Wellington Yueh was indeed the same person who graduated from the Suk School with Imperial Conditioning. Jessica says she's known Wellington for 6 years, so that must be when he joined the Atreides, because she's been around for at least 15 years. It sounds like Jessica and Paul hadn't heard about Wanna, and hadn't met her, which implies that she was captured before Wellington joined up with the Atreides. Which implies a degree of long-range planning on the part of Vladimir and Piter that's bordering implausible, but maybe Piter really was that good?
(Jessica's history has a similar problem: who chose her for Leto? The Bene Gesserit wanted those two to breed, but Leto was the one who sent "buyers" to the Bene Gesserit school. Wouldn't he have had some say in who was picked to be his concubine? But it's relatively easy to believe that Leto's Bene Gesserit contacts were just that good at manipulating him and his buyers, both into wanting a Bene Gesserit concubine and into picking the "correct" one.)
Overall, I really wonder about how much wiggle-room there is in a galactic empire with thousands of planets but no mechanical information processing network. How easy would it be to conceal events in your past? How easy would it be to assume a new identity (assuming you could pull it off)? When spice hunters leave Arrakis during the transition, where do they go and what do they do? Who could check their background?
>It sounds like Jessica and Paul hadn't heard about Wanna, and hadn't met her, which implies that she was captured before Wellington joined up with the Atreides.
Yeah, that part would make Thufir borderline incompetent. If someone comes to you midlife and asks you to trust them with your biggest secrets and access to your greatest vulnerabilities, you *check out their past*. And double-check, asking the people you know about whether there are any other people you should know about. It's never going to be a perfect process, but if you miss the fact that they used to be happily married but nobody's seen their wife for six years, you fail Counterespionage 101 forever.
If it's the bit where Thufir stops checking because he finds that yep, Yueh has Imperial Conditioning, then it's every Evil Baron and Mentat *before* Thufir that's borderline incompetent. If Imperial Conditioning is a thing, and it's proof against "but I have your wife, bwuahahaha!", then if you're in the Evil Mastermind business you check and see if that still holds for people with the extra-special witchy wives. And you check and see if it still holds when you do a false-flag recruitment where they think their treachery will destroy the people you've tricked them into thinking kidnapped their wife. And every other plausible permutation of that. The annals of kanly should be filled with examples of treacherous Imperially Conditioned doctors, if that's all it takes.
2 more bits that don't look so good for Thufir. There's a brief bio in one of the headers:
> YUEH (yü'ē), Wellington (weling-tun), Stdrd 10,082-10,191; medical doctor of the Suk School (grd Stdrd 10,112); md: Wanna Marcus, B. G. (Stdrd 10,092-10,186?); chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Leto Atreides.(Cf: Bibliography, Appendix VII [Imperial Conditioning] and Betrayal, The.)
--from "Dictionary of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
So he was 109 years old when the book started, and they estimate Wanna died 5 years previously, which would be one year after he joined the Atreides. So she may have been abducted right around the time he joined! It's unclear to me whether Irulan knows what happened to Wanna, though - the uncertainty might be that she knows of the abduction and is estimating how long Wanna survived, or it could be that as far as anyone knows, Wanna just vanished one day. (I forget whether Paul eventually gains access to all of Vladimir's memories...)
Also, from the bit where Jessica confronts Thufir:
>"It’s not you, Thufir. It cannot be Paul. I /know/ it’s not me. Dr. Yueh, then? Shall I call him in and put him to the test?"
"You know that’s an empty gesture," Hawat said. "He’s conditioned by the High College. /That/ I know for certain."
"Not to mention that his wife was a Bene Gesserit slain by the Harkonnens," Jessica said.
"So that’s what happened to her," Hawat said.
"Haven’t you heard the hate in his voice when he speaks the Harkonnen name?"
"You know I don’t have the ear," Hawat said.
So yeah. Thufir didn't know what happened to Wanna, and he knew that he didn't know, and he didn't think it mattered. And it wasn't even a mistake about trusting people who hate Harkonnens. :-(
1) That movie battle scene is silly. In the book, their forces ARE dispersed thorought the part of Arrakis which is not sandworm teritory (pretty small zone around north pole). They are nevertheless destroyed, of course, but their strategy makes much more in-universe sense.
2) Leto was forced to abandon Caladan due to imperial decree which gave him Arrakis instead. I thought to it was clear even in the movie, but apparently not.
The movie didn't make it clear that the Atreides forces had to forfeit Caladan. I was under the impression the Emperor gave them Arrakis as an addition to whatever planetary possessions the Atreides already had.
I've heard a lot of people got confused by the 1984 movie, because they had no clue what was going on. I only saw it decades later, after I'd read the book a number of times, and it all made sense to me. I guess the new movie is the same way, at least to some degree. I really do wonder what the movies seem like to people who don't already know the story.
It has several appendices, so it can be as wonky as you want. Around here, we read the appendices. There's also a semi-canonical "Dune Encyclopedia" with more detail for the true wonks, but that's hard to find these days.
Has someone written about what's the fairest way to tax a multi-income household, where the number of income earners > 2?
I feel like taxing in pairs may disadvantage, say, a throuple - like say a situation with 2 breadwinners and one live-at-home caretaker. Is there a way for say, a 3 - 4 adult household to enjoy similar benefits of joint taxable income as a 2 person couple?
A throuple with two breadwinners filing married-jointly and a live-at-home caretaker getting refundable credits, etc., seems like pretty solid benefits- certainly more than many real life couples get. Not exactly 50% more benefits than the 1 breadwinner + 1 SAH caretaker, though, I'd expect.
Jordan Peterson: I really like Jordans intellectual capacity, his world view, his ethics, his rationality, he is a guy I would like to trust seeing as a leader of a huge country, the climate change issue, the WHO, the UN what else. BUT: from about 10:00 in this video he looses me when he is talking about 'a god's, about 'a genesis' and stuff. I was raised as well by my parents that I should believe that there is a Christian god, but it made never sense to me even as a child. So what shall I do with him after he discloses he is believing in an old white bearded men floating in space and creating life and universe in 7 days???
Well, try to bear in mind that although he mostly centers on Christianity, he'll talk about Marduk and Osiris and other gods in much the same way, as if the legends and myths were real things that happened. But I think he keeps coming back to Christianity for much the same reason that he gives speeches in English - it's the culture in which he's working, and in which he lived his life, and which has influenced him the most deeply. Put another way, maybe try looking at Christianity from the same perspective that you look at ancient Babylonian religion or ancient Egyptian religion?
He's also got a biblical lecture series that you might find interesting, especially the first bit, where the question he opens with is literally, "why bother with this strange old book at all?"
Interesting ethnological point of view - but - I still cannot cope with my cognitive dissonance seeing an extremely intelligent, ethical, educated, eloquent arguing human being who takes every ungrounded false believe apart in two sentences - and then he starts to cite old ferry-tales like it would be the same like citing E = mc² Its just not getting into my head how a person can be so impressing intelligent and at the same time believing in ferry-tales invented by kleptocrats 2000-5000 years ago. My inner model just has no slot for a human being like that.
PS: just recently a very intelligent friend of mine was pissed of after I shared an article about a local pastafarian church announcing its religious services right beside the local Christian churches. OMG, please help us stopping people believing in you and hurting other humans in your name...
If your inner model has no slot for a person like that, then perhaps you should expand your inner model?
I don't want to get into politics too much, even on an even-numbered thread. So to speak generically, I am often tempted to look at a side of politics that I detest, and to make sweeping negative judgments about everyone who takes that side. But sometimes I am reminded that there are good people on that side, who interpret their politics in a way that is good and healthy and makes the world a better place. And it's hard for me to keep this in mind, and it's easy for me to forget. But I like being reminded that those people exist, because it helps me realize that the world is a better place than I thought it was. It snaps me out of my small viewpoint, and gives me a glimpse of the wider world, and gives me more hope than I had before.
Just in the process of expanding my inner model. Nearly all the time by the way... Generally speaking I was growing up as a naive optimist but would call me now a optimistic realist trying not to get a cynic. Quite a lot of things and learnings since the COVID pandemic in my professional try to convince me of the opposite...
Well, first off, nobody does believe in old white bearded men floating in space (unless you're hoping to become a space tourist in your old age when Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson finally build their hotels on the Moon), so you're safe there.
Creation in seven days is something endlessly argued over, and Young Earth Creationists get quite enough pushback. If that really does concern you, you can stand instead with St. Augustine in the 4th century:
"In City of God, Augustine rejected both the contemporary ideas of ages (such as those of certain Greeks and Egyptians) that differed from the Church's sacred writings. In The Literal Interpretation of Genesis Augustine argued God had created everything in the universe simultaneously and not over a period of six days. He argued the six-day structure of creation presented in the Book of Genesis represents a logical framework, rather than the passage of time in a physical way – it would bear a spiritual, rather than physical, meaning, which is no less literal. One reason for this interpretation is the passage in Sirach 18:1, creavit omnia simul ("He created all things at once"), which Augustine took as proof the days of Genesis 1 had to be taken non-literalistically. As an additional support for describing the six days of creation as a heuristic device, Augustine thought the actual event of creation would be incomprehensible by humans and therefore needed to be translated."
Sorry, but that was not the point. Guys I should coin it "meta level discussion" or so. JP seams to be a very reasonable human being to me. Very rational, very informed, very you name it. I would expect him to post exactly here. But then he tells about magical old ferry-tales. That bothers me. I'm trying to understand the world, reality, humans. I'm not happy with "all men are dumb" and similar platitudes. I try to understand human behavior, reasoning, rationales asf.
I'm not familiar at all with Peterson's writings, so I have no idea how much he believes in God or a god. It may be that he is a conventional Christian, it may be that he is a liberal Christian. It may be that he is doing the "scrap the mysticism and miracles, but Christ was a Wisdom Teacher and we can use the stories as ethical guidelines, as well as interpreting them metaphorically and allegorically, and enjoying them in the same way we enjoy stories and movies about magic without believing in wizards and dragons".
He may not be as literalist as you are taking him to be. Think of all the talk about Buddhism on here and the benefits of meditation, where some at least of us don't believe in Buddhism as a religion but would practice the mediation for mental health benefits. That could be where Peterson is coming from: "these stories are how people of the past made sense of the world and struggled with the same questions of how to live, and they codified it as 'don't do these things' to maintain a healthy society".
Sure, not my mother's tongue, typing on a smartphone while doing the homework and the kids, auto-correct set to another language and switching random words - so I hope you can forgive me for now...
So, I think the thing about Jordan Peterson is that he's a mystic. He managed to synthesize insights from psychology, neuroscience, and mythology, and now he's trying to explain the results as rationally as he can. It's a rare and fascinating combination.
And one of the things about mysticism is that, when you have an insight, you can see it reflected from innumerable facets of the world around you. And to some extent, that's what I think is going on with him and religion - he's come to some insights about human behavior, and looks at religion, and sees those insights mirrored back at him. I have no idea whether the things he says about Christianity and the Bible are historically accurate, or how much they reflect the teachings of any of the modern strains of Christianity or Judaism (or Islam, for that matter). But on some level, it doesn't matter, as long as it helps him reveal true things about the world. Does that make any sense?
And I don't know what exactly he believes, and I'm trying not to look it up because it would be unsporting. :-) My suspicion is that he believes something that, if you squint at it the right way, could be called Christianity, but that bears little resemblance to orthodox (lower-case-o) theology.
Like, if you asked him about that bit in the New Testament where Jesus sums up the law as "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.", and you asked him what it meant, I think he'd say something about how the second bit is fairly straightforward and explained more in the parable of the Good Samaritan ("go and do likewise"), while the first bit is about how the most important thing in life is orienting yourself toward the highest good possible, putting yourself in correct relationship to it, and not letting other things come between you or distract you from it.
Which I think is really good advice, and also a generic high-level description of the goal of many religions, while also being something that most actual practitioners of actual religions would say is fatally incomplete. And if someone pointed out that a lot of non-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions don't conceptualize things that way at all, his answer might be that that's what's so fascinating about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, and part of why they've been so successful, etc.
(I dunno, at this point I think I've exhausted my mental model of Jordan Peterson, and it's becoming more about what I've taken from him than anything else...)
Wow, pretty damn awesome. I'm not into mysticism nor was I interested much in this thing before - but I remember darkly I once was curious about an often cited man called Master Eckhart. According to Wikipedia he had a crystal clear logic and got in conflict with catholic church in the middle age.
Seeing or observing Peterson from this perspective makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for the discussion.
My friend and I both have an issue sometimes where we hear a song, and can't tell whether it's in our heads or we can actually hear it. We have to ask someone else to find out.
We both assumed this happened to everyone -- but from asking other people it sounds like this is unusual. Anyone understand this or have any information?
How would Taiwan credibly pre-committing to attacking the 3 gorges dam in the case of a Chinese attack on Taiwan work?
Taiwan could use some sort of bond that works regularly the majority of the time but if and only if China attacks Taiwan then it renders some sort of economic advantage to Taiwan if they spend x resources on attempting to destroy the 3 gorges dam. You can balance it out with another bond that renders some smaller advantage in preventing war with China but I doubt anyone thinks Taiwan could benefit from war with China.
Also would the US plan over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan ever not include retaliation with India towards China?
Attacking the Three Gorges Dam with what? Taiwan has no weapons that could plausibly breach the dam, and would have a hard time even reaching it with weapons capable of destroying the powerhouse.
In June a certain Leonid Chuzhoy posted about an online discussion on why parliaments appeared in Europe. I have been searching for something similar since, but I've never seen anything.
Does anyone know of events like this? I thought it would be a great way to make new friends.
The reply system here is either broken or very confusing. I got an email that Zorba had responded to the last thing I said in our thread. I clicked on Reply. It gave me a mostly blank screen with a comment box. So I wrote a comment. "I will read your link..."
But that comment was not added to our thread. I will go back to the slow method that I know works: click on View and use Find in Page to search out the end of the thread.
As is usually the case with The Onion, the headline is much funnier than the article. I got a chuckle out of the absurd headline, but the actual article made me roll my eyes.
Apparently they come up with the headlines first and write the article afterwards, which is why all the good jokes are in the headlines.
Their sister publication beat them to it, in a funnier way: https://clickhole.com/taking-a-stand-an-ohio-english-teacher-has-removed-all-1825122254/
I think that’s hilarious. It probably says more about me than the article.
Since politics are allowed:
There's been some recent drama at the NIH regarding funding grants from Black researchers that received worse scores than would normally be funded. The initial announcement was here:
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-NS-21-049.html
Now, Science magazine has reported that they rescinded that notice. https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-pulls-notice-aimed-encouraging-applications-black-scientists
I'm glad; in my opinion, it was a step too far. Although the grant application process has many problems, doing things like this won't fix any of them, and will just lead to resentment.
See also: https://www.science.org/content/article/major-u-s-research-charity-places-big-bet-diversity (HHMI scaling back their normal fellowships to give more to "underrepresented minorities").
Is that meant to be a precis of https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-pulls-notice-aimed-encouraging-applications-black-scientists ? Because if so, I'm afraid I do not think it's a fair summary, or even a plausible attempt at such.
I'm confused. What would you prefer this article say? News of this kind is essentially reporting what people say, and that's what the article does.
I don't know. The article quotes scientists on Twitter. Are there other scientists on Twitter they should be quoting? Is it possible the journalists are just lazy in the way most journalists are, and go to their standard sources?
I think it's fair. They make no attempt to explain why the NIH did what it did, and only talk about the "some" who were "dismayed" with it. It's kind of obvious why one would walk it back, so one does get a little suspicious why it's presented as apparently senseless and arbitrary.
A good explanation of the initial announcement is here: https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-institutes-try-new-approach-supporting-black-scientists
>Now, three of NIH’s 24 grantmaking institutes are trying a more direct approach. In a recent notice, they are encouraging Black investigators and others from underrepresented groups to fill out a box that flags their application and brings it to a program officer’s attention. Then, even if the quality score that peer-review panels award the proposal falls outside the cutoff for most grants, institute directors may fund the project if they decide the applicant’s diverse background strengthens the research.
Of course, the NIH also does things like the "Diversity F31" (a separate version of the F31 with a higher funding rate). This sort of thing isn't new, but this would have been a big expansion.
>institute directors may fund the project if they decide the applicant’s diverse background strengthens the research.
If taken at face value, this seems like telling directors to be on the look out for applications in which an outsider or underrepresented perspective makes the project more valuable to the field than it might look under standard evaluation rubrics, rather than telling them to fund weaker applications.
Critics may not believe it's possible for an application to be stronger based on providing outsider perspectives, but, critics should at last be acknowledged what the beliefs and intentions of the people behind this are, rather than assigning them a different motive that makes more sense to the critics.
> If taken at face value, this seems like telling directors to be on the look out for applications in which an outsider or underrepresented perspective makes the project more valuable to the field than it might look under standard evaluation rubrics, rather than telling them to fund weaker applications
I would be okay with that, only if they were also allowed to do the same with projects which went the other way.
Like, "This project is pretty borderline, but I think that a straight white male perspective on this particular problem is really needed"
Sure, but do you think there are any fields under the purview of this directorship in which white male voices are underrepresented?
Maybe, maybe not, but would the above be allowed if there were?
My argument is basically, yes, because in order for that to be true at any meaningful scale, we'd need to live in a society where white men were a small and oppressed class, in which case all the norms about which views are underrepresented and who diversity initiatives are aimed at would be different.
Like, yeah, in a society where white male voices are basically never underrepresented anywhere, we don't have mechanisms explicitly for boosting them, and trying to build such mechanisms looks weird and suspect. That's a pretty normal thing, in the same way that stocking up on antivenom kits for black mamba bites in a kindergarten in the US is something we don't do and might look weird and alarming if we saw it. That's not really a problem.
I noticed this “less charitable explanation” bias that your comment flagged within me. (I’m not convinced it’s entirely bias because this may warrant legitimate criticism, but there’s some emotion/heuristic there, too) I find the best tool to separate this out is some effort to understand, so let’s say you’re right:
>If taken at face value, this seems like telling directors to be on the look out for applications in which an outsider or underrepresented perspective makes the project more valuable to the field than it might look under standard evaluation rubrics, rather than telling them to fund weaker applications.
What would be an example of this? I’m thinking maybe research into housing / poverty but there’s probably a lot of legitimate cases.
That said, I feel cautious given that I’ve seen “the power of diversity” claimed to enhance all sorts of research in various fields (esp in stem) where it doesn’t belong at all, and I think this is what makes me skeptical. I doubt that the grants which are funded based on “diversity” will be publicly flagged or indicated in some way, but this seems like an important step to allow verification that diversity *actually* lends itself to a particular grant and not just “we’re finding this even though it’s weak.” (I haven’t read up on this; please let me know if this is being done and I’ll be much more supportive.)
Well, female voices might be underrepresented in, say, reserarch into cervical cancer, and black voices might be underrepresented in attempts to balance populations in vaccine research. There are many other obvious examples, as well as many examples where there's no obvious connection.
There is a margin of error associated with the rating system for potential research. It is an estimate of the value of the research. If the "diversity delta" is markedly smaller than this expected error then the change is unlikely to have much impact on the overall quality of funded research.
Basically, if you are just rolling dice anyways, I think this isn't a horrible place for this kind of investment (If that is the kind of investment the organization wants to make).
"This kind of investment" being discrimination against people with the wrong genitals/skin color?
I suppose you think freeing slaves was discrimination against your poor mistreated class(Trolls possibly).
Obviously not. On the other hand, if black slaves were freed while white slaves were allowed to remain slaves that would indeed be racist discrimination. I guess you would argue otherwise?
My initial post was a bit inaccurate; it's not just Black researchers who would be favored, but anyone who fits the NIH's diversity criteria. In practice, this means "not White or Asian". Technically one can qualify as a White or Asian person by having 2 or more criteria of family disadvantage, but this is relatively rare.
For these kinds of things, I'm always waiting for someone with an Ancestry DNA kit to try and test them and see if they are willing to go far enough as to define what counts as various racial groups.
Or a White South African.
Given that society in general has no hard-line standard for that question, why should the NIH be expected to have one? Seems like an isolated demand for rigor.
Very few institutions are giving out money based on your race, and any that are, I'd ask for similar rigor. Mostly because I find the idea to be immoral.
Ok, that's pretty much the definition of an isolated demand for rigor, but at least you articulate your reason.
"I think this 'floating city' proposal needs some hard numbers."
-"You don't expect society at large to justify every statement with hard numbers! Isolated demand for rigor!"
"Well, yeah, but most statements don't have the context of 'if we get this wrong, a vast amount of resources are misappropriated'..."
The last response I would expect at this point is "YEAH THAT'S TOTALLY ISOLATED OMG". Is it really? Isn't the entire point of the above response that it ISN'T isolated, that the same standard would be expected from any proposal that actually allocates resources to people on the criterion of race?
I think I've even read definitions of the term that specifically require that an I.D.f.R. must lack justifying details; didn't Scott's post about it note something similar? I dunno — in any case, it doesn't seem *isolated* here, at least.
While we're at it, we should adjust the quality scores given out by peer-review panels based on the genetic makeup of the reviewers.
I don't think it's fair that a professor who comes from a long line of misanthropic, skeptical curmudgeons should be allowed to pour cold water on a grant proposal with the same authority as an ordinary well-adjusted peer.
I just read the first notice and I saw nothing indicating that these grants would be awarded with lower scores than other applications. Am I missing something or is that an invention of critics?
It was a notice encouraging researchers to include their underprivileged background on their applications.
Grantmaking institutes already have the discretion to do things like that, because the NIH are formally committed to increasing diversity among researchers. (imho, correctly; we could get into a political argument, but the main benefit is the downstream effect whereby research lines relevant to specific health concerns of minorities get attention) This would have been one more method of making it explicit and taking some of the guesswork and arbitrariness out of it.
Of course, sometimes being explicit backfires, because some dissident panelists will under-score minority applications to counteract the pro-diversity policy. And so it goes, much as in the world at large.
So... yes, there's nothing here about accepting grants with lower scores, and the accusation that there is is a fabrication?
If you follow the links back (the Science article that Metacelsus linked links this (https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-institutes-try-new-approach-supporting-black-scientists) which in turn links this (https://journals.lww.com/neurotodayonline/Fulltext/2021/06170/Michelle_Jones_London,_PhD,_on_the_NINDS_Call_for.6.aspx), you find:
[How does a NOSI work?
Each NIH Institute has a certain amount of funding for each round of grants, and grant paylines help us allot that funding. These paylines are cutoff points for funding applications, and are typically based either on overall impact score or relative rank percentiles, driven primarily by peer review of the grant's scientific merit. Generally speaking, at NINDS if your percentile score is better than the payline, your grant will be paid unless there is some serious flaw; otherwise, it will not be funded. But we also have some flexibility to consider other factors and choose to fund applications that fell just beyond the payline, called “select pay.” That flexibility could be allowed, for example, because a project involves an under-funded area of research, or a strategically high priority research area. This is something pretty much every [NIH] institute has available to them. For example, we may give bridge awards to investigators without other significant lab support for whom we think sustaining their research program is important to our mission.
How does the new criteria ensure that the NINDS is bringing in more diverse representation and interests?
The category of diverse perspectives that strengthen the science is one of those areas where we would also consider applications that fall into the select pay zone. The new NOSI will help us to identify grants that bring in those diverse perspectives and inform, in a holistic manner, our funding decisions for those applications. As an agency of the federal government, we cannot make funding decisions based on race, gender or other identity classifications, but we are allowed to include diverse research perspectives as something that informs our consideration of meritorious applications that might not have met the payline. But I want to be clear we are also ensuring that the research is rigorous and that it aligns with the NINDS strategic objectives.]
This was from, to quote the second Science article, "Michelle Jones-London, chief of workplace diversity at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)".
Thanks, this pretty much shows what I think is just going to remain the ideological break that people are falling into here.
To me, what this says is
1. Lots of programs with these scores get funded already for a variety of reasons, so this is not funding something with a score too low to get funded otherwise, it's adding it to the already large category of reasons why something might get funded with that score.
2. They are not funding based on race but based on an empirical belief that broadening the breadth of perspectives and experiences of people in the field has actual benefits to the overall quality and advancement of the field.
By "empirical belief", I think you mean something like "a belief rooted in empirical observation", but I'd like to see that Orwellian-sounding phrase die a quick death before it spreads into the culture at large.
"1. Lots of programs with these scores get funded already for a variety of reasons, so this is not funding something with a score too low to get funded otherwise, it's adding it to the already large category of reasons why something might get funded with that score."
Well, specific proposals that would not otherwise get funded will get funded, because of racism.
"2. They are not funding based on race but based on an empirical belief that broadening the breadth of perspectives and experiences of people in the field has actual benefits to the overall quality and advancement of the field."
Well they want their racism to stand up to legal challenge, so they have to come up with a fig leaf. But since it is within a larger attempt to discriminate against white and male scientists, this seems pretty transparent.
If the notice was one favoring white and male applicants and the reason given was that minority scientists are subject to a lower bar for admission to college, graduate school, etc. and therefore likely to have lower performance, would you accept that?
Racism is wrong.
I am in favor of this kind of, diversity increasing, thing. I don't actually know the details of this particular one and don't feel like engaging in an argument about it's merits.
However, if your grading system for has enough resolution, then by definition, including another factor as a positive, means accepting grants with lower scores. I commented earlier in the thread that if the predictive power of your scoring system is imperfect (it is) then that reduces this impact.
What I mean specifically here is that grants with these scores are already being accepted - the articles mentions studies that focus on questions the institute is interested in, or on currently underfunded topics. So it's not 'accepting lower scores', grants with scores these low are already being funded.
If you are not granting all proposals above a given score then that means the resolution (number of decimal points) of your scoring system is inadequate. If you are granting all proposals above a given score, then in granting proposals based on some non-scored factor means, by definition granting lower scored proposals.
It has been 20 years since The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language came out. It's remarkable how much uptake it has enjoyed in some communities and how little it has had in linguistics. If you've heard about or used it, what are your thoughts?
Not knowing anything about this, but being interested in language and linguistics, can you explain what's remarkable about it?
Consider this review from a co-author of *A comprehensive grammar of the English Language* (1985): "Every so often, there appears a book which is important enough to fill the reviewer with something like awe. Such a book may be a brilliant ground-breaking book such as Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures. A different but no less awesome production is the present book, whose strength lies more in being a consolidation and synthesis of existing linguistic theory and description. But to suggest that The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is backward-looking in any sense is misleading, as it also contains a great deal that is new, if not daringly provocative, in its reworking of the well-tilled territory of English grammar. The depth and richness of detail, as well as the breadth of coverage, are extraordinarily impressive, so that there is scarcely a topic that grammatical old-timers like myself cannot read without fresh insight and understanding."
Leech, G. (2004). A new Gray’s Anatomy of English grammar. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674304001273
Good lord! Hardcover copies run $200-$300. And the Kindle version is nearly $200! That's a lot of dough for grammar!
I've got a copy next to my bathtub, but I doubt I will ever finish reading it. It seems excellent in what it discusses, but there is SO MUCH of it!
I've used A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, which is based on CGEL. I think it's an excellent textbook; it's given me enough understanding of general features of grammar to be able to study another language. The descriptions are lucid and economical. Having said that I have nothing to compare it to other than the a priori rules people invoke when they see red over some perennial issue that turns up in English; invariably this is a low hanging fruit dispute about whether a word belongs to a particular lexical category.
I'm curious to know more about where it has enjoyed uptake and why it hasn't within linguistics?
I've used this as well, and it's fantastic. It helped me think about and make sense of English grammar in ways I hadn't before. I found it very useful and referred to it often when teaching English as a foreign language.
Brett, I didn't realise you were one of the authors of the latest edition of ASITEG! I look forward to buying it. Geoffrey Pullum told me about it earlier this year when I emailed him about some prescrptitivst foaming at the mouth over something I'd written.
Yes, I've been extremely lucky to be a part of this project.
From an email I got from a reader, in response to a discussion of a Chomsky (I would share his name but I'm unsure if he would be cool with it):
"The poverty of the stimulus argument says that there isn't possibly enough information to learn a grammar from the amount of speech children hear. This is true, and relevant; if we are supposed to emulate a language's grammar precisely, we cannot unless there is a dedicated substructure of the mind set up for it. But, as we realized theoretically in the 00s, and demonstrated empirically with GPT2 and 3, we don't need to; approximate learning of a grammar can be done with zero knowledge and a modest training corpus, and it asymptotically approaches perfect learning. This implies that the grammar of each person's "idiolect", the personal dialect reflecting how that one person uses language, is subtly different from every other speaker they know. Grammars are "never fully mapped", because there isn't a fact of the matter; many of the tiny intricacies will give different answers depending on who you ask, even if you're asking, say, identical triplets, who learned the language under conditions as uniform as you could ask for."
I hear this more and more and it may be relevant to Cambridge's project - you can't map a grammar because a grammar is emergent rather than fixed. But I'm not qualified to have a real opinion.
Sorry, meant to say that GPT2 and 3 are Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 and 3.
Your reader is right that each of us has an idiolect, but the variations in syntax within an adult population are typically tiny and extremely difficult to detect, while the similarities vastly outnumber the differences. A map of a grammar is going to be very useful despite such some change and individual variation in the same way that a land map will be despite tides, earthquakes, and road construction.
I think it's maybe a coastline-of-Britain sort of argument. There are a vast number of those tiny variations in syntax (as with pronunciation, vocabulary, semantics, and pragmatics) which are particular to a small group of speakers, either in a geographical area or in some other kind of affinity group: a community of practice, a social class, a religion, an ethnic group, an employer. These may have arisen as idiosyncrasies of a particular person's idiolect and then spread throughout the group, sometimes as shibboleths.
To give one particular example, in psychology research "high" and "low" are standardly used as adverbs to produce the comparatives of adjectives, resulting in constructions such as "the high nurturing group" and "low aggressive men were found to use...". In my idiolect, these are ungrammatical utterances (unless equivalent to "the nurturing high group" and "aggressive low men", which they are not), but plausibly a complete account of English grammar would include these novel comparative constructs, in the same way that it would include the habitual-aspect be-construction of AAVE.
What's AAVE?
PS - thanks, Freddie.
African-American Vernacular English.
Sorry. Bullseye is correct: African-American Vernacular English.
Possibly relevant-- I was taught an exercise of precisely repeating back exactly what someone said about a low-emotional-intensity subject.
It was amazing how hard it was to hear the small differences in what people said, and how much people (including me) cared about being quoted exactly.
But there are now many linguists who agree that grammar is emergent. Look at work by Michael Tomasello, Ron Langacker (and, to some extent, myself).
But surely, GPT2 (let alone GPT3) doesn't suffer from a poverty of stimulus, it is based on a vast corpus of text, far more than any mortal human will ever consume. It doesn't seem tricky to figure out the rules of grammar from a GPT-2 sized training set.
Tomasello and others have shown that it doesn't require a very large training set given human's ability to discern patterns and generalize from them.
Humans aren't computers tho so the lessons learned from GPT-type exercises are not inherently transferable.
I don't think GPT-2 and GPT-3 represent an empirical demonstration that approximate learning of a grammar can be done with a modest training corpus. Childhood language acquisition may, since even children suffering severe neglect usually acquire language successfully; a focused and competent teaching effort is evidently not needed in most cases for basic linguistic competence. But GPT-2 and GPT-3 are, by contrast, trained on enormous training corpora.
Chomsky's main target, as I understand it, was the (self-evidently absurd) behaviorist argument that people don't actually have minds, and were instead Markov-chain stochastic text generators with classical conditioning (reinforcement learning). By showing that at least some internal state was necessary to explain observed features of grammar, an arbitrarily large internal state in the case of a CFG, he destroyed the scientific plausibility of these fundamentalist forms of behaviorism.
(On reading _Atlas Shrugged_, incidentally I realize that these forms of behaviorism were also among Rand's targets; some of the ridiculous positions Rand's strawman villains take were real behaviorist tenets, the same tenets Chomsky was attacking.)
But I'm not sure if that's the poverty-of-the-stimulus argument?
What's CFG?
Sorry, Til is right: a context-free grammar.
My opinion:
One thing that's wrong with the "poverty of the stimulus argument" is that it ignores that language is an attempt to describe an existing external reality, so it needs to map onto that reality. If you give that "the brain has a Polish notation built into it", then much of early grammar falls out quickly as a description of external reality. And even amoung adults things that don't have obvious observables, like, say, ethics, tend to have radically different meanings. There's also a lot of pattern fitting that happens after the basic part of grammar is in place.
For this reason I assert that a system that really understands language will need to be emboddied. And for it to understand human languages, the body will need to react to the external world more or less the way human bodies do.
FWIW, I'm not an expert in the field, but I've thought about this stuff for (off and on) for decades.
My impression is that linguists are very happy with this work. But that is because it is the first ever work to treat the English language dispassionately as an object of linguistic analysis, much as Thai and Quechua and Hawai'ian have been analysed by Western linguists. As such, it doesn't have a lot to say about linguistics per se; from a linguist's perspective, it's just something that needed doing.
A Student's Introduction to English Grammar https://www.amazon.com/dp/1009088017/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_XM0A1V5AGSDYZVF20PEF
I learned of CGEL after Pullum referred to it several times on the Language Log. Although Pullum's posts often annoyed me, I was hugely impressed by the breadth and the meticulousness of CGEL. I don't know if there's anything like it for other languages (or English for that matter). The only other comprehensive descriptive grammar I've used is the Russian Грамматика-80, and it is not nearly as well-written, clear and comprehensive.
I've looked things up in particular chapters of CGEL perhaps a dozen times over the years, just when some interesting or dubious-looking construction in English held my interest.
Why do you think CGEL did not receive enough uptake in linguistics (not that I can tell one way or the other, not being a linguist)?
Why does a carbon tax, pegged at the cost to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, not just completely solve the climate change problem? You directly target the source of CO2, for example taxing coal, and let the rest trickle through the economy
There are a few subtleties that can be addressed.
1. Carbon taxes can be very regressive. We solve this by making sure that all proceeds from the tax are used to alleviate other taxes on the poor (for example making income tax more progressive by cutting it for lower income brackets).
2. Imported goods will miss this tax. To deal with this you need to tax an imported good by how much CO2 went into producing it that was not taxed at the source.
I like this solution because it is incredibly simple and easy for people to understand, seems fair, and seems price things correctly. I don't know why activists aren't pushing for it more.
They have, but it's a hard sell politically because the costs are so upfront (although a few countries have them). In the US, Washington state tried to do a carbon tax twice by referendum, and it failed both times - the first time would have been revenue-neutral, the second time would have paid for stuff.
One problem is that we don't know what the net externality from CO2 is. We don't even know its sign, although many people are sure they do.
The second problem is that the political mechanism is very unlikely to produce anything like optimal rules. I had an exchange with Greg Mankiw, an economist who supported carbon taxes, on this, pointing out that our best estimate of what would actually be done was the cap and trade bill that passed the House but died in the Senate. My side of the argument is on my blog, along with a link to Mankiw's:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/01/me-vs-mankiw-on-global-warming.html
"One problem is that we don't know what the net externality from CO2 is. We don't even know its sign, although many people are sure they do."
This is technically true, in the same sense that "we" don't know if evolution is real if you use the word "we" for a group including some creationists.
But all the people who study it seriously do in fact know the answer, and the fact that some intentionally ignorant and intentionally dishonest conservatarians are still trying to find excuses not to believe them doesn't mean that this isn't a deeply deceptive and misleading summary of the current state of knowledge.
I think the word 'net' was miscommunicated in this sentence.
I would agree that the greenhouse effect is almost certainly negative. But one of the externalities of CO2 is energy. When you account for the energy, it becomes harder to tell.
I suspect, from the forcefulness of your reply, that you think you're arguing against people who think warming will be good for the planet. (Even that is far more controversial than I think you suspect, Scott wrote an essay about deaths from the cold vs the heat just a few days ago and found that even that question was almost impossible to answer.)
I do, in fact, think that climate change might on net be beneficial. There are positive and negative externalities and the size of both is too uncertain to sign the sum. That was my (published) conclusion almost fifty years ago about population increase, which had about the same role then in public discussion that climate change does now. Then too, many people believed that everyone informed on the subject agreed. The predicted catastrophes didn't happen — indeed, the changes that occurred from then to now were in the opposite of the predicted direction — which makes me less impressed by the current consensus.
Defending my view would be a long argument. If you are actually curious, I have a considerable number of blog posts on the subject over the past fourteen years or so. This link should get you most of them — you can try other keywords for more:
https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/search?q=warming
Would you agree that warming, say, six degrees over 1000 years would be more positive than warming six degrees over 100 years?
I do agree that signing the sum is hard for the long-term effects from total warming; I think the effects from warming rate (i.e. climate refugees) are much more obviously negative.
That's not an externality. The guy burning the CO2 gets paid for the energy.
Correct.
That's the same mistake as saying that public education is justified because it makes people more productive. That's an argument for a subsidy only to the extent that the benefit of being educated isn't reflected in the wage the educated person gets.
He personally was unable to answer it. That doesn't make it almost impossible to answer. He particularly didn't seem to understand that cold temperatures induce fat loss and potentially lessen the risk of diabetes, for example.
We also don't know what the sign of the externalities are for enforcing U.S. laws, for joining WWII to stop Germany, or for forming NATO. Nonetheless, most people agree that the obvious medium term benefits suggest they are were the right things to do.
In this case the claimed benefits are in the very long-term, although a lot of the rhetoric obscures that. Some of the estimates show a net benefit for the first degree or so, becoming a net loss only later.
At present, every time some bad climate event happens it gets blamed on climate change, despite sea level rise being less than a foot so far, warming a little over one degree. Nobody says "we didn't have a bad cold wave this year, thanks to climate change." Nobody says "the glaciers haven't started south yet, thanks to climate change" — although in that case the anthropogenic climate change was in the distant past, at least if you accept Ruddiman's hypothesis.
For large temperature changes the medium term externalities are pretty clear.
I don't want to have a debate about it. I was just making an unserious reply to your unserious assertion that we don't know the sign of the externalities.
My assertion was not unserious — I have been arguing it on my blog from time to time for about fifteen years. It is the same assertion I made with regard to population increase nearly fifty years ago. We still don't know the sign of the externality from that but we know it could not have been nearly as negative as the orthodox opinion at the time held, because what has actually happened since then is the opposite of what that opinion predicted.
I don't know what you count as large temperature changes, but if the medium term is forty years the projected temperature change is a degree or so, possibly two.
A. It's pretty unpopular and hard to implement politically, and B. a lot of activists are not solely motivated by trying to solve the issue they're being active about as efficiently as possible.
In addition to the point about it being politically unpopular, there's the difficulty of finding out what price level is appropriate. Ideally, if you can set the price of carbon at the marginal social cost of marginal emissions, you can get the socially optimal set of emissions reductions. But the problem is that it's hard to figure out the marginal social cost of marginal emissions.
Additionally, I would guess that this marginal social cost changes depending on what the total level of emissions is (and perhaps on how other technologies change). So you might have to frequently update the price (higher or lower).
The idea is to peg it at the current cost of sucking out CO2 from the atmosphere. If someone figures out how to half that cost, then the tax will half.
Given the political motivations to find that cost high to fund pet programs or low to cut taxes, I'd guess the odds that it would wind up anywhere near the accurate level (let alone that it would quickly track changes in CO2 reduction costs) are extremely low.
I guess that this, i.e. immediately forcing net-zero emissions, would be prohibitively expensive.
However, setting the tax at any level would be more efficient to achieve some amount of reduction than achieving the same amount of reduction through the various ad-hoc rules we use today. Then gradually increase the tax until the desired reduction in net emissions is reached.
" Then gradually increase the tax until the desired reduction in net emissions is reached."
Why do you assume that there is a desired reduction in net emissions? If it turns out that your tax produces less reduction that's evidence that the cost of using less carbon is greater than you thought, which implies that the optimal amount of reduction is less than you thought.
What's the optimal death rate from traffic accidents? We can reduce it to zero by banning automobiles, but it doesn't follow that we should.
In both cases you are looking for the optimal balance between costs and benefits, whether of reducing traffic deaths or of reducing CO2 output.
that’s politically untenable. You aren’t targeting the greatest carbon users with a carbon tax anyway. Take flying.
In terms of flying a bbc report from 2019 showed the top 1% take 10% of flights, and the top 10% take 50% of flights in the previous year. 47% of people didn’t fly in 2018. although most would have flown at some stage.
The carbon costs of the prolific flyers are probably higher than this because the rich and business classes who fly frequently certainly fly long haul more often. Or fly private jets. It could be that the top 10% of flyers use 70% of carbon. These are the people least likely to be affected by a carbon tax.
A better solution towards carbon reduction for flying would be a voucher system.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is fungible; there's no benefit to targeting specific generators beyond their amount of generation. Also, vouchers are equivalent to quotas which are inherently less efficient at achieving a particular outcome than taxes/tariffs.
What does atmospheric carbon bring fungible have to do with what I posted? Who doubted it?
The second part of your statement is provided with proof (although it also states the obvious). Any economic proof wouldn’t matter here anyway since we are surely, trying to cause the greater polluters to desist, which isn’t the same as economic price mechanisms. Any carbon tax that stops the 47% of people who didn’t fly in that year from flying in that year would reduce 0% of carbon on that year.
A mechanism that stops the top 10% of flyers from taking 50% of flights would be useful, but carbon taxes will have little effect here.
That seems to be setting it too high, but it has the advantage of being clear.
That price assumes that the socially optimal amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (emitted by humans at least) is zero. While figuring out the actual value is hard, it is for sure not zero. That would cause problems in the opposite direction as fossil fuels would become overpriced instead of the current under priced situation.
Using fossil fuels is a bad idea. Period. If it's kept really limited, then it's not a real problem, but it hasn't been, and permanent carbon storage is a real problem. One of the "remove CO2 from the atmosphere" plans to offset it's costs by converting the CO2 into "natural gas". (I assume that means methane.) Then they plan on selling it as fuel. So that's not really not carbon removal, merely carbon recycling. Better than adding new stuff, but not optimal.
The "olivine beaches" that was mentioned above actually is a fairly permanent removal, but is slow. I don't trust plans to "pump the CO2 back down the well-head shaft", as those things can be expected to leak. (At least one of them claims that there's rock at the bottom which will absorb the CO2 in a chemical bond, but that's going to be hard to check.)
Better is to just stop using fossile fuels wherever possible. Then carbon capture can start making sense. (FWIW, it's my personal estimate that due to lag in various cycles, like absorbtion of heat AND CO2 by the oceans, we are already committed to a 2 degree rise in temperatures. And we may be committed to more, as the Arctic seems to be releasing its stored carbon both by fermenting under the remains of the permafrost and as massive forest fires, which no longer die out over the winter, but instead burn under the snow in a dried out layer of shed debries. ... Look up "zombie fires".)
What we can do now is minimize the future impact, by not making things worse.
Cheap, accessible energy is literally the reason for the first world today. We are slowly replacing it with better options in some places, but that will not be a complete replacement for some time. If you could wave a magic wand and replace every single fossil fuel with a renewable energy source tomorrow, overall welfare would be worse because energy prices and reliability would go down. Climate change is a real and serious problem, but access to cheap, reliable energy saves lives and improves QOL. We need to be shifting ourselves to a sustainable future as quickly as is reasonable, but "reasonable" does not mean "immediate 100% transformation". Everything has tradeoffs and energy is the same.
It doesn't actually need to be a complete replacement...but it needs to be net-negative. Yeah, this means lots of investment in solar, wind-power, even tidal-engines in a few places. And lots of additional storage facilities. That solar has gotten as cheap a coal, and cheaper if you need to build the plant, is really good news, but it's not sufficient.
I left out nuclear, because that one's got too many thorns in it. I really hope that the molten salt reactors prove out, and that they actually CAN process the "spent fuel rods" into power, as some claim. But there's a lot of proving that needs to be done. If we had been developing "advanced nuclear fission power plants" actively for the last few decades (developing, not building; I'm talking research and pilot plants) that we'd have grounds to throw nuclear into the mix, and perhaps it would be the best option. But we did what we did, so now it's solar, wind power, and a few other approaches in particular cases.
I'm all in favor of cheap power, but that should be almost orthogonal to the carbon cycle problems.
I feel like there's a problem with that formulation: isn't the cost of removingCO2 marginal, ie it gets more expensive to do the more you remove (because there's low-hanging fruit that only works in some places/etc)?
So, say that we need to remove 1000 tons of CO2 to meet our goal, and say that if I wanted to remove 1 ton of CO2 right now, it would cost me $100. But if I wanted to remove all 1000 tons, it would cost $500,000, because the last tons are really hard to get at.
If I charged everyone $100 per ton emitted, I'd only raise $100K, a fifth of what I'd need to solve the problem.
Is that not how the situation work irl?
This seems unlikely, at least in the ranges you are talking about. Eventually you might reach a point where you had removed 50% of all CO2 from the atmosphere and thus you needed to pump 2x as much through your process. Until that point though you just need to pull it out at a rate (#/hr) low enough to allow the wind to cycle new air into the neighborhood.
If "removing CO2" literally meant "take air from the atmosphere, filter it, and release it without the CO2", this would be true, but I haven't heard of any carbon neutrality proposal that worked like that. If it was something like planting forests, or improving existing power plants, you'd run out of opportunities to do it much sooner than that.
You can't filter one gas from another but instead need a chemical process to extract it. A plant (or tree) is such a chemical process. I believe all CO2 extraction requires a fair amount of energy. In the case of plants it requires light.
If you are concerned about square footage of real estate, you could plant inside skyscrapers with artificial light, plants on every floor and fans to keep pushing CO2 laden air through. Obviously you would need clean energy to produce the light.
Biochar sequestration does exactly that (use fast-growing plants to take CO2 from the air, harvest and pyrolyze the plants to turn them into charcoal, bury the charcoal, lather, rinse, repeat). Olivine sequestration can do exactly that, pulling CO2 from the air and turning it into carbonate rock, which is then buried). And there are brute-force physiochemical approaches that have been proposed, though they are probably more expensive.
I've pointed this out in the past as a problem with carbon offsets. Al Gore can claim that he makes lots of CO2 and buys enough carbon offsets to prevent the damage, because not a lot of people buy carbon offsets and so he's getting the cheap ones at the top of the heap. This doesn't generalize--if everyone followed his example, carbon offsets would get much more expensive.
You certainly don't want to remove *all* the CO2 from the atmosphere, as all the green plants would die, which would be a bad thing. Current CO2 levels are about 0.042% and pre-industrial levels according to the most skeptical estimate are about 0.028%. So if you wanted to return the Earth to pre-industrial levels you'd want to remove about 1/3 of what's there now.
Kenny, why would we care about the optimal price? Presently, in the U.S. the government is funding clean energy research (mostly solar). This has largely brought solar and wind to parity prices with carbon based energy.
In my mind, a carbon tax is just a way to accomplish this same, leveling of the playing field, without the government explicitly paying and without the delay while you wait for technology to develop. It is ok for the tax to be too large, so long as the proceeds are used to cushion it's impact.
From the perspective I'm thinking of, there's no particular interest in achieving parity of prices. What you want is for each thing to be priced at the level that equals the sum of the harms it causes others minus benefits to others, together with the opportunity cost of whatever resources were used in producing that thing. At that price level, people will burn fossil fuels only when the good they can produce by doing so is greater than the harms they cause by doing so, and similarly for operating solar panels or windmills or whatever. If every price reaches these values, then an economy full of people who do things only when they are willing to pay the price will end up with the greatest total welfare of all people. For a certain kind of utilitarian, it is axiomatic that this is optimal, and that any deviation from it will be a problem (though some will be worse than others).
Under standard pure market pricing, prices reflect the opportunity costs, but they don't reflect the harms or benefits they cause anyone other than the two parties to the transaction. Thus you tend to get an oversupply of things that cause net harms to others (like burning fossil fuels) and an undersupply of things that cause net benefits to others (like shade trees over the sidewalk and well-educated voters and so on).
Price parity between fossil fuels and alternatives *might* be the socially optimal price - but it probably won't precisely be, and so would still result in either an oversupply or undersupply (perhaps not as bad an oversupply as the level we have with current prices).
If the price is too large, then we get an undersupply, in the sense that there are some situations where the benefit to people of some marginal additional fossil fuel use (whether in economic development of some low-income country or whatever) is greater than the harms to the environment, and yet we aren't doing it.
That only solves the problem if you actually use the proceeds of the tax to fund carbon removal. So you can't sell it as a revenue neutral change. Any changes to make income tax more or less progressive are a policy conversation to have on its own merits, but orthogonal to a carbon tax whose proceeds are used to build and operate enough carbon removal to reach net zero.
You don't actually need to use the proceeds of the tax to fund carbon removal, unless the goal is to get immediate net zero carbon emissions. If the goal is rather to get the maximum social welfare (where some things that increase social welfare on net do still result in additional carbon emissions) then all that matters is that the price on carbon emissions be higher than the cost to social welfare of the carbon emissions. The money doesn't need to be spent on emissions reductions in order to get optimal social welfare - it just needs to be the case that the only net emissions that exist are coming from activities whose social welfare gains are greater than the welfare cost of the emissions, and the tax ensures that these are the only ones that are profitable. The tax proceeds can then just be rebated to everyone uniformly, or weighted towards the poor, or spent on anything that increases social welfare.
I didn’t understand that at all. Are you using social welfare as it is normally used, or in a different way.
The usual way it is used in economics, where it is the sum total of well-being. Not the way it is usually used in political discussions, where it refers to a particular class of government institutions and payments.
Ok. That still doesn’t clarify much about how we estimate “social welfare gains that are greater than the welfare costs of the emissions”. Anyway as I argue in other posts this is political suicide. A pricing mechanism will in many cases end post war prosperity for the middle incomes but keep the rich in luxury.
I think it is difficult or impossible to get a precise estimate of the social welfare impacts of carbon emissions, which is one very big problem with trying to use a carbon tax. The fact that carbon taxes are extremely unpopular is, unfortunately, also a big problem.
There's no reason why a pricing mechanism would end postwar prosperity for middle incomes, provided that the carbon taxes are rebated universally, or to the lower income brackets.
People respond to incentives. If you raise the price of emitting carbon, people will do less of that.
If you insist that any policy to address climate change solve 100% of the problem, you will find no solutions which fit that criteria. Incrementalism is key.
Poor people will do less of that.
This is exactly what Citizens Climate Lobby advocates and has done so for years. They are very active but aren't in the news as much as the Sunrise Movement.
Because it becomes immediately politicized. In Canada everyone loves piling onto the Alberts oil sands - but miraculously /s the auto industry in Ontario and the aircraft industry in Quebec are exempt. That is because the federal government in Canada is effectively elected by Ontario and Quebec. Climate change isn’t about the climate - it is about Big Green and it’s enablers empowering themselves. If the earth stopped cooling - and that was widely reported in the media - they would just move on to some other end of days bullshit.
My favorite way to offset the regressive nature of a carbon tax is to devote all of the proceeds to a Universal Basic Income.
So who is paying to remove the carbon?
Yeah I not totally sold on a carbon tax, but if I were to implement one I would set a quantity not a price by selling X tons of emissions rights per year with X decreasing over time and then and then rebating the entire proceeds on an equal basis to every citizen.
Taxing coal sounds great, but what about low-income families whose home heating source is coal? They end up freezing in the winter while the big concerns can switch to something else, pay off fines/carbon offsets, or lobby government to give them exceptions.
There's been a successful campaign in Ireland to move to smokeless coal/get rid of coal fires in homes altogether, but that came via people moving to home heating via oil. Now oil is problematic around carbon, what next? Electricity? But we've seen large price rises due to problems with supply there. When the public gets hit in the pocket, or ends up shivering in the cold, because they can't afford home heating - then the top-down policy initiatives don't sound so good.
Apply all of the proceeds from a carbon tax to UBI. The poor will come out ahead.
I thought that it was to be spent on capture. And how does coming out ahead de-incentivise carbon use?
Carbon emitting consumptions becomes more expensive relative to other consumption encouraging people to substitute away from carbon intensive consumption.
I get that. But that’s not the question on this sub thread. How does a UBI which compensates for a carbon tax change behaviour.
People are still incentivized to change their behavior because the amount of UBI doesn't depend on the amount of carbon you use (it only depends on the average over the whole population) whereas the tax does depend on the amount of carbon you use.
This is why the sorts of proposals that everyone in the comments here are giving usually involve collecting a tax on these fuels, and then rebating all of the money collected in a way that is evenly divided, either among all people, or among the lowest income people.
(Also, are there really still people in Ireland heating their homes with indoor coal?!)
Yes, although it’s been smokeless for years. Why would you not use a chimney? My parents only use it at Christmas though, for decorative purposes.
Ireland has your proposal already - a winter fuel allowance. It was increased this year. Nobody wants the old and poor to freeze. This means that the energy use stays the same.
Sure, but if the whole idea of a carbon tax and rebate is "push the power generation companies to use green sources of energy generation, give the customers the rebate to cover the cost of increase in their heating bill", then that still doesn't cover "I heat my home with an open fire, now I have to change everything over to electric heating" which is a big enough cost if you're on an old age pension or low income.
Yes. I agree with that. It doesn’t even encourage the energy plants to stop producing coal from their coal plants because that’s what the plant does. And as I said before we can’t, as consumers, pick our energy sources.
Energy providers can be encouraged with carrot, not stick, to move to wind. That’s happening, if the wind blows then wind takes priority. Wind farms are given cheaper loans and subsidies.
Coal plants will be shut down when there’s an equivalent stable base load.
Grants can be given to upgrade houses. A carbon tax on its own would be a disaster.
It’s also not likely to even change behaviour in heating a house that much. I’m keeping the heat on this winter like it was last year because to don’t want to freeze to death. The 20% extra that costs me will be saved elsewhere.
For all kinds of reasons carbon taxes are weak ways to police carbon usage, on their own.
-"we can’t, as consumers, pick our energy sources"
Some people somewhere decide on what energy sources to build. Yes, once they have built a coal plant then that plant cannot be used for anything other than coal. But if coal is taxed then they will be incentivized to build other types of plants. It doesn't matter much whether the tax is applied at the consumer or the producer level, because the producer can always pass the cost on to the consumer.
It doesn't mean that energy use stays the same unless all energy is currently being used to prevent the old and poor from freezing. If there are *any* other sources of carbon emissions that are at *all* price sensitive, then the carbon price will reduce total emissions, even if a rebate means the old and poor generate just as much carbon emissions.
I mean that's Econ 101, sure. In reality when talking about electricity the prices for consuming electricity vary by company but not by fuel mix.
When a fuel becomes expensive, as gas has become expensive in Europe, then the price is applied by the electricity companies regardless of what their fuel input is.
I imagine electricity generation is one that tends to react more slowly to prices, since a lot of the changes involve changing the generators, rather than changing total use of electricity. But a carbon tax whose value is known years in advance (and perhaps whose price phases in slowly over several years) is the sort of thing that gives utilities the incentive to make the plans needed to change their mix of generators.
"(Also, are there really still people in Ireland heating their homes with indoor coal?!)"
Well if they're not, somebody better inform this business about it!
https://www.lsbmarketing.ie/clients/whelan-fuels/
That is amazing! I had assumed that indoor coal heating was phased out worldwide decades ago!
There aren't a lot of them here, but eastern US, still see a fair number of coal-heated homes. A good friend of mine still uses one as well. There's a distinct smell in the air when they are burning.
I wish. Poland has a huge smog problem as result of coal heating in residential properties.
Major cities started banning its use around 2015 ( https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/07/poland-krakow-ban-coal-use-anti-smog-law ) and it is still 100% legal to use it in suburbs.
BTW, it is also legal to use low-grade coal of worst varieties.
Lol come to Kerry
If the idea of the carbon tax is to reduce consumption then tax rebates for the poor (that balance that out) won’t help you reduce consumption.
That's why the leading proposal includes not a tax rebate, but a flat dividend for all Americans, regardless of where they get their energy from (i.e. the revenue turns into a UBI). Since UBI is inherently progressive, it balances out the regressive aspect of the carbon tax, while still making cleaner energy cheaper & more incentivized.
I’m still confused -,if the flat dividend covers the tax it will have no effect at all. If carbon taxes add $500 to the cost of heating, flying or driving on average then giving people $500 won’t affect behaviour.
If you are saying that above middle income people will be penalised more than $500 because they use more carbon ( more flying, bigger houses to hear, bigger cars etc) and the $500 won’t help compensate so much, you still have a regressive tax. Somewhere up the income level carbon taxes, unless really really high, won’t matter. I don’t think doubling the cost of flying by raising carbon costs on fuel will affect a billionaire with a private jet, and it won’t affect most frequent flyers either.
That’s the first time you mentioned making cleaner energy cheaper. But where I live I can see that the grid is providing 70% renewables today and that won’t be reflected in my bill. In fact my bill has increased by 20% this year even as wind power increases in the mix.
And of course I don’t really get to control where the electrons come from, the wind is blowing or it isn’t.
Still there might be more political support for more wind farms if the public could be convinced that electricity prices might come down because of renewables. One way to do that would be for governments to allow different prices for different fuel mixes.
The input costs here that are forcing the providers to increase prices are driven by gas shortages, if the retail unit prices were higher for gas, and lower for wind the public might come aboard more in renewables. And that reflects wholesale costs.
As it stands the winter could be very windy, or not windy and the energy providers can make off like bandits in the first scenario.
There’s very little joined up thinking in any of this.
I think the piece you're missing is that the tax is mainly meant to incentivize *energy companies* to reduce their carbon emissions, or alternatively punish fossil fuel companies and reward renewable energy companies.
Sure, the tax will get passed on to the consumer, and the dividend is meant to mitigate that. And it's true that consumers don't typically have much choice in where they get their energy from, but sometimes they have some choice, and this will make it a better deal more often to go with the renewable option.
I’m not missing that. If you deincentivise someone (which your proposal seems to do) then it can’t affect a coal burning electricity plant. The grid either needs that energy or it doesn’t. The plant can’t magically become a wind power plant. And the user has no choice either.
So no one has any choices, we're all just doomed to keep on feeding the grid with dirty energy till we suffocate on the air we breathe, huh?
It's true that the tax wouldn't by itself set up better options for energy companies and consumers. The point is rather to create a more favorable environment for green energy initiatives. It does this by increasing the marginal cost of carbon.
By the way, it's not "my" proposal; see an FAQ here https://energyinnovationact.org/how-it-works/ and the bill itself here https://teddeutch.house.gov/uploadedfiles/deutch_eicda_117th.pdf
If you increase the price of fuel and give people cash to compensate, why wouldn't they economise on fuel and keep some of the cash for other purposes?
The idea is to make carbon more expensive, which a carbon tax would do quite well.
Not with a rebate. And otherwise it’s regressive.
Yes with a rebate - even if you end up paying the same amount on net with the rebate (or even less!), the marginal cost of using more "dirty" energy (and reward for using less) goes up. This pushes people, and more importantly businesses, to be more energy-efficient and switch to cleaner energy sources if possible.
Plus it won't feel like nothing's changed to the consumer - their energy bill won't stay the same, it'll shoot up, and then they'll separately get this check in the mail. People will still want to find a way to reduce the energy bill so they can enjoy more of the check.
People will want to stay warm. If they get money from the government that can keep them warm and heating costs have gone up then they will use the money to heat the house. Plenty of studies show that’s a priority ahead of everything else except food (except in dysfunctional situations where the extra money is spent on drink etc).
As for switching to cleaner suppliers that only works if the price of carbon free energy is cheaper. A carbon tax on coal will, on its own, just percolate to the consumer in his bill. Electrons are fungible. If your provider needs the electrons produced by a coal plant they will use them. There’s no billing system that I know of that charges less per unit depending on the fuel mix that billing period.
Alright, all I'll going to say is that:
- I'm not saying people should sacrifice their basic needs to save the climate. That's not what this is about and is why there is a dividend.
- I almost have to conclude you're being intentionally narrow-minded about the changes such a tax could induce, on the supply side as well as demand.
What do you mean by "needs the electrons produced by a coal plant"? If alternative energy is available then the provider can use that instead, and as long as the price of alternative energy is less than price of coal + the tax, it will be worth it for them to do so.
Carbon tax combined with subsidies for the poor does change the incentives significantly - e.g. with the home heating example, if the fuel cost doubles but you get extra money to cover that, it's *not* the same as suddenly the tradeoffs for various carbon-reducing mechanisms (different types of heating, more efficient heaters, better insulation, smaller heatable space) become much more attractive.
You know what else would help there, but not be a punitive attack on the poor? A subsidy for retrofitting the house.
I don't think that is the idea. I think it's just to raise the money needed to undo the negative externalities. If a billionaire wants to burn coal to heat an empty house and then burn more coal to cool it down again, but he pays the tax to cover the cost of removing all that CO2 from the atmosphere, then we're happy with that.
We really aren’t removing carbon at all.
So what’s happening with a carbon tax is that the billionaire can “burn lots of coal” ( fly a private jet) which is many multiples of the cost of “burning small amounts of coal” (flying short haul) because he can afford it. The short haul flyer is priced out.
> The short haul flyer is priced out.
That will reduce the carbon production, will it not? There's only so much flying that the proportionally few bilionnaires can do.
The rebates only balance out over the entire population, not over individuals. So an individual still has incentive to reduce consumption, because then their tax will be smaller but their rebate will be (almost) the same (because it is averaged over the entire population).
If you believe in capitalism, then you have to believe that a second company will come along and eat the coal power companies lunch if it fails to produce clean energy under these conditions(massively increased profits).
There is this huge population of customers out there paying 3x the production cost for coal electricity(2x is refunded tax 1x is actual cost). If you can produce solar electricity for 2x the cost of coal then 100% of the customers will switch because they can keep that extra money.
Capitalism is what got us into this mess. And carbon taxes are government interference, so if they work at all it won’t be capitalism.
I’ve explained more than once that the customer doesn’t, in any billing system I know of, get a rebate for the provider using cheaper fuel in the mix. If it’s a windy month, or a calm month the cost is the same.
Without that there’s no demand side incentives. Supply side incentives exist to move to cheaper renewable fuel (ie the taxes are lower) but they tend as much to depend on the subsidies for renewable producers to build out the solar or wind plants to begin with. If we had left it up to capitalism we’d be using oil, gas and coal until they ran out.
So, no, I’m not a believer.
It's capitalism because you apply an incentive and let the market adjust. It is a Right wing solution to the climate change problem in the same way that Obama Care was a Right wing solution (Heritage Foundation) to the health care problem.
I don't see how you are not understanding. The government collects a tax from carbon based energy suppliers. Let's say it is enough to triple the cost of carbon based energy. The refund the collected taxes to users of energy (possibly just a progressively scaled credit to all people in the US). The refunded money ensures that nobody freezes to death while the market adjusts.
Now, coal and gas powered companies can continue to sell energy but that energy costs 3x as much as before (the companies take no additional profit and pay their taxes). There is now a massive opportunity for any technology to produce clean energy at any cost up to 3x the competitive cost previously.
This is very similar to the government paying the solar/wind companies to produce energy (but market based).
Not if the price increase in fossil fuels makes them more expensive than a green alternative.
In general, at least in the US, there's zero political will to do anything to reduce externalities, as I'm reminded every time some bot abuses my phone number for purposes of advertising. This effective denial-of-service attack is good for business, and what's good for business is good for (political) America. Those of us who exist to buy the products and work the unpleasant, less renumerative jobs are welcome to get stuffed. We aren't politicians (unless we're exploited campaign flunkies with no policy input) and we generally can't afford lobbyists or the kind of huge campaign contributions that buy access to political ears.
Is damaging communication actually good for business in general, or just good for enough businesses that they have political influence?
Good question. My guess is that it's not harmful enough to matter, compared to the scary idea of limiting commercial behaviour.
Like a lot of policies: yes, if we actually implemented a pure, hard-nosed version of the policy without exceptions or loopholes or carve-outs, and if it was enforced diligently and vigilantly and evenly, and no one was able to evade it on a large scale, then yes, it would largely solve the problem.
But few policies survive implementation in such a strong form, so it's good to diversify our solutions and follow many paths at once.
How sure are you that more CO2 is a net bad thing?
I searched for cost of CO2 removal. Numbers are all over the place... but currently ~$100 to $600 per ton. A gallon of gas makes about 20 lbs of CO2, so 100 gallons of gas makes a ton of CO2. Your proposed tax would add something between $1 to $6 per gallon of gas.
You seem to be considering a local carbon tax rather than a global carbon tax. Plausibly such a local carbon tax would push some economic activity outside its ambit. For example, steel is relatively carbon-intensive, so maybe if you imposed it in the US Caterpillar would move its bulldozer manufacturing and GE Transportation would move its locomotive manufacturing to Mexico. Caterpillar bulldozers and GE locomotives imported into the US from Mexico would still be taxed on the carbon emissions from making the steel that went into them (assuming USMCA is abrogated in order to impose your proposed tax), but most Caterpillar equipment is sold outside the US. (Maybe GE is globally competitive too, but I'm less sure of that.)
The result would be that, among other things, earthmoving equipment and railway transportation would be more expensive inside the US, which means that factories and supply chains inside the US would be more expensive. This, in turn, would gradually increase the price of goods manufactured inside the US. While you could tax imported goods on the carbon implied by their steel content, there's no remotely plausible way to tax imported goods on the untaxed carbon footprint of the earthmoving equipment used to build the factories they were manufactured in or the untaxed carbon footprint of locomotives used to ship the raw materials for those goods around.
Of course, it's possible that these effects are too small to matter much because the tax would be very small, but I think it's likely that they would be very significant for certain goods.
If the effects are very small, how would they plausible motivate behaviors? My understanding of carbon taxes is that they are only intended to change behavior. If they are too small to do that, then they aren't effective at all.
You could imagine a case where the carbon tax would add 1% to the price of a bulldozer, but 10% to the price of a liter of gasoline; in that case it would motivate even end-user behaviors to conserve gasoline, but probably not to relocate bulldozer production to Mexico.
Also, though, the effects on other parts of the value chain might be much larger. Spitballing, maybe a bulldozer costs US$200k and weighs 40 tonnes. Maybe it contains 30 tonnes of steel, costing US$60k, but that steel accounts for essentially all of its carbon footprint, US$2k out of those US$60k, which is 3% of the cost of the steel, big enough to make the difference between profit and loss for the steel mill, or maybe to get Caterpillar to switch to recycled steel from a minimill instead of virgin blast-furnace steel. 3% might be an incentive big enough for the steel mill to maybe gamble on these newfangled hydrogen reduction processes and see if they can solve the embrittlement problem.
There might be other things in the bulldozer's value chain (food web?) whose carbon footprint accounts for an even higher fraction of their price, and perhaps their carbon footprint can be reduced more easily. Maybe that the arc-welding used to build the bulldozer frame gets most of its cost from its electrical energy use, and maybe the carbon tax doubles the cost of coal power. Buying that energy from a solar farm instead of a coal plant is as easy as submitting a web form to your power distributor, if it'll save you money. The cost of the bulldozer won't go down detectably but the guy in charge of purchasing energy at the plant might get a nice bonus.
The benefit of markets is that it multiplies this kind of decision-making power by 7 billion.
I would say there are a few ones. First off is the one on merits vs cap and trade. A carbon makes the polluters pay for the cost of the externalities, but in most schemes (especially with some sort of UBI rebate) it doesn’t do much to limit total pollution. If you’re one of the people who believes that our children will only see the ashen remains of trees if we don’t cut our emissions in half within 10 years, then a tax isn’t enough. And while serious researchers may not lend credence to that morbid future, I think enough of the donating base for climate change has such concerns to draw off lobbying for climate change.
Secondly, in America at least, having a politician tax you more is frowned upon. If you’re on the right you probably want everyone’s taxes to go down, and if you’re on the left you probably want to tax the uber-rich and corporations. But one thing both sides can usually agree on is that they don’t want to be taxed. And the carbon tax would effect enough constituents that I suspect that puts a chilling effect on it.
You can't solve global warming with a local tax.
Even if the US figures out the perfect carbon tax scheme, that only affects 15% of global emissions.
TinyURL.com/HowStopAGW
There's not really a reason to believe that the cost to society of one additional unit of CO2 in the atmosphere is equal to the cost of removing one unit of CO2 from the atmosphere. If I understand correctly, this would be the case if there were an efficient market of CO2 emission and removal, but since the costs/benefits are basically entirely externalities, there is no such thing. Since there's been a lot of optimization pressure on carbon-producing industries and very little optimization pressure on carbon removal, I suspect that the latter is overpriced. Therefore, your proposed tax may be far too high. (However, it's also possible, say if you think that climate change is a significant X-risk, that your tax would be far too *low*.)
I found out recently that Halloween comes from All Hallows Eve, which itself is part of a three-day holiday from the Early Middle Ages that celebrated the dead (it's also the inspiration for Day of the Dead in Mexico). Amusingly enough, Christmas used to be more like it - the Christmas equivalent of going door to door asking for treats was called "Wassailing", and the early 19th century push to reshape Christmas into a more family friendly festival was in part a response to Christmas in the city being a rowdy affair with wassailing and drinking.
I'm thinking the reason Day of the Dead isn't a bigger holiday in the US is because we already have Memorial Day. Plus Americans just don't seem to do Two-Day Holidays besides Black Friday after Thanksgiving.
I think we often treat Veterans Day and Memorial Day as two copies of the same holiday (though only Memorial Day gets barbecues). And notably, Veterans Day is just a week and a half past Day of the Dead/All Souls Day.
Colonial Boston celebrated their wassailing/trick-or-treat/mandatory drunken redistribution day on Guy Fawkes' Day, in which the drunken guests demanding figgy pudding or what have you also burned a big pope in effigy. I suspect but cannot confirm that this evolved out of people going "I want to do all the fun Christmas stuff, but Puritans say Christmas is too Catholic, so let's do it on the most impeccably anti-Catholic holiday around."
"Christmas is too Catholic so no fun" by the Puritans and Calvinists/Presbyterians meant that ironically, the big end of year celebration in Scotland was moved to a pagan (in origin) festival, Hogmanay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogmanay
As well as traditions of Mummers, which comes more from the English side and is celebrated up North), there is the St. Stephen's Day (day after Christmas Day) custom of "going on the wren": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Day
Like Hallowe'en, children and adults would dress up, go from house to house to sing and dance and collect goodies and money.
There's also the Straw Boys, which are more in the south-west and west of the country, and are more elaborate costumes made of straw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0dJcjHYMDw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e4EgBSMsus
I'm not sure which North you mean. Philadelphia has a very lively Mummers tradition-- it isn't about collecting candy, it's about adults with complex costumes and big competitive displays.
And of course there is always the bizarre and fascinating Mari Llwd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_Lwyd
Fun fact: All Hallows Day is a public holiday in Bavaria (Germany) and presumably some other places I haven't bother looking up. (I know this because I work in Bavaria, but I *live* in Schleswig-Holstein, so I have tomorrow off, but all the shops are open for me. Convenient!)
Well that's rather the commute
XD! Yep. I'm glad we're working from home at the moment. I'm moving at the end of November. No more public holiday cheat codes for me then, alas! (Well, in all fairness, I do actually intend to visit Schleswig-Holstein frequently if I can arrange it, with work from home arrangements for week chunks -- because getting from work to home takes about a day of travelling, so "just visit over the weekend" is basically not feasible.)
Some of France, too. We got stuck in Crozes-Hermitage (yes, the wine region) on Nov. 1 and the only thing open was a small cafe. Fortunately we were on a cruise so we didn't have to find dinner, but lunch was a pizza and some local wine :-)
Memorial Day and Halloween have nothing to do each other. Halloween was a result of Catholic immigration, especially Irish. Memorial Day was due to the Civil War and was originally explicitly a political holiday. Half the country celebrated a version remembering the Confederacy, half the Union. It was only turned into a generic holiday in the late 19th/20th century through a complicated political process.
Also, back when wassailing was a thing Christmas wasn't as big a day. Epiphany and Epiphany Eve (also called Twelfth Night) was the big deal. Twelfth Night was the big day for wassailing and the like, though there were some Christmas celebrations.
They still have the tradition of mummers in Newfoundland at Christmas where people dress up in costume and masks and go door to door asking treats. The hosts have to guesss who they are.
Halloween is cultural appropriation. First, because we are appropriating it from the English, and second because they appropriated it from the Irish who called it Samhain.
Only the Irish should be celebrating Halloween.
Much of Europe has appropriated American Halloween during the last few decades, though I think "cultural imperialism" is a more common term than "cultural appropriation" when US culture is the source.
American Hallowe'en is a very different beast from traditional Irish Hallowe'en, which has been supplanted by its transatlantic successor. I think Hallowe'en as it is now celebrated in societies which never before had it (including European countries) is a product of general American cultural export. You see it in movies and on TV, you want to copy that too. Native customs are too old-fashioned, associated with the boring past and being rural and backwards. You want the brightly coloured, fun, modern celebrations you see coming from America!
Since we now too have "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" sales, I am half-expecting us to start celebrating Thanksgiving as well within a few more years.
The one thing we do still have is barmbrack! (Though only with the ring, not all the traditional inclusions). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmbrack
This National Museum of Ireland video on Hallowe'en is *terrible* (honestly, the way she mangles "the haloed/hallowed ones" and seemingly has no idea that "hallowed" means "blessed") but it's something about it, at least. She doesn't mention that the home-made masks were called 'face fiddles' (half-English from "aghaidh fidil" or "false face") and people used to resort to such primitive methods as blacking the face with burned cork but eh, about what I'd expect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai_8RaTbmeY&t=1s
The Púca is sort of true, but she doesn't mention the taboo about blackberries:
https://oldmooresalmanac.com/dont-mess-with-the-puca-at-harvest-time/
The Scots have right to celebrate it as well!
It’s not really all that different, not the dressing up part for kids, or the Jack o lantern, although that used to be a turnip.
I don’t know if Americans bob for apples, or do the barmbrack. It’s also more of an adult thing.
Nevertheless I wore costumes, and trick or treated as a kid in 1980s Ireland. We also built bonfires which isn’t the American tradition.
Americans bob for apples. No barmbrack, though.
I didn't realize the Puca in Lafferty's _The Reefs of Earth_ were Irish until I researched the names.
> though I think "cultural imperialism" is a more common term than "cultural appropriation" when US culture is the source.
That seems like one of those "heads I win, tails you lose" situations.
I kinda feel like things will have gotten where they really need to go when it becomes impossible to tell the difference between cultural imperialism and cultural appropriation 😄
A Samhein-like festival was celebrated by Celts across Europe before the Romans (and Germanic tribes) rolled over them. And don't tell Mexicans this, but Celts in Spain may have indirectly influenced the way they celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico—anthropologists have noted some striking similarities between the two—so, from Iberian Celts to Roman Spanish to Christian Spanish who colonized Mexico but who also acquired their indigenous traditions. I love the idea of a Celto-Aztec hybrid holiday!
The English haven’t celebrated it until recently - because of American influence. There’s always a column or two bemoaning it’s arrival to the “U.K.”, but it’s been celebrated for centuries in the Celtic parts.
By the way, Halloween is a bonfire day in Ireland.
I remember as a kid in Germany (which did not celebrate Halloween as such except on American bases -- one of which I visited, and with an American bedsheet I managed to score a quantity of candy I would never before have dreamed of!) we celebrated All Hallows by the less raucous method of praying with a rosary in order to earn time-off from purgatory for our deceased ancestors.
Memorial Day in the US isn't especially about the dead even if it's supposed to be. I think Day of the Dead is gradually infiltrating the US. Partly because there are more Hispanic people and partly because it's a cool holiday. The movie Coco is also a possible influence, and I wouldn't be surprised if it has some influence on customs in Mexico.
Because the Southwest of the USA used to be Mexico, it is not just a gradual infiltration, it has been part of (part of) USA culture for over a hundred years. My niece painted some nice calaveras (skulls) in San Antonio, Texas:
https://www.facebook.com/jens.fiederer/posts/10166573517800500
In the Netherlands, it seems that the festival where children go door to door asking for treats is St. Martin's Day (November 11). However, this is more of a thing in the Protestant north of the country, because in the Catholic south November 11 is the traditional start of the Carnival season.
This means that Halloween (which is an American import) seems to be more popular in the south where there isn't an existing similar festival for it to compete with.
The history of philosophy is the history of forgotten hands. I wrote about why, with a riff on the invisible hand in Adam Smith and Heidegger: https://whatiscalledthinking.substack.com/p/invisible-hands
Hi Zohar, how do I unsubscribe from your free email list?
there should be an unsubscribe button but i'll take you off myself if you send an email to one of them
Found it. The greyed-out text defeated my glasses.
People who got introduced to Effective Altruism a couple of years ago, and who have been seriously involved for some time: how do you feel about the trends within the movement? How credible do various organizations and cause areas seem to you now? What do you think about EAs in general? How do you envision the most likely future of EA in 5-10 years? How has the involvement changed your attitude, fundamental values, beliefs, and priorities?
Uhh I haven't noticed much in the way of trends but what I have noticed seems... good. Probably I'm not involved enough to notice as much as I should. I have a day job.
I believed in donating 10% before joining EA/GWWC, but it has focused me toward giving to the most effective charities. Except I still don't make enough time for analysis, so I take shortcuts, and in particular: donating to things that other EAs think are effective, that also seem plausibly effective to me.
I don't think EA itself changed my beliefs or terminal values, but since I discovered it after leaving my religion, EA and rationalism may have influenced some of my post-religion beliefs.
Wait, there is one thing: EA views on animal suffering influenced me. I became a reducetarian.
I've been following reactions to Dave Chappelle's latest special, The Closer, pretty closely. I'm a big fan of stand up in general and Dave is my favorite comedian. My best friend, also happens to be trans, and she, like a lot of progressives, believes Dave is transphobic. While I've seen plenty of responses to The Closer from people on both sides of the argument, I have failed to find anyone who seems genuinely interested in convincing those with whom they disagree. There is an abundance of name calling going both ways here, and seemingly very little interest in persuasion.
So my question is: How would you go about convincing someone that a cis person who makes jokes about trans people isn't necessarily transphobic/bigoted etc? More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?
If you disagree with me on this, you are welcome to try and change my mind, but I'm not particularly interested in debating that point here, and would prefer you shoot me an email at emwjazz@gmail.com if you'd like to discuss that instead.
> More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?
I think you should have hard data on jokes not increasing bullying, crimes, discrimination. If you don't have that, it's going to be hard to convince them because they will be right by default in a way.
I don't think that's true at all. I'm fairly certain that some people would change their minds depending on the data. Maybe they are not a majority, but they still exist. And if the data confirms that jokes increase bullying, crimes, discrimination, why would you want people to stop being outraged by that?
> You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into.
Why do people keep saying this? Surely I can't be the only person who has had the experience of having an emotional reaction to something, then either stopped to consider it or had something I was overlooking pointed out to me and changed my mind.
If anything, I'd expect reasoning oneself out of a conclusion one didn't reason ones way into would describe a sizable fraction of all reasoning that gets done.
While I recognise the experience you describe, I think most people would say that from an external perspective causative bit is whatever calmed you down to let you use reason over emotion - once someone is calm you often don't need to add any additional info or reasoning beyond what they themselves come up with, but getting someone calm enough to think in the first place can be challenging and is fundamentally an emotional task, not helped much by facts.
I'll also note that most anyone commenting here is likely to be much more biased towards reason than the average member of the general population, though obviously I don't know you personally.
Yeah, it's just wrong, but it makes people feel better about trying to reason with someone and not winning the debate.
It's an easy way to dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as irrational. Pure ego defense.
> And in the unlikely event that such data exists, why should I trust the people who are collating -- given that just about every scientific institution is all-in on social justice advocacy being more important than sober pursuit of the truth?
If that's what you think we can't really talk about anything, there's no point.
The most trustworthy kind of science is the sort you verify yourself.
The next most trustworthy kind is that where the authors changed their minds as a result of their data.
>How could "data" possibly confirm that, anyway?
I mean, at a very high level, different cultures have different beliefs and norms -some cultures are more or less racist, transphobic, sexist, etc. than others. Since a genetic explanation for those differences is a non-starter - kids raised in a different culture from their biological parents adopt that culture's norms - the causal factor must be cultural.
Sure, it's not like we can say exactly what percent of those cultural differences are caused by a particular set of jokes, or a particular book written by an elite, or the particular platform of a particular political party, or whatever. But all of that is a part of the same cultural milieu that we know causally produces those cultural differences, so it's not weird to assume that each has at least some contribution to make to the whole.
>some cultures are more or less racist, transphobic, sexist, etc. than others. Since a genetic explanation for those differences is a non-starter - kids raised in a different culture from their biological parents adopt that culture's norms<
Wait, what? How do we know it's a non-starter? I'm not an expert on this, but I'm given to understand that personality differences between individuals (including things like homophobia, as well as political leanings) are partly genetic, so why couldn't it be the same between cultures? E.g. say, people from group A have a greater genetic tendency towards homophobia than people from group B, *and* group A has a strongly homophobic culture while group B has a much more gay-accepting culture. And then, if children from group A are adopted by adults from group B, they are *shifted towards* group B's more gay-accepting culture than they would have been if raised by group A adults, but *on average* they are still more homophobic than group B children raised by group B adults.
I'm not saying that that necessarily *is* the case in any given circumstance; I just don't understand what rules it out a priori strongly enough to call it a 'non-starter'.
I think this misunderstands the average person's relationship with data in an unfair way.
While I would agree that the average person gets sucked into opinions largely by emotional appeals from elites and by the consensus of their 'side', I think their willingness to that that is based on an underlying belief that their elites and their 'side' is right on the data, and that the data would support their beliefs if they bothered to look it up and were competent to understand it.
I think for the average person - maybe not the very-online-zealot, but most people - if you could get them to coherently express 'what data must be true for your belief to be true', and then truly convince them that the data says the opposite, they would feel a strong impetus to reform their belief.
Right. Presumably someone who is trans has salient recent memory of being ostracised to some extent for being trans, and it is reasonable to worry that if becomes ok in the mainstream to make fun of trans people in a comedic way then the ostracism will come back. I think in response to the OP you should try to listen to what your friend is upset about. Lots of people just blindly follow the media/"moloch" and get scanalized about "the right things". I think this describes a lot of the reaction to the Closer. If that's the case for your friend, better to not engage until the media hype moves on to the next outrage. However if your friend is at least partially afraid of this contributing to bullying and ostracism or some other defensible reason, you should engage with their strongest argument, show you understand it, and either leave it at that or try to explain your counterargument (for me this would be something to do with how humor is important and societal holy cows are dangerous)
Even before ostracisation, constant "jokes" are really tiring, especially when people don't understand when you tell them to stop, or don't understand how you could be offended by a joke. Receiving one joke a week is not the same thing as receiving multiple jokes a day. the.jazzhole also seem already convinced that their point of view is the right one ("So my question is: How would you go about convincing someone that a cis person who makes jokes about trans people isn't necessarily transphobic/bigoted etc? More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?"), which isn't a great way to start a conversation.
Thanks for that clarification. When you talk about getting multiple jokes per day, is this mainly from strangers or friends?
Both in my experience, though mostly friends since for me it wasn't something very visible most of the time.
Even one joke a week can be irritating if it's always the same obvious joke. My context is medieval cooking so not as touchy as trans issues, but still annoying.
yeah, especially since transphobes have had like one joke - 'I identify as an attack helicopter' - for about 15 years now, and every trans person has probably heard it about 10,000 times. It's just hack comedy and unoriginal, if nothing else.
I'll take your word about the attack helicopter, but wouldn't have been confident of it before, given stories of googlers seriously identifying as "expansive ornate buildings" and "yellow-scaled wingless dragonkin":
https://metro.co.uk/2018/01/10/google-criticised-talk-worker-sexually-identifies-ornate-building-7219464/
As a more, uh... ahem, moderate trans supporter, it's actually a pretty funny joke that can be endlessly remolded and remixed to new forms, the namesake form dates back to c. 2014 (so barely 8 years) and it was originally created to mock the kinds of bizarre genders that tumblr users create, the ones about the weather, fairies and colors.
The number one thing not to do about a joke, no matter how annoying, unfunny or - very debatably- "hateful" it is, is react violentely to it. For an actual bigot doing it to harm, the sound of offended screeching is music to the ears. Nobody ever derives pleasure from eye rolls. For the moderate or even supporter doing it in good-hearted mockery all people give to and receive from each other, an offended group is a permnant mark of outsiderness, the One Group Nobody Is Allowed To Talk About, and so they don't talk about, or to, that group. Problem solved, to the loss of everybody involved.
And you might want to be careful calling people who identify as helicopters bad names, it can be seriousely harmful to some genders. https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/Heligender
I've seen Chappelle's special. It has offensive jokes. But I really believe it will *decrease* bullying, crimes, and discrimination against trans people in viewers, possibly more so than any other show on Netflix.
The crux and emotional climax of his show is about Daphne Dorman, a trans comedian and friend of Chappelle's who died by suicide. He spends the last 12 minutes or so talking about her. There's one quote from Dorman that Chappelle particularly emphasises:
> I don't need you to understand me. I just need you to believe that I'm having a human experience.
And I think that's a powerful message for anyone who is a bit transphobic. Because they're not going to understand being trans; not easily anyway. But they can understand that everyone is having a human experience and deserves to be treated with kindness.
Look, transphobic people probably don't follow a lot of trans people on Twitter, or subscribe to trans-rights-promoting newsletters. Progressives can talk all they want about how discriminating against trans people is bad, but they're probably neither reaching nor convincing their target transphobic audience. (You could argue their real target audience of these blogs is people who already agree with them, but lets ignore that as it's not particularly relevant to my point.)
But transphobic people might watch Dave Chappelle. And he reels them in a bit by espousing some views they agree with (e.g. "gender is a fact"). But then he ends with talking about how special Daphne Dorman was and about the importance of respect and compassion. A lot of viewers will relate to Chappelle. Some probably admire him. If this special going to shift their opinion at all, it's going to shift it towards compassion.
> I think you should have hard data on jokes not increasing bullying, crimes, discrimination.
I don't even see why such data would be relevant. Jokes are not an incitement to violence or discrimination any more than any other form of legal speech.
Furthermore, even if jokes were associated with increases in bullying or crimes, that does not somehow entail that the joke-maker is hateful or bigoted.
Well, first of all, since Chappelle refers to himself as "transphobic" and a "TERF" several times in his act, you would need to formulate a convincing argument that these statements are ironic or facetious in some way. I've written a somewhat deep analysis of his set which makes this point (among others) - https://nealzupancic.substack.com/p/dave-chappelle-and-the-cancellation - but the short version is that he's trying to make the very point that you are trying to make: that it isn't actually harmful to make "transphobic" (or misogynist, or whatever) jokes as long as everyone is clear that it's a joke and that you aren't actually treating trans people badly in real life.
I also pointed out in that analysis that his transphobic jokes, at least in The Closer, are far, far tamer than his misogynist jokes, which people mostly give him a pass on. This won't be convincing to someone who thinks that comedians shouldn't do any offensive jokes, but it might convince someone who thinks that regular stand-up comedy is in bounds but that Chappelle's trans jokes are somehow outside the purview of normal comedy. Again, Chappelle's set itself functions as an argument that trans people shouldn't get special consideration (that is, over and above blacks, Jews, women, Asians, gays, or lesbians) so it might be worth 1) making that point and 2) pointing out how Chappelle makes that point. Again, his argument is sophisticated and I think 99% of people arguing about it on the internet are missing his point entirely, because you kind of need to watch the whole thing, with an open mind, and think about it, in order to understand how it all fits together and how the various seemingly unrelated pieces (like the "space Jews" jokes) contribute to the thesis.
"More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?"
This is unfortunately just a matter of personal preference. Offense is deeply personal and it's somewhere between difficult and impossible for one person to move the needle on how offended another person is by certain content. Like, there are some people who will never, ever, ever be able to enjoy a comedy set in which women are referred to repeatedly as "bitches" even if you explain that Chappelle means it ironically or something.
There are jokes I am offended by and other jokes I'm not offended by and a lot of it just has to do with my personal life experiences. I think the best you can do is convince someone that when something offends them they should just try to tolerate the fact that some people will enjoy it anyway.
I wonder what it is you are trying to accomplish, though, because I'd say the advice in the prior paragraph applies equally in the opposite direction - if you notice that someone is offended by something that you enjoy, the best approach might be to just try to tolerate the fact that some people will be offended by things that you enjoy.
I personally would never try and convince someone that they, individually, should not be offended by something. As you said, taking offense is deeply personal. The proper (in my opinion) argument is that a) giving offense, especially in the context of comedy, is not problematic and b) even if it was, someone being offended is never an adequate argument for any action beyond "don't interact with the person thing which caused you offense anymore".
Now, both of those opinions are getting pretty close to base level beliefs which do not have (nor need) any justifications. I could make arguments in support of them, but are not very far from values that I think are important just because they are, and it's hard to convince anyone to change basal values, since there is no objective morality/set of values that can be in-arguably decided upon.
The most obvious argument for b) is "there is no state of affairs that is universally non-offensive, at least unless you butcher half the population". Technically, this does rely on the listener valuing the lives of those they disagree with, but most aren't *that* far gone.
I have a pretty strong prior that if we did kill half of the population (and somehow didn't create offense doing that!) we would instantly find a new host of issues to become offended about. I consider offending people to be a fully intractable problem, because anyone can be offended by a potentially limitless list, regardless of their upbringing, profession, friends, etc. They can even say that they are offended by things that they are not offended by, or create new offenses from nothing.
The only solutions are to 1) stop being offended by things - tough sell there, or 2) learn to live with each other even if we are offended by things said or done.
I mean, I did say "at least". I also was going for a much stronger claim than "IRL, people will get offended"; I was claiming "there are issues where group X will be offended if A and group Y will be offended if ~A, so even magically handwaving pragmatic considerations and assuming you can manufacture any world-state, someone will *still* be offended".
I can imagine that you could assemble a reasonably-large group of people who have at least non-contradictory utopian visions (as opposed to complete agreement on every detail of realistic policy; that's in "three can keep a secret if two of them are dead" territory)... but nowhere near everyone.
He starts the special saying he was molested by priests as a boy and would cum on their face. I don't think you need much more analysis to argue that just maybe he can be ironic or facetious.
This feels facile.
Certainly we know comedians can say things that aren't true as jokes. But that doesn't man nothing they say is true, nor that an informed audience can't do a pretty good job telling the difference.
Dave is clearly trying to make an overarching point in this special which he thinks is true and important, and the audience knows that and can interpret his statements accordingly.
You still need to discuss particulars - was X particular claim ironic? Was it well-executed enough that the ironic intent was clear? How likely is it that someone might miss or misinterpret the irony?
If Chappelle's fans hear Chappelle describe himself as "team TERF" and don't interpret that ironically, and then a bunch of people become TERFs who otherwise wouldn't have, and those people - as TERFs do - pass laws making it hard for trans people to access medical care or public restrooms, then the Chappelle's intentions didn't matter as much as how he pursued them and how people interpreted them. And then the fact that Chappelle himself said not to make laws restricting bathroom access gets lost in the shuffle - and who's to say that wasn't the ironic part? Who's to say that wasn't just setup for a joke?
Chappelle made a bunch of contradictory statements and arguments and we need to think critically about them to figure out what he's actually trying to say and whether or not he said it in a way that was likely to have the intended impact. You can't just say "well sometimes he's facetious" as a way to selectively dismiss any claims about Chappelle that might paint him in a bad light.
I think he said we can’t really ask for passports or driving licenses at restrooms. Which is correct.
He didn't say "can't", he said "shouldn't" - specifically, "no American should have to show ID to use a restroom". He also specifically said that it was "mean" to restrict bathroom access, and also dismissed concerns that trans people might somehow be dangerous to families. He's making a moral case against bathroom restrictions, not a practical case.
Can you describe a comedy act that meets this criteria while still being funny? I feel like the only outcome of this approach is to kill all or almost all comedy, as comedians will be unable to tell actually funny jokes. It would instantly destroy any kind of shock comedy, which I would consider a pretty bad loss.
I'm not super attached to Chappelle or any particular jokes, but if you start making "offensive" jokes taboo, then instantly almost every possible joke is gone. I guess they can still make fun of white cis males, but that would get stale in about 2 seconds, and would also have no shock value to add to the comedy.
What criteria are you talking about? I haven't listed any criteria and I feel like you're responding to something I'm not saying.
I'm extrapolating from the implied requirement that jokes must be legibly ironic to pass muster. If it is not obvious that the joke is ironic, the implication of your post is that it's problematic and therefore must stop.
Jokes that signal their irony don't sound terribly funny to me, at least is they have to do so enough that it's clear no one can be offended by it. Chappelle went pretty far to show that he cares about, even if he doesn't understand, trans people. He could have just told some trans jokes and moved on, like he used to do. Apparently even with the attempts to signal "ironic" he failed. Toning it down further sounds impossible, leaving us with "don't tell jokes involving trans people or issues" and that's where my last post comes from.
> if you notice that someone is offended by something that you enjoy, the best approach might be to just try to tolerate the fact that some people will be offended by things that you enjoy.
I agree it's probably futile to convince someone not to be offended by something, but I personally consider a high capacity for personal offense indicative of many deal-breaking character flaws. So I no longer attempt to "tolerate" people who are easily offended on any subject. Rather, I don't associate with them at all.
Hard agree.
Chappelle also makes fun of white people (also blacks and Jews). Do you think he's racist?
I mean, honestly, yes? The vast majority of people of all races are pretty racist, and Chapelle certainly doesn't strike me as the kind of person who is unusually _un_racist...
Could you refine what you mean by "racist"? Because I've seen that used for anything from "believes that all races are equal" to "believes that there are behavior trends in racial demographics" to "wants to genocide other ethnic groups" to the point where just calling something "racist" is now pretty close to noise.
So, I haven't seen the special in question, but I'm familiar with a lot of other of Dave Chappelle's jokes about trans people.
I'm trans and Ill try to weigh in.
I think fundamentally your point is true, being cis and making jokes about trans people isn't _necessarily_ bigoted. But there's a real fine line to walk here, and if someone in particular just keeps coming back to this trans thing and really defending their desire to make jokes about trans people, you should be suspicious.
"People should not be offended by jokes" is both not true and not really what you believe. Some jokes really are just offensive and people should be offended.
Broadly speaking, I likely agree with you that the _current_ equilibrium is too sensitive, and trans people especially are sensitive. But just because the current equilibrium is too sensitive doesn't mean we should be supporting all jokes being okay.
Separately, Dave I'm quite sure is just a transphobe. I remember one special in particular where his "joke" essentially just becomes a screed that being trans "reeks of white privilege" (direct quote!). And again, it's suspicious that he _just keeps coming back to this_. And, also importantly, he's not shy _at all_ about the fact that he finds it gross and confusing. So like... There's really not much to misunderstand here.
And the jokes he makes about trans people just.... Aren't funny. They're not well done jokes. Half of them don't even really have punch lines, it's the equivalent of saying "the trans people", making a funny face, and waiting for the audience to get the cue.
Not every joke is like this, there's a few good ones. The "beyond pussy, impossible pussy" is a joke that I think a lot of trans people would find offensive and realllllyyyy skirts the line but it is just funny and I can easily picture a trans person or someone like James Acaster delivering that joke and it being totally fine.
Part of the reason this hits trans people especially hard by the way is that it's so close to the main way we experience bigotry on a daily basis - getting laughed at, humiliated, called gross, and in the bad cases sick/perverted/dangerous. Thats part of the _daily_ experience of being trans. So sitting down and enjoying a comedy show for it to take a turn into that feels very "ah shit here we go again"
And really it's just - lazy. Or bad writing. Like I agree with him 100% that being trans is objectively a funny predicament. But there's a difference in laughing with someone and laughing at them and we always seem to be the butt of the joke.
As to how should you convince someone they shouldn't be offended by a joke - there's 1 of 2 scenarios, depending on whether _youre_ the butt of the joke, or _they_ are.
If _you_ are the butt of the joke, it's pretty easy you can just reassure relying on personal experience.
If _they_ are the butt of the joke, you seriously risk coming off as a patronizing asshole and really should reconsider whether you're absolutely certain you're right. If you are, and you want to risk it anyway - come from a place of compassion. It's about understanding why they're upset, reassuring it's all in good fun and they're NOT being kicked to the bottom of the status heirarchy and you then compromising by agreeing with them that some things are too far and you won't go there.
A well-balanced and moderate response that considers several sides and makes good points, thank you for weighing in, I enjoyed reading!
Furthermore, I think that while us trans people are a bit jumpy about this stuff (to say the least), it isn't without justification. One only has to observe the trajectory of things in eastern Europe to see how anti-trans (and LGBT in general) legislation can follow from the spread of anti-trans (and LGBT in general) rhetoric. In Africa, new laws are being put into place to allow persecution of LGBT people, again following in the wake of similar rhetoric.
In the UK, you see the same pattern, almost the entire media running poorly supported stories pushing a narrative that trans people are a threat to women on nearly a daily basis, with further anti-trans action primarily hindered by the existence of fairly strong legal protections for trans people that would have to be undone, and perhaps Boris Johnson himself not actually being a transphobe.
And of course in the US, there's also been a deliberate refocusing of the religious right from gay people onto trans people, directly followed by an enormous salvo of legislation in every Republican-controlled legislature designed to hinder trans people's participation in public life, some of which passed and became law. Nearly every right-wing outlet runs poorly-researched stories designed to paint trans people in a bad light (the recent coverage of a rapist in Loudon school district, for example) as frequently as the UK media does, and a lot of centre-left outlets love scare stories about detransition and social contagion.
The upshot of this entire environment leaves one feeling rather vulnerable, that our many supposed powerful allies (the ones Chapelle rails against and claims make us the privileged ones, the orgs that Red Tribe culture warriors love to hate for their love of Diversity™) will disappear the moment the prevailing winds start to shift against us, the moment demonizing us becomes more profitable than at least verbally supporting us.
I find it really hard to believe that characterizations of Chapelle's special as "anti-trans rhetoric" are in good faith when one of the final, and most heartfelt, emotional, statements in the entire thing was him saying how a trans person was a human, having a human experience, an deserving of empathy, even if wasn't possible to fully understand that experience. I'm not trans and can't pretend to know what it's like to be trans, but I can know, without having to understand their lives, that they are humans and are deserving of human dignity and respect. That's the message that I think Chappelle would have wanted someone to take. Yes, he made jokes, and yes some of those jokes were directed at trans people, just like he makes jokes directed at women, and white people, and black people. But he made it very very clear, to the point that misunderstanding it almost has to be deliberate, that he thinks trans people deserve dignity and respect, just like everyone else. That they are not lesser.
I totally agree, people who think he is spouting anti-trans rhetoric are working hard to misinterpret him. But in the interest of being charitable, I think people who view him as transphobic are of the opinion that the consequences of his jokes result in hurting trans people's feelings, and that his intention is not the only thing that matters. That said, a lot of people adamantly state that his intentions are far from good, that he's using Daphne as a token, that she wouldn't have wanted him to make those jokes, etc, so that really can't be said of people like that.
>I find it really hard to believe that characterizations of Chapelle's special as "anti-trans rhetoric" are in good faith when one of the final, and most heartfelt, emotional, statements in the entire thing was him saying how a trans person was a human, having a human experience, an deserving of empathy, even if wasn't possible to fully understand that experience.
We have all seen every racist saying 'but I have black friends' in the news for the last 50 years, to the point where the phrase itself became a joke and a mockery of how weak an argument it is.
It turns out you can say and believe horrible things about a group while also thinking individual members are nice people. It turns out you can actively undermine the rights and dignity of a group while also reminding your audience that they deserve respect as human beings. This is well-trodden ground, and those who have watched these tactics from opponents of past progressive movements are familiar with them.
The bit in question isn't a dashed-off exculpatory statement along the lines of "some of my best friends are trans", it's arguably the heart of the entire performance, even the point of the entire special.
>It turns out you can say and believe horrible things about a group while also thinking individual members are nice people. <
This ... doesn't strike me as a problem, as long as the horrible beliefs are true (or at least plausible enough on currently-available data that a reasonable person could think them true). Take, for the most radioactive example, the IQ claims of the Horrible Banned Discourse - as far as I can work out, it would be well within the bounds of what a reasonable person could believe on present evidence, for someone to think that the tentative consensus of intelligence researchers is probably correct, and still be friends with people from all the groups concerned.
Am I missing something?
I live in an area which has some serious white supremacists still in it. I have, in fact, interacted with those white supremacists. And I have heard from them that they have a "black friend" or a "hispanic friend" or what have you. What I've never heard is them make a plea for the basic humanity and dignity of their minority friend or minorities as a whole. This comes off like you're deliberately trying to dismiss anything positive Chappelle did in the special while not joking as lip service while pointing to his humor (no matter how cruel you deem it to be) as proof of his true, secret agenda.
"Nearly every right-wing outlet runs poorly-researched stories designed to paint trans people in a bad light (the recent coverage of a rapist in Loudon school district, for example)"
Reading up about that particular case, the school board, the DA, and the trans activist parent and their ginger group all managed to cover themselves in the opposite of glory, and it's only the right-wing outlets who were covering it. Everyone else was happy to go along with the line that there were no sexual assaults in any of the schools and this was all anti-trans/non-binary prejudice.
Until it came out that the 'non-binary/genderfluid' boy accused committed two assaults and then suddenly the same people were all referring to him *as* a boy, not the genderfluid student. No True Scotsman in full rearguard action. But the students in the district organised a walk-out, parents are pissed-off, school board members are resigning, and it's even a live issue in the governatorial race. A father angry that his daughter was raped in school and losing control and being confrontational and even violent at a school meeting is not a good thing, but it's even worse to deny that any rapes happened and call the cops to drag him out, then have the DA push for a jail term for him. People reading that are going to be on the side of the father, not the trans rights woman telling him his daughter was crazy or lying.
"Painting trans people in a bad light" is going to happen when things like this happen, until the trans activist movements face up to the fact that when fusty conservatives like myself were asking awkward questions about "but have you considered what might go wrong with a blanket policy of inclusivity?", we were not invoking the slippery slope fallacy, we were acknowledging basic human nature where bad actors take advantage of well-meaning idiocy.
When the general public sees story after story about things like the Wii Spa, criminals convicted of sex abuse and child abuse suddenly coming out as trans so they can be sent to women's prisons, and Ruby Eby-style cases, then until trans people figure out a policy to avoid the crazies and the perverts jumping aboard the "you're trans if you say you're trans and anyone questioning you is a bigot who should be facing legal penalties" train, then the view of the general public will indeed be "trans people bad light".
This is pretty much true and it's a huge problem that I've been trying to think about a lot. I find myself so frequently loathing The popularly-understood trans activist movement because damnit 9/10 times they make things worse for us by being idiots.
I don't agree with the whole "the second you identify as trans you're trans and a woman and get full inclusion". It's not surprising to me that that gets taken to the extreme - one of the things, maybe THE thing, trans women most crave is validation and acceptance, and so the movements instinct is to be extremely generous with it but it leads to obvious problems like the above and ends up making everyone hate us. So there _has_ to be (also, just empirically... Is) some qualifying line, some kind of distinction, you can't just say you're trans. I've had a lot of thoughts on that subject, maybe one day I'll get around to making a blog for it.
If Chapelle's main point is white privilege, what does he make of trans people of color?
Mostly, he seems to pretend they don't exist. Which is a whole other kettle of fish, but not uncommon for black people in the US, painting being LGBT as a "white" thing.
That's like saying Chappelle seems to pretend the Uighurs don't exist because he didn't mention the prison camps in China when he did his Asian coronavirus joke.
Chappelle was complaining about his treatment by white LGBT activists. Black trans people aren't white LGBT activists, so why should he bring them up?
There's a segment where he's talking about a gay white guy calling the cops on him. He specifically says that a gay black guy wouldn't have called the cops, because the cops adopt a "kill'em all, let God sort'em out" attitude towards black people. He uses this to make the point that white LGBT people can easily fall back on their white privilege when interacting with authority, whereas Chappelle can't rely on his straight/cis privilege to protect him from being brutalized by cops. One could charitably assume Chappelle would apply the same line of thought to black trans people: that he would assume they'd have racial solidarity, at least in the basic sense of not using white authority to tear down another black person, and thereby be outside the bounds of his complaint.
I don't think his main point (or any level of point) was white privilege.
"White privilege" isn't a point, it's a concept. For it to be a point, there would need to be some sort of claim or proposition about white privilege.
Chappelle's main point is that LGBT activists should show more consideration and solidarity towards other minority groups and individuals, because suffering is part of the human condition and does not exempt us from the duty to treat each other with empathy and care.
I don't _necessarily_ think Dave's intention was to moderate transphobes opinion on trans people. But if it was, he scarcely could have done any better. He demonstrates his non-woke credentials by making a load of trans and race jokes... then he goes on to scold his audience for supporting bathroom bans, and has a very heatfelt story about how we should respect a specific trans woman's "human experience."
Sure, he could have stood up and not mentioned trans people at all, or also only said positive things about trans people. However I don't think either of those things would have persuaded as many people as what he actually did. (Again: This isn't an argument about Dave's intentions, just the effect)
> And, also importantly, he's not shy _at all_ about the fact that he finds it gross and confusing. So like... There's really not much to misunderstand here.
You seem to imply that this means Chappelle is a bigot or transphobic or something, but I'm not clear on how that follows. Is it really outside the realm of possibility that Chappelle might think that trans people should have all the rights they're due, that they should be able to use the facilities and services of their preferred gender and live a life of dignity, while still being confused by them and having this strong aversion to dating a trans person? Are these thoughts mutually exclusive somehow?
I know there is debate in the trans community about whether an aversion to dating someone trans makes someone transphobic, and exactly what constitutes "valid" reasons for such avoidance. This strikes me as falling squarely into that scenario, and it's not at all clear that Chappelle expressed honest bigotry. He definitely crossed that line for the sake of a couple of jokes, but crossing taboos is exactly what he does for the sake of humour (laughter response as tension release). It always seemed clearly delivered in jest from my perspective, although I understand how sensitive and personal topics might bias someone to different interpretations. I'm probably more charitable than most when interpreting intentions, and I disagree emphatically with the seemingly common view that intentions don't matter.
> And the jokes he makes about trans people just.... Aren't funny. They're not well done jokes. Half of them don't even really have punch lines, it's the equivalent of saying "the trans people", making a funny face, and waiting for the audience to get the cue.
Jokes aren't only funny because of their content, but also their delivery and the context in which they're delivered; that's why great comedy is art. A overly-narrow analysis of any joke like you just did is probably going to completely miss the funny part. For instance, assuming Chappelle even did something so trite, it could have been delivered as a joke showing how stupid the thought it is, like "eww, girls have cooties", and the surprise that a grown man would even think or utter silly or outrageous thoughts so openly is the funny part.
So, as I mentioned I'm my top comment, I had not seen the new special in question and I am delighted to hear about his message at the end and it's definitely much better than I was expecting and I have updated on him, I no longer think he's a transphobe.
I want to take this chance separately to say, that I do not think it is bigoted _at all_ to not want to date a trans person. Genitalia preferences are absolutely valid and okay. And most trans women feel this way. I small but vocal minority of very-online weirdos has set the tone of the discourse in an outsized way.
Separately, I believe my analysis of the jokes in question was absolutely fair. I just went and rewatched a compilation video of his jokes from previous specials and I maintain my case.
And lastly, despite not thinking he's a transphobe anymore (probably), there's still some jokes he makes that are too far, and I can absolutely fairly think he's an asshole, even though I don't think he's a bigot.
I don't want him to get cancelled. I don't really care if he in particular gets "fired", he's a comic in a unique position, where his whole thing is saying things people like. If enough people decide what he's saying is stuff that they don't want to listen to, or if his sponsors decide it's not the message they want to publish, that's their purview and Dave is no martyr he's a schmuck.
> And lastly, despite not thinking he's a transphobe anymore (probably), there's still some jokes he makes that are too far, and I can absolutely fairly think he's an asshole
Haha, I think Chappelle would totally agree with labelling him an asshole. I even think being a bit of an asshole is his intent, as I don't think you can break taboos without being an asshole to somebody.
I personally don't think joke compilation videos are representative. I think everyone knows that spliced videos that cut out important context from political interviews aren't representative either, for instance. As a comic, Chappelle in particular weaves a whole narrative throughout each special, where the jokes are all interwoven with stories, themes and moral arguments, and the surprising jokes he sprinkles throughout to break tensions can easily be taken out of context. He's still totally an asshole sometimes though, no denying that.
Point out that he makes jokes about everybody, so that jokes about trans folk are Dave's way of accepting them into the mainstream.
You're a nobody until Dave makes fun of you.
Does he make fun of cis people for being cis?
Yep, he has a bit where he's in a dance club and gets all offended when he's surprised to be dancing with a trans person, then the punchline is that he goes to bed with them anyway
I watched The Closer with my uncle, a trans man. Some of the jokes didn't hit with him, but overall he laughed a lot and teared up a bit at the end. He's been excitedly telling all his friends about it since. He's quite thrilled that the most popular comedian in the world is paying attention. It wasn't long ago that you couldn't even talk with the average person about trans issues. After that the conversation was dominated by insufferable people on twitter. But two average people still wouldn't talk about it. He sees Chapelle as the tipping point where the entire population can now be involved. And that is a good thing.
I think stories like his are going to be much more convincing than any argument. He's not overly concerned whether Chappelle is transphobic or not. There is something much more important going on.
The problem I see with Chappelle being people's intro to talking about trans shit is that he's really blinkered. Like the conversation about trans people is already full of dumbass cis people deciding they know everything about us and being incredibly wrong, we don't need more of that.
A lot of the show was demonstrating a deep and meaningful relationship with Daphne. He recognized her humanity. He made people really feel for her. I doubt there has been a single piece of media, ever, which made more "dumbass cis people" sympathize with a transperson. I think that's important.
Sure, he made some dumb trans jokes. He also says he came on a priest's face as a kid. The average person is able to separate the jokes from the deeper message of the story he's telling.
And yet he doesn't respect her enough to not misgender her in death (yes it's a "joke", but that doesn't mean it isn't still super shitty). Seriously, you have NO idea how much being remembered for who we are and not continually being shackled to how we were born matters to us, and neither does he if he makes that joke without her permission. Nor does he understand her very well if he thinks that dumbass people on Twitter being assholes are why she might have killed herself and not much more substantial real-life issues, like the custody of her children and access to healthcare, which her closest friends talked about but he completely skated over in favour of something that was ultimately focused on him and his need to be validated as a good person by her defence of him.
You're speaking as if you were close to them and knew the intimate details of their relationship. Come on. You don't know anything about it. Neither do practically all of the other commentators. Why are so many people doing that?
Exactly, and that is the real problem here. It seems you (Naamah) feel confident enough to speak for her because she was trans, but really you have no idea who she is or how she felt about things like this because the fact that she is trans is completely inadequate in explaining who she was as a person. This is the problem with your argument, and it's the same problem that lies at the core of identity politics--an individual's membership within groups based on immutable characteristics is weighted as more important than their character.
Because Dave is doing the 'I can't be racist, I have a black friend' thing: speaking for someone they know to say that their relationship is ok and that person doesn't think they're bad, so by extension it must be wrong for anyone like that person to think they're bad.
The implication is that Daphne being ok with his rhetoric should generalize to all trans people being ok with his rhetoric, and that the ways he treats his trans friend are ok ways for everyone to treat all trans people because his trans friend was ok with it.
But trans people have their own lived experiences, and know that these standards and ideas do *not* generalize to themselves, and that the assumption among the cis population that they do is actively harmful to themselves.
Dave is trying to use his relationship to Daphne as a synecdoche to smuggle in arguments about the relationship of mainstream culture to trans people in general. And the people objecting to that are treating it in the same way, in turn.
It's a dishonest maneuver on both sides, but Dave started it and they're kind of forced into matching him if they want to argue the point.
I agree that his usage of her story did seem a bit like he was using it to cast a kind light on himself. However, he was he friend and he knew her and her sense of humor (whi ch seemingly was such that it was controversial with other trans people), so I would not male assumptions about whether or not she would be offended or find his joke hurtful if she could have heard it. He likely felt he knew her enough to make a joke that he thought honored her sense of humor. He might even had made a similar joke to her while she was alive and knew she thought it was funny. It's all supposition but my sense was that he had real affection for her. Comics don't generally speak of people in their acts unless they admire them (unless they're tearing them apart, which he was clearly wasn't doing). Among comics, it's an honor to joke about someone after they've passed, that's their method of eulogy.
You're absolutely right--stories like your uncle's are going to help change minds. And your point about his special resulting in more cis people sympathizing with trans people than just about any other piece of media is also really fantastic, though people who are bothered by his special aren't likely to see it that way. I really feel that a lot of his critics fail to engage with his discussion of Daphne. Clearly, she was the impetus behind this special, and many of Dave's jokes in The Closer stem from Daphne, her experience, his experience as her friend, and his goals in making comedy more inclusive.
Except that's not what I've seen happening. What I've seen is legions of Chappelle fans going after anyone criticizing him and crapping on trans people in general. Maybe the more thoughtful parts do change some minds, but I think he at a minimum made a mistake and didn't consider how his other words would undermine that message for a lot of people.
Twitter is not representative of the wider population, it's an amplified slice of the extremes of humanity. Don't mistake what you see there for how most people are taking the special.
I'd say that you can make jokes about trans people that aren't minstral show level garbage; Dave just isn't doing them (all the time, I'd say his impossible meat joke was pretty damn good).
That's the difference between his race jokes and misogynist jokes; they come back around as jokes about Dave's lived experience.
To give an example: his jokes re. Poor White People Are Stupid and Also Trash, are ultimately sympathetic to their experience. He's pointing out their bullshit, but then saying they're still people and come by it honestly, and you should treat them as such.
(Some of)His jokes about trans people are about how they are whinny bitch baby crybullies and you should feel SO SORRY for him, a rich celebrity, for being "Canceled" into n+1 Netflix specials.
Basically, he is deploying this
https://twitter.com/ClassicShowbiz/status/1452062382847500291?s=20
as a rhetorical gambit, and your predisposition towards the issue decides if you are for it or not.
> I'd say that you can make jokes about trans people that aren't minstral show level garbage
Putting it into a broader context, though. From the perspective of most people, the trans* movement has come out of nowhere in a very short space of time and suddenly established a whole new set of "Things You Used To Believe But Can No Longer Say". Ten to twenty years ago it was taken for granted that okay, a man can cut off his penis and take a bunch of hormones but he's still a man (even if we choose to humour him and pretend he's a woman), but now that's the kind of thing that will get you fired from your job and banned from twitter. I'm not sure where the point was where everybody changed their minds, but I must have not been paying attention at the time because I missed the compelling argument in favour of it.
Sometimes, for a lot of people, it feels like there's been an alien invasion, our new rulers have green skin and bug eyes, and everyone is too afraid to mention it because nobody else is saying anything.
In this social context, there's a huge market for someone, anyone, to stand up and say "Hey, what the fuck happened with that?" It doesn't even matter that much whether the jokes are good, the audience laughs because they're relieved that someone finally had the guts to stand up and say "Hey, has anyone else noticed that President Grragghblar walks on six legs, what's up with that?"
This is a big deal, because for most Americans, that 10-20 years feels more like less than five. There are bubbles around major cities and "Progressive" areas that feel like it's been a full generation or more, but they are insulated away from rural areas as well as conservative areas. This goes well beyond conservatives who actively reject the ideology, but to a majority who wonder how and when things changed. It's a big deal that your more woke boss might get very upset with you for believing something that 90% of your coworkers also believe and you thought was common in society (which it is).
Data shows its more like 35-40%, not 10%, who feel that way. Its not nearly so overwhelming as you believe.
I grew up in conservative areas (rural NC) and my family and their friends are all religious and conservative. I remember when I first came out things were a little rough there - but my experience with those people has overwhelmingly been that seeing and knowing me has changed a lot of hearts and minds.
I hate that a tiny minority of loud weirdos has become the voice and face of the trans movement. Most of us are just out here living our lives, not trying to knock over innocent social conventions.
There's a big difference between knowing that trans people exist, and the current push for widespread inclusion at the cost of a person's place in society, including their job, if they are not fully "accepting." "Accepting" can mean a lot of things, some more reasonable than others, and some, in my opinion, that are completely unreasonable.
This is an axiom problem though.
You could take every mention of trans people in your statement and find and replace with "jews", "black people", or "Gamers" and it would still work.
So it comes back to: Do you believe that trans people have a valid identity, and do you believe that identity deserves X privileges?
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate the discussion in the replies. It is making me update from "Chappelle is the latest target of a censorious media mob" towards "Chappelle is probably transphobic on a visceral level and a trans person with the same aesthetics/politics as myself would probably find his latest special annoying". It kind of sucks because I like Chappelle and dislike censorious mobs, but it feels good to be able to have this discussion and update. Thank god for ACX.
So it goes.
Not everyone can be a perfect shining god on every issues.
I think the thing that bothers the more thick-skinned, edgy SJW's among us (me!) is less the jokes, and more the double down and air of martyrdom he's assuming.
It worked last time when he fucked off out of showbiz, it works less well this time when he ffo dekcuf back INTO show biz, as it were.
Can I push back a bit on the misuse of the suffix "-phobic" to describe someone who has disdain, rather than fear, for something? It smacks of an unfair attempt to shame a position rather than describe it.
Whatever you may think of the underlying issues, I think that in the interests of rationality we should support the use of neutral words to describe positions, rather than words picked by one side in order to make an end run around the question at hand.
Agreed, though I'd take it further to say that we should push back on the misuse of the suffix "-phobic" to describe someone who has slight issues with something, or even someone who broadly accepts something except wants to be able to discuss it in a logical way.
Agree, I was going to say that the first problem with this question is that no one is even going to agree on what "transphobic" means.
The dictionary definition I just googled says "an irrational fear of trans people". So then we can argue about what type of fear is rational versus irrational.
And many people who either don't like trans people, or have neutral feelings about them but don't like the current metaphysical and political views they're advancing, are not in any manner fearful of them. Others have something much more close to disgust or aversion than fear.
It is interesting that the designation "phobic" is only applied to forms of discrimination that invoke some aspect of sexuality. We call people racist, sexist, or misogynist, not "female-phobic" or "black-phobic" or whatever. Though in some cases that may be closer to the truth. Homophobic I believe came about as a term because of the proposition that many straight men who opposed gay rights were secretly afraid of their own homosexual tendencies. So it may have been a political slogan in and of itself to imply that anti-gay men in particular were secretly gay themselves -- whether or not that is or was true, it's clever marketing.
I am fairly certain no one described as "transphobic" is secretly afraid that they might be trans. There are certainly some females who feel threatened by and are afraid of transwomen. There may be some parents who are afraid of their children being influenced to be trans. But I don't think it's an accurate description for most people who are not on board with current pro-trans politics.
And even if we remove the "phobic" element, it's still not clear what the term means, because it seems to be applied to everything from someone who believes trans people are sick perverts who should be locked away in mental institutions to someone who fully supports and loves trans people but doesn't quite get on board with 1% of their current political theories (which seem to change almost daily, so this is probably everyone). By some of the broadest usages I've seen, there is likely not a single person alive who isn't "transphobic".
"Homoist" and "transist" don't quite have the same ring to them. But I agree, "phobic" is used way too loosely. Cleaning out cobwebs doesn't make you an arachnophobe, but staying out of a room because you saw a spider there does.
As far as Dave Chapelle's situation is concerned, I think it's basically a case of taste vs. morals. There's a difference between, "I don't care for this kind of thing", and "this is a BAD thing that should never be consumed by anyone." I'm starting to think more and more that the latter statement needs to die, whether it comes from moral busybodies on the Left or the Right. If a piece of art or product is offensive enough for most people to say "I don't care for this kind of thing", then it will die a "natural death." But if even a handful of people say, "this a BAD thing" and try to convince as many people as possible, that it is indeed, a Bad Thing that no good person should appreciate, and the person who produced it is a Bad Person, then you've got Cancel Culture. And I don't think that's right. I can understand parents wanting to control the media their children consume, and being allowed the tools to do so, but adults should be able to make their own entertainment choices based on their tastes. And of course, broad cultural tastes do change, but I think it's best when such changes occur organically, rather than being forced. For example, regarding the tweet about Jack Albertson above, did blackface fade out because a bunch of people said loudly enough that it was bad? Or did it fade out because general attitudes towards black people shifted?
I agree.
I would also say -- as someone who is a hardcore stand-up comedy fan and has met and had close relationships with professional comics -- that the ability to joke about EVERYTHING and ANYTHING is about as close to a fundamental, iron-clad belief and moral as you are going to get with stand-up comics. So when you tell one that they are not allowed to tell jokes about something, it is for most of them the most offensive possible thing you could do. You are violating their moral code in and of itself. The way they joke to each other is far worse than what you'll see in public too, as it's part of their moral framework that comedy is an important art precisely because (1) it respects no sacred cows, and (2) it has the ability to transform what is dark and painful into levity and joy. Amongst themselves, they joke about the death of their loved ones, suicide, their biggest insecurities and darkest shames, everything that normal people find scary and untouchable. There's sort of an inversion of sacred values. Call it a defense mechanism if you like, but if you can joke about something, it loses some of its power to hurt you.
Of course, that's why people hate for things they think are important to be joked about.
I interpreted The Closer as Chappelle truly being offended that he was being pressured not to joke about trans issues. His closing line about "leave my people alone" made that perfectly clear. He is literally and truly offended on behalf of the comic community. Take whatever statement would be the most offensive possible thing to say to a trans person and how it makes them feel...outraged, indignant, threatened, disrespected. That's how a professional comedian feels when you tell him he can't joke about something.
I believe that Chappelle is doubly offended because he has made fun of literally every other category of people throughout his career, and this is the one group that is apparently so untouchable or protected that he's received blow back. He made it blatantly clear that he's upset that black people have been fighting for their rights for centuries, and trans rights have only become something that most people are aware of for maybe 5 or 10 years, yet he's been allowed to make fun of black people with impunity and what he perceives as this new group is suddenly so protected by society that he's being told they're in a sacred class that you can't touch. Now, arguably that's not true because norms have changed across the board and maybe he wouldn't be allowed today to make all kinds of jokes he freely made about other groups 15 years ago. But I think that's his perception. He blatantly says he's envious of how fast LGBTQ has made progress.
So I guess if you want to make an argument to a trans person to not try to fight against the special, it would probably be best to make it on a tactical and practical ground that telling a comic what they can't talk about is just going to piss them off, you'll never convince them of the moral position because the idea of not being allowed to joke about something is fundamentally immoral in and of itself in their calculus, and it just adds fuel to the fire and will make them want to make jokes about the topic even more. If you want to neutralize the threat, the best tactic is to make jokes that are even edgier and make fun of yourself more than anyone else could. That's what Chappelle himself did with racial jokes (though obviously he had some ambivalence about that). And that's how his trans friend won him over...not by telling him not to joke but by being willing to joke about herself.
Otoh, you can certainly scare the rest of society into pretending that they think certain topics of humor are unacceptable. Though if you're scaring them with shaming, you're not actually convincing them, you're just creating a pressurized issue that is subject to blow open at the first leak. And you're NEVER going to convince the actual comics on that point. The whole point of comedy is to be subversive and transgressive. And I don't have data on this, but I strongly suspect that comedy is probably the single most powerful tool in getting people to actually change deeply help and emotional beliefs. It's a cliche, but I truly believe Will and Grace did more to advance gay rights than anything the activists ever did. So if trans people want to change hearts and minds, they would do better to drop the thing where they require people to recite mantras or scare them into not saying what they think, and try to promote more comedy and laughter. Sermons about "punching down" may seem morally correct but isn't ultimately going to help the cause.
Well said. Like you, I'm really into standup and feel that absolutely everything should be on the table, and what really matters is whether or not the joke is funny. The vast majority of my friends feel similarly, and your arguments are certainly intuitive to us. However, for people that can't tolerate certain jokes, arguments like yours don't seem to dispel the belief that those offensive jokes are wrong at a fundamentally moral level. That's the crux of my problem here. It generally feels impossible to convince someone of this sort of thing if they see themselves as a victim, or as someone trying to protect someone who they see as a victim.
Something my friends and I have observed is that people (like us) who were bullied growing up tend to have a very high tolerance for offensive jokes. Maybe this correlation is meaningless, but it seems like anecdotes like this reflect reality to some extent. If your hands haven't faced much wear and tear over time, they're probably gonna be soft. Why should it be any different with egos (or whatever you want to call it)?
You're right, it seems to be impossible to get this across to people who don't have the same intuitive understanding of comedy. For one thing, most people simply don't respect comedy...they think of it is as, basically, a joke. Not something important or respectable or difficult or weighty. Whereas I consider comedy to be probably the most important art form and place a lot of value on it....to me it is a realm of the mind that allows all kinds of possibilities that are almost divine in nature, and the best comedians are also good philosophers. I don't expect to convince many people of that, but that's my view.
People are very invested in the concept of punching up or down, when that entire idea is totally illegitimate to a comic. There is no such thing as a topic that can't be joked about...rape, murder, child molestation, nothing. And I think to a lot of people, that just means comedians are amoral jerks. But that's not it. There's an actual moral code and set of values there. Comedy forges bonds and turns dark to light and is the only tool I'm aware of that can suck away power without physical force or violence. Any topic is open for playing with because all humans are ultimately absurd and no human is sacred or powerful enough to take that away from someone else.
So any group saying "you're not allowed to joke about us" will strike a comedy lover as deeply immoral and imperious. Being self-serious enough to elevate oneself above comedy is a sin in and of itself. And any group with the power to prevent certain topics from discussion or joking reveals the lie that they're "down" on the totem pole. Progressive people have created an upside-down status hierarchy where particular groups and categories that they deem oppressed are given extra privileges -- specifically, the right to talk about certain things and say certain things that others can't. It used to be that only the kings and CEOs and patriarchs could speak freely, and everyone else better keep their mouth shut or risk getting their head chopped off.
Now we're in a weird world where the supposedly oppressed are the ones most free to speak, and everyone else has to shut up. And to a comedian, who doesn't respect authority or status (which none of them do), this is just nonsense because in making the claim that you're oppressed enough to not be talked about, if anyone listens to you, you're inherently proving that it isn't true. I mean, who were people not allowed to tell jokes about? Kim Jong Un, Saddam Hussein, Louis the VI, and....trans people? In the comic view of the world, everyone is equal, anyone with power should be taken down a peg or two, no one deserves to be sacred, and anyone with enough power to prevent people from telling jokes about them is precisely who needs to be made fun of.
And I take your point about learning to take the punches. Many cultures that have historically been crapped upon have robust traditions of comedy (Jewish people, black people). I guess some people view that as a result of emotional scarring or a defense mechanism, but I view it in a more positive light than that.
I'm not sure that your bullying correlation holds up with my experience - yes, it can lead to thick skin, but it can also lead to an emotional open wound that's extremely sensitive, and I think that most people who are truly aggrieved by jokes are ones that bear the wounds of past bullying.
Having said that, I think it's possible to make "laughing about" type jokes for any topic, and the potential problem is "laughing at" jokes are just cheap tribal signalling - and there my issue is more with how much humans love shitting on the outgroup, lazy comedians are just a symptom.
I think my main problem with the state of trans-sexual discourse is not so much that it doesn't tolerate jokes but that it doesn't even tolerate legitimate, polite and thoughtful philosophical disagreement.
I think "phobic" has gone into casual use to mean any sort of irrational aversion-- it's lost its etymology that relates it to fear.
Also, "Islamophobic" isn't especially about sexuality.
This is interesting. I feel like being provocative. What irrational aversion is not based in fear?
I am hard-pressed to come up with one. Others may be able to.
Beets. My irrational aversion to beets is not based in fear.
What is it based on? Or, why do you think you have an irrational aversion to beets?
I have what some might term an irrational aversion to zucchini. I’m not too crazy about beets either.
But when I try and follow my feelings around those things I get to some deep sense of mistrust. And I find that mistrust is very related to fear.
That, and I just don’t like the way they taste. But I don’t know if I would call that an irrational aversion.
Some fabrics I found distractingly itchy when trying to focus, so I developed an aversion to them. This was essentially rational behavior _at the time_.
I figured out later on that it wasn't the fabric that was the actual issue; I have a mild reaction to some detergents. (Not actually really a problem. Just enough to be distracting sometimes.)
However, I kept the lingering now-irrational aversion, even though the actual issue has nothing to do with fabrics. I am well aware it is irrational; it isn't particularly harmful, and I have more important irrationalities to focus on.
To the best of my knowledge none of this is based in fear.
I suspect that most irrational aversions (at least ones that aren't fear-based) fall into this same general bucket of things that were rational once upon a time given the information at the time, and are no longer rational given additional information but still linger.
This is interesting. Something caused you to itch, an unpleasant experience.
You located the cause of the itching erroneously and avoided that thing. Later you figured out that something else caused the itching but for some reason kept your aversion to the original- now innocent - thing.
What emotion do you attach to the idea of not wanting to itch?
I think what homophobia, transphobia, and Islamophobia all have in common is that they are all more recent concepts than racism and sexism.
> I think "phobic" has gone into casual use to mean any sort of irrational aversion
"Irrational aversion" seems way too fraught a definition. Many of our preferences are irrational in some objective sense.
An argument can be made that cis men have an irrational aversion to handling other penises. I mean really, what's the big deal right? But wouldn't your definition thus imply that all cis men are necessarily homophobic?
It would imply that any one who has an irrational aversion to touching another man’s penis is acting in fear. Not all cis men having an irrational aversion to that. Some are doctors some are healthcare aids, some just don’t care.
Seems like a dodge. I could easily tweak the dial on the knob to exclude those scenarios, like "all cis men have an irrational aversion to handling other penises in a sexual context".
It started off as political tactic re: gay rights; call opponents "homophobic" and talk about "homophobia" because they wanted to cement the idea in the minds of ordinary people that "no, there is no principled opposition or reasonable disagreement here, it's all irrational and slightly unhinged".
Naturally, since it worked for gay rights, the trans rights people took it over. "You don't have a neutral basis for saying what you say, you are just speaking out of irrational bigotry, and if you let yourself be persuaded by the Science, then of course you will change your mind!"
I say we go much further, and reserve the word 'homophobic' exclusively to its literal sense, to refer to people who are irrationally afraid of things that are the same :-P
Eh, descriptivism has pretty much won the day at this point.
'The root Latin suffix here means something subtly different from how it is commonly being used, this is wrong and must be stopped' just has not been a winning argument for a very long time, and pretending that people are wrong for using words in the way they are typically used is just begging to create *more* miscommunication, not less.
Yes. There's nothing "rational" in pretending that we don't know how language works or that words can only mean what they supposedly meant at some other point in history, rather than what we know damn well the user intends them to mean.
So you back the change to "per say" or even "percy" as I once saw it, from per se? Or "I could of" for "I could've"? Where people have only heard the word said, don't know how to spell it or how it is derived, and give it their best-guess go which is incorrect - for now, but if we follow usage, we'll all be "could of per say that rouge tracker".
It's not about 'backing' anything, any more than you 'back' fire not being caused by phlogiston. It's just about noticing the reality and accepting it as truth, like any empiricism.
Whether or not I "back" the change is irrelevant. If someone types "per say" or "could of" I know exactly what they mean, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Unless doing so allows me to make a dad joke.
I have no idea what "that rouge tracker" is supposed to indicate, but perhaps with context I would.
Language changes all the time, and that includes spelling, grammar, and meaning. It changes whether or not we "back" it.
I don't go around objecting to people telling me "goodbye" on the grounds that I'm an atheist and therefore I don't agree that God will be with me, because I understand that people no longer use that term in its original sense.
My willingness to accept that "-phobia" can denote a dislike, disregard, or hatred in some contexts, rather than an irrational fear, is based on the same logic, just applied on a shorter time span.
The idea that it's "rational" to spend hours arguing semantics even when we know exactly what the person using a term intends to communicate with that term is very prevalent around here and I find it utterly baffling. It seems to be based on some kind of idealist view that we gain knowledge through pure reason by just constructing an endless series of syllogisms in our heads from first principles and so it's of primary, utmost importance to get those first principles exactly right, and if we do, then we can call the output "knowledge."
But if I say "well technically 'transphobia' means an irrational fear of trans people, and Dave Chappelle isn't afraid of trans people at all, therefore he's not transphobic" I have contributed exactly zero knowledge to the discourse and settled the question being asked - whether Chappelle's attitude towards trans people is negative and potentially hurtful - in the minds of exactly zero people. So it what sense is it "rational" to insist on this type of rhetorical gambit? It strikes me as a huge waste of everyone's time.
I'm with you on this. And also want to add, that another term _was_ added. TERF. Which wasnt even a word we made, theyade it themselves. But now it has nearly the same vitriol attached often times.
I'm not attached to using -phobe either. But it's just the word that's in common usage. If I were to say Dave Chappelle is antitrans instead I think that's be incorrect. He's not against trans people, he just finds us kinda gross and confusing. And if I made up a new term, I'd have to explain what I mean every time. So transphobe for the moment is what we've got, but when there's something new I'll use that instead 🤷♀️
I would normally agree with this principle, however, I think this is one area where in fact there is NOT understanding or agreement on the way these words "are typically used" or what any given user "intends them to mean".
Words and concepts surrounding trans discourse are entirely new to most of the public and were rolled out recently with little (or in some cases no) explanation, and even when there is explanation, some people don't understand it or if they do understand it, some of them don't accept or agree with the usage, so there really is not a common understanding of what is meant by a lot of those words. I'm fairly certain if you were to survey, say (1) progressive leaning cis Boomers, (2) conservative cis Boomers, (2) trans people over 50, (3) trans people under 25, (4) progressive cis Zoomers, (5) Gen X, or any other number of demographic groups, and asked them for a definition of the following terms, you would get completely different answers, many of which would be contradictory and unreconcilable, and in some cases (like with "cis") most people are likely to have never heard of them at all: sex, gender, gender identity, man/woman, transwoman/transman, trans, non-binary, gender fluid, cis, transphobic.
And what is understood to be the common or intended meaning of any of those words among the educated, urban, younger demographics is probably entirely different for others, and I think there's profound confusion when talking about these topics. Read any comments on, say, NYT trans-related articles and it becomes clear that even among educated progressive NYT readers who consider themselves trans-supporters, they have all kinds of misconceptions such as that transwomen can't be sexually attracted to women, or have male genitals, or that sexual orientation and gender orientation are not the same thing, or that the meaning of cis is unrelated to sexual orientation, such that it's accurate to use the term "cis gay man".
Even in Chappelle's own special, he obviously mixes up gender and sex at least once and says "gender" when what he means is "sex", but in other instances says gender to mean gender. It's not at all clear to me that people understand each other on these topics (and sometimes very obvious they don't). So while perhaps on ACX we can assume everyone shares a common understanding, that's an extremely narrow slice and when people are talking about convincing or talking to third parties, who knows what they may understand or how to convince them of anything.
I was rereading a part of Gender Trouble the other day and it struck me immediately how much the language has changed even since I first read that section back in 2006. So yes, of course, in cases when a word is not well-understood, we have to acknowledge that and address it.
But in this specific scenario, that's not what's going on.
One thing about natural language communication is that different words and contexts reinforce each other.
If someone says "I don't think Dave is transphobic because he talks a lot about a trans friend who he liked, and also he says he supports trans people's right to use the bathroom of their choice" then we know what they mean by "transphobic": a transphobic person is someone who doesn't like trans people and/or opposes trans rights.
If someone else says "I think Dave is transphobic because he misgendered his dead trans friend and says he's 'team TERF'" then we also know what this person means by "transphobic": someone who misgenders/disrespects trans people and aligns themselves with anti-trans movements.
If these two people have a debate about whether Dave is transphobic, they're not really debating the meaning of the word "transphobic". They're debating whether Dave is a good person who we should affiliate with, or a bad person who we should distance ourselves from, based on his actions and attitudes towards and about trans people. They're debating which evidence deserves more weight, which actions have which consequences and how meaningful those consequences are, etc. etc. etc. At no point is anyone confused over what "transphobic" means - in this context, it's a stand-in for this debate over Dave's moral standing in the community.
We know that natural language operates on the pragmatic level as a stand-in for these types of ideas and questions, both based on empirical anthropological and linguistic study of pragmatics, and on the theory that human language evolved precisely to navigate these exact types of social relations involving someone's status in a community and the rightness or wrongness of an action. We know instinctively what it means, and what's at stake, when people debate whether or not to apply an epithet like "transphobic" to a person. Trying to devolve it into an argument over semantics is, therefore, rightly seen as derailing - as an attempt to evade, rather than clarify, the object question.
There are people in these threads who are using "transphobic" to describe Dave in ways other than you are using here. They are not disowning him or saying that they think they should distance themselves from him. They are agreeing with the term, but not your meaning behind it. That sounds pretty distinctly like the term is not communicating well.
Again, I take your point as a general rule, and certainly do not like when I think someone is being pedantic about semantics.
Though I'm a lawyer (sorry), and our first rule of ANY argument is that you have to agree on your defined terms, or no argument can be had. So this one is hard for me. I can't understand how anyone could ever get to the point of determining whether someone or something is bad if the people in the argument don't even remotely agree on the basic terms being debated OR the concepts that underlie them.
And I maintain that the "trans issue" is really very different from virtually any other culture war type issue involving the struggle to advance the status or rights of a certain group, because it directly involves completely changing people's understandings of certain foundational words, in a way that is just totally different than any other struggle I can think of. So much of the trans argument is *directly* about words and language (and the concepts that underlie them), not just as a secondary or rhetorical matter, but as the actual meat of the argument.
I suppose it's possible to not define terms, and have a bunch of people who completely disagree on the definitions of "trans" and "gender" and "man/woman" and "transphobic" just post memes at each other of rolling-eyed gifs that convey their mutual dislike and "you're a bad person" opinion. And arguably that better reflects natural communication. But I can't see that as a good thing.
BTW, I read your article and thought it was quite good and a nice close read. Though I found your interpretation of the Space Jews joke interesting, because it didn't even cross my mind that the joke was intended to be about Israel or Zionism, I interpreted that joke very differently.
Boy, do I agree with this. Language is a constant negotiation and sometimes it becomes a really difficult one
> Eh, descriptivism has pretty much won the day at this point.
Except, apparently, when it comes to pronouns, because a million linguistic prescriptivists seem to come out of the woodwork to tell me I'm wrong every time I call a trans-woman "he".
That's not prescriptivism. That's people disagreeing with the idea behind your word choice, not the usage of the word itself.
They're not saying you're mistaken about the meaning of "he" - they're saying you're mistaken in your belief that trans women are ontologically masculine-gendered, and probably also saying that you are rude for promoting that belief, knowing that it is offensive to the people in question.
Possible Melvin is not using the word 'he' to refer to ontologically masculine-gendered people, but to refer to *biologically male* people (that is to say, Melvin uses the term to refer *both* to biologically male people who believe that they are men, *and* biologically male people who believe that they are women).
...Or, more likely, to refer to people who *appear to Melvin* to be biologically male - a sufficiently convincing trans woman would presumably elicit a 'she', and a sufficiently convincing trans man would elicit a 'he'...
That use of the word is less accommodating of the wishes of transgender people than the alternative of using it to refer to people who are ontologically masculine-gendered, but I'd bet it's still a very common usage of the term - certainly common enough to be recognised and understood by people who take a descriptive approach to linguistics.
I don't think anyone is confused about Melvin's intentions or about how those intentions are received by people who believe in trans rights.
Descriptivism is not "you can call anything anything you want" it's "the purpose of language is communication- if everyone knows what you're talking about, your usage is correct in the only way that matters."
If you see some early transitioner and make an honest mistake and say He, I hope people do the proper thing and politely and kindly remind you.
If you insist on calling any trans woman he, then not only are you being an asshole, but you're also being non-descriptive. A huge proportion of trans women (myself for example) do not get mistaken for men in public. If you call us he, people _will_ be confused.
Latin? Probably someone who thinks "phobos" is Latin has a lot of misconceptions about how English has grown and changed so far and the social processes that have affected this.
non sequitur is Latin though, right?
>So my question is: How would you go about convincing someone that a cis person who makes jokes about trans people isn't necessarily transphobic/bigoted etc?
I mean, to start, you'd probably have to get them to accept your base moral framework and reject their own, which is a big ask.
My observations of this type of debate - who or what is or isn't racist, transphobic, etc. - has been that the right generally sees it as a virtue ethics question, where someone is only racist/transphobic/etc if they hold specific beliefs and intentions in their heart, while the left is generally more consequentialist, defining someone as racist/transphobic if their actions lead to greater inequalities or greater oppression/difficulty/suffering for minorities/trans people/etc.
A virtue ethicist and a consequentialist can't really have meaningful moral discussions with each other until they acknowledge this difference and carefully frame their arguments in those terms, because otherwise they're using the same words to mean entirely different things, and will just talk past each other forever. That's probably a lot of what you've seen and been frustrated by.
So yeah, to convince them he's not transphobic, I think you'll first have to convince them to stop being consequentialist on this subject, which... good luck.
Of course, even if you convince them of that, you'll still have a ton of convincing to do - I think it's pretty clear he harbors enough resentment and contempt and disregard in his heart that I'd still call him transphobic on virtue ethics grounds, but that would at least be an evidence based argument we could have - but you can't even start the conversation until you agree on the definitions of terms.
>My observations of this type of debate - who or what is or isn't racist, transphobic, etc. - has been that the right generally sees it as a virtue ethics question, where someone is only racist/transphobic/etc if they hold specific beliefs and intentions in their heart, while the left is generally more consequentialist, defining someone as racist/transphobic if their actions lead to greater inequalities or greater oppression/difficulty/suffering for minorities/trans people/etc.
Yes, this is precisely what's going on! Usually in discussing this with people who disagree with me, we get to this point where we mutually understand that one side believes that the deciding factor is intention and the other thinks it's the outcome, and that's where we get stuck. Usually we don't bother with the terminology of virtue ethics vs consequentialism, but the outcome pretty much the same.
Since you seem to have a perfect handle on the disagreement, I would love to hear your best argument(s) for and/or against consequentialism in this instance. I'll give arguing my position a shot here, though the entire reason for the original post is that I don't feel my argument is as convincing as it should be. This is an argument against consequentialism in this case, but not really an argument for virtue ethics. For what it's worth, I consider myself rule utilitarian.
I am almost certain that there exists some fact, which if a prominent public figure were to articulate, the direct net impact would be that people behave worse towards one another than if the figure had refrained from stating the fact, or had made the opposite claim. Should stating that fact be immoral? My intuition is that saying a fact can be an incredibly dumb thing to do in certain situations (eg, "Sorry ma'am your recently deceased child isn't in heaven because heaven doesn't exist"), but that saying so is not immoral. There is another layer here though which blurs the line, because to some extent, the speaker's knowledge of the outcome matters (eg, outing a gay person in Saudi Arabia). I would call that immoral in some ways, although the real crime lies with the people who directly harm the gay person, and that makes me really unsure as to whether or not stating a fact of that nature is immoral, or simply really, really stupid.
I guess the nice thing about conseqeuentialism is that you don't have to quibble about the differences between evil, immoral, bad, stupid, wrong, bigoted, etc. when making decisions about what to do.
If it has bad outcomes, you shouldn't do it.
You can fill in whatever post-hoc adjective you want to that - don't do it because it's evil, don't do it because it's stupid, whatever - but consequentialism is blind to all those distinctions. 'don't do it because the consequences are bad' is all it has to say on the matter.
If you convinced me that Dave Chapelle's act was merely stupid to do instead of immoral to do, without changing the consequences, that wouldn't make me more in favor of him doing it. It might b an important distinction for other reasons - do I want to be his friend, how best to convince him not to do it again, etc. - but ti doesn't change the equation regrading the show itself.
In cases like this, I think it's dangerous to have a situation where the same action with the same consequences either should or should not be done based on whether you can argue yourself into believing that the motivations behind it were good/bad. In terms of psychology and motivations and other social things that are not directly empirically measurable, you can always argue yourself into believing anything if you try hard enough, meaning you can always excuse or encourage causing harm and having worse outcomes with the right argument.
So I'm pretty firmly behind using consequentialist definitions here. We might have some *other* dialogue about what he believes in his heart, but I think terms like 'transphobic' and other morally-charged signifiers should be use consequentially to keep the moral discussion socially productive.
>I guess the nice thing about consequentialism is that you don't have to quibble about the differences between evil, immoral, bad, stupid, wrong, bigoted, etc. when making decisions about what to do.
If it has bad outcomes, you shouldn't do it.
Yeah, that is pretty nice. The awful thing about consequentialism though is that nobody is perfect at predicting the future. In really simple and direct circumstances (eg, 'should I tell this nazi that there's a jew hiding in my basement?'), I'm cool with consequentialism. But for things like public figures making jokes and wondering what the net impact will be on society and to what extent can their words directly cause people to do bad/good things rather than being completely misinterpreted/misunderstood and then doing good/bad things, I don't believe anyone is equipped to do the math. That's why calls for data on the results of people's jokes strike me as ridiculous. 1, it would be pretty much impossible to get that data, and 2, we can't assume that the outcome would be the same for a similar, but different statement. So that approach is so inapplicable so as to make consequentialism useless here, and having a simple and consistent rule like "it's okay to joke about whatever you want" is so appealing to me.
I don't deny that hueristics can bee a useful part of consequentialist praxis, but I just think you're miles away from being correct about how easy or hard it is to know the effect of something like this.
We've got trans people in this thread here saying that they get regular abuse from definite transphobes based in the same types of logic an rhetoric that Dave uses in his special; we've got states around the nation and countries around the world actively passing laws to restrict trans people's rights and access to civil life and medical care, an the people proposing them use the same talking points Dave does in his show.
I don't think it's hard to understand that every culture has it's own milieu of thought and opinion and norms about various topics, and that everything in the culture ads to that milieu in inter-connected and mutually causal ways. I don't think it's weird to believe that the people who are affected daily by hateful rhetoric and dehumanizing thought on a topic can recognize that rhetoric and those thoughts when they see them, and testify accurately about the effect they have on their lives.
'you can joke about whatever you want' might be a good hueristic, IF you are aware that when someone says something to an audience and the audience laughs, 'telling a joke' is just one of the many things that person on stage is doing with their speech act. They may also be building a personal brand, fulfilling a contract, setting up a running gag, insulting someone they don't like, trying to convince the audience to believe something or stop believing something, or - and this is the big one - pushing an ideology.
We can recognize when an ideology is being pushed on us, and whether the speech act that does so takes the form of 'a joke' or 'a screed' or 'a rational argument' has little to do with its effect on people and the world. Pretending that some speech acts can't affect the world in negative ways because they are in the category of 'jokes' is just miles away from a good understanding of how human communication works, and I don't think it takes any complicated calculation to confirm that.
Like, was George Carlin 100% neutral on the topic of whether or not God exists, had no intention to influence his audience one way or another on the topic, would b totally surprised to learn some people thought he cared about that issue, because everything he said on the topic took place during a standup special and was therefore 'a joke'? No, of course not, come on.
I think you're putting words in my mouth. I never said jokes can't lead to negative outcomes in the world. Of course they can. I never said comedians are only ever joking and not making claims or pushing an agenda. Of course they do.
The question is, is it wrong to say a given joke. You are quick to recognize some ways in which jokes can have a negative impact and you are certainly correct that they do have those negative impacts *to some extent*, however you failed to acknowledge positive impacts. 1. Jokes make people laugh, and laughter is good, and it's impossible to correctly weight just how good that laughter does the world. 2. There are people who enjoy being joked about. At least one anecdote of somebody was brought up in this thread alone, and I've found 4 or 5 prominent trans people on youtube who have commented on Chappelle's special saying that they thought some of the trans jokes were really funny and that it was a good thing that Chappelle told those jokes. And I'm positive Dave has hundreds, if not thousands of trans fans who stand by his latest special. 3. As another commenter pointed out, Dave talking about Daphne and echoing her words, "I don’t need you to understand me. I just need you to believe that I’m having a human experience," will probably do a lot to humanize trans people and create more sympathy for them among cis people.
If you only look at the bad, consequentialism is easy, but if you actually attempt to do the math, it becomes impossible nearly instantly. For consequentialism to work in practice, you have to have at least good estimates for the value of good and the value of bad that directly comes out of the situation. For consequentialism to work in principle, you have to have perfect estimates for the value of good and the value of bad that ultimately comes out of the situation, ie, you have to be omniscient. Simply noting that bad things happen is entirely insufficient, you have to be able to weight them too, and you have to repeat the whole process for the good stuff too.
This is interesting, because I think you make a very strong case for consequentialism and most of your points are correct.
Except this one, which I think is just SO wrong: " I think terms like 'transphobic' and other morally-charged signifiers should be use consequentially to keep the moral discussion socially productive." I would say that it's the insistence on using terms that previously held morally-charged, intention-based meanings, and applying consequentialist understandings to them (rather than coming up with a NEW term that conveys the consequentialist understanding) is exactly what fuels a majority of the culture wars and is socially unproductive.
People get so upset about, for instance, racial discourse today because "racist" is thrown around and applied to people who have always understood it to mean "morally bad person with hatred and animus in their heart" when the usage today is "person engaging in conduct that contributes to disparate outcomes regardless of intent or animus", and that makes them offended and defensive. If instead of co-opting an existing word and changing the definition, a new term was used, I think conversations would be massively more productive.
Though I imagine that this technique is somewhat purposeful, in that the new usage is intended to import the emotional reaction and righteousness that the old usage prompted, while applying it to far broader scenarios that might not result in the same sense of moral outrage if a different/new term was used. I can see the point in that, but it still seems unproductive.
I don't think I agree with this framing. When my friends on the left say that Chappelle is transphobic, they don't mean "Chappelle did a thing that was harmful on balance". They mean "Chappelle is a bad person who thinks bad thoughts."
I don't think you can handwave away the judgmental way that people are talking about Chappelle by saying that they are only judging or reacting to his actions. "Dave Chappelle is a transphobic asshole" is nothing like "Dave Chappelle did something morally wrong".
It may be true that people are looking at the balance of Chappelle's actions - at what he said in The Closer, in Sticks and Stones, in other specials and at other times - and coming to the conclusion that all of these things add up to "transphobic asshole", and I'm not even going to try to debate that. But to say that isn't an indictment of his character - the basis of virtue ethics - is to play some kind of weird rhetorical game.
I agree that in this debate the left will tend to cite consequences and the right will tend to cite intentions, but I do not agree that these things actually form the basis of their judgments. I would argue rather that these are simply post-hoc justifications for moral judgments made on the basis of moral intuition and group affiliation. The left wants people to take the claim seriously so they point to the harmful real-world consequences and ground their arguments in empiricism. The right wants people to excuse Chappelle so they center an unfalsifiable claim about what's in someone's heart. Flip the script and make it about bathroom access and suddenly the right is very consequentialist, talking about predators in bathrooms raping kids, the destruction of families, ROGD, and all sorts of other apocalyptic "destruction of the West" nonsense which is nonetheless based on claims about consequences.
I think you also have to acknowledge that there is also a debate as to whether each particular joke or statement is or isn't transphobic, and again these debates do not really fall cleanly on consequentialist/virtue ethical lines. For instance, opinions seem to be divided on whether "impossible pussy" was transphobic. Consensus here seems to be that it wasn't, but on twitter it's "he compared our genitals to artificial beef, that's as transphobic and offensive as it gets" all day long. I would struggle to believe any claim about the consequences of the "impossible pussy" joke *other* than that some trans people were offended - because I have seen such offense, and understand why that joke would be offensive - so the question then becomes whether offense counts as a consequence that's bad enough to warrant calling someone transphobic - and I don't think consequentialist ethics has a convincing answer for that. Do we want to accept a moral system in which anything that offends anyone is ethically wrong? I don't. Sometimes there are things which are offensive which are nonetheless important to say. "If it has bad outcomes, you shouldn't do it" simply doesn't cover this scenario as neatly as you are representing here.
And that brings me to the classical liberal/libertarian consequentialist argument which is something like "if we give comedians too much pushback on joking about sensitive topics, the consequence will be a chilling effect which will interfere with the right of comedians to do satire and perform an important function as social critics". If we "cancel" Chappelle then it will also contribute to an environment where non-comedians feel afraid to state their opinions. Where academics (like Kathleen Stock) get pushed out of jobs for wrongthink. Where writers (like JK Rowling) get death threats just for expressing an opinion. The whole opposition to "cancel culture" is argued in explicitly consequentialist terms. And since you've already agreed that everything in a particular social milieu adds to that milieu in mutually-causal ways, I think you can see how that could lead to deeper forms of repression of speech - and other liberties - by the radical woke left. In fact, Chappelle himself in The Closer has pointed out that this tendency has already hurt people like Da Baby and Kevin Hart who don't even have Rowling's white privilege to fall back on. And - wait for it - if the consequence of cancel culture ideology is that black stars are hurt disproportionately by cancelation as opposed to white stars, then by consequentialist definition the people who criticized Da Baby, Hart, and Chappelle are therefore racist - hence Chappelle's exhortation to "stop punching down at my people".
I do not endorse (or repudiate) any of the arguments here - my point is only that consequentialist arguments are used by both sides, to varying effect, and that sticking to a consequentialist frame does not alleviate the problem when both sides can simply point to consequences that disadvantage their side as evidence of moral shortcomings on the other side. And as you said, "In terms of psychology and motivations and other social things that are not directly empirically measurable, you can always argue yourself into believing anything if you try hard enough". Consequentialism offers virtually infinite degrees of freedom for people to find consequences, good or bad, which suit the narrative they've chosen to adopt.
From my point of view, those jokes add up to, "I think you're ridiculous, and if you don't accept being told you're ridiculous, you'll be socially punished because I enjoy telling you you're ridiculous".
I remember the sixties, when it went without saying that women were ridiculous. And now I see a social shift where (at least in some large circles) it goes without saying that men are evil. I'm opposed to that, too.
Quite apart from the opinions in those circles, anyone who would try to publicly suggest that women are ridiculous these days would face plenty of social punshment himself in the much larger circles, and the trans stuff is certainly headed in this direction. It seems obvious to me that acceptable targets for jokes in any culture could be either those of suffuciently low status, because there's no cost for offending them, or sufficiently high one (but not too high), because they aren't in apparent danger of losing it. Culture wars, in the main, are wars for the redistribution of status, which is zero sum, or close enough.
This. Thank you. Really great way of putting it.
Comedy is one of the mechanisms of culture enforcement.
Doesn't match my memory. Who was more ridiculous on "Bewitched," Darren or Samantha? You could say Tony and Jeannnie split it 50/50 on "I Dream of Jeannie," maybe. Further back, I don't remember June being any more ridiculous than Ward on "Leave it to Beaver".
Maybe people just didn't take their identities so seriously then. Practically everybody was a vet and that didn't seem to stop them laughing at Gomer Pyle or the bulk of McHale's Navy.
>More broadly, how would you go about convincing someone that they should not be offended by jokes?
I don't think you can or should try to do this. Surely offense is a matter of personal taste. "That's offensive to me" is a statement of fact, not an invitation to debate.
There seems to be a misunderstanding. Stand up comedy is an art form. Other art forms you may be familiar with include literature, music, painting, poetry, film, etc. If an author writes a book that includes someone innocent getting murdered, would we say that the author supports the murder of innocent people? If a musician sings a song about a parent who beats their small child, would we say the musician supports beating children? If a writer writes a script about a racist man that degrades a black person, would we say that the writer is a racist? Hopefully the answers to these questions are not controversial. Of course not, it's an art form. A comedian that says a joke about a trans person is not "transphobic" anymore that the author or musician. It's art. Could someone that tells a "racist" joke happen to also be racist themselves? Of course. But the fact that they told the "racist" joke gives you absolutely no information either way on that question.
Murder mysteries aren't usually set up to get you to like the murderer, though sometimes the person who gets killed is extremely annoying.
Standup comedy is an art form, but it isn't an *abstract* art form.
Is anybody up to date with the most promising trends in "psychosomatic health"? I am especially curious about the affordable biofeedback devices, novel supplements, and therapeutic modalities that substantially help people suffering from various bodily discomforts, fatigue, and somatic complaints that seem related to a struggling with a combination of depression, anxiety, sleep problems, etc. I have met many such "broadly psychosomatically dysregulated" people in the last years, and they don't seem to benefit much from the mainstream advice (first line treatments, healthy lifestyle, etc).
Presuming that their issues are psychosomatic seems like it's rather rude - just because mainstream advice isn't that useful doesn't mean their issues aren't the result of physical causes. My first guess for arbitrary patients (since you haven't exactly been specific here) would be issues with gut microbiome, that would probably necessitate a combination of short term treatment and long term diet changes. Next option is sleep apnoea, which is usually relatively obvious if your looking for it but is nevertheless massively undiagnosed, and will lead to chronic fatigue and mood issues, along with slowly accumulating permanent damage if it goes untreated for many years.
Howdy. I'm getting an early start on my New Year's resolutions, namely weight loss! [Alternatively --- and sadly more accurately --- I'm getting like a 2 decades' late start at controlling my morbid obesity, with some timely extra motivation coming from an upset stomach caused by pre-Halloween candy binging. 🙄]
Anyway, my question regarding weight loss: **Does anybody have a deeply informed opinion they want to share --- or failing that, a mildly informed opinion or personal anecdote they want to share 😉--- with the _commercially available gut microbiome tests_?**
Most pertinently: do they really produce anything *both* actionable and novel? Or do they, in the end, seem to give advice that... oh I don't know... ends up just being Michael Pollan's motto: "Eat [minimally processed] food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Quick searching of this substack as well as its subreddit and bulletin board as well as LessWrong.com didn't bring up any posts directly talking about the commercially available options (as opposed to aspects of gut microbiome science generally).
The most credible-seeming source of information I found through quick Googling and such was this: Episode 51 of the podcast "The Quantified Body": https://thequantifiedbody.net/microbiome-labs-richard-sprague/ . Alas, I'm pretty sure dates from 2018. Also, I'm a little leery of taking it as truly indicative of the expert consensus. I mean don't get me wrong: the interviewer and interviewees involved seem proper, postgraduate-degree scientific folks IMHO, and certainly the website design gives off IMHO awesome vibes of the sort "Behold my laudably well-curated info dumps that will satisfy even the most insatsiably curious of you, my gentle readers and fellow infovores!" (e.g., full transcripts and annotated bibliographies and such). So, that's a definite plus IMHO. On the other hand, there's the ye olde problem that the most voluminous content on the internet on on any given non-mainstream issue, even if it's written with rational-ish vibes, is probably written by people wayyyyyyyy too enthusiastic about the given non-mainstream issue to use it a simple proxy for "yup, this truly the expert consensus".
In case you want more specifics of what I'm imagining (i.e., feel free to skip):
Well, I'm under the impression many commercial gut microbiome test companies advertise with the notion that there's actually a substantial-and-personally-very-much-worth-knowing heterogeneity across the human population to how much various foods spike one's blood glucose, putting forth hypothetical scenarios where some invidividual has gut microbiota that aren't adapted (alternatively, are hyper-adapted) to extracting sugar in the presence of dairy fats so that such a person can indulge in full fat ice cream with a lot less of a blood glucose spike than the average person (alternatively, should avoid full fat ice cream as if it were utter poison)?
Is the overall notion that such heterogeneity exists right?
Even if it exists, is it really a key modifier of one's weight loss strategy for any significant portion of the population?
And even if that, can you trust these microbiome tests' generally qualitative recommendations in and of themselves, or do you have to go full biohacker and, say, wear a continuous glucose monitor for awhile to quantitatively calibrate these microbiome tests' generally qualitative recommendations?
Thanks for your time. 😊
I don’t have anything helpful to say about microbiomes, unfortunately, but I’ve been working hard at losing weight for the last two years and have found one truism: you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet. You probably can’t microbiome your way out of it either.
I work out like a madman, and made substantial healthy changes to my diet, and not too much happened on the weight end after some initial good results (though I’m in great shape from working out and eating way healthier). I lost about 15 pounds and then it just stalled. The remaining weight didn’t start coming off, unfortunately, until I just forced myself to eat much less. WHAT I was eating didn’t seem to matter that much. I just needed to eat less food.
The upshot (for me, might be different for you) is that if I’m going lose weight, I’m going to be hungry, and there doesn’t seem to be any way around that.
On the good news side: this probably doesn’t apply at the beginning. I got myself down from 210 to 195 just through a healthier diet and more exercise. Everything past that, though, has been a huge struggle.
Eat meat. Only meat. Protein and fat. No carbs.
That works really well for me. It’s just so temporary though - i find it impossible to maintain. I’m trying for something more permanent (which definitely involves way fewer carbs)
I tried the all meat diet. I did not lose much weight, but my sleep and complexion dramatically improved. If the all-meat diet doesn't give you the results you want, then you should try vegan low-fat/oil, which gives similar results by going the opposite way.
As with all diets, the only way to know if it works is to try it for yourself.
*maybe. I know it works for some, but:
That super didn't work for me. My gains stopped and I felt like shit until I went back to just eating what I was hungry for, but less.
Yep. At the end of the day you have to reduce calories. Sounds simple, but, of course, psychologically its SUPER hard.
I agree with this, I had a similar experience. It's really frustrating! I'm exercising way more than I ever did before, and I'm pretty sure it's having almost completely 0 effect! Why do people push cardio as the solution if it seems like it does nothing? For context, I've been doing 25 minutes of moderate to intense cardio on an exercise bike 5 times per week, which I think is quite a bit more than the recommended amount. Is it possible that I've neglected my body for so long, that my metabolism is shot, and there's no amount of exercise that'll really work to burn off weight? The only thing that's ever worked for me is eating way less, and like you, I basically have to be hungry much of the time in order to maintain.
I've lost weight with cardio exercise, but at a significantly higher level than what you're doing. I would run 6-8 miles over hills at about 10 min/mile, or swim about 3500 yards, 2/3 freestyle, 1/3 butterfly, every day. So heart rate at about 135-145 for about 75 minutes a day, with multiple 2-5 min intervals up around 150-155. That works. Takes up a lot of time, though.
Well, for the duration of my 25 min workouts, I'm usually hitting and staying at a heart rate of 150 to 160 for the entire time.
Sure. But try it 3 times as long 7 days a week. My son played competitive water polo in high-school, and that was like 3 hours of hard swimming 5 days a week. He ate like a starved wolf and still lost weight at the start of the season.
In short, it's certainly not impossible to lose weight by sheer aerobic exercise. It's just way harder than most people think, and it takes a much larger investment in time than most people want to put in who aren't already competitve athletes.
I guess I'm generally feeling like I don't want to spend all of my time exercising. I really really hate doing it. Everyone always says exercise makes them feel good, their body starts to crave it. I don't believe it for a minute, and I've never felt that way no matter how much I've done it. It's a considerable struggle to do what I'm doing now, which is way more than what I've ever really done before. I don't see why the amount of exercise you do shouldn't scale linearly - do I have to spend 75 minutes exercising per day to get any benefit out of it? 25 minutes a day is far from nothing, so I'd think I'd at least see SOME benefit!
Ditto me with the "hate exercise, it never feels good, I never get this high everyone talks about".
No I don't think it scales linearly, and I'm not sure why it should. For one thing, hard sustained exercise does considerable damage and that must be repaired, which takes considerable energy (and raw material). General adaptation takes energy and materials, too. Metabolism also becomes significantly less efficient when power output near one's capacity must be generated.
I would hate exercise, too, if I did it in the form of riding a stationary bike indoors. Maybe you should try some other forms? I quite like swimming in an outdoor pool. Doing 100m butterfly sprints burns a fantastic amount of energy but (when you're in the groove) feels great, because you feel (and actually look) like some kind of awesome sea creature, a killer whale surfing Waikiki rollers or something. I also enjoy trail running, and am fortunate enough to have some fairly hilly and wild terrain right near my house. Even getting on a real bike outside might be an improvement -- the wind in your face, bombing down a curvy hill leaning waaay over, feeling the triumph of cresting some tough hill and taking a welcome swig from the water bottle. There are often riding clubs that can make it a blast socially, too.
Well, it sounds like you don't think I've been working at this for a while. Rest assured I've been trying to find an exercise that works for me for upwards of 15 years. This is the ONLY thing that I've EVER been able to keep up, both in terms of sustained activity for more than just a few minutes, and in terms of doing it almost every day. Running outside makes my muscles scream and I can never do more than 5 minutes of it before deciding I just can't do it. I tried that for a long while. Biking outside is fine, but it's inconsistent and I can't tell how much effort in putting in, and also it's inconsistent in terms of the fact that I'm at the mercy of the weather. Believe me, if you hate exercise this much, you'll look for any excuse to not do it. That's why indoor biking is the only thing that works for me. It's controllable and predictable and does not hurt quite as much as other things so I can't excuse myself from it, which, believe me, I would find any reason to if I could, when I'm in the moment and in agony, or dreading going back to it fearing the agony. Not to mention I watch media that I would otherwise be watching anyways, so I feel like it's less of a waste of time then being outdoors, where I would simply be bored.
I do feel like what I'm doing is near my capacity, I don't think I could do any more and keep it up. And I do think I'm doing hard sustained exercise, I don't see what basis you have to say that I'm not. My heart rate goes into intense exercise territory and starts that way for 25 minutes. How is that not hard sustained exercise?
Exercise (unless you are doing a massive amount of it) won't make you lose weight, but it will make you fitter: helps tone up what muscle you do have, you can walk distances without getting breathless, etc.
That's why diet and exercise go together: eat less (often drastically less) so your body just doesn't have the same calories and should start burning fat; exercise for your heart and lungs and muscle tone.
I tried Thryve’s gut microbiome test and have a couple of personal anecdotes. First, they’re mostly trying to get you to subscribe to their probiotics after you take the test. Second, the recommendations were so granular that I concluded that they’re BS. It was stuff like don’t eat spinach, eat kale, don’t eat red lentils, eat green lentils. The whole thing seemed quite overengineered.
If you’re primarily concerned with losing weight, I think tracking macronutrients on MyFitnessPal or similar tools is going to get you much further than microbiome analysis. IMO, the key is to build good habits and stick to them for the long term.
My comment does not answer your microbiome question, may not be what you want to hear, and may even be unhelpful, but I notice you have a very quantified outlook on this thing. Morbid obesity seems to have a significant psychological aspect as well, in particular wrt a history of trauma: (see e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16713630/).
If this is the case for you, then getting the perfect microbiome may be curing a symptom rather than a root problem. Leaving the root unresolved risks setting yourself up for relapse, and all the attendant pain, suffering, and disease that relapse entails. Therefore, it could be worthwhile to consider (if you haven't already) spending just as much or more energy addressing the psychological side of your problem as you are on the biological side.
Just my 2 cents.
Nothing on the microbiome, but as for losing weight:
Calories in, Calories out is not 100% of it, but it is a thing.
I help control my diet by mandating that I may NEVER buy sweet prepared food from the store. I can eat as many cookies as I like, as long as I bake them myself from scratch. It's way more sustainable for me that way.
Personally, I've gotten permanent results by building lots of muscle, then doing some amount of aerobic exercise every day and reducing calorie intake, while still maintaining muscle mass.
Also, being really strong is fucking GREAT. It is incredibly satisfying to be able to trivially left heavy things, or push a stuck car or whatever.
That said: Pay attention to your body and your joints! Pain in your muscle meat can be satisfying, pain in your joints and especially your back is NOT GOOD.
Nothing on the microbiome, but I can report on the two things that help me hold my weight down. Whether they would work for you I don't know.
1. Intermittent fasting. For other reasons I adopted a rule of no eating for sixteen hours between my last meal of the day and my first meal of the next day. I don't know if it works for the reason I adopted it, but means I can't nibble in the evening or morning, which makes controlling my weight easier.
2. Reward/punishment. I imposed a rule on myself — I am only allowed to eat ice cream if my morning weight is no more than 164 pounds, which is about what I think I should weigh. That brings my short-run current utility maximizer self in on the side my long run self supports.
I have also had success with intermittent fasting (also known by its less fashionable name, "skipping breakfast").
Losing weight inevitably leads some degree of hunger, but I find it's psychologically much easier to concentrate all your hunger into the morning hours rather than to remain low-key hungry all day.
Also skipping the late night snack.
Agreed on the snack. 16 hours fasting for me is 6-7pm to 10-11Am, preferably earlier. I like to get some food around mid morning. If I started a fast at 8pm it would be noon.
However I have often skipped breakfast in the past, that's not too hard. Not snacking between 6pm and 12pm was suprisingly hard, but I am good with it now.
The only thing that worked for me (until I fell off the wagon) was reducing my carbohydrate intake.
The usual advice: cut out all the junk, restrict or avoid starchy foods, plenty of vegetables (but again, avoid starchy ones like potatoes), cut out sugary foods, snacks, treats, drinks.
So, on the one hand, getting your microbiome in order is going to be hugely important -and if you're obese it's almost guaranteed to be out of sorts. One the other, it's mostly going to come down to "Avoid processed food, eat lots of vegetables, avoid excess carbs (aka any food you think of as "carbs", vegetables are fine if you're not aiming for ketosis)", probably combined with taking some standard probiotics. If you are American, my limited experience there as a tourist is that absolutely everything in stores has added sugar, so even things that should be healthy won't be if you don't make them yourself.
My experience with gut microbiome tests is due to chronic illness, so it'll differ from yours (I'm actually persistently underweight :( ); I'm also in Australia, so I probably can't recommend any specific brands. I will say that almost all the tests will need expert help to interpret the resulting reports, so if you don't have a doctor or naturopath or similar that you trust they'll be of limited use.
If the monetary cost isn't an issue, it's arguably worth doing anyway in case you have a specific overgrowth that needs treating, which would alleviate other symptoms you might have - eg. acne, acid reflux, gas. It'll also be an alternate metric to measure your progress, like how waist measurements are, since if you're also stepping up your exercise then your weight will hopefully be somewhat confounded by muscle growth.
=== Main Reply to All Who Replied ===
Thanks everyone for the replies. I should've clarified that while I'm 100% agreement with all those who mention mental health as a key --- if not THE KEY --- thing for overcoming morbid obesity, I'm interested in all this gut microbiome stuff since I worry mental health issues might be in some ouroboros-y, self-sustaining/exacerbating, vicious feedback loop with some yet-to-be-understood hormonal/neurological pathological "ratcheting" of my appetite and "metabolic set point". In this regard, I'm thinking of Scott's 2017 rundown of informed speculations of such things in regard to anorexia nervosa -- https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/26/anorexia-and-metabolic-set-point/
That's the main clarification I should've raised. I hesitate to make my secondary clarification since it may just sound like an aggrieved snort of "Hey, buddy! This ain't my first rodeo. It ain't even my second, third, fourth, or fifth!" I don't mean it that way. After all, I was the one who in quite potentially misleading fashion opened with self-deprecatory schtick, namely:
"Alternatively --- and sadly more accurately --- I'm getting like a 2 decades' late start at controlling my morbid obesity... "
So, attention conservation notice, folks... feel free to cut out here... but if you like reading personal tales of woe (perhaps leavened by some degree of mighty struggle against said woe) in your Substack comment threads that you pay for with your hard-earned $$$, well keep on reading! You're about to get your money's worth! 😄
==== Utterly Optional and, indeed, Kinda Self-Indulgent Secondary Reply to All Who Replied ===
"Controlling" was the operative word in my schtick "... I'm getting like a 2 decades' late start at controlling my morbid obesity..." For all that 2 decades or so, I've been mightly *struggling*. Indeed, every 3 +/- 1 years, I have had 6-9 month periods of significant "success" with everything from:
a) 12-step programs,
b) outpatient behavioral health clinic programs run by MDs that think 12-step programs are cults, [so given these first 2 items (a) & (b), I'm100% agreement with all those who mention mental health as a key --- if not THE KEY --- thing... of course mental health issues might be in some ouroboros-y viscious feedback loop with some weird, pathological biochemical "ratcheting" of my appetite and "metabolic set point"... I'm thinking of Scott's rundown of informed speculations of such things, especially in regard to anorexia back in 2017 -- https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/26/anorexia-and-metabolic-set-point/ --- indeed, this is why I'm most interested in whether commercially available gut microbiome assays give any useful information],
c) measuring everything I ingest or imbibe down to the gram or mL (even when I'm not eating healthily),
d) doing the complete opposite of that on psychiatric advice that that such measurement an is eating disorder unto itself,
e) going very low carb,
f) going very low fat,
g) going very high meat (though never full carnivore... which, sidenote, sounds utterly insane to me in the absence of, say, blood tests every 6 months to ensure you're not --- at least by the standards of traditional MDs --- eliciting truly pathological blood chemistry... don't get me wrong: please enlighten me with references, but I know of no pre-industrial societal groups that ever did a 100% meat diet... seems to me just like a massive biohack... perhaps a useful medium-term kick to ye olde system, but very, very biohacky).
But alas! All these things (a-g) [which, come to think of it, weren't mutually exclusive and probably should've been enumerated differently... oh well 🙄] ultimately led only to many, many "yo-yo's" in my weight. My compliance inevitably dropped off after 6-9 months of successful diet / "lifestyle change". My problem eating then returned, and thus then my weight returned with a vengence (i.e., built beyond my previous baseline, often by a 20-40 lb increment)
And, not to go all the way into territory occupied by Bob Dylan's "lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale", suffice it to say that I didn't indulge in all that yo-yo-ing because there were no stakes. To the contrary, I messed up a marriage to a truly great woman with all that yo-yo-ing. (I also messed up some nice jobs and job opportunities.. but that vocational stuff is a distant second to me messing up my True Looooooove with --- what's that antiquated Massachusetts divorce legal-speak that sorta amusingly-if-mordantly applies to me? --- ah yes "gross and confirmed habits of intoxication". BTW, "intoxication" here in my case was solely from food, and not booze or other drugs On that note, did you know that taking *reasonable* amounts of opium was NOT grounds for divorce in 19th Century Massachusetts? It was only taking so much opium you demonstrated "gross and confirmed habits of intoxication" that allowed you to cite your spouse's opium use as cause. Oh, how times change! Though one thing that doesn't change is my mental defense mechanisms inclining me to digress into overeducated, intellectual trivia in a vain attempt at humor when I start recollecting certain life f@$kups a little too keenly. 🤪 😭 🤔)
Oh right, I said this would be "leavened with mighty struggle against said woe". So here's the silver lining to the above succession of clouds. In my struggle with my weight, I've become what I dare say would be a Massachusetts-state-record-setting, 45-49 age group powerlifter in the 105kg (231.5lb) weight class (well, in a drug-tested federation like the USAPL, mind you!... I couldn't compete with the untrammeled PED crowd). It's just that I'm --- alas! --- weighed down by literally 90ish extra kg (200ish lbs!) of fat. (Yes, I'm 430ish lbs). Thus, I can't compete in the 105kg weight class, but would have to compete with the "super-heavyweights"... who, mordantly hilariously IMHO, are everyone >120kg (>264.6 lbs) which, for me, is a level of svelteness of which I presently can only dream. [On that note, 100% wholehearted agreement with all those who say you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet... even if you develop amounts of muscle mass that are substantially more than the average... and even if you supplement your powerlifting with a nontrivial amount of aerobic and anaerobic endurance stuff. Oy!]
Anyway, to anyone who read that wall of honestly-somewhat-aggrieved-but-trying-to-sound-cool-and-rational-and-informative text, thanks. Writing over-verbosely bere on Substack at a fine blog like Astral Codex Ten beats screaming into the void (i.e., almost the entire rest of the internet 😉).
Hey, thanks for sharing!
I noticed that you didn't mention weight loss surgery. It's *definitely* not for everyone, but it's certainly an excellent solution for some (including me. I lost 100 lbs from my high and have kept it off for 7 years).
For me, it was an ideal tool. I was morbidly obese simply because I really enjoyed food and I wanted to eat a lot of it. That was honestly it. I have no trauma. I wasn't depressed. I was in a good, contented mood most of the time.
But I just wanted to eat yummy stuff and it was really available, so that's what I did. I occasionally attempted diets with little success. Going months of eating less food or annoying food just made me hungry without seeing any satisfying results. And I wasn't motivated to diet and exercise even harder or longer because...eh...I can do that later!
But weight loss surgery is SURGERY. It physically changes the body's capacity for volume, and certain surgeries change the capacity to enjoy sugar/carbs.
My pre and post op diets (which were necessary to have a successful surgical outcome) were so restrictive I eventually lost all cravings for my formerly favorite stuff, and then having a smaller stomach capacity where eating a lot made me *physically* miserable meant I *couldn't* overeat the things I liked anymore. One post-surgery experience of eating too many steak nachos felt like I had an Alien chest-burster...in my stomach. It was so unpleasant that "one extra bite" (or five) never felt worth attempting again.
In addition to making eating too much and eating the wrong foods acutely uncomfortable, weight loss surgery has another psychological advantage: because the volume of food is so much smaller, and there's a lot of blood testing nutritional stats, there's a lot more motivation right *now* for eating maximally nutritious foods and saving junk food for "later." (The great trick of it is there often isn't a "later.")
That said.
Many people manage to thwart their weight loss surgeries by imbibing high-calorie liquid foods (sugar soda and milkshakes, etc), or they just push through the pain of force-feeding themselves until their stomachs stretch back out again. The tool of weight loss surgery isn't powerful enough to fix their particular psychological issues. You absolutely shouldn't consider weight loss surgery if you think you might be incapable of complying short term with a miserable pre and post surgical diet and long term with a diet that prioritizes protein and fat, then veggies and fiber, then healthy carbs, and little to no sugar.
But IMHO, it's an *excellent* option for someone like me, who can be compliant with dietary and volume restrictions only when there are immediate consequences and much higher stakes than "heart disease 35 years from now."
My general advice would still be aligned with my other post, but reading a bit more about your specific situation...
Have you ever tried a 24 hour fast? I'm not suggesting this as a fat loss tool, but a psychological one. The idea is that you get hungry for a while, then the hunger goes away, and you realize that being hungry isn't a life or death situation. It may be helpful for appetite suppression, which seems like what you need long term.
Also, great that you're strong! Means you have something to look forward to as the weight comes off! Hopefully you won't get too worried about dipping strength as the weight comes off, the caloric deficit means you won't have the energy and the fat gives you leverage.
Thanks for your reply. It sounds like you are in a lot of pain, and struggling mightily against it. Keep fighting. It helps me to remember that everything beautiful is inherently difficult.
I too have recently lost true love on account of prior psychological baggage and my own poor choices, so you have company. I'm still going through it, but here are some resources that have really helped me along the way:
1. I tried MDMA in a relatively therapeutic setting and it revealed and brought up a lot of stuff that I had been repressing for quite a long time. The memories and events of the experience were objectively horrendous but I consider it the most therapeutic experience of my life, hands down.
2. I read "The Body Keeps The Score." The thing that resonated with me most from the book was that sometimes traumatic memories can't be accessed by the left brain (i.e. rationally-verbally-analytically), and instead must be processed in the right brain (i.e. experientially-somatically-holistically) because traumatic events will overload the Broca's Area, the part of the brain connecting the two. This helped me see (a) that (like you) I was using intellectualization as a defense mechanism (abstraction is dissassociation), but more pressingly (b) that intellectualization wasn't actually helping me understand what was wrong.
This is not to say intellectualization is bad per se, just that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. For me, less intellectualization would have been more understanding. Anyway, I recommend you read this book.
3. Sleep, Exercise, Meditation, Gratitude/Forgiveness, Reading Great books, and Journaling every day as my top priority. If you are religious go to church.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Brilliant.
I’m a big fan of that book myself and subjectively I know it to be true as I am working through a lot of childhood early adult trauma and I’m now in my 60s. I spent a lot of time trying to think my way out of it with not much success.
Michael Polan should not be offering universal advice about diet.
Because you're right - it's pretty clear that different groups have evolved different digestive strategies, and it follows that finding your group's ideal digestive strategy and following it would optimize your diet.
Like, I don't know why this is really still even a question? Lactose and alcohol tolerance are the most obvious examples of digestive evolution, but consider also that the traditional Inuit diet is almost entirely animal-based (sea mammals, fish), as is traditional Mongolian herders (dairy), and traditional Maasai (dairy, blood, beef). I'm assuming we can agree there's a general consensus from decades of study that people of these cultures did well eating their traditional diets. It wasn't until a lot of Westernized food (generally defined here as processed cereals, sugars, seed oils, etc) entered the diet that they started to have diet-related issues.
But some people feel absolutely great and stay healthy eating a Westernized diet!
Some people get healthier when they eat a vegan diet. Some people get healthier when they commit to being carnivores. Billions of people thrive on eating an amount of rice every day that would make others morbidly obese.
What's the explanation, if not individual digestive adaptation that should be considered when thinking about one's own diet?
What I heard from Andrew Huberman is that the gut biome is real, and its effect on health is sizeable. But there is little idea of how to quantify that size or determine which interventions would cause which result. He suggested experimenting with
* Fasting
* Fiber
* Fermented Foods
And seeing if they did anything noteworthy.
But if you're looking to lose weight, I'd say ignore the mainstream and go straight to the bodybuilding community. They've been doing this for a long time, and know the practice.
https://youtu.be/slXxO2zJXUI
If you haven't already, read "The Hacker's Diet"
On YouTube I can spend hours watching well done videos about any conceivable topic - how to cook the last meal served on the Titanic, the latest on the James Webb Telescope, a review of the Model S Plaid, what’s the modern equivalent to Mr. Darcy £10,000/year and on an on. All non-political topics. Politics certainly exist on YouTube but the algorithm doesn’t push them on me.
On the written internet, it seems every site has to include a political angle. This site is great as it has a lot of non-political content. But is there some other way to find an aggregator of non-political content? There is so much going on in the world besides clickbait political takes designed to get folks all riled up about nothing.
Any suggestions?
> But is there some other way to find an aggregator of non-political content?
You might want to take a look at hacker news (https://news.ycombinator.com). Its content is biased for tech stuff and startup stuff but there is plenty of other stuff there too. Politics are discouraged, and the moderation is pretty good.
Yeah, one solution would just be to try and find stuff that's actually and effectively moderated to discourage politics (the Less Wrong site does this as well).
I think this is because the market for writing is smaller than the market for audio/visual content. And the market tends to be political.
I don't know if it's smaller, I think it's just less discoverable. Good text-based content is spread all over the internet, while video-based content is mostly concentrated on one site with a well-optimised algorithm designed to feed you stuff that you're likely to watch.
There's probably a good business idea somewhere around "youtube recommendation algorithm, but for the whole internet" (but there's probably far more bad business ideas around it than good ones).
> There's probably a good business idea somewhere around "youtube recommendation algorithm, but for the whole internet"
You just invented Google.
The market for text content is objectively smaller and has lower barriers to entry than for video. You might be right that the political bit is just an artifact. In particular, political news is probably more networked than (say) blacksmithing news. No great controversies on blacksmithing blowing up Twitter.
My two suggestions would be RSS and Reddit.
1) RSS: When you find an interesting, well written blog post, add the blog to your RSS reader.
2) Reddit: Remove the default subreddits from your account. Find some subreddits which represent your interests.
I really wish there was an option like /r/popular that, instead of removing just NSFW content removed all political content. I have removed over 100 subs from /r/all, probably half of which are political in one manner or another but new political subs get created seemingly every day. It's a sysiphean task to keep up with it all and I'm really tired of it.
Oh, and obviously my front page is free of political content, but I like having the ability to find subs that I never thought of or might not want to see everything they post, just things that get highly upvoted. My front page is great for keeping up with topics I am explicitly interested in, but not so good for finding novel stuff I wouldn't have thought of.
Instead of checking /r/all and manually pruning subreddits you don't like (a Sysiphean task *regardless* of what your criteria are), you might consider checking something like redditlist that lists rising subs.
I also quite like tumblr in that you follow people rather than topics without it being twitter. I have a personality and worldview bubble there (one deliberately created, that I pop out of every so often), but not a topics bubble.
I don't know of an aggregator but I usually will try to find newsletters focused on a particular topic or industry. And I'll find them usually through links in other news letters. Unfortunately I can't really remember how I found any of the ones I read. So I won't be much help.
Trivial but potentially interesting: what is your favorite image, sound, tactile sensation, scent, and/or flavor?
Apart from the standards (sex and food), my favorite is the smell of rain, and a cool breeze blowing through rain without actually getting me wet.
Hard to beat a nighttime train in the distance.
The infrared heat coming off a building after the sun has finished warming it all day.
The crunch of a fresh corn chip.
Sound: the bubbles popping on the top of a class of soda right before all of them are gone. You get to a point where there is a single layer of very small bubbles and that seems to decelerate the popping to the point they make this really great woosh sound.
Scent: 1) The smell of the plastic that is used to make three ring binders. 2) The smell of rain approaching or just after on a hot day (I think its an ozone smell but I am not sure). Seem like this is popular - I wonder if there is an evolutionary explanation.
The others all change depending on mood, season, location, temperature, repeated exposure, what I have just eaten (or not eaten), etc.
I really like the smell of cut and crushed geraniums, the sound and feel of wind blowing off the ocean and up the face of a cliff, and the feel and sound of impact from working out with a rag stuffed heavy bag.
Nothing quite like sliding into clean high-thread count sheets.
Previously I would have said my favorite tactile/audio/etc sensation was sitting under a heavy waterfall. I think the white noise/white tactility/etc either overloads or cancels out a bunch of sensory sensitivities I have.
But a while ago for work, I got to tour a facility that makes speakers, and they let us into their bass testing room. This is just a big room with hundreds of bass speakers, some of them 10 feet wide, playing different random patterns at maximum volume forever, to stress-test them. You need very heavy ear protection to go in, and it's an immediate tsunamis of deep vibration, thumping hard enough to physically push against you, and deep random (but rhythmic) noise crowding out everything else.
Everyone else in my party felt sick in their and wanted to leave immediately, but I wished I could stay for hours. Very soothing, while also focusing attention and thoughts.
My reaction to sunset light falling on an eastern wall hasn't changed since I was five, which is to stare in awe and delight.
My favorite sound is probably cardboard being cut by scissors.
My favorite scent is fresh bread, I think :)
Flavor - Costco's returning Hoody's Peanut Butter Chocolate Mix is probably the most intense food I've ever eaten.
Sound - Anaal Nakrath is like the auditory equivelant of the hugest peat bomb scotch you can think of, or of licking a 9volt battery with your ears. It took a solid month to desensitize myself to it, but its now my go-to when I need to overwhelm myself with audio input.
Tactile - warm flannel shirt and jeans, right out of the dryer.
Image - going against type, high-precision minimalist art. That includes a good technical drawing. Rachel Rising is a masterwork of showing the most complete scenes with the minimal number of pen strokes.
Image: Easily the hardest for me to rank. Perhaps the darkness of a thick forest during a sunlit day- verdant green, enormous details that blend into a harmonious semi-random background, diffusion of light and shadow...
Sound: I listen to music far less than all of my friends or relatives- I do not dislike it, and I greatly enjoy the *addition* of great music or sound design to a movie or video game- but rarely feel the drive to listen on it's own. I think perhaps it's that I get a lot more out of reading, or playing, or "audio-reading", or cinema, etc., and find those relatively incompatible with listening to independent music. (Similarly, I often find music distracting when I work) So! All of that given, I am perforce demanded to select some sound beyond music. Am I a sap if I say the sound of my wife excitedly telling me about her research or readings?
Tactile sensation: Putting aside the obvious, the feeling of radiant warmth from laying in sunlight when the air is just a touch cooler than preference, but the insolation makes up the difference- if a breeze picked up, you'd be too cold, but in the stillness you are perfectly warm.
Scent: Perhaps the smell of a mole sauce being simmered? Complex, chocolatey, spicy, savory... I find it difficult to even concentrate on other matters if the house smells too strongly of some scents!
Flavor: Most of flavor is scent, they say, but holding that apart I'd go with well-smoked pork tenderloin, with touches of honey, wine, garlic, and pepper- basically char siu. I eat vegetarian many days, but things like this prevent me from it more often.
Smell: The wave of fresh chilled air and ozone that flies in front of a thunderstorm. It's brings such a high, like the entire world is balanced on the top of a rollercoaster ready to dash down the other side.
Sunlight refracting through decorative glass to project tiny rainbows on the walls.
Tactile, felt my baby kick in my wife's belly for the first time yesterday, that's gonna be hard to top
I think it’s going to hold first place for a long long time.
The sound of the tiny wavelets around the bow, and the first hint of heeling, when finally getting a faint breeze and being able to set sail again after days of drifting at sea with no wind at all - Context is everything.
Has anyone noticed a political balance to opinions on continuing work from home? I have my thesis but I want to see if there’s data on this. Does anyone know if the red tribe / republicans or the blue tribe / democrats are more likely to want to continue working from home?
I’m not sure about politics but there sure is a gap between extroverts and introverts. You also get a biased view from internet commenters who tend to be more on the introverted end of the spectrum.
I think there's a few potential confounds (depending on what question you're actually interested in). Even before the pandemic, blue tribe jobs tended to be the kind that could be done from home, while red tribe jobs tended not to be. During the pandemic, an interest in working from home may have been picked up by people who were generally in favor of pandemic mitigation measures, and an interest in going back to workplaces may have been picked up by people who were generally against pandemic mitigation measures, which may have increased a blue tribe/red tribe correlation. But it's less clear whether either of these two things will continue as we move into the post-pandemic world, and it's less clear whether there is an additional red tribe/blue tribe association if you are comparing pairs of people that are matched on job and matched on interest in pandemic mitigation measures, but one is blue tribe and the other is red tribe.
Other confounders that are likely to have a strong relationship with both political opinions and whether you want to go back to the office:
1. Young and single vs older with spouse and kids
2. Where you live (inner city vs outer suburbs)
There's a survey on this here, broken out by party: https://www.vox.com/recode/22576811/remote-work-survey-data-for-progress-democrats-republicans-approval
This confirms my prior bias. My observation is that the key variable has more to do with age/years in industry/seniority than political party. Older people or those with more seniority tend to be more conservative because they are older and more wealthy so you get a small effect like the one shown in the article.
People who have been promoted to senior roles in a particular office environment typically like that environment and will want to maintain it. Firms that have been remote or remote friendly before the pandemic likely have selected for senior people who are comfortable with a remote environment. It would be interesting to see this data broken out by type of work environment these people work in currently and in the past.
Thank you!
Why does the provision of educational services have to be done by a government bureaucracy. Why not move to a free market.
Creating an educational endowment for each person and paying out annually when students attain an agreed level of mastery, using tests like the Texas STAAR, would change everything in a hugely positive way.
There has never been a better time to introduce competition into the K-12 educational system.
I propose creating an educational endowment for each student, with the money paid out only when that student achieves a specified annual level based on tests like the STAAR.
.
Education funds are currently paid in at the top and are expected to be used properly to educate the students. That is often not the case. The worst failures are in poor areas where a good basic education is most needed. Our current system also leaves dropouts to fend for themselves.
Students should be seen as customers for educational services, not inmates in a government factory school system.
We should change all state level funding to an endowment at the individual student level. The money stays in the student account until each level is met, making poor students much more valuable to educators who can catch them up. For example, bringing a fifteen year old at the sixth grade level up to sophomore level would pay four years of compensation to the successful educator.
Instead of leaving dropouts to fend for themselves, the funds would remain on deposit indefinitely, allowing those who got their act together after some time in the adult world to get an education.
Troubled students would have teachers and mentors who had a financial stake in the outcome. The dramatic difference in quality based on differences in community income levels would end.
Opening educational services to the free market will see most students moving through material much faster than at present. This will allow for practical job related instruction, and college level courses, to be included as providers fight for market share.
Competition among educational providers will make full use of technology, will provide useful training for actual jobs, will deliver far more education for the same money, and will free the taxpayers from the grip of an incredibly corrupt and self-serving educational establishment.
Our factory government school system is a relic of the past. We need to insure that everyone is educated, but trying to reform the current system is a hopeless task. Without competition nothing will ever change.
I don’t know what an ideal system would look like, but we can all agree on the desired results, and competition operating in the free market will bring it into being. I have followed the educational system all my adult life, and what we have now is ridiculous. By focusing on the desired result, which is student mastery of the required material as measured by tests like STAAR, we can bring about immediate major improvement.
I have several associates in the Black Community, and the appeal of this idea to them transcends ideological boundaries.
If state level funds were used to set up student endowments, paid out only after educational accomplishment, if would start dramatic positive change.
Isn't there already a movement for this kind of thing with charter schools and vouchers?
That movement assumes that the money still goes into a bureaucracy. What is needed is to introduce competition into the process at the individual student level. Make the student the customer. Vouchers are still limited to traditional schools, and none that I know of withhold payment if progress is not achieved. Withholding payment for poor results is essential, and once that is understood the door is opened for far more competition and freedom from government intrusion than otherwise.
I see, thanks for explaining.
Parents are stupid because they were educated in government schools. As such, they cannot be trusted to educate their own children or even choose which private or even which government school their own children should be educated in. That's why we need people who were educated in government schools to choose which school everyone's children should be educated in.
Yes, this is sarcasm.
I could see this working, but the incentives seem to be towards picking winners and avoiding losers.
I'd add: This only works if you can somehow reward schools for taking a poorly performing student and making them average; and not just taking and excellent student and leaving them alone.
For example, you take some random selection of the student population and assign them to a school, and the school needs to try to get all their grades as high as possible, rather than taking all the A students and letting them get A's.
"Troubled students would have teachers and mentors who had a financial stake in the outcome. The dramatic difference in quality based on differences in community income levels would end."
I am fascinated to see how that would work. Little Johnny is a trouble-maker who likes starting fires and hanging out on street corners with the local gang of petty criminals. Does Tutor Smith, whose pay is conditional on little Johnny becoming a solid citizen, have leeway to use any and all methods? If heartfelt pleading to change his ways doesn't work, can Tutor Smith return to the traditional methods of corporal punishment?
What if little Johnny honestly isn't academically able? Apprentice him to a plumber because tradesmen make good money? I think that is a good option, but once again - is little Johnny (like a real-world example I met) going to prefer smoking weed, go into the course teaching him how to become a plumber stoned, and boast about this in public in a phone call to a pal?
'Teacher doesn't get paid if the pupil doesn't shape up' is also a good incentive for the kind of "we've sold off the bus line and now the private operator only runs the three profitable city routes, leaving people with no access to transport" kind of result: if little Johnny is too much trouble, nobody will take him on, yet he has to be dealt with *somehow* and will probably end up in jail, an even more expensive result.
A huge problem with treating the education market as if it was just another kind of market where competition would help is that education does not work like a market.
The benefits of education are numerous, hard to measure, and visible mostly a decade after education has been completed. Creating any proxy for "quality of knowledge gained" such as multiple-choice exams we have now will lead to Goodhart's Law. Plus there is the danger of the same problems as private insurance runs into: if a system is open, there's adverse selection, so insurance will try to just skim the cream (as noted by Deiseach above).
All of this means that you need to have a system that MUST teach all students at least something for that system to be able to function. I think that the current system is deeply flawed, but I would prefer a solution as has been done in Finland to one like you propose. Privatizing healthcare, education, or police would all find themselves in similar market failures. Sometimes, the market failure is simply that much worse than government failure that it is best avoided.
The requirements to meet the annual minimum of academic achievement would be similar to what is now used, and almost all students would at least achieve the minimum level. What is new is that free market providers could deliver educational services at a dramatically lower cost than the current system. The amount of money per student in today's system is amazing.
As providers sought market share they would offer additional training as part of their basic offering, allowing training for skilled trades, advanced placement courses, etc. Specialized schools for troubled students with various problems would arise and go nationwide. Troubled students many times would have several years of catchup waiting to be used. Dropouts would also have several years accrued to be used.
The key is that payment must be only for performance. That removes the micro-management from government, and the unions, which are choking the system and will always be a problem. A free market is the only permanent solution.
But performance of education is very hard to measure. If it's standardized tests, you end up teaching to the test, removing the socializing part of education and not measuring the pleasure that students have while studying in any way at all. Current system at least allows Slack (opposite of Molloch) which creates the lovely moments that we actually remember from education.
It is worth noting that I'm from South East Europe, so I cannot comment on inefficiencies of US education - prices, especially of higher education are horrendous there. Here the government has little money and produces pretty good effects with the amount given I'd say. But they're unionized here too, and unions are often a force of good in free markets (a counterbalance to cartels and general higher bargaining power of firms compared to individuals ingrained in how employment works in the modern world)
"What is new is that free market providers could deliver educational services at a dramatically lower cost than the current system."
I dearly wish I had a tenner for every time I've seen this touted as a solution: "just privatise X, the free market can do it cheaper than the government!"
What does a business do? It exists to provide a profit for its owner(s), be that a private individual or the shareholders. Providing a good or service is the means whereby the profit is generated, be that selling turnips or educating children, but the main goal of the business is to generate profit. If selling turnips makes more money, they'll sell turnips. If there is a glut of turnips and prices fall, then they will teach children. If the children end up unable to read but the EduCompany plc makes a fat living off the government contract, then that is all to the good for EduCompany. And they set up contracts so that if the Department of Education comes along and says "hey, the kids can't read so we want to terminate the contract", it will cost a lot to do so.
https://www.cato.org/blog/public-private-partnerships-cautionary-tale-uk
The fact that the government is too incompetent at contract negotiation to successfully privatise things is not a ringing endorsement of the government, though it is a good does of reality as to the difference between a system we'd design here in the comments and the travesty of a law that would actually pass if it went through most currently extant governments.
Having said that, the dramatic cost hikes in education seem to be spent entirely on things unrelated to actual education - mostly administrators, buildings, and sports teams, if I understand correctly. Any given private institution can and will eventually succumb to bureaucratic bloat, but the advantage of privatisation is that schools can collapse individually - leaving plenty of alternatives for the students - whereas a government monopoly is "too big to fail".
The major advantage of private education over public is that it's just way more efficient. At my local public high school, only half the people on the payroll actually ever stand in a classroom. The situation is far worse in higher education: the nearest public university campus has 10,000 employees, only 600 of whom are instructors. These figures are completely unsustainable in the private sector, of course -- no parent would willingly pay to maintain them.
However, the *origins* of the efficiency are less clear than one might hope: one reason public education is *inefficient* is that it has a mandate to service everybody, so for example the public school system can't simply eject troublesome students, or not take handicapped students, the way the private school can -- it has to cope with them, and they are a very expensive burden indeed. Nor is it clear what alternative might exist in general -- unless you are prepared to bring back galley slavery, the workhouse, or exile for the most difficult young citizens.
How would you make sure that this neither drastically overpays for the education of easy students nor drastically underpays for the education of difficult students? I'd prefer skipping the endowment part and just making it an actual free market.
Someone being a good or bad student has a genetic and social aspect - both of which are outside of reach of a child. I consider it unfair to give less of a chance to a kid from poorer household, so I would not want them to be treated that different. But it depends on whether you consider education a right or a privilege - I know. But I've been my whole life working with students from very different backgrounds, from rural China to French Jet-Set kids and I can tell you they are alike more than different in how little power they have over what they do - it's all luck of the draw on who their parents are. But they're all equally human and deserve attention and a chance to develop and effort put into helping them discover themselves and this world of ours. A free market is hard to incentivise in that direction, and while I have ideas on how to do it I lack the funds and connections to pull it off, and even then who knows how it'll work in different markets. Education ties into employment market and is tangentally related to votes etc etc, it's all too hard to look at in a vacuum.
Apologies for perhaps a confusing post but it's late here, so I hope I got the main points across.
The average 85-IQ child is going to have less of a chance than the average 115-IQ child no matter how the system is set up (and likewise for other, less measurable, traits), so I'd forget all about equal opportunity and instead focus on allocating resources efficiently, which I think most people acknowledge that free markets are very good at, whereas planned systems tend to be horrible. I tend to think that most people, and especially that majority of the population that is not particularly intellectually gifted, would be better off with apprenticeships than with modern education. Apprenticeships are, naturally, something that the free market could provide at no cost to anyone except the employer.
NB. the employer will not provide apprenticeships if they're a net drain on the business - the two options there are to pay the employer, or to allow for contracts that lock in the apprentice's labour for some years after their training is complete. But this is a bit of a tangent....
Traditionally apprentices spent a lot of time doing scutwork rather than learning, in addition to being enslaved as you are suggesting, so their master received the apprentice's labor for some years during their training instead of after. This has the disadvantage that it's unskilled labor, but it also has the enormous advantage that it doesn't require slavery, which is bad.
The problem is that an education lasts a life time and employer will not want to pay to train a worker that won't give their whole working life to them. Either we then allow workers to sign life long contracts or companies buy off debt of workers from other companies - each of which is a dystopia in and of itself.
However, there are marked benefits from getting elementary education (forgot the exact TED talk on IQ test change through time showing that people without education lack abstract thinking for example) so even those with low IQ benefit from some education. While I agree we currently overeducated people (most should stop at High School and fewer should be getting PhD) - this too is a consequence of a free market of labor. Free market of education isn't the solution to the free market problems.
Employers already pay to train their workers without having any guarantees of life-time service, so I think you're drawing some pretty wild conclusions there.
They do for limited training - they will not teach employees basic math. They teach how to use the software that is used in this specific firm, but a lot of that is non-transferable. An example closer to what you are saying are the Big Four auditing firms which pay for CFA exams (usually two years of study, several exams and can be pricy) and they do so while binding workers with a four years after CFA contract, and if the worker leaves early they have to give the money back. Firms do not enjoy paying for positive externalities.
I am open to hearing counter-examples though - once again I am in Europe, perhaps things are different where you are.
There is an important factor to note, which is that in a free market model the student is not the customer, the parent is, in that it's the parent who'll ultimately make the choices. Thus, even taking the government out of the picture you're still left with a classic principal/agent problem. Now, most of the time a parent cares more about their child and knows more about their child than the state, but one must consider the subset of the population whose parents are apathetic or simply woefully ignorant on the topic of education. (Also actively abusive ones, but the need for a system for those is independent of your educational model).
Beyond that, working out the right incentivisation scheme seems very difficult, but your idea of paying per grade level achieved rather than by time in school is novel and interesting. I suspect an optimal solution is some combination of the two, especially considering that for younger students school is as much childcare as education.
Plenty of other commenters have mentioned the impossibility of getting current politicians to pass a law that resembles this, but that's a comparatively boring topic compared to "would it work if we could make it the law?", so I'll just leave this as a footnote.
The materials offered to home schoolers are an example of what the offerings would look like. What I have seen are excellent. I would expect education providers to use existing infrastructure, renting space, paying for student transportation using existing fleets of school busses, etc. In cases of apathetic parents the kids themselves would want to do what their friends were doing so they would find adequate providers. The payment annually only for minimal achievement would protect kids with apathetic parents. No provider is going to spend time and money without providing materials that educate students to the minimum level, but they will insist on orderly classrooms etc. which are not being provided by our inner city schools. They won't be filling the rosters with no show jobs by local Democrat operatives etc. I live in rural Texas south of Houston. The suburban schools are very good, the city of Houston schools are a disaster, and some of the black suburbs are endless sources of failure and disorder. Some of the strongest supporters of this idea are blacks in failed suburban schools in large traditional black communities.
With government schooling, you have a classic principal/agent problem where the agent is obviously going to nearly always be worse than a parental agent.
>Why does the provision of educational services have to be done by a government bureaucracy. Why not move to a free market.
Primarily principle/agent problems: parents are not expert enough to find the best school, schools are more successful by advertising to parents than by making a better experience for kids, some parents legitimately do not care and will go for the cheapest most convenient/accept kickbacks/whatever, many parents want religious schools that will not teach entire concepts, etc etc etc.
Isn't the principal/agent problem much worse for government-run education tho? Surely parents and their children have vastly better aligned interests than politicians and other people's children?
So, basically, the whole idea of having a democracy is to make it such that no, it isn't. Whetehr or not you think democracy succeeds here is an open and important question, but the *intent* is something like:
If a parent is making bad decisions for their child, likely no one outside of hte child and maybe close family knows about it, and absent actually child abuse, no one has a way to intervene. If a government agent is making bad choices for *all* children, everyone notices, we have a huge political debate about it, and they can be fired or not re-elected.
An individual parent probably knows little about education as a discipline and is ill-prepared to evaluate different schools, is very susceptible to advertising and marketing. A government agency can employ hundreds of experts to find the best answer, then apply that answer broadly.
If a parent is very religious, they may want to send their kid to a religious school that cripples them by only teaching holy texts for 8 hours a day; we outlawed religious considerations in government agents to prevent this.
A parent might get a kickback from a bad school to send their kid there, and this may be totally legal, or impossible to monitor for every single separate family in the country if illegal; it would definitely be illegal for a government agent making that decision, and they face a lot of personal scrutiny from reporters/opponents/etc to catch it.
Parents may care about using a school that's on their way home from work so it's convenient for them to drop off and pick up their kid each day, even if it's a bad school; the government agent doesn't give a shit about that, and is only being evaluated on choosing good schools.
And so forth. Basically, the idea is that by being distant from the situation and subject to public scrutiny and recall, the government agent has fewer reasons to go against the children's interests, and is easier to discover and remove if they do. you can make their job evaluation solely dependent on good outcomes for the kids and nothing else, so that all their incentives are aligned with the kids, in a way you just can't do to every individual parent in the country.
Of course, like I said, how well you think that system actually works is an open question. I think it's going to be better overall, especially because I've seen a *lot* of really bad parents over the years. Others may have different intuitions.
I've never heard of anyone getting a kickback from their school vouchers, and considering how many journalists there are that dislike private schools and the voucher system, I think I would have if it were even a rare occurrence. What I have heard of is people getting raped in public schools and the rapists not getting expelled and the politicians staying in power, time after time. A parent who treated their child that way would be an extraordinarily poor parent, guilty of child abuse – but when politicians treat children that way, it is just par for the course. Thus to me it seems impossible to believe that politicians' interests would be better aligned with children's interests than are the interests of the parents.
The parent has a higher incentive than any government agent to ensure that the child gets a well-rounded education. Doesn't mean they always will, but often enough to discard government schooling.
Well, first of all: the *average* parent does, perhaps, but certainly not *all* parents. Lots of bad parents out there, and I worry that it's primarily the people with good parents who are always up in arms about keeping the government away from kids. Some kids really need the government to step in.
But, second... I'm not sure how to phrase this idea, but: even a fairly good, informed parent may not be able to tell whether the school their child is going to is 5% better or worse than an alternative school in their area, they just don't have the data or knowledge to make that discrimination, and they have no felt incentive to make that decision correctly because they will never notice or be aware of the outcome.
But a government official who lowers student outcomes nationally by 5% will likely loose their job, and a government official that raises student outcomes by 5% nationally will become well respected and advance their career greatly. They have very strong incentives with real, tangible pay-offs.
So I guess I'm arguing about what it means to have 'aligned incentives'.
Yes, in the abstract, the good parents cares more about their child than the government official does.
But in practice, the *tangible feedback* that informs and guides behavior is, in some ways, more sensitive and responsive and impactful for the government official, meaning the *incentive structure they operate in' is in some way more aligned with the child than the incentive structure the parent operates in.
Like... take 1000 people who care a lot about the environment but don't really know much about it or have any unusual amount of time or resources to devote to it, versus one person who doesn't really care about the environment but is a domain expert with lots of knowledge and is in control of an institute that is charged with helping the environment and will get a lot of money and social status and career advancement if they help the environment. Which one is likely to help the environment more, in practice?
And who has better aligned incentives - the people who care a lot but don't know what they're doing, or the person who doesn't care but gets heavily rewarded for success and knows how to achieve it?
You are optimistic about the effect of government beyond any applicable data. Name a government official whose rewards are correlated with positive student outcomes or whose punishment is correlated with negative student outcomes. Look at Randi Weingarten, who is president of the AFT. She has demanded that schools be closed during the pandemic, and yet is now claiming that she wants schools to be open and always has. How is she being punished for that lie?
Essentially, you are saying that governments have a magic wand they can wave that somehow gives them better incentives and more information about students than the parents. That is .... unlikely. Google for "knowledge problem" and the scales will fall from your eyes.
This is an interesting comment because the full application of market logic would suggest an answer - there’s no private offering for education because nobody thinks that there’s profit to be made in it.
Our financial system is flush with cash and companies are getting funded everyday to fulfill all sorts of consumer services like delivering food and subscription exercise classes, but none of them (that I am aware of) are educational alternatives. I seem to remember some ex-Googlers starting a school in SF but that’s all I’ve got.
The optimistic interpretation is that there is a rich market opportunity to tapped - what pitch deck is complete without an outrageous TAM? The pessimist might take two tracks. The first is that massive government monopoly has sufficiently distorted the market that no profitable alternative is tenable. The second is that there is in fact no more profitable alternative to be had.
The realist thinks, under the present constraints, we are at equilibrium.
What might can change the present constraints? Hell if I know.
> there’s no private offering for education because nobody thinks that there’s profit to be made in it.
But there are lots of private offerings for education. E.g. in Sweden a quarter of high schoolers go to private (but government-voucher-funded) schools. In England, so called public schools (which are privately funded) still educate the elite.
It just occurred to me that there *is* a private offering for education - fee-paying schools. So now the question is, why don't they broaden their intake to encompass all students? And there are two possible reasons:
(1) They want the cachet of remaining exclusive. If any Tom, Dick or Harry can come attend JamNCream Academy for The Terminally Loaded, then why will oligarchs bother sending their kids there to mingle with the hoi polloi? And if they're being funded by taxpayer money (which is ultimately where the endowment student accounts get funding), then they can't charge the same level of eye-watering fees.
(2) Cherry-picking. They can cater to the rich and thick, in which case they get the eye-watering fees just for babysitting rich people's brats for five years or so, and the smart but less well-off via scholarships. They don't have to take the all-comers who range from the troubled to the intellectually challenged to the average to the really bright ones that public schools have to do, and since they can select the better students, they keep the aura of "JamCream Academy turns out the next generation of leaders, heads of state, and extremely wealthy tech entrepreneurs".
The half-way position on this - state funded but independently managed schools were the academies set up in the UK, and that didn't turn out very well (again, my point is that these are businesses first and education providers second, so as long as they are turning a profit, that is what matters to them):
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jul/22/academy-schools-scandal-failing-trusts
I've been asking myself a similar question with respect to higher education: Why don't universities drop their SATs and their racial quotas and their legacy admissions and all that stuff and just admit the highest bidder? To me it would only seem fair that even if I was of the wrong race and I wasn't too good at the SATs and my high-school grades weren't all that great and I didn't have the right connections and I couldn't kick an American football too far, if I still thought I could be a good lawyer and I was prepared to pay for the chance to make a fool of myself trying to prove that, I should be given that chance. It looks to me like the universities are just leaving huge piles of money on the table here, so I'd like to understand why.
There are plenty of universities that will admit you, no questions asked, if you are willing to pay full freight. But what you probably mean is why don't Harvard and Stanford do that? The answer is: because they don't need to. They get only a small fraction of their budget from tuition, probably around 15% or so. (I vaguely recall Stanford toying with the idea of just dropping tuition entirely, or maybe it was for certain "low income" -- like less than $100,000/year -- families.) Big famous research universities make almost all their money from research overhead, licensing and patents, and assorted investments. They do instruction more or less as a hobby, and spend hobby-level money on it. And as long as they can fill up the hopper of undergraduates trudging through acquiring a lifelong long for alma mater, they really don't give much of a crap what the actual tuition they pay is. There's no especial reason to auction off 50 spots to the children of Hollywood stars who'll pay $250k instead of $75k for the privilege, the modest amount of extra money wouldn't be worth the PR hit.
Universities whose students are the highest bidders instead of the highest academic achievers certainly do exist, and some are even accredited, but they face a number of problems. They're subject to severe grade-inflation pressure (so the quality of feedback is low), they have a hard time recruiting good students (so the quality of classroom discussion is low), they consequently have a hard time recruiting good professors (so the quality of curriculum design and classroom instruction is low), and their degrees have minimal signaling value, perhaps even negative, both because getting admitted has no signaling value and because graduating (due to the grade inflation) has little signaling value.
And everyone knows there are better alternatives available, so the question arises of why your diploma is from a diploma mill instead of Harvard.
Abraham Lincoln became a good lawyer without ever attending a university. The way to retrieve that sort of equality of opportunity is not to have more diploma mills; it's to eliminate the requirement for a law degree to take the bar exam.
"Why don't universities drop their SATs and their racial quotas and their legacy admissions and all that stuff and just admit the highest bidder?"
Used to be done. Still sort of happens; some people go to university because their fathers and grandfathers went there and they go for the networking and to join the right societies and make the right friends. Not necessarily stupid, either, many of them are intelligent and get good degrees, but the piece of parchment is not the most important thing for which they are attending.
It used to be known as the "gentleman's third" (that is, a third or lowest class honours degree) because it was enough to pass and be awarded, but you weren't depending on how well you did at university to make a career (often because you were of independent means - a gentleman - or your father would make a place for you in the family business):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification#Third_Class_honours
The (in)famous Bullingdon Club, getting its maximum publicity from the fact that several members of the British government were also members of this club when attending university in the late 80s, and that they did favours for and were cronies with other members in later life :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club
https://byline.com/2015/05/06/cameron-at-the-centre-of-the-bullingdon-club/
Anecdotally I have seen examples of both (1) and (2) - and I would add a third demand-side constraint. There are only so many jobs at Goldman and Google, Rhodes Scholarships, and first rate research positions out of undergrad, and I suspect that total elite university production will track roughly the availability of elite positions.
Second - per Carl's point below, there's a weird extent to which undergrad education in the USA is a public outreach program that encourages elite support of the academy as much as it is a system for education. Unless you go to a small liberal arts college or a state school without much graduate presence, the undergrad component is definitely less important to the administration than graduate studies, research, etc.
If we didn't have public schools, there would be more profit in private schools.
There is generally a small private offering for education because governments force everyone, whether child-ful or child-less, to pay for schooling, and they force children to be educated. Can you imagine any product worse than when everyone has to pay and customers have to use it?
What's TAM?
Total Addressable Market - it’s typically presented as “our total market for product1 is $X billion annually and we believe we can capture y% for a mature revenue of $Z million”
It’s an easy way to get a sense for if a company would be viable in the space given competitor market shares and total spending on that category.
"we can all agree on the desired results"
Probably the biggest problem in education is that we can't agree on the desired results - at any level at all.
Is education for vocational training? Is it to produce civic-minded citizens with an appreciation for how their government and society work? Is it to enable us to meet our human need for enlightenment and self-actualization? Is it to give parents a place to stick their kids while they're at work? Is it to instill the values and ethics of society? Is it to teach facts, or skills, or "critical thinking" (whatever that is)? Is it to give all children in society access to the same opportunities to "succeed at life" (whatever that is)? Is it to produce equality of outcome, correcting for historical discrepancies between groups? If so, which groups? Is it to promote social cohesion and unity? If so, does that involve addressing historical grievances, or papering over them? Is it to give children the skills they need to make our nation strong and competitive, globally, compared to other nations? If so, what are those skills? Is it to reach kids in dysfunctional homes or communities with social services they wouldn't have access to otherwise?
I doubt many people, when asked, would say that the desired results of education are to pass standardized tests. There isn't even widespread agreement on whether standardized tests are a good indicator of achievement, let alone what achievement we should try to test for.
This is a great point, thanks
The desired results I am referring to are functional literacy. Our inner city schools are not doing even that. The Texas STAAR tests functional literacy and has been successful at determining how schools are fulfilling that basic function. Most other states have similar tests. The idea behind my plan is to provide at least that before payment, but let the free market offer endless other attractive educational services to try to gain market share. The available technology is not being used in education as it would be in a free market. Gamification is being used successfully in job training by business but is subject to endless studies paid with tax money in the educational morass, while simple orderly classrooms and attention to basic literacy and math skills is not happening in many schools.
One of the things that radicalized me was a recent experience with a tow truck driver. In the Army in the sixties my company had a group of black draftees from inner city Detroit. Our entertainment at that time was paperback novels, which were passed around, and the black guys read them effortlessly. I recently was towed by a nice twenty something black guy who had graduated from an inner city high school. He struggled to read the forms that had to be filled out after the tow and asked me to read some of it for him. That is an absolute disgrace. He was not dumb, but after spending twelve years in inner city schools he certainly was uneducated. My plan would end that incredible malpractice and misuse of educational funding.
The Army in the sixties tested draftees and only admitted the literate ones, so I'm afraid your example suffers from selection bias. (Although there was Project 100,000, where some illiterate or otherwise unqualified draftees were admitted and given remedial training to try to catch them up to their peers).
I'd want to see good comparative stats on literacy over time to believe that US literacy is worse now than in the 60's. I can't seem to find any, though.
Having spent a life around and operating machinery I was able to see that my tow driver was intelligent, I was also able to see that he struggled to read. I questioned him on his schooling and found it was a large inner city high school. I really don't think your criticism of the idea based on a misapplication of the Army example is valid. My tow driver was average or above based on his handling of his equipment. What I am seeking is to stop paying for non-performance, while at the same time open the door for use of technology and competition. The system is far behind what it could be if competition were allowed to operate.
Now and then, I float the idea of more work on adult literacy. I get no traction-- there's a common belief that if people don't learn to read in school, they can't learn later. I'm pretty sure this is false.
I'm pretty sure it is false as well. But I also think the problem isn't so much people who are totally illiterate even at the "see spot run" level, but people who stalled out at a fairly low grade level, have trouble reading much of anything targeted at adults, and no longer bother to try. And that may be a much more demoralizing problem, requiring a different sort of solution.
I agree it more likely that there are a lot of people who can read a little rather than a lot of people who can't read at all. There may be more people who can read their native language, but not English, though.
I've wondered about an adult version of Sesame Street. It turns out there was one in England for a while.
Agreed. As far as I can tell, American education (at least) mostly runs on habit, with no clear goal.
Another couple of possible goals-- teaching students to be entrepreneurs. And I've been told that the purpose of education in the Renaissance was to teach people to be able to represent themselves in court.
One problem with this is that the feedback loop takes years. Smart students, in particular, will keep learning even if their teachers, labs, and libraries turn to crap, and you'll *eventually* notice that they aren't learning as fast as they probably should have, but not in one or two semesters. And you weren't going to get quick miraculous turnarounds from the dullards either. But you are going to have to pay your teachers, and even more so your overhead expenses, in the meantime.
Another problem is that the current educational system combines financial and non-financial incentives. Teachers accept lower pay because they feel that they are performing a sacred duty for the public good - rather like how the U.S. Army can hire soldiers for less than half the cost of whatever Blackwater is calling itself now. You're going to have a hard time maintaining that if you explicitly monetize and market education, so at least initially any such proposal is going to cost more for the same quality education.
Neither of these are dealbreakers, but they are substantial risk and cost factors to keep in mind as we consider this proposal. Which we should, even if we ultimately decide against it.
I'm curious whether anyone has any views on this new article "Effectiveness of Common Antidepressants: A Post Market Release Study"(https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00451-X/fulltext).
It purports to find substantial differences between anti-depressants and, importantly, it identifies different anti-depressants as being better or worse within different (quite specific) subgroups (the best antidepressant had an average remission rate... 1.5 times higher than the average antidepressant... and 20 times higher than the worst antidepressant").
Strikingly, it has a neat web site http://hi.gmu.edu/ad where you can input your medical history and it will generate an individually-targeted recommendation for a specific anti-depressant. For example, the first time I tried it, it suggested that for people with my characteristics, fluoxetine had the highest remission rate (55%) and compared this to the remission rates for a bunch of other specific anti-depressants.
So far so good, although naturally I had some initial scepticism of subgroup analysis. Particularly since the medical history 'quiz' was taking a lot of quite specific information (not just age, gender etc.).
Unfortunately, when I retook the test a couple of times the wheels started to fall off. Some of the questions were a bit ambiguous (maybe they'd be clearer to a US audience). For example, it asks whether you've received psychiatric evaluation or had a gynecological appointment (does this mean *ever* or specifically in connection with your depression? would meeting with your General Practioner and discussing depression count?).
With slightly different answers on questions that do not, realistically, seem likely to be connected to massive differences in the effectiveness of different anti-depressants (as well as some different branching paths where the test will ask different questions based on your previous answers) the test generated totally different answers. In some of these cases (despite only very mildly different answers) it was explicit that for example, only one antidepressant had been used by people in that particular subgroup, so that was the recommendation. In one of these cases it also explicitly said "This antidepressant has a 3% chance of remission, but it's still the one we recommend!"
Suffice to say, this seems very dubious and it seems quite likely they are over-interpreting noisy subgroup differences.
I took it twice. The first time there seems to have been an error as there was no history and no recommendation. The second time with basically the same answers I also got fluoxetine.
I think they need someone with experience in survey design to rewrite the survey. Its a great idea, but the questions are not clear. I would like to have some examples to help me understand what they are talking about particularly when it comes to types of diagnosis and therapies. For example it was not clear to me the first time that when they said "remission" they meant my symptoms improved. I get that that is the correct technical word to use but its not very user friendly.
Well, I managed to bust the site: 😂
"Remission means that your symptoms will be reduced by 50%. We examined the experiences of more than 3 million patients, who took more than 10 million antidepressant treatments. Most of these patients did not match your age, gender, and key aspects of your medical history. Among 174 who did match you, 174 persons tried uncommon or multiple antidepressants.59% of patients who took uncommon or multiple antidepressants that we have not analyzed,experienced remission.Talk to your clinician. We think you need uncommon or multiple antidepressants but we are not sure which one."
You and my GP both, website algorithm!
Okay, second time around I went easier on it and it was able to find something for me:
"Remission means that your symptoms will be reduced by 50%. We examined the experiences of more than 3 million patients, who took more than 10 million antidepressant treatments. Most of these patients did not match your age, gender, and key aspects of your medical history. Among 110 who did match you, 110 persons tried Citalopram. No other medication was tried by the group that matched you. 51% of patients who took Citalopram experienced remission. We recommend you take Citalopram."
I have a snowball in Hell's chance of convincing a doctor to prescribe this to me, particularly given that it would interact with other medications I am on and is contra-indicated for my physical health condition, but at least I have some kind of suggestion there.
They are not any clearer to a US audience, or even a US physician for that matter.
"Did two or more of your previous depression episodes end with remission?"
uh....if they *ended*, that would be remission by definition, would it not? The only other way I can think of a depressive episode ending would not be terribly conducive to my filling out a survey about it.
COP26 starts today. What are peoples views? It’s been billed as the most crucial summit on climate change since the Paris Agreement, as countries are expected to have submitted new plans to reduce emissions.
Do you consider it a crucial summit to prevent climate change? Or is it just another UN summit, like the now forgotten COP25?
Personally I guess from the China presidents no show this will just be another talking shop but progress will be made toward countries agreeing stronger emissions targets. It will take another year though for the politics to be worked through.
Interesting - I hadn't realized that Paris was COP21! I had assumed it was the most recent one. But on looking up the list of these conferences, I do see that the Paris agreement had been worked out over the previous five conferences, in what is called the "Durban round" (which is a term I do remember) named after that fifth conference before the Paris one. Looking back at the list, I see that Kyoto back in 1997 was an important one, and it looks like there were one or two others that were particularly important, though all of them probably played a role in getting to the position for the big ones to happen.
It looks like the COP25 was particularly problematic because it had first been scheduled to happen in Brazil, until Bolsonaro pulled out, and then Chile, until other protests there caused that government to cancel, and it was moved to Madrid relatively last minute.
Glasgow had been scheduled to occur in late 2020, but covid moved it to this year. I'm guessing that it will be one of the more significant ones for several reasons - first, having been billed as such will tend to make it more significant one way or another (either living up to that significance or being seen as failing); second, if this really is when the first updates to Paris are scheduled to happen, then that is an important test of Paris; third, since there's been a longer gap since the previous one than usual, and the previous one had problems, there may be a backlog of activity that occurs.
Xi's absence will certainly cause some difficulties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_conference
I don't think any of it matters because the main sources of emissions in the developed world are mostly supported by governments (building roads, zoning policies which create suburban sprawl, heavy regulations on nuclear energy which make it unfeasible, subsidized agriculture that creates artificially cheap meat and distorts land use, etc.).
Hard to have solutions for the developing world until they are developed and I don't think anyone has found any way to actually accomplish that from the outside. The best the developed world could do would be to drastically increase migration from poorer, developing countries to richer developed ones but that's a big bag of political impossibility right now.
"The best the developed world could do would be to drastically increase migration from poorer, developing countries to richer developed ones"
From an emissions standpoint, wouldn't that be among the WORST things to do? The average American has a carbon footprint four times larger than the average Mexican.
I agree, the best thing we can do is to drastically increase migration from the first world to the third world.
Are you referring to repatriation or to some kind of colonialism? I think colonialism would risk increasing prosperity in the colonized countries, which would lead to increased emissions.
I would replace the tax system with a flat $20,000-per-annum fee in all first-world countries. It's like a "country as country club" approach.
For productive people this would be a much lower tax burden than they currently suffer, while for non-productive people it would be unaffordable, forcing them to move to cheaper countries.
Oh, I've had the same idea. I think that fee is much too high, though. The first-world country I live in currently has tax income of approximately €10k/inhabitant, and that's with a costly welfare system. If our politicians got their hands on even more money, I can't imagine what silly and dangerous things they'd do with it.
However, I don't think there's much chance of such a system, where poor pensioners and cripples and so on are thrown out of their own country, ever being implemented, for obvious reasons. But I wouldn't be too surprised if some country added a flat-fee option to their tax system, as a means of attracting the right migrants.
Question 1: do you simply open the border and shove the poors over it, or take all their stuff on the way out as compensation?
Question 2: how do you get the poors to the border? Do you give them a period to sell up and move out, or do you just auction their stuff off for them and put them on a special train?
Question 3: who mows Mr and Mrs $20,000 p/a's lawn, or serves them coffee?
Wikipedia writes:
*This conference is the first time that parties are expected to commit to enhanced ambition since COP21. Parties are required to carry out [to increase commitments?] every five years, as outlined in the Paris Agreement, a process colloquially known as the 'ratchet mechanism'.*
I think this "ratchet mechanism" (also described in the article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference) is one reason why there are high expectations.
My view is that global warming isn't that big of a deal and these summits probably won't have much of an effect – presumably we'll keep using fossil fuels as long as they provide cheap energy no matter what. The previous summits don't seem to have affected my life at all – I can still fly across the continent for €20 – so presumably this one won't either, and I'll just view it as yet another cocktail party for our rulers, of no concern to me.
I am concerned about AGW and I have low expectations for COP26. I am hopeful for the future because human fertility is dropping rapidly. I spell out my thoughts here:
TinyURL.com/HowStopAGW
Hadn't heard of it. My prior for any climate summit is that it will have negligible effects on climate change, unless it somehow convinces the US or China to go nuclear (which I think is a fairly unlikely outcome).
China is moving ahead rapidly with nuclear power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
Interesting! I'm somewhat skeptical that this is a consequence of climate summits (as opposed to simply being a promising economical way to generate power), but to be fair I haven't looked into it.
What are the reasonable lifestyle options for people with a very low well-being (e.g. due to genetics, external circumstances, resistance to most treatment options, lifelong imprisonment) who don't want to or can't undergo euthanasia/commit suicide?
I was curious if frequent lucid dreams and deep meditative states (such as 6 hours of jhanas or metta per day) could serve as satisfying coping strategies.
In practice it’s hard to blame someone so disadvantaged for seeking relief with opioids, alcohol or other drugs.
Long duration meditation requires time and discipline. Not strong suits for the people who drew the short straw in life.
Many people turn to religion.
It depends on if you're merely incapable of much productive activity - in which case pray you find a loving relationship with someone who can support you, and focus on your partner and family - or if you're also in constant pain, in which case that shit really sucks and drugs or, if those fail, euthanasia become very plausible options.
I know plenty of people in the first category who manage to lead lives that are happy overall, though obviously things would be better with good health. The only person I know in the later category is pursuing every possible means of maybe curing the pain, at almost any cost, and I don't know what he'll do if he runs out of options....
If you're after more prosaic advice of how to kill time when unable to leave the house of exert yourself, videogames are literally optimised for providing feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment, and many of them have substantial communities to provide a social network! I also recommend gaming to healthy people, it's just fun :)
I was just thinking video games.
Cleanthes was below average intelect (allegedly, I have my doubts), lived below the poverty line, had the kind of job that made the ancient Greeks say "wow that's a tough job" and his hobby invovled breaking bones in his hands and face. My life is way, way cushier than his but his Stoicism seems to have worked for both of us.
For the last decade America has been depolarizing around race and repolarizaing around class. To be clear, it's still more race polarized than class polarized. But that's been changing. The Democratic Party has been bleeding working class voters to the Republicans. The Republican Party has been bleeding middle and upper class voters to the Democrats.
The issue with that is that the working class outnumbers the other two classes. If the process is completed then you'll see the Democrats representing 20%-33% of the population and the Republicans representing the rest. For now, the Democratic Party is staying afloat (more or less) on the fact that minority woring class voters are still Democrats. But that's increasingly shifting.
I think that political parties tend to know where their bread is buttered. They see these changes and I expect them to react. The question is what the Democrats can do to prevent becoming a permanent minority. Electoral reform won't do it. It will give them a boost but they're genuinely losing vote share. It might even accelerate the process by forcing the Republicans to appeal to non-traditional Republican groups more. Likewise, it's increasingly looking like non-voters are leaning Republican so the Democratic focus on general turnout like automatic voter registration isn't likely to help. (Both are good things for democracy but not the party. Also, politically, the major reforms the Democrats want are unlikely to happen anyway.)
So where do the Democrats go from here? Do they find some kind of new working class politics? Can they afford to alienate their elite, cosmopolitan donor/volunteer base? Can they reform the actual people who make up party leadership to look like their base? The Republicans, for all their other flaws, have politicians, donors, and staffers demographically similar to their base. The Democrats don't. Do they (ironically) need some kind of affirmative action? Do they become an increasingly tyrannical minority and turn on democracy as a concept? (They haven't so far but how much of that is contingent on the fact they're getting the majority of the vote? It's easy to be pro-democracy when you're winning.)
My idea (which is half baked) is that we're heading for something like Britain got in the 1930-60s. The Democrats could collapse and be replaced by a more openly socialist, consciously working class party. They'll stay on as a rump like the Lib Dems who represent the OxBridge set but don't have enough vote share to do anything. The question is whether the Democrats can course correct and absorb the nascent movement (like they did in the late 19th century and 1930s) or not. Though an argument against that is Labour has increasingly become, like the Democrats, a non-working class party too! The British working class is increasingly voting for the Tories, which is admittedly easier since the Tories have a longer history of working class engagement. So there's some kind of general political shift going on here throughout the west.
Or is this not a problem and the realignment will stop before it necessitates any kind of response? Will the Republicans just fail to pick up the $20 on the ground because they're too married to their form of class politics? Place your bets, I guess, but I'm curious to hear what people think.
Isn't this roughly the same thesis as Scott's `modest proposal?' I agree with your diagnosis of the way things are trending. I don't have confidence in what this implies for the future (besides, realignment of political coalitions, but realignment into what exactly?)
Roughly, yes. I'm asking for people to place their bets, as it were. Personally, I'm between a 1930s-Britain style realignment and a late 19th century American Progressive style realignment. But I'm curious to hear what people think or to have holes poked in my thoughts.
I don't understand American politics at all, so forgive me if this is a very naive view, but from the other side of the Atlantic (France), the way we present things is that Democrats are social-democrats, while Republicans are more conservative, and we heavily insist that Republicans consists mostly of old, rich, white people. So I was under the impression that Democrats were on the side of the working class. But that doesn't seem to be the case. So what do the Democrats represent? Cosmopolitan, city-dwelling elites?
I think this would have been a roughly correct characterization circa 2000, say, but the parties have evolved a lot since then. Read Scott's "A Modest Proposal" for a primer. Erusian's thesis (with which I agree) is that the Democrats are evolving to be the party of the patricians (roughly, of the college educated), and the Republicans to be the party of the plebians (roughly, the working class). The thing is, a pure sort of this form is unstable, because there are a lot more plebians than patricians, and the American political system more or less guarantees (on the national scale) two roughly competitive parties, so the political coalitions have to realign somehow. The questions is, how exactly? I don't know. I can imagine multiple scenarios, but don't have very high confidence in any one.
There are more plebians than patricians, but college educated at present includes a lot of people who are not patricians — consider school teachers, for example.
I don't know, I'm defining patricians and plebians in terms of class, not income, and I would say school teachers are patrician class (as are baristas with advanced degrees in fields ending in`studies')
Wikipedia says more than a third of Americans over age 25 have at least a bachelor's degree. No class that large can be patrician.
why not?
There are obviously multiple sub-tiers within each class. But college educated vs non-college educated seems to be trending to be the major fault line in our politics. Labelling the two groups as `patrician' and `plebian' respectively is just me being whimsical. Feel free to suggest alternative terms.
It was true even circa 2012. The big realignment roughly coincided with Trump.
There's a difference between who the policies of the parties are aimed to support, and the class of voters that support the two parties.
In principle this is true. In practice, I tend to assume voters vote in what they see as their best interest, and that thus if group A votes for party X, then the policies of party X must actually favor group A, regardless of who they are claimed to support. Of course, voters may weight other factors than purely economic calculations into their assessment of which party supports `them.'
If group A votes for party X it means that group A *thinks* that party X's policies will favour them, but whether it actually shakes out that way is another story, and party X knows that too.
agreed
Favour isn't necessarily monolithic. The party that favours you in some ways will disfavour you in others.
In the US I think it's often a choice between the party that actually serves your interests better and the party that flatters your social status and tells you that yes, _your_ group of people are the people who really matter.
If you're a member of the white lower-to-middle-middle-class then maybe the Republicans aren't _actually_ going to serve your interests best, but they are going to tell you that you matter and are important and are precious and special and are being listened to. Similarly if you're a member of one of the Democrats' many client groups then the Democrats might not be your best bet either, but they are definitely going to tell you that you matter and are important and are precious and special and are being listened to.
The more accurate version of this is: voters vote against people they think despise them (on both sides)
"In principle this is true. In practice, I tend to assume voters vote in what they see as their best interest, and that thus if group A votes for party X, then the policies of party X must actually favor group A, regardless of who they are claimed to support."
This would only follow if voters could accurately deduce what was in their best interests, which is clearly not even close to being true.
I said what *they see as* their best interest. They could of course be wrong. In a one off election being wrong may even be probable. But I don’t find it very plausible that tens of millions would repeatedly and consistently vote against their interests because they are too stupid to realize it. Probably they are just working with a different utility function.
The easiest way to show that tens of millions of people repeatedly and consistently vote against their interests is with a "grandmaster attack" (https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/19681/chess-grandmaster-problem-and-valid-attacks-on-zero-knowledge-proofs-of-identi).
Observe that there are tens of millions of pairs of people with virtually identical economic interests but one of whom votes Republican and the other Democratic.
Given this, we don't even need to ask which of them is right - we have already demonstrated that lots of them are voting against their own economic interests.
Now, you've been very careful to talk about "interests" without specifying "economic" throughout, and I'm intentionally moving the goalposts slightly - my suspicion is that your response will be "ah, but some of those people want to live in a world governed by right-wing social policies and others want to live in a world governed by left-wing social policies". And I acknowledge that there's an element of truth to that, but I also claim that in most cases one of the most important things making them vote the way they do is the belief that it's in their economic interest to do so, and that half of them are definitely wrong about that.
And given that, I also think it's farfetched to assume that people can reliably work out what's in their own interests in other ways (see, for example, the large number of people who were convinced that legalising gay marriage would have terrible consequences for straight marriage).
Why do you tend to assume so? I would think that voters vote for what they consider the common good. After all, a person motivated by selfishness shouldn't waste their time on voting in the first place.
I think most people define `the common good' as `that which is in the best interests of me and mine.' However they define mine (may not be blood relatives), and however they define `best interests' (probably not purely economic).
On economic issues, the Republicans support big business and the Democrats half-heartedly support the working class. (Half-heartedly because they've been taken over by cosmopolitan, city-dwelling elites. Biden and Sanders are old men from before that takeover.)
On other issues, the Republicans support the white, rural working class, and white suburbanites who think of themselves as rural working class. The Democrats support everyone else.
Economic policy is how Democrats win, and it's a serious failure of the current party leadership to lose sight of that. Conventional wisdom says that Biden won because he's a boring moderate, but I think he won because he's a relic of the old working-class Democrats.
Interestingly, although Sanders himself is from before that split, his big surge in 2016 was mainly due to him becoming the candidate of the highly educated diverse urban social class (though perhaps particularly the lower income fraction of that higher class set).
Biden is not Trump. A dead horse could have beaten Trump, and possibly did.
I thought we ran a dead horse against Trump in 2016 and she lost. Or was that a broken toaster? I can never remember.
That was a witch, at least if you ask her opponents. Nobody *hates* a dead horse, or a broken toaster. It's just sort of there. And if it's only *mostly* dead, it can still sign legislation passed by a friendly Congress, appoint judges from the approved list, and generally fill the office in a way most people would prefer to having that office filled by someone they actually hate.
Hillary Clinton, lots of people actually hated. Likewise Donald Trump, so the election came down to who people hated more. And we know how that turned out. But very few people really hated Joe Biden, which is a significant advantage over Trump or Hillary.
It's fair to say the Democrats are social democrats and the Republicans are more conservative. Likewise, the unions tend to be Democrat. But the Democrats are also historically the party of urban areas, the Northeastern, and Southern elites, and the college educated elites. They've also been the party of minorities since the 1970s or so. Historically, this led to weird things like the Democrats being the pro-segregation AND the anti-segregation party.
The Democrats have been losing the working class since the 1970s. This was stopped somewhat by the Democrats moving to the right (as Clinton I did) and by the fact the minorities used to be solidly Democratic regardless of their class. In the last ten years this has been less and less true. Working class minorities are increasingly voting Republican and working class union members are increasingly voting Republican. In short, the working class is increasingly resembling each other regardless of race in voting habits. This has led to a joke that the Republicans are building the broad, working class coalition the Democrats always wanted.
Now, minorities and unions are still majority Democrat. But less and less so. Meanwhile, educated white people (even in business positions like Wall Street types) are increasingly Democrats. The Democrats do have vote share trending upward among the college educated. Especially the elite ones, less so people at trade colleges. But they're losing vote share among most other demographics.
As Appleby says, this is unsustainable because the college educated aren't a broad enough coalition to win. They know this. I know this. Everyone knows this. The question is what they're going to do about it.
It's a bit misleading to say "working class minorities are increasingly voting Republican" or "Republicans are building the broad, working class coalition the Democrats always wanted". The first claim is literally true, but I think because Republicans are now getting something like 40% of the Hispanic vote rather than 30% (i.e., back to the level they were at with George W. Bush, rather than McCain, Romney or the first Trump run) and are getting something like 20% of the Black vote rather than 10%.
The trends are moving in a direction such that, if they continue uninterrupted for a decade or two, the Republicans might be winning a majority of working class minorities. But that's still a ways from now, and these sorts of trends only sometimes continue uninterrupted for that long before the next trend begins, which might be orthogonal to this one.
I've repeatedly brought up the possibility the trends could be interrupted and that majorities still vote Democrat. I don't think it's at all fair to say I'm being disingenuous.
I'm not claiming you're being disingenuous. I'm just clarifying because I know that some other people in the thread indicate that they are unfamiliar with the details of the American situation, and someone could easily get the wrong idea from your post that Republicans are *already* winning close to half of working class minorities.
"They've also been the party of minorities since the 1970s or so."
1930s.
"The Democrats have been losing the working class since the 1970s."
Nixon v. McGovern was in 1972, and it was far more of a modern election in its voting patterns than most late 20th century ones, so I suppose that's true.
"The question is what they're going to do about it."
The Democrats have not lost ground in the national popular vote. They've lost some ground in the electoral college, but this seems temporary, as Georgia, Arizona, and Texas swing toward them. There are far more safe Dem electoral votes than there are safe GOP electoral votes.
> 1930s
This was when the shift from Blacks being solid Republicans started. They only became solid Democrats a bit later on, during the Civil Rights era. You also see Black Republicans (mostly older) surviving into the 1950s. You're right it's the start of the shift but it took a few decades.
> The Democrats have not lost ground in the national popular vote. They've lost some ground in the electoral college, but this seems temporary, as Georgia, Arizona, and Texas swing toward them. There are far more safe Dem electoral votes than there are safe GOP electoral votes.
Not yet but if current trends continue they will. Plus the next few years look to be an electoral bloodbath because of how the map's drawn. Maybe the pattern won't continue! I don't know and I'm perfectly willing to hear it won't. I'm just trying to figure out because I have a feeling we might be heading for a new party system.
If you want a good generalization, cities vote D and rural areas vote R.
Cities are gaining population and rural areas are losing population.
Ergo...
The cities will turn red? That's what happens when people move from one place to another. They take their politics with them. Or are you suggesting they're all going to die off?
Also, a fair bit of the red shift last election was working class/minority communities in cities. Again, not enough to make a difference. But enough that if it continues the Democrats will have a problem. My question is what political actors will do to respond to that.
It made a huge difference. The Dems lost two Senate seats they expected to win, and all of the stretch seats they thought they might have a chance in. They lost a bunch of House seats they hoped to win. The result is no filibuster reform, no statehood for Puerto Rico or DC, no national voting standards, and no change to the Court.
Instead we got a decent economic bill early on, and we *might* get a bit more here in a few weeks. Or, you know, maybe not. The red shift already dashed most Democratic hopes for this last cycle before we go into the wilderness.
Because we have, essentially, two parties and not many smaller ones as is common in Europe, the two parties are not monolithic. Each one has lots of smaller factions with in it. Some parts of the Democratic Party support unions, some are cosmopolitan, city-dwelling elites. Some in the Republican Party are old and white, others are religious and non-rich and non-white, others are racists. None of the factions is in control 100% of the time. This is even more complicated because its plays out different at different levels of government (federal, state, local, etc).
The most accurate descriptions is that democrats are against republicans and republicans are against democrats. Thats really the only consistent behavior.
That's becoming less and less accurate with time but as of now it's still better than useless -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election under "Income"
One issue is that with voter turnout so low, and voter turnout being so heavily correlated with education and income, it actually wouldn't be too hard for a party that gets the support of the 30% of the population with highest education and income to actually get more votes than the party that gets the support of the rest of the population. That is, under this new configuration, voter suppression will generally help Democrats, and making it easier to vote will generally help Republicans. The parties are definitely not operating in ways that reflect this understanding.
It also helps that by far the biggest source of funding for political parties these days is small dollar donations, which tend to come from the 80-90th percentile of the income distribution. The party of the upper middle class can be the party of a much smaller fraction of the population, and still get a majority of votes and the vast majority of political donations.
Interestingly, the Senate and Electoral College have very different biases than this set of biases. If this transformation does become complete, then it may coincidentally turn out that these structural biases cancel out with the voting and donating biases. But it will be hard to measure this, because the votes are much easier to measure than the preferences of the population as a whole.
So you think it's sustainable long term? Do you see Democrats going back to voter suppression as in the 19th century?
I doubt that it is sustainable long term, but there is a possibility it continues longer than overall popularity would suggest.
I expect that new social and cultural trends will intervene in some unpredictable way before we clearly get to that point though.
The deck is heavily stacked against third parties. Instead of new parties replacing old ones, we get new factions taking over existing parties.
How do you think that's going to shake out? Working class Republicans? Democrats moving towards socialism? Something else?
The 2016 election suggests a natural fracture point - we ended up with the Clinton wing of the Democrats against the Trump wing of the Republicans, but we weren't that far off from ending up with the Sanders wing of the Democrats against the Romney wing of the Republicans. It didn't have to be the case that economic protectionism and anti-immigrant sentiment was in the same party with tax cuts for the rich.
This is a rather odd comment that asks 'how will the majority party stop from becoming the minority party?', which seems like a bit of a non-sequitur. You have an oddly doom-and-gloom look at the party who received 7 million more votes in the latest presidential election, and had a similar performance 4 years before that, etc. I don't see how one gets 'what the Democrats can do to prevent becoming a permanent minority' from there.
It's true that the Dems lost ground with some groups, but they..... by definition made it up with other groups, as their vote share remained the same or higher. Biden reversed several class & gender trends that Clinton suffered from, so obviously whatever 'trends' are going on are hardly inexorable. The non-college educated voted overwhelmingly for Reagan, then switched to Clinton, then Bush, then Obama, then Trump- they're clearly a swingy group, you're ignoring mean reversion of any present trends around education & voter share.
"The issue with that is that the working class outnumbers the other two classes"- The educated vote at much higher rates
"If the process is completed then you'll see the Democrats representing 20%-33% of the population and the Republicans representing the rest"- Mean reversion, the process will not 'complete'
I don't see how that's odd at all. "One party is trending towards the minority. Will the trend continue? How will they stop that if it does?" This discourse comes from Democratic strategists, by the way, not Republicans who tend to be doom and gloom too.
Except that Democrats /aren't/ trending towards the minority. If you put together a bunch of demographic trends in a particular, fragile, tendentious way, you get a semi-plausible reason why, in the future, Republicans might stop tending towards the minority and Democrats might start doing so, but that's a very different thing.
This isn't true. If the same trends of the 2016 or 2020 elections are moved all the way to 100% then the Democrats will be a tiny minority. That would mean that working class minorities and whites go Republican while suburbs and college educated folks go Democrat. And at that point the Democrats are non-viable.
Will they get there? I don't know. I think probably not. But I'm curious how that realignment will happen.
How does that follow? The trends for both elections is there Democrats get more votes. They've consistently gotten more total votes since 2008. In 2010and 2014 Republicans got more votes relatively speaking, but those were low turnout elections.
Democrats may have a motivation problem, but in terms of number of votes cast the trend has been in their direction for a long time. In the Senate, for example, Democrats represent 39 million more people than Republicans. In a parliamentary system it would be closer to 60-40 than 50-50.
Senate Republicans haven't represented a majority since 1996.
`people represented' seems like a red herring, in that you are counting all California republicans as being `represented' by Democrats, and all Texas democrats as `represented' by Republicans. (And remember, there are more Republicans in California than in Texas, and more Democrats in Texas than in New York). In a proportional representation system, the senate would be maybe 52-48 D (instead of 50-50), but not 60-40.
"The Republicans, for all their other flaws, have politicians, donors, and staffers demographically similar to their base."
I don't think this is at all true. Republican donors and politicians are for the most part quite rich and represent the Mitt Romney type. The Republic base is a non-rich, religious, white working class person. The GOP has historically been fantastic at using culture war issues to get non-rich people to vote for them, then making zero actual progress towards those culture war issues and in fact losing basically every culture war, but keeping the tax cuts for the rich going. Recall that the Republican establishment was initially absolutely horrified by Donald Trump and did everything they could to get rid of him....they wanted country-club, silver spoon Jeb Bush.
In fact, up until very, very recently, I would say it Democrats were far more aligned with their "base" than the GOP. The difference is that once the Republicans realized Trump was super popular with their base, they quickly got on board. Conservatives have far more respect for power and authority than progressives -- you wouldn't see that happen among Democrats. And still, plenty of the country club types bailed on the GOP over the populist vulgarity...David Brooks, George Will, Bill Kristol, etc.
Anyway, your point is correct that IF a legitimate party ever arose that was focused entirely on an economic platform for the working and middle class, one that just stayed out of the culture wars entirely for the most part, it should have the biggest base and be essentially undefeatable. But that is precisely why both the DNC and the GOP will make every effort to prevent that from ever happening.
Still, conditions are ripe, since Bernie proved you don't need the support of national legacy media nor big donors to run a viable campaign. And he almost did it, despite vicious opposition from the DNC power players. Plus most under 40s are not aligned with a party and there are now more independents than either Republicans or Democrats.
I can see two ways it happens:
1. The progressive wing of the Democrat party actually gets something economically substantive and majorly threatening up for a real vote -- Medicare For All or a major overhaul of the tax code or something like that. If this became enough of a threat, it's possible that all the affluent social progressives would freak out and leave to form an alliance with the moderate Republicans so that you essentially had three parties: right-wing Q Anon type crazy Trump people, affluent urbanites, and then working class social democrats. It's hard to see how this happens when the DNC is in power now and couldn't even get soak the rich policies into its big package.
2. The more likely thing I see happening is that the ultra woke identity-politics wing keeps alienating Democrats -- this is already a huge issue and I expect it to become moreso as the threat of Trump recedes, which was a unifying force for Democrats -- and moderates and normies abandon ship and strike an alliance with moderate non-religious Republicans. This would end up not with a working class party but with an extreme right, an extreme left, and a moderate party in the middle a la Bill Clinton.
The main problem with trying to just create a party directly for the interests of the non-rich is that the people most likely to go for that are either (1) young (since almost everyone young is broke and they are far less committed to or in interested in the parties, and (2) not young but poor or close to it. And those two groups vote in very, very low numbers. Bernie tried to do this in 2016 and came very close to succeeding, but the DNC -- in a somewhat brilliant turn -- managed to use identity politics against him to paint his movement as sexist and only for white bros. He tried to remedy that in 2020 by bringing in more identity politics and that made him slightly more popular with the urban progressives but less popular with everyone else.
You are misinformed about the demographics among other things. Specifically, you believe some stories that Democrats/Progressives like to tell themselves but aren't true. The median Republican politician is closer in age to their median voter, the same race as their median voter, the same gender, and only somewhat wealthier. The median Democratic politician is white when their median voter is not, the median Democratic politician is MUCH older than the median Democratic voter, and they're much wealthier.
There's been a ton of research into how specifically Democratic staffers and donors are HUGELY out of step with the median Democratic voter in their backgrounds, policy preferences, etc. Specifically, they're much MORE progressive than the average Democrat and tend to pull the party further to the left than is electorally viable. And how the problem is much less on the Republican side.
"when their median voter is not"
Both the median Dem primary voter and Dem general election voter in 2020 was White.
"And how the problem is much less on the Republican side."
Maybe on a one-dimensional political spectrum, but Republicans tend to take popularism to heart no more than the Democrats. Democrats have a trifecta, after all, despite running substantially to the left of the median voter.
> Both the median Dem primary voter and Dem general election voter in 2020 was White.
Good catch. That was a sloppy point though Democrats are less diverse than their base is true.
> Maybe on a one-dimensional political spectrum
Yeah, to be clear I mean "problem" in the sense of "selfish parties trying to win and it prevents them from winning" rather than some kind of moral absolute.
I thought you were talking about policy interests and ideas, not demographic stuff such as age and race. I've known plenty of GOP donors and I assure you that many of them could care less about the things the GOP base does (i.e. abortion, religion)...they just want the tax cuts. I'm also not sure those demographic things you mention are true in local and state politics, though obviously they are at the federal level.
As for the policy thing, TODAY Democrats are out of step, but that's a new thing, as is the whole education re-alignment. It was not even four election cycles ago that people with college degrees voted more for Republicans than Democrats.
I'm pretty sure that a large fraction of the Republican base (a group in which I considered myself when I lived in the US) is also just in it for the tax cuts, and not in favour of the culture war stuff, though.
People are policy, as they say. The issue is when the people making policy are alienating the votes they need to win. Though I'm not convinced that's actually what's causing the shift. That seems to assign too much agency to elites and too little to the actual people.
"It will give them a boost but they're genuinely losing vote share."
2012 election: Dem by 4, 2016 election: Dem by 2, 2020 election: Dem by 4. That's not losing vote share. Both of the parties are highly competitive and can win depending on economic and other conditions.
"So where do the Democrats go from here?"
They become a neoliberal party, like the Lib Dems, but with a much larger vote share. They win Hamilton County, IN, and Madison County, AL while losing ground in what is largely already red territory.
"The Democrats could collapse and be replaced by a more openly socialist, consciously working class party."
Why would they? The areas that swung greatest against Trump are precisely those growing fastest in population.
"Will the Republicans just fail to pick up the $20 on the ground because they're too married to their form of class politics"
Almost certainly. It's not impossible for either party to lose in a landslide, but, in this party system, it simply doesn't happen very often. Maybe it might in the next.
> 2012 election: Dem by 4, 2016 election: Dem by 2, 2020 election: Dem by 4. That's not losing vote share. Both of the parties are highly competitive and can win depending on economic and other conditions.
Agreed. My point is that if current trends continue they won't. We're not there yet and this is probably something they'll adjust to before it happens.
> They become a neoliberal party, like the Lib Dems, but with a much larger vote share. They win Hamilton County, IN, and Madison County, AL while losing ground in what is largely already red territory.
Totally possible. Do you have any evidence or signs of it?
> Why would they? The areas that swung greatest against Trump are precisely those growing fastest in population.
They wouldn't. But insurgents might. Or not! I tend to think American parties survive more than people give them credit for.
> Almost certainly. It's not impossible for either party to lose in a landslide, but, in this party system, it simply doesn't happen very often. Maybe it might in the next.
That's kind of my point. I think we might be heading for the next, for better or worse. And I'm curious what it'll be.
One problem with this view is that party allegiance changes very slowly, even long after party positions have changed. There were a lot of old white southerners who were Democrats well into the 90s because their fathers had been Democrats and their fathers' fathers and so on and they were damned if they would vote for a Republican even if the Republicans better represented them. In the same way, even if the Republicans come to represent working class black people better than the Democrats, I think there's at least another generation before working class black people start voting Republican en masse, and in that generation probably lots of other things will happen.
This is correct. Bill Clinton won West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Missouri. The Kentucky House only flipped in 2016, as did the last overwhelmingly White rural southern county.
Definitely. My parents and others I know of their generation consider themselves Republicans, but only because they still think it is the party of Eisenhower. On actual policy issues they are far closer to modern Democrats (as Eisenhower was). My parents just don’t realize how little the party of Trump has in common with what they grew up with.
Previous realignments have seen the death of parties (where are the Federalists? the whigs?) and the emergence of new ones. Such a process, if it occurs, could presumably short circuit the stickiness of party allegiance. It also seems clear that we are headed for a major realignment. Is it clear that the next party system will involve two parties with the same names as the current party system?
We've had a two-party system, with parties named Democrats and Republicans, for more than half the history of the Republic. I don't know what the parties will look like in twenty years, but I can tell you what their names will be.
That will merely delay rather than stop the phenomenon. Losing slowly is still losing. Though sometimes simply holding in place until the situation on the ground changes is valid.
More importantly, I think that washes out to be an argument for either a Democratic realignment or for the rise of a new left wing party like the Labour Party in the 1930s. Liberal Whigs weren't going to become Tories but plenty of them were willing to sign up for a new left wing party. Negative partisanship keeps you against the other guy, not for your guy.
I agree that's far more likely than some triumphant march to victory where we get to a one party state. The parties aren't filled with fools. They'll try to adapt.
Possibly related: as I understand it, Americans have been stably in favor of easy access to abortion in the first trimester, some gatekeeping for the second, and making abortion difficult in the third trimester. Even though this is the majority, it doesn't have political representation *at* *all*.
I'm not sure if there's any other issue where the politicians are that far out of step with the public, though access to recreational marijuana is vaguely in the neighborhood.
Well, this is the Roe standard though. Roe said that states cannot implement any restrictions during the first trimester, can have reasonable restrictions in the second, and can implement basically a full ban in the third. And I think the DNC position is basically that Roe should stand -- though you are probably right that most Americans don't know what Roe actually says. I think people might have the wrong impression and think that it just fully legalizes abortion or that it doesn't take into account length of pregnancy.
The trimester framework of Roe was overruled in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, though.
It was only slightly tweaked, by a few weeks with an option for a bit more tweaking if medical technology changes further. But Nancy's point remains. There is little active political representation for the view that abortion law should reflect either the Roe or Casey standard. There's a strong force arguing for "we must vigorously protect every abortion guaranteed by Roe/Casey, *and* allow every other abortion that Roe and Casey would theoretically allow us to prohibit", and there's another strong force arguing for "ban every abortion the courts will let us get away with banning; overturn Roe/Casey ASAP", and only a few judges standing in between.
Which, because the two sides are vaguely even in strength, maintains the balance. But it's weird that there are so few politicians arguing for "let's try to maintain that balance" even though it is the position of a plurality and maybe absolute majority of the electorate.
-"It was only slightly tweaked, by a few weeks with an option for a bit more tweaking if medical technology changes further."
I thought they also got rid of the distinction between first and second trimesters? Though I'm not sure whether this makes it a more liberal or more conservative law.
Do you think the working class will be generally opposed to Universal Basic Income? (If they are, god help them.) The Republican party is unlikely to support UBI.
I think UBI is pretty exclusively popular with a few left wing technocrats. No idea how that'll shift though I tend to think UBI is bad policy.
Regardless: you do realize the Republican Party is the only party to implement anything like UBI (in Alaska) and the party that invented just mailing people money as a response to the pandemic (Bush, Trump)? The Democrats are the ones who want to send money through institutional intermediaries.
My guess is the trend of working class minorities, particularly Hispanics, moving into the Republican camp will continue over the next decade, and The Democrats will take a drubbing in Congress over that period.
Where do The Democrats go? It will depend on where the Republicans go while they are in power over multiple cycles. Right now, a great strength of the new, Trump-reinvented GOP is that it is inchoate. Meaning it isn't burdened by a coherent ideology or perceived policy failures, and therefore working class minorities can imagine it differently from how working class whites might.
The Democrats will look for weaknesses in their opposition as they develop. If there's a major recession, maybe the Democrats go with the FDR playbook and run on an anti-free market platform in an attempt to win back the working class. In that scenario, current Wall Street Dems and other moderates rush back to the GOP.
If the economy stays strong for a decade, the Dems could twist in the wind, over which period perhaps the economic leftists divorce the woke leftists, each deciding the other side is the problem, with the Democratic Socialists forming their own party, which could emerge stronger than the old Dems whenever the next recession does come, since the Dem Socs might be in a better position to win working class voters than a woke Democratic party, leaving it a rump.
Or maybe the weakness in a winning working-class Republican coalition is that working class whites and minorities don't get along as well as they might hope to. I suspect many current Democrats believe the GOP, in its new populist guise, is in reality too white nationalist at its core for a large multi-race coalition to hold. If that turns out to be the case, The Democrats won't have to change much and can go back to being an Upper-Lower coalition.
Another possibility is the Republicans get sucked into a foreign war, say with China over Taiwan or Iran over potential nukes and the US suffers either a military loss (with China) or an Iraq-style unpopular war (with Iran). That would be an own-goal by the GOP, and perhaps the coalitions would more or less go back to how they looked in 2008.
Or maybe the Republicans lean heavily into Trumpist "America First" economic sloganeering and, in turns, becomes the more statist party, which enjoys picking winners and losers in the economy. Or perhaps just picking on winners. If that strategy failed badly, as in hurting the economy, perhaps the Democrats position themselves as the more free-market oriented party. What would the resulting Democratic coalition look like then? I don't know.
So, predictions. The TL;DR version is that I'm cribbing David Shor and you should just go read him.
Dems lose both houses of Congress next year, and the White House to a Trump revival in 2024. I think people who are saying a dead horse could have beaten Trump underestimate his strength. Tim Scott runs and wins in 2028 and wins a second term in 2032. The Scott presidency will complete a political realignment that leaves Black voters as Democratic voters, but with a 70-30 or 60-40 split, rather than the current 90-10. Basically, the black vote will end up looking like the Hispanic vote. At some point during the Scott presidency fatigue sets in, leading to Democrats getting the House, then the Senate, ahead of winning it all in 2036. What happens then? Depends on what kind of party the 2030s Republicans turn out to be.
I have two ideas for what the Democrats do in response. One - and this is the one I hope for - is that we shut up about most social issues and talk relentlessly about economic ones.
Aside - I'm from Missouri, which is now a red state. A few years back our legislature passed right-to-work legislation (for non-US people, this is considered very anti-labor by the labor movement). This has been a Republican goal for years, and it's been spreading state by state. But we still have (for now) a robust petition process and what's called the People's veto. For any law that's passed, if you get enough signatures objecting to it then it goes on the ballot and doesn't go into effect. We did that here, and overturned right to work by something like 2 to 1 against. The left has had similar, if less dramatic success, in other left economic goals here over the last few years - minimum wage and Medicaid expansion are the two I can think of off the top of my head. Which is all to say that a Democratic economic agenda is popular, even in a reliable red state.
So, getting back to my first scenario, Democrats, as 2024 bleeds in to 2026 and 2028 and the political wilderness stretches out all around us, shut up about most social issues. Not that we have to change our minds about them, but we stop fucking making them our main messaging, and refuse to do more than perfunctorily acknowledge them. Instead, we talk relentlessly about economics, where most people, by large margins if my red state is any indicator, agree with us. This leads us back into power sometime in the 2030s with a mandate to run a Bernie like playbook. I probably put more credence into this option than it deserves because it reflects my personal preferences.
Second - none of that happens but the young save us anyway. Democrats keep harping on trans stuff and immigrant stuff and abortion stuff and critical race theory and whatnot and keep losing, but the electorate changes under us and in our direction. The 20-somethings agree with us about these things in large numbers, and it turns out that they don't moderate on this stuff as they turn into forty-somethings, meaning that by 2036 having voted for a bathroom law is seen in the same light as having voted for one of the gay marriage bans is now. Dems sweep back into power on the wings of wokeness and proceed to focus on reversing the (I presume) considerable cultural and social standing damage done to various marginalized groups in the 2020s. Little is done economically, and the rich, who by then will have capital gains and inheritance taxes zeroed out after the long era of Republican triumph, will enjoy watching the little people fight over pronouns while their large fortunes, now not subject to any taxes, pass from generation to generation.
Third, like the second except that the young decide they're as annoyed about "birthing people" and "people who menstruate" as I am as they age, and they never become Dem voters in the large numbers we need to save a woke party. The Democrats scrap and fight about this, with some insisting on an economic pivot and other insisting that that's privilege showing and that we can't abandon a moral position just because it's a losing one. The Dems win an occasional election here or there, but basically become like the Republicans were during those forty years when they never won the House. Occasionally, due to one party fatigue or a good candidates, we break through and win one or the other of the House, Senate or Presidency, and maybe even once in a while all three, but we basically remain a minority party for a generation or so until the politics become totally different from the concerns of 2021. I don't really expect this. The incentives for finding the 50/50 point are too high. But I do think it's possible.
I think one weirdness of recent politics is that each party has been winning on the front it's voters care less about, and losing on the front it's base cares more about. The Democrats have been winning the culture war but losing on economic policy, and the Republicans vice versa, but the Democratic base cares more about economics, and the Republican base cares more about culture, so go figure. This is a large part of why I think the current party system is unstable - the parties have been consistently failing to deliver what their own base wants.
Yeah. Everybody thinks they're losing, and everybody's right.
Not everybody. The people who fund both parties are getting what they want.
I fund the Democrats (in my small way). I'm not getting what I want.
Any thoughts about what happens if Trump's health doesn't permit him to run?
yeah I think if Trump is the Republican nominee again, he probably loses again. The Republicans need a standard bearer less toxic than Trump (but still able to energize the Trump voters)
Hard disagree. Trump had serious headwinds last time and still came closer than he had any business doing. If working class voters keeping moving his way, that will put Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and maybe Minnesota in his column. If Black and Hispanic men do as well, that probably forestalls the Georgia and Arizona losses from this time.
He'll probably still lose the popular vote - I don't think things are changing that quickly - but so what? Winning more votes only puts you in power in a democracy, and this isn't that.
Same, basically. Move Scott's run up four years. Not sure whether you get a four-year term on the backend from a Bush 1 style figure or not, but I think the shape of things to come stays the same.
Off Ramps:
I think there are a couple of ways this might be short-circuited. One is the new monthly tax credits for parents. It's the best Democratic policy since the ACA, and given how muddled and half baked the ACA is, maybe better even than that. Republicans hate it, and are already working on messaging against it, likening it to monthly welfare checks. So, IF Dems can get their act together and extend it at least another year, and IF the Republican congress of 2022 then cuts it, and IF Joe doesn't run again (he doesn't have the chops for a strenuous campaign anymore), and IF the Dems can find someone with decent charisma who can do anger well, THEN they have an opportunity. Something like, "There it is folks. They FINALLY met a tax cut they don't like. Cut taxes on rich folks? Sure! Bezos had his taxes cut from x to y. Cut taxes for giant corporations? Why not? Facebook had it's taxes cut from i to j! Hell, GE didn't even pay taxes last year, just like my opponent for the last decade. Trump and his Republicans *love* to cut taxes. Let people (well, rich ones) keep their own money. But you and me? Tax cuts for working parents? Tax cuts for people who can't afford yachts? No no no! That's welfare! WELFARE! That's a tax cut sir, it's our money, and we earned it! And we *also* know better than anyone else how to spend it, thank you very much." If the situation arises and Democrats know what to do with it, they could bring the working class back. If they pair it with someone who realizes in 2024 that they need to shut up about social issues, they could dodge the whole lost decade. The problem is, I don't see any prominent Dem who could pull it off. Maybe Pete, but I don't think he can do outrage. Maybe Booker, but outrage from a black politician has to be done very very carefully so as not to scare the horses, and I don't know that he's deft enough. And definitely not Harris, who's the presumptive nominee and who I think will actually manage to lose the actual vote, not just the election. And the incentives are all wrong right now. A candidate who tries to keep all his (or her) focus on economics and keep as quiet as possible about the social stuff probably can't get through the primaries in 2024. I think it will take time, and probably a lot of it, before that changes.
The second is even more speculative. The Court could go ahead and kill the Roe/Casey regime. I don't think they will do this. A lawyer friend of mine has convinced me that Roberts will maneuver it so that through a series of decisions the Court will gut the Roe/Casey regime, leaving it dead letter, but do it carefully do there's never a "No More Roe" headline. But if he's wrong and we do see that headline, that might be a game changer. This is mostly speculating from my own family, but I've got a mother, two sisters and a few other female relations who are all Republicans, or independents, but the kind that vote Republican. They're also all pro-choice, some staunchly so. One (that I know of) has had an abortion. I've asked several over the last several years how they can vote they way they do and still be pro-choice. I'm typically told that Republicans have to say those things because of the church people, but they don't really mean them. That they'd never outlaw abortion, because they know they'd lose every election until it was legal again. As long as the frog boils slowly, they'll probably keep these women, but if we get a "Roe Goes Down!" headline, they at least lose the women of my family, along with some of their husbands. If that trend is general, that would also override and negate the decade and a half in the wilderness I think I see coming. But I don't even know if there's polling that supports this, or if my sisters are just mistaken about other Republican women.
I agree with this analysis
Interesting post. Thank you.
If someone were telekinetic, what's the least amount of force one could exert to kill a person? The obvious answer would be to squeeze on their brain, but I'm wondering if there's an even more efficient line of attack.
Block one of the big blood vessels I guess?
Agree. The heart is a strong muscle. Much easier to squeeze a carotid artery. Consciousness is lost in seconds. Squeezing both carotids simultaneously would be most effective.
I would think squeezing the vein leaving would require less force than squeezing the artery entering since the blood there is under lower pressure (having passed through all of the capillaries. Obviously the pressure would rise under constriction but it should still rise less than that of the incoming artery.
Never took anatomy but I would lay odds there are more than two veins leaving the brain. Only two arteries entering.
If there is no flow, there is no loss of pressure through a piping system. The loss of pressure is due entirely to frictional losses in the flowing liquid.
Excellent point! I retort that it is not actually necessary to fully stop flow to cause death :P
I recall a sci-fi story that about a guy who had a telekinesis hand. It was about powerful enough to raise a shot glass to his mouth.
The character mainly used it for free drinks and to attract the attention of women.
In the story he kills someone by reaching the other person’s heart and squeezing.
I want to say it was Larry Niven that wrote it but I was smoking a lot of pot back then so I wouldn’t bet on it.
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Arm-Hamilton-Larry-Niven/dp/0345342380/
Probably pushing a button.
Christopher Paolini agreed that "squeeze on a blood vessel in the brain" was the most efficient way to kill someone, since magic in Eragon can't violate conservation of energy.
I think the true force-minimising answer involves something like "target a vital area of the body, and apply a miniscule force to each cell within it, individually, that will kill it". You can imagine puncturing each individual cell membrane, or pushing each cell's nucleus outside it, but I suspect someone more knowledgable about cellular physiology could suggest something even more gentle that would nonetheless be able to kill a cell with a tiny force by disrupting its action at a microscopic level.
I'm not sure whether your telekinetic powers are precise enough to allow you to apply millions of different atomic-level pushes simultaneously, but if they are then I think this is the right approach.
depends if you have crushing only or also a slicing type of deal - crushing is probably hitting a key blood vessel in the brain; if you can slice, though, going for the nerves seems much more efficient. Crushing nerves would be debilitating but probably not cause permanent damage, if I understand things correctly (conditional on the force not being extreme enough to pop the cells)
Are we talking about maximum force, in Newtons, or total work done, in Joules? The first is somewhat problematic to define for telekinesis, since you could apply arbitrarily large shears with a zero net force. However, interpreting things "in the spirit", and assuming you could only apply a unidirectional force on one particle at a time, but could alternate these force applications very rapidly, so that it looked like you were pushing on multiple things at once: I would guess pushing around individual sodium ions in neurons or cells that regulate heartbeat, to trigger some sort of arrhythmia. I would guess this could be done over the course of an hour, never exceeding piconewtons of absolute force applied.
Of course, you have to be able to "select" the individual atoms, being able to do which might be a cheeky assumption. I find this "visualization problem" to always the most underspecified part of telekinesis: do you have to know exact coordinates in some reference frame to apply the force? Does it have to be an object you see, or imagine? Does your imagination have to be predicative, e.g. "the 5,000,000th lowest sodium ion", or can it be impredicative, e.g. "the sodium ion blocking which would cause the most damage." Full impredicativity generally makes this kind of exercise a little boring, but it's hard to know where to draw the line. There should be a standard "psychic powers predicatvity clause", saying something like, "The power can be applied on any object whose coordinates can be identified by a team of two people armed with standard lab equipment in 30 minutes based on the thing I imagine/utter". But I digress...
JMS's Rising Stars includes a character that is telekenetic, but can only move very small things. Initially a CIA assasin that kills by squeezing small blood vessels but ends up doing something very different that I won't spoil.
It depends on how precise you could be, what the limitations of your secondary powers (telekinetic visualisation etc) are. The lowest-energy option is to break the chromosomes in a few spots in a few hundred cells and give them a virulent form of cancer. Thereafter I'd imagine that it would be something like working out how to put enough force on a few key neurons to induce an uncontrolled seizure.
I'm not sure we're allowed to talk about themotte culture war thread, if we aren't just delete this or something.
I've been posting on the motte for a while, and recently I had a feeling it was becoming useless as a space where I could have "good" arguments with people I disagreed with. Just to check, I made a couple fake accounts and posted a bunch of wedge statements, some racist/tradcon stuff and some woke/BIG COMUNISM stuff.
The most heavily heterodox right wing stuff got positive karma and no pushback (mixed societies have heavy drawbacks, Black people are low IQ, Democratic participation should be restricted), the mildest center left statements ("Diversity can have benefits") got neutral karma and some back and forth, and anything to the left of center (Global warming exists) got huge -karma and massive push back.
This extends to any scientific arguments the right doesn't like (Vaccines work, Covid is real, etc.) I'll admit it's not the most scientific test, but I also don't actually care that much, so I'll leave it at that.
It looks like the inevitable self sorting mechanism of internet communities has happened.
Seems like it just can't be avoided. Maybe it's just a feature of social groups.
I am going to have to tread *very* carefully here, since I don't want to cross the streams, but may I ask you:
(1) Are you intimating TheMotte has gone full right-wing/extreme right/even worse?
(2) Have you posted about this experiment of yours and the conclusions you drew over on TheMotte, because I do feel it would be a topic of interest?
(3) I'm.... sort of in the middle of a row over calling for... sanctions... of a particular poster... and I don't want to say anymore. But in their defence, everyone rapping my knuckles are fully committed to free speech and no censorship, argue it out and let the Devil take the hindmost. So your experiment may only show that "the most heavily heterodox right wing stuff" is treated as being heterodox but attacking it would be Censorship so no pushback, while topics such as climate change and the Covid vaccines are ones where everyone feels free to jump in and argue about.
Like I said, I'm heavily in disagreement at the moment with a few people over there, but I don't want to attack them. For what it's worth, I believe the people who are "what you are calling for is censorship" are sincere (even if that allows bad actors to take advantage of the platform afforded them) and I do find it a valuable place still.
(1) No, just that it has it has crystalized a set of "These are normal opinions, and opinions other than these are NOT normal opinions" that makes it less useful as a place for me to calibrate my leftist ass against.
It used to be I could get arguments on merits about crazy leftist things that even I'm not sure about, now I mainly just get poo-poo'd and called an irrational liberal.
(2) I did, it got downvoted out of existence and nobody responded. It might be different if I did up some better actual metrics about it, but I don't care enough.
I only did it to see if I was wasting my time on the community, and it looks like I was; so now I'm just gonna stop going and getting rage dopamine.
(3) This might be true, but I don't care. I'm not interested in fielding in good faith the views and opinions of people that can't agree with me on objective reality; or on core moral axioms.
I'm willing to argue with people who I think are making a mistake, but I've subconsciously shifted to thinking the majority on themotte are actually in conflict with me.
If I keep going there, I'm only doing it to satisfy my lizard brain need to fight the outgroup.
You could try posting on DSL instead. People there have been complaining about not enough left wing posters. I find the mechanics easier than here, since it will show you which topic threads have new posts and let you just read the new posts on the topics of interest to you.
You could, but I think you'll find most of the problems you have with themotte are also very much true there. ACX comments threads are a bit less bad, though.
I disagree. I think DSL hosts pretty good debate. There are some threads which are dumpster fires, and some posters who I prefer to avoid engaging with, but if you avoid those (and you can block them!) it's very good. Of course, it takes some time to figure out which threads to avoid, but avoiding anything with a culture war tag would make a good beginning.
Disagree. The latest top thread has the forum regulars mostly agreeing how nothing needs to be done about moderation policy, and if there is a problem, it is with anyone who has problems concerning the latest debate about three-dimensional interference pictures without unit of weight followed by corrosiveness without tic?
Yeah, anyone seeing this, unless you're a far right extremist, DSL won't be for you. The Mods will run you off, for one thing.
This is a wildly incorrect characterization. I voted for Biden, I don't consider myself right, much less far right, I've been on DSL from the beginning, and I've never so much as been warned, much less `run off.' Sure, there are a lot of right wingers on DSL. So what? There are a lot of right wingers in the country. Isn't it better to have a place where you can discuss with them, instead of sorting into disjoint bubbles?
No, it is not an incorrect characterization, and I'm certainly not the only one who thinks so. This was covered in one of the other open threads, the mods are stilted hard-right, and you're not allowed to play by the same rules as the RWE posters. If you're truly left, and planning to give substantive critiques from that perspective, expect to get snarking from them and then the ban hammer. I'd also note this type of censorship has been in evidence every place I've seen RW/Libertarian mods-only. The same people who whine about cancel culture promptly set one up for themselves.
And I am certainly not the only one who has noticed. If you're left of center, my advice is don't waste your time.
"The Mods will run you off, for one thing."
Assuming I have correctly identified the name you post on there, you have made 559 posts without being run off. It follows that you must be a far right extremist.
I responded to your post over there, and promptly got banned (no, I didn't call you names, accuse you of bad faith).
While over there, I saw these posts in one thread:
JB: I want to end nonwhite immigration to the US, end affirmative action, ....
######er: I consider this attitude far more toxic than JB's racism.
Left-leaning poster: I agree with JB that the presence of intelligent minorities makes things harder for people like him (racists).
right-leaning poster: (And just to be clear, I'm not defending JB, whom I consider an abrasive, tedious, humorless, racist crank.)
Paul Brinkley: AFAIK, we've never explicitly discussed the policy for it on DSL, but I'll venture the following ground rules as a reasonable Schelling point: you can claim someone's a racist, but it had better come with a lot of support
So 3 people called JB the "r-word". Guess which one got banned? #2easy
I'm an active leftwing poster and haven't been run off. It definitely feels like there's a right wing bias, but there's still enough of us that it isn't a complete echo chamber.
Don't recall seeing anyone over there with your handle.
I disagree, it's definitely a RW echo chamber at this point. And it looks like they ran off bobobob yesterday, which is something else.
I definitely am of a conservative bent, so while I enjoy arguing with others over on TheMotte, I probably do feel more comfortable crossing swords with people ostensibly on the same side of the political left-right divide as myself, but who hold much more extreme or completely different views.
If I were a lot more lefty, or if I were myself on a very lefty site (which is why I avoid interacting over on TheSchism because I don't want to get into pointless fights), I imagine I would feel as you do.
You would be more than welcome back on DSL. You are missed.
And not because I expect to agree with you very often.
+1
Come on over. For some reason, they gave me mod privs, so, fair warning - I promise to give you the dignity of not modding you with kid gloves!
(FWIW, yours is one of the few usernames I grep for in ACX threads.)
Yup. Very true. DSL is even worse at this (Erusian, the Nybbler, and maybe Cassander are the only truly quality posters there).
Thanks for the praise. Do let me know if there's anything you want to see me talk about more.
Not even close to true. We had a long and moderately interesting discussion of evidence on whether masks or mask mandates work and the best single contribution was by Conrad, who went through the articles pretty carefully. Hasu, on the other side of the argument, has done a fine job of maintaining a civil discussion while being opposed by multiple people — even if his arguments are, in my view, weaker than he thinks.
I took a look at the thread you're talking about, and Hasu got banned twice by the two RW mods.
But I'm just making stuff up, right?
225 posts, and he got two one day bans. It doesn't seem to have run him off.
I used to be a regular on the culture war thread and the motte. I think the motte trends more conservative and the lefties tend to give up more quickly and move on to other balieys. There were definitely a few hard-headed regulars that I didn’t care for, but the debate wasn’t totally useless. That said it got pretty dull to continuously read the same crap over and over.
For a while, there was a lot of attention paid to how much they wanted and appreciated the liberal voices, I believe it was basically charitable. But I think there were three factors that caused it to bleed liberal voices. One might be a general sensitivity that favors one side over the other and lefty types being, possibly, less loyal to a brand and more ready to head over to sneerclub or something. Scond there was an Overton window-type limitation on what got posted or discussed, it was pretty much “look at how bad these anti-Trump/pro-Woke articles are,” which, points at how bad editorializing is in the current media ecology, but also gets dull and pointless to defend. Which is the third reason it hemorrhages lefties: there’s little to defend in the debates that happen, so why stay?
The bigger problem and the reason I ultimately left is that the quality of everything on Reddit has gone down the tubes. Everything I was subscribed to turned into left wing brigading with the right-wing brigading happening on subs I never got into, usually the stuff where people die or get arrested. And everything that isn’t just weak political karma whoring has become this self-pitying MeIRL thing that’s so juvenile I simply don’t have time for it. The other thing is I’m pretty sure there’s some numbers manipulation going on there with Karma to the point I suspect foreign interference (Tristan Harris described some of this with foreign actors setting up karma farms and buying high karma accounts). It’s see a bevy if very specific types of posts getting very similar vote counts and similar comment streams. I never bothered to test any of this empirically, I simply stopped using it like Facebook and Twitter before it.
So, TLDR I stopped going to the motte because it was repetitive but stopped using Reddit because it sucks more than ever.
Reddit banned all the good subreddits a while back; it's an intolerable mess these days.
First they came for /r/fatpeoplehate, and I did not speak up, because I was already banned.
Were this Reddit, you would get a free award from me, sir!
I really DO miss the "Like" button, but Christina's alternative works for me. Of course, you wind up with a lot of low-information comments this way.
The left-inclined and those who felt driven off moved over to TheSchism instead, and that has a lot less posting and commentary. So that is something on the side of 'lefties tend to give up more quickly'.
I'm sticking with TheMotte (that reminds me, must go and see if I got banned for the latest kerfuffle) because in spite of the hard right talking point *some* (not all) of the commenters engage in, particularly hard right of the American kind, it's still interesting to me and worth engaging with.
At a slight but relevant tangent to this set of threads.
"Hard right" is an ambiguous term. It suggests to me anti-immigration, pro-protectionism, belief in the importance of HBD, probably anti-communism, probably but not necessarily support for an aggressive foreign policy. I am on the opposite side of a majority of those issues, yet people like me — libertarians — make up a sizable fraction of the DSL commentariat that JohnS and EHarding are complaining about.
We mostly share the conservative dislike of things we associate with "Wokism," which could make someone who identifies with the current progressive left uncomfortable and cause such people to lump us all together as enemies and feel unwanted, but that shouldn't be a problem for people with other kinds of left or center views. Or for woke folk who enjoy defending their position against criticism — think of it as a target rich environment.
I am an anti woke leftist ( or European centrist). I think in reality very few old school labour type parties in Europe are woke, and to me that's the left.
The people I'd consider ideological right libertarians (with whom I share most of my social views and VERY few of my economic views) represent 100% of the worthwhile disagreements I've had. I believe your politics are based on some level of empiricism. I mean, I still think you are wrong, but maybe you aren't and I'M the wrong one (I know, an impossibly ridiculous thought).
Unfortunately, 95% of my actual time spent reading/arguing is with people who I am 70% confident cannot be shifted from any of their viewpoints, regardless of truth. The types of people who confidently proclaim "The covid vaccine does nothing and has tons of side effects!", and then I spend 6 posts going back and forth, showing them charts and tables and arguments, before they sign off with a "Well, the coverup liberal media sheep shill leftist irrational geroge soros TDS!"
Maybe it's too cynical, but I've come to the conclusion the pessimists are right. Nobody can be convinced out of anything, no mater how baseless; people can only be shamed into pretending they never believed it in the first place
Reddit is designed to brigade. Losing karma isn't nice, so people self censor. To fix it I would put a cost on downvoting. Minus 5 if you downvote. If the post is banned or deleted you get it back. Maybe. Anyway there is a cost to downvote. You gain karma and you can be trusted to downvote.
( And maybe not 5 but a percentage of your karma up to a limit).
Such a system would perversely incentivise me to downvote, just to show that I cannot be bought off by "if you downvote you lose karma, and you don't want to lose karma, do you?"
It's a chicken and egg situation: if you have to gain karma to be trusted to be able to downvote, how do you gain karma? Well, the easiest way is to self-censor, only post the kind of comments everyone will go "How true" and other methods of farming positive opinion. Then we are back to the same problem of a popularity contest.
Yeah, the saddest part of the whole thing has been jut watching everyone there repeatedly congratulating themselves on being so open-minded and even-handed, as they consistently push anyone who disagrees with this diagnosis out of the community. I think the experiment can be called a failure at this point.
The Motte has failed to become one thing, but has become something else instead.
It hasn't managed to become a place where an even distribution of people from all over the political spectrum come to exchange ideas. Places like that are super rare, and valuable, and they never last for very long.
Instead it has succeeded in becoming an intelligent right-of-centre community. Places like that are slightly less rare, and still valuable, and they don't necessarily last long either. I don't read themotte all that much these days but I just popped in for a look; I think the quality of the discussion is still quite high.
Appreciate themotte for what it is, but don't be sad about the things that it isn't.
I agree with this ^
I know nothing about "themotte". In googling for more info I found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/theschism/comments/pp214s/themotte_is_a_problem/
TheMotte lead mod here.
I honestly wish I could just get rid of karma. I think it has a bad effect on opinion diversity. Unfortunately, I can't, it's baked into the platform.
I think your analysis of what gets applause lights is accurate, but I also don't think that's really a damning analysis. I don't think communities should be judged on what gets applause lights, especially if those applause lights literally cannot be turned off; it would be like complaining about what got upvotes here before Scott got them to disable upvotes.
I'd be interested in seeing what posts you made; one issue we run into is that occasionally people show up and post things that are kind of half-baked analyses, and *in general* people argue with half-baked analyses they disagree with more than they argue with anything else. You're welcome to post links here or send 'em via modmail to TheMotte or send me a message privately or, y'know, just ignore this I suppose, whatever you'd prefer :V but I really would be interested.
We complained heartily enough (ha!) about the "hearts" that got them turned off, and I do think we're better off for it. I dislike the Reddit karma system, especially as it's all tied in to their monetisation efforts ("like this post? spend real money to buy a fake award you can send this person!") - Tumblr, for its many flaws, has resisted every effort Yahoo etc. have tried to make money off such things, to the point that people accustomed to being spoon-fed by an algorithm about "try this" are complaining that they have to - gasp! - look up and follow blogs of interest with their own manual efforts, like peasants!
I think karma has a bad effect, even when communities and mods are aware of it: it's very easy to be influenced, even if you think you are not, by "So-and-so has high karma and is thus respected or at least liked by the communities they engage in, and is thus respectable and should get the benefit of the doubt/slightly more favourable treatment". It's the Big Name Fan effect.
One big advantage that something karma-*like* has is that you can loosely tie it to moderation abilities; some kind of low threshold that means "you have contributed to this community without being banned, now you can report people, have fun". Slashdot does this to great effect; so does the ACX Discord.
Meanwhile, Reddit is like perfectly designed to ignore all the lessons of Slashdot. We can't even tell who reported something, there's absolutely no way for us to filter it for people who are good community members. I don't get it. They could literally have copied Slashdot and ended up with a better platform. Ughhh.
And yeah, everything you say about karma having a distortionary effect is true. I'd be okay with a tier system, something like "new user/established user/respected user", and then just . . . stop there, nothing more.
Anyway yeah I'm increasingly interested at the idea of moving off Reddit. Which is slow going. But maybe we could build a platform that does a better job of being what we're trying to be, if we weren't hamstrung by Reddit.
"you have contributed to this community without being banned, now you can report people, have fun"
That does not reassure me. I've eaten a few bans here and elsewhere in my time, and sometimes I've thought "Well, I don't see what I did was so bad", but them's the rules so do the crime, do the time.
That declaration of bias out of the way, and ironically enough since I argue felons should lose the right to vote, but I don't think "you were banned" is *necessarily* an indicator that someone is bad. Yeah, trolls and provocateurs and gadflies and plain nutcases get banned, but someone can have a bad day, post something inflammatory, and get a ban.
Tying "you have the right to report" to "dependent on never being banned" makes me uneasy. We all know that there are people who use reports as a weapon against their perceived enemies, and we all know people who carefully skate on *just* this side of being banned. I don't want to leave that power solely in their hands, whereas someone who is otherwise sincere got banned and is now debarred from reporting bad content.
I tend to be pessimistic, which is why I don't like explicit systems like karma, upvotes, etc. They easily turn into political campaigns to get Candidate X a reputation as Pillar of the Community, whereupon Candidate X can then get away with murder because they have a critical mass of supporters and general members who go "Oh, X? Yeah, they're big here".
Speaking of bans, it has been down to the kindness of other members of this community who interceded for me that kept me able to participate here, and I am very grateful and very humbled that they valued my contributions enough to do that for me.
I much prefer such interventions to a formal system of "you have a gazillion karma points". We have our resident Marxist, who divides opinion between calls for banning them and calls for leaving them be. Everyone has an equal voice in that. I would not like a system where it's "I have a gazillion karma points so I can spare a million to get them banned".
Oh, and it's also worth noting that "can report people" is not the same as "get people banned". In our current system, reports go to the mods, and we decide whether the report is valid, and I'd say 90% of the time we decide to ignore the report. In some hypothetical future system I'd still definitely run reports past a neutral arbiter; getting someone banned would require *at least* reporting them and then having a randomly-chosen-judge-out-of-generally-good-judges agree with it.
> Tying "you have the right to report" to "dependent on never being banned" makes me uneasy.
Keep in mind that I'm very much speaking in shorthand here :) This was "you have contributed without being banned so you can report people", but in a world where we have this power, I'm sure there would be an amount of positive contribution that counteracted a ban as well. This is mostly to deal with the fact that once in a while someone mentions a right-wing-but-innocuous thing, like "I voted for Trump", and we get a report saying "ban this [insert your favorite slur for the right-wing here]".
I can only imagine those people either don't understand the point of the community or don't care; either way, our lives would be easier if they just plain couldn't report stuff.
On the other hand, if there's someone who's been contributing for like a year with lots of positive contributions and who has a bad day and gets banned, yeah, alright, fine, that happens, I would not revoke reporting ability off that.
(practically this ends up being some kind of combined metric of "contribution count" and "bayesian-estimate of user's posting quality" and as long as those both stay above some reasonably low but still positive threshold, everything's good; that's at least my gut instinct on how I'd implement this)
In my opinion, Zorba is a mod of great integrity and consideration and I think the defenses given for the motte should be considered seriously. I find a lot of people are very quick to write off the discussion there as if it were typical right-wing something-or-other. That’s too simple.
This is not about karma, but since you are here...
I posted my 8000 word Haiti plan at the Motte and I don't regret doing so. I have gotten value from that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/qo9n20/a_secured_zone_in_haiti/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
But 99% of the responses were negative. I simply do not believe those replies were made in "good faith" as one person claimed.
I actually upvoted your post almost immediately after it was posted because it was a high-effort idea, but at the same time, I read it over and thought "this is not a very good plan, this is going to get torn to shreds".
I think you're confusing "good faith" and "agrees with me".
I very much appreciate your response in this forum. I have a request. Below I will copy the new synopsis. It's not long. Please read it and tell me what you think is the worst idea.
#######
The ZSS plan for Haiti in brief
Haiti has been much in the news in recent years, and for all the wrong reasons. Faced with a never-ending series of disasters, both natural and man-made, Haitians are desperately trying to flee their country and enter the US and other countries. Far better if they could live safely and productively in their own country.
We believe that Haiti is failing because of long-standing inequality, government corruption, and unrestrained gangs. In this plan we propose to eliminate corruption and gangs in the most distant Department (Sud) which has 5% of the population of Haiti. A functioning government in Sud could begin to address inequality. Success in Sud would provide a model for the other nine Departments.
The funding would come from the United States. Five year cost: $3.2 billion. About one-thousandth of the cost of the Afghan War.
The US would provide a small military force which would back up the Haitian police in Sud.
Eliminating civilian guns in the Sud is key to eliminating the gangs. (Have you ever heard of a gang with no guns?)
We propose to empower government employees (including the police) while eliminating corruption by pairing each employee with a Haitian (Creole-speaking) auxiliary. Government pay would be matched for those employees with auxiliaries. Auxiliaries would be hired and paid by the US.
By guaranteeing security throughout Sud, tourism would be greatly enhanced. The entire Department, not just tourist enclaves.
We propose to decentralize government funding and authority so that Sud can succeed even if the central government is failing. Value-added tax revenue would stay in Sud and would be used to fund basic services: security, roads, water, sanitation, electricity, and trash collection.
We propose to fund the project (announced in 2013) to expand the Les Cayes airport to international status. This would enable tourists to reach Sud without passing through gang-controlled areas in Port-au-Prince or taking a prop plane.
The offer to fund the airport expansion also serves as a bargaining chip to encourage adoption of the plan.
#####
The short answer is that I think the entire process is insanely expensive and is unlikely to solve anything; you're basically saying "we'll eliminate corruption by hiring people to make sure nobody is corrupt" but this tends to not work out. You're also making the classic gun-control argument of assuming that gangs will cheerfully hand over their guns. It feels frankly naive; it's like the people who said "well, alcoholism is a problem and is wasting our nation's resources, so *let's ban alcohol*, that will solve the problem" and actually just made the problem worse.
You can't just come up with some ideas and assume everyone will play along, you have to assume that people explicitly *won't* play along; put yourself in their shoes, don't assume that they will put themselves in your shoes, because they won't.
What happens if gangs decide not to turn in their guns? What happens if they import guns from the rest of Haiti, which is literally next door? What happens if the corrupt government employee tries to pay off their overseer in order to look the other way? ("The overseer will report it" isn't an answer unless you know how to guarantee that, which you don't.) The airport is already underused; why would making it bigger change anything? How is any of this different from "we'll occupy the country and give them a lot of money in an attempt to reform them", which inevitably turns into "yeah, we left after ten years and now it's worse than we started"?
I keep running across this same fallacy, which tl;dr is "people think about the way their plans and ideas are correct, they don't think about the way their plans and ideas are incorrect" - longer version at https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/qmwsdg/dictator_book_club_orban/hjgwiki/ - and I feel like this is overall another example of the same thing.
And none of this is me saying I have a better idea. I don't. It's a really hard problem. I just don't think this solution is likely to work.
Zorba, thank you for your response.
"insanely expensive"
One-thousanth of the cost of the Afghan War to do something that people believe needs to be done but no one has a solution.
I get the impression that most people at TheMotte are advocates of gun rights. Are you also?
I do appreciate the ongoing dialog!
>Assuming you mean the Afghanistan War,
https://www.britannica.com/event/Afghan-War
>Even if you were to convince me that guns should be banned, I simply do not think that's going to be an effective way to take gang-owned territory and remove guns from it.
Department Sud is not "gang-owned territory". I have been searching for evidence of gang activity in Sud (such as kidnappings) and haven't found any.
Now (hypothetically speaking) assuming you owned guns and lived in Sud, and the government made owning guns there illegal with a buyback period. Your options would be;
1) Sell back your guns for $50 to $500 per gun.
2) Keep your guns hidden and risk going to prison.
3) Fight a gun battle with the Haitian Police which is backed up by the US military.
4) Move to another Department.
Which would it be?
A line from your post:
> In this plan we propose to eliminate corruption and gangs in the most distant Department (Sud)
Now you're saying there's no gang activity. What's going on here?
> Now (hypothetically speaking) assuming you owned guns and lived in Sud, and the government made owning guns there illegal with a buyback period. Your options would be;
If I'm already a criminal, my choice is #2, because I'm already risking going to prison by virtue of being a criminal, and now crime is going to be easier because fewer other people will have guns.
> Now you're saying there's no gang activity. What's going on here?
Actually, I said:
"I have been searching for evidence of gang activity in Sud (such as kidnappings) and haven't found any."
You may have heard this before:
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
So in the absence of evidence, I make the conservative assumption that there probably are some gang members in Sud. I would give odds, however, that there are fewer gang members than around Port-au-Prince where there are thousands and daily news reports.
> If I'm already a criminal, my choice is #2, because I'm already risking going to prison by virtue of being a criminal, and now crime is going to be easier because fewer other people will have guns.
The police force just got doubled in size and they can call for backup from the US military. Anyone who knows you have guns can tip off the police anonymously and reap a huge reward.
If I were a criminal, I would take my guns and my skills and move to another Department.
> The police force just got doubled in size and they can call for backup from the US military. Anyone who knows you have guns can tip off the police anonymously and reap a huge reward.
How do they get a reward if it's anonymous?
Also, it's anonymous, eh? So I can tip off the police about those noisy neighbors I don't like, with no repercussions to me?
Or is it only anonymous to the people being raided? In which case it's *not* anonymous to the police . . . which means I just need a gangmember *in the police* and now I can go find and kill the guy who tried to snitch on me.
Also, I can bribe the police to ignore me. And the police don't want to be on the front line, so they're going to use the US military to do the dirty work . . . and now the population is starting to learn that the US military will raid them and take away their self-defense tools, so now the population hates the US military and we've got an armed rebellion going (with guns easily imported from, you know, next door, where they're still legal.)
You need to think like a black hat here. You need to think like someone who's trying to exploit the system, not like someone who's trying to make a system that they don't know of any exploits in.
https://crimestoppers-uk.org/give-information/rewards-for-information
You think like someone who is willing go to the mat for gun rights. I can see why my proposal was received so negatively at TheMotte now.
Continuing the ongoing discussion between Zorba and Peter.
Zorba references this previous discussion.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/06/guns-and-states/
Zorba:
>>Guns are a force equalizer, both between physically-strong people and physically-weak people, and between large populations and wealthy organizations.<<
I have read countless times about Haiti "The police are outgunned." (by the gangs).
Zorba, do you believe this is true?
Assuming you believe (as I do) that this is true, are you happy about this? Alarmed? How do you react?
Sounds like a pretty bad situation to be in, and one that should be fixed. How do you propose doing so?
Keep in mind that the gangs are already criminals and are unlikely to care about laws saying they have to give up their guns. Also keep in mind that any law you come up with regarding whistleblowers could just as easily be used to whistleblow *on gang members*.
Of course there are ways to convince criminals to give up guns. You can raid them. It's quite effective. It often comes with collateral damage, of course, and I don't recommend it. This ends up being the same solution as "dictatorial micromanagement of the population" and I don't recommend that either.
But "get rid of guns" isn't relevant. Guns don't matter; they are not an end goal when we're talking about gangs. The thing that matters is crime, and how much damage it does to the population. That's the thing you have to fix, and you don't fix it by hoping that gangs hand in their guns voluntarily.
I've already talked about my issues with your plan. You should take them into account when talking with me instead of attempting to convince people through repetition.
Zorba:
>Of course there are ways to convince criminals to give up guns. You can raid them. It's quite effective. It often comes with collateral damage, of course, and I don't recommend it.
In the US when a criminal resists arrest, does law enforcement typically just let them be because they don't want any collateral damage?
One of the guidelines of the plan must be "NO IMPUNITY". There must be no one person who is immune from arrest in Sud. There must not be ten persons who cannot be arrested. There must not be a thousand such persons. The only acceptable number is zero.
There must not be one square meter of Sud where the police are afraid to go. This is why a military force is part of the plan. Overwhelming force.
>But "get rid of guns" isn't relevant. Guns don't matter; they are not an end goal when we're talking about gangs.
The problem being addressed is "The Police Are Outgunned." Are we in agreement on that?
Are you trying to convince me that "get rid of guns" is not relevant to that problem?
> The thing that matters is crime, and how much damage it does to the population. That's the thing you have to fix, and you don't fix it by hoping that gangs hand in their guns voluntarily.
Sorry. That's not on the list. We have four goals:
Expand the Les Cayes Airport
Eliminate corruption in Sud
Eliminate gang activity in Sud
Eliminate private guns in Sud
Perhaps when these goals are achieved, the police can try to fix crime.
BTW, do you understand that according to this plan following the six month grace period, turning in civilian guns in Sud IS NOT A VOLUNTARY PROCESS. Persons in possession of a gun can either run (out of the Department) or go to prison. Or I suppose they could destroy the gun or give it to someone in another department.
>I've already talked about my issues with your plan. You should take them into account when talking with me instead of attempting to convince people through repetition.
Your issue with this plan is eliminating private guns. Since that is an integral part of the plan, there is no possible compromise between us.
You can continue to try to convince me that no amount of force will eliminate guns in Sud.
And I will continue to wonder why defense of private gun ownership IN ANOTHER COUNTRY is such a sacred issue for you.
> Sounds like a pretty bad situation to be in, and one that should be fixed. How do you propose doing so?
Glad you asked. Let me refer you to our plan.
TinyURL.com/HaitiZSS
Zorba, thank you for responding. I fear I have been overly antagonistic. I will try to watch out for this.
Let me diagram the relationship between the police, the police auxiliaries, and the US military (Rapid Response Team), as I envision it.
The Haitian Police (under the control of the Haitian government) are in charge. They make the decisions. If they are corrupt, of course nothing can go according to plan, so assume they are not.
The ZSS police auxiliaries (under ultimate control of the ZSS Command Council) take orders from the Haitian Police. (This is true of all ZSS auxiliaries. They take orders from their Haitian counterparts.)
At this point I assume the police auxiliaries are armed. Ideally these are Haitian-Americans with policing experience in the US. They MUST be Haitian. All auxiliaries must be Haitian and speak Creole.
The Rapid Response Team (RRT) is a US military force of size to be determined. They have helicopters, armored vehicles, and appropriate weapons.
The RRT never appears unless the Haitian Police and their ZSS auxiliaries declare an emergency. Technically the auxillary would make the call to the RRT.
After being called into action the RRT acts autonomously. As soon as the situation is under control, they give command back to the Haitian Police and return to base
P>There must not be one square meter of Sud where the police are afraid to go. This is why a military force is part of the plan. Overwhelming force.
This seems obvious to me. Do you disagree? Do you think it is advisable to withdraw in the face of gang violence?
Z> You're not proposing civic reform, you're proposing an armed imperialistic invasion force.
The Police are in charge. The RRT are in reserve. You call this an invasion. I'm not sure why.
> The problem being addressed is "The Police Are Outgunned." Are we in agreement on that? No. The police are outgunned in most places. The problem is that the police are outgunned by people who are opposed to the police.
I will try to say everything in detail.
THE PROBLEM IN HAITI IS THAT THE POLICE ARE OUTGUNNED BY THE GANGS.
Are we in agreement that is the most acute problem in Haiti at this time? I'm not particularly attached to how we solve this problem in Sud. The RRT was my solution. I'm open to yours.
What is not acceptable in my mind is ceding territory to the gangs. This must never happen (in Sud). I recognize that is the default state all over Haiti at this time.
The goal is to change this state ONE DEPARTMENT AT A TIME.
We can argue about the airport expansion etc. another time.
> If they are corrupt, of course nothing can go according to plan, so assume they are not.
This feels like the fundamental problem; you're saying "assume the police aren't corrupt", I'm saying "the police are corrupt, how do you want to deal with it".
One, there are literally UN investigations saying that the police are corrupt: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article240398551.html
Two, if the police *aren't* corrupt, then the problem is easy to solve: give the government over to the police and let them handle things.
Governmental corruption *is a core problem*, and you can't handwave that away. If you have a solution that works only if the government isn't corrupt then you have a solution that works roughly 0% of the time.
> There must not be one square meter of Sud where the police are afraid to go. This is why a military force is part of the plan. Overwhelming force. This seems obvious to me. Do you disagree? Do you think it is advisable to withdraw in the face of gang violence?
First, this seems overly optimistic to me. I'm not sure it's true in any country (except The Vatican, I suppose, though I think the mental image here is hilarious.) Even Japan, with its almost pathologically low gun ownership rate, has the Yakuza, and while I don't know the details on how the Yakuza work, I'm willing to bet that there are areas where the police just kind of stay out.
And that leads into "it seems unnecessary". If every country on the planet has areas that the police don't go, and *many* countries have perfectly functional governments, then it seems like your requirement is just not important. We don't have it, we probably can't have it, it is empirically unnecessary.
This feels like one of those "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good-enough" issues. Your goal here isn't complete government dominance of everything and the total eradication of the underworld, your goal is to make life suck less, and given that humans build an underworld in five seconds no matter where they are, I'm pretty sure you cannot get rid of the underworld.
If your plan relies on something that is impossible, then your plan is impossible, regardless of whether the rest of it is good or not.
> THE PROBLEM IN HAITI IS THAT THE POLICE ARE OUTGUNNED BY THE GANGS.
This is a very different problem from "the police are outgunned".
If the problem is that the police are outgunned *in general*, then you can solve this by taking guns away from civilians, even if the gangs don't play along.
If the problem is that the police are outgunned *by the gangs*, then taking guns away from the civilians doesn't help and may even make things worse.
> Are we in agreement that is the most acute problem in Haiti at this time? I'm not particularly attached to how we solve this problem in Sud. The RRT was my solution. I'm open to yours.
I'm not really sure that's the core problem, honestly.
Gangs are fundamentally an economic issue, in the sense that gangs are expensive and wasteful, and something needs to be funding them. Traditionally, that's civilians buying contraband; the more you try to cut down on contraband, the more you drive people to give money to the gangs (see American prohibition).
The Internet suggests that the gangs are being funded by the government, politicians, and local corporations. That's where I would focus my efforts - as long as you've got major organizations dumping money into the gangs, you're not going to have an easy way to eliminate the gangs, and trying to crack down on the gangs without cutting off that money supply first is just going to result in warfare.
Now, *why* are those organizations funding gangs? I don't know. The Internet doesn't seem to know either. Some sites claim it's an extortion racket (how do you solve that one? maybe private security? maybe subsidize insurance as long as a group doesn't pay the racket?), some sites claim it's basically just looting warlords (find the nicest of them, intentionally elevate them into a local government, have people pay taxes instead of just looting stuff?) It seems like the drug trade is huge (this one's easy, at least: legalize drugs and it's dead.)
But I think this requires a lot of understanding of the motivations involved, because otherwise, killing one gang will just result in another one instantly springing up. Economic forces are a tidal wave; it gets into every crack and tears everything apart inexorably.
> If they are corrupt, of course nothing can go according to plan, so assume they are not. This feels like the fundamental problem; you're saying "assume the police aren't corrupt", I'm saying "the police are corrupt, how do you want to deal with it". One, there are literally UN investigations saying that the police are corrupt:
I was giving an example of how the Haitian Police, the Police Auxiliaries, and the Rapid Response Team interact. One example where the particular police are not corrupt.
I'm not making a claim about all the police in Haiti.
By generally interpreting my words in the most illogical way you are wearing me down.
I'm going to stop the dialogue now. Have a good day.
And yet, your plan has to deal with the situation where the police are, in fact, corrupt.
Remember where this conversation started; it started by you complaining that people weren't taking your plan seriously. I explained why people weren't taking your plan seriously and you turned it into a debate where you wanted to prove that your plan was good. Now, because you've been unable to do that, either because of an ill-defined plan or a badly-designed plan, you're leaving the conversation instead of improving the plan.
This is why people aren't taking your plan seriously.
Good luck out there.
> And yet, your plan has to deal with the situation where the police are, in fact, corrupt.
I assume you didn't read these parts.
###########################
If the situation is serious, the auxiliary could make a formal complaint to the ZSS Command Council. The employee could also file complaints to the Council. Complaints would be investigated and a resolution sought. Among the most serious complaints would be suspicion of corruption or complicity with criminal elements.
THE ZSS DOES NOT HAVE AUTHORITY TO IMPOSE CONSEQUENCES FOR CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR BY A HAITIAN EMPLOYEE. IF THE GOVERNMENT IN SUD FAILED TO ENFORCE THEIR LAWS, THIS WOULD BE CAUSE FOR CANCELLATION OF THE ZSS PROJECT.
...
Cooperating with the Haitian National Police (PNH) in Sud must be a careful process. A member of the local police force who refused to have an auxiliary would certainly raise a red flag. Gang ties should be cause for dismissal though that would be in the hands of the local government.
Assuming the ZSS can identify a trustworthy police force, we must consider the role of the auxiliaries. Certainly they would accompany their police officers everywhere. That's what auxiliaries do. Probably they should also be armed. Necessarily they must be ready to defend their officer and vice-versa.
...
Vetting the police force in Sud and establishing unquestioned cooperation with the Command Council should be a prerequisite to the ZSS Project. The project (and airport construction) would not begin until this hurdle was cleared.
###########################
Vetting...
prerequisite...
would not begin...
These are important words.
A belated re-revisit, since I missed the initial publication due to a change in format. The 2020 FBI Uniform Crime Report is now available for download, which means we can finally evaluate the first prediction from You Are Still Crying Wolf properly. The prediction was: "Total hate crimes incidents as measured here will be not more than 125% of their 2015 value at any year during a Trump presidency, conditional on similar reporting methodology [confidence: 80%]"
The ACX revisit was written before the 2020 data was out, and initially listed this prediction as correct using the 'Total number of Incidents' metric. A commenter pointed out that the 2019 measurement was 125.03% of the 2015 value, and that it was thus false. While that alone might be sufficient, I also had the complaint that the initial ruling ignored that 2020 was indeed a year during a Trump presidency - using the same metric for 2020, 7,759 incidents gives a more decisive value of 132.6% of 2015 values. Reversing the evaluation would now require throwing out a minimum of 447 incidents (assuming zero issues with the 2015 values), up from merely 2 in 2019. That's a much more substantial epistemic cushion.
Relevant links:
2020 data: https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/downloads
2015 data: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015/tables-and-data-declarations/1tabledatadecpdf
SSC article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
ACX article: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-grading-my-trump-predictions
I can't think of a way for contesting the relevance of a prediction after the observation of the result to be less harmful for the predictor's integrity than simply taking it as a missed prediction. On an epistemic level, the ad-hoc use of an additional degree of freedom implies the existence of other degrees that were not used; this dramatically undercuts the statistical power of the entire exercise. On an object level, disassociating the nominal point from the metric chosen to evaluate it directly attacks the coherence of the original thesis.
Do I understand you correctly in that you think that Scott's prediction was incorrect, but in a way that does not provide significant evidence against his thesis?
I don't think it is hard to claim though that a different president on either side of the isle might have been able to dramatically curtail the impact of the BLM activities.
You may believe some (or all) of what you have said here but you can't possibly believe your comments will be persuasive. These won't either:
1) Its demands? BLM made demands? Through it's spokesperson at the front office in (city name)???
2) "wouldn't have made [it] less destructive" Do you actually think that not one of the millions of protesters might have been persuaded by anything the president might have done or said?
3)"Trump complained impotently..." Yes, he complained about how despicable and worthless the protesters were and challenged them with threats to send in the military. Everyone knows that incitement is the best way to calm a a mob. Maybe he was boning-up in preparation for Jan 6.
4)Literally any other president of either party would have had the sense to soften their rhetoric.
January 6th rioters didn't demand anything. If some of them had, I would have been accurate and said that some of them had.
I disagree that BLM as a movement wanted less policing. I am sure some percent of BLM protesters wanted that. I would guess less than half actually want that and more than half would claim they want that to annoy the other tribe.
The only statement about BLM as a movement that I would consider reasonable is that they wanted justice of some sort. I would feel pretty comfortable saying the same thing about Jan 6 protesters.
Nobody is "driving the BLM train." That is just BS. If Trump had said something to diffuse half of the protesters the ratio of cops to protesters would have doubled. If he had done this in the beginning it would likely have never gotten off the ground. A bit like slowing the spread of a virus...makes you think.
"He should have actually sent in the military." - YAWN
A different president, even one equally incompetent, but less paralyzed by his own ego would have made a marked difference. The guy just couldn't get out of his own way.
There was recently a thread on HN about post-SSRI sexual dysfunction ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024808 ). Are long-term side effects (even months after stopping the SSRI) really so frequent?
Someone wrote a comment about this recently: People start taking SSRIs while young and horny, take them for a couple of years and then stop. The natural decline in lust caused by aging is then attributed to the SSRI. Same reason for why almost all medication has "hair loss" as a listed side effect.
Dunno if this is true, I'm just aping what I've read.
Do most people with sexual side effects actually take SSRIs consistently for 2 years? If so, I must have been a remarkably unreliable depressive. I don't think I've ever kept them up for more than 4 months straight (Just long enough to get the current depressive episode under control enough to cope.)
Also, depressive episodes average about 6 months in length; there certainly are people who are permanently depressed and don't have episodes like that, but it's not the norm.
And if you're going on and off SSRIs somewhat regularly, you probably have a good idea of what side effects are the meds, and what are mood and current-age-driven. The med side effects aren't really subtle or easy to mistake for not being in the mood.
Hello and happy sugary sweets evening to all.
I had a question about getting into medical school.
I graduated from a top undergrad program though didn’t do the full pre-med courseload. But I do have clinical research publications at an Ivy, an MD mentor, a great GPA, relevant medical work experience, and of course a really strong desire to become a psychiatrist. My parents are both medical practitioners (MD, APRN) affiliated with Ivy institutions should that factor nepo-credentially.
What are my options here? How can I slide through this creaky old door? Notably, due to Covid many schools are waiving the MCAT for this academic year.
Alternatively I consider a PsyD, but I don’t want to “settle” with this life-long goal of mine.
On the very off-chance a medical school admissions officer or pertinent member of faculty is reading me, I would really cherish your input.
I should also add that some med schools are easing pre-med course requirements and instead accepting subject-area “competencies”, though after much reading it seems this change is dubious and performative to appeal to Equitable admissions; and so applying on this basis is discouraged. That’s what SDN says, anyway.
Thanks for reading my comment, everyone. This is very important to me!
I have no clue about the (I assume) American education system, but can you do the missing coursework at a cheap / non-famous institution (possibly online?), or as an external student (doing the exams but not attending classes)? I only mention this possible option because it should provide bureaucratic compliance without you needing to "settle", although it does come with non-trivial costs.
Hey Ana, your intuition is correct. This is an option and some schools even offer post-baccalaureate pre-med programs which are designed for prospective medical students to complete the courseload. Unsurprisingly they are expensive! and take 18mo+. In my case I am missing most courses.
It would be costly and the extra schooling overkill if I did somehow get into medical school. It’s been hard to justify tuition as is. A cheap or online school for this is appealing but has its time and other inefficiencies.
Well, another alternative that you haven't mentioned yet is to go abroad. Having an undergrad degree is completely overkill for getting into med school in Europe, or at least in my particular country (but this kind of thing tends to be standardized in the EU; don't know about the UK, but would guess it is the same). You would probably have a harder time later if you want to work in the US, though. You can look through old SSC posts to learn about Scott's experience (he studied in the UK).
A great idea I had not considered. Thank you.
It’s unbelievable that an undergraduate degree is overkill for medical school in Europe. Many premed students would cry at the notion.
As you say finding work and matching for residency in the US may be tough coming from abroad. I must look at schools in the UK and read up on the realities of that. I’ve read Scott’s posts from when he studied in the UK and really enjoyed them. I miss his insights from when he was doing his US residency, too.
Okay, children, before I break out the Wolfe Tones' Greatest Hits, Cork (UCC, where Scott studied) is in the Republic of Ireland, *not* the United Kingdom. Do you still refer to the USA as "the Colonies"? 😁
We had a teeny bit of a difference of opinion about this entire matter exactly 100 years ago, the centenary of which has just passed and which also involved a new teeny bit of a difference of opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_Ireland
*strains of "A Nation Once Again" fade off into the distance*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88-qgHh31bw
I'm sorry. I misremembered and didn't double check. Thanks for the correction!
*slides pike back into thatch* No bother at all, you're welcome!
Two time failed medical school applicant here (15 years ago tho). So what exactly are you lacking? If MCAT, you can remedy that in about 6 months of part time prep, assuming good fundamentals. Same-ish with missing courses, which vary by school. If I were in your shoes, I’d pick my safe and stretch schools, see exactly what they want, and spend 6 months to a year trying to fill the gaps. I had to do something similar back in the day, as I did not do premed either.
However, get advice from someone else because as noted, I didn’t actually get in :-). Have you posted or browsed online forums specific to med school applicants? This one came up in a ddg search and seems legit enough: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/forums/pre-medical-md.10/
> If I were in your shoes, I’d pick my safe and stretch schools, see exactly what they want, and spend 6 months to a year trying to fill the gaps.
This is really good actionable advice. Thanks!
I am missing most courses except for like, biology, which means the time and cost of more schooling is heavy. And in my opinion, quite sub-optimal for really qualified candidates, which I like to fancy myself as.
you should definitely take the MCAT. I'm a US MD student. check out the wiki for /r/premed, it's mostly accurate and should give you a good starting map for how to apply. the aamc website also has good starting information.
Is there a reason you recommend I take the MCAT?
Perhaps you think a good score would increase my chances as a nontraditional applicant, a great point and something I hadn’t considered.
As mentioned the MCAT has been waived by some schools this year, but indeed a steadfast requirement otherwise.
MD here, started medical school in 1996, with a baseline pedigree much less impressive than yours. But I did do all the premed coursework, fairly cheaply on a post-baccalaureate basis at my hometown public university. It took two years, but I ended up really enjoying that side of things, and despite my intention to go into primary care ended up in a pretty physiology and pharmacology heavy specialty (anesthesiology). So I wouldn’t look at the science prereqs as a sunk cost, in my case I found them very valuable. I also took the MCATs twice, really nailing it the second time. It sounds like you’re impatient to get going, and I understand that, but I guess my advice would be to not look for shortcuts and do everything you can to make your application shine.
My other piece of advice would be to avoid private medical school if you can, and attend a reputable state school. The difference in price is just astonishing. I went to medical school at a top-tier public institution (University of Washington), and ended up with a bit over $100k in debt. My wife went to a mid-tier private medical school (New York Medical College) and wound up with closer to $400k in debt. Big difference, especially when you’re just starting your career, buying into a practice, starting a family, etc. (We both matched into competitive residencies and that’s where your real training takes place.)
Bringing these threads together, I firmly believe that putting together the most competitive application that I could got me into UW, netted me great opportunities, and saved me ~$300k. That’s a pretty good ROI for the two years I spent doing premed coursework and MCAT prep.
I'm glad to finally hear from an MD. Thanks for a well-informed answer as well as a positive review of the post-bacc. I'm often told it's terrible.
To my surprise, no one else I've spoken with has brought up the discrepancy between public and private school tuition, and that's uber-relevant. It's not the only consideration, but that will help narrow school criteria.
Hard decisions to make for a young person. And then there are these institutional barriers in place to triage large groups of people effectively. Indeed I am eager to start; if it's going to be my career for life, why not get a move on? But young people are unwise in ways we have yet to find out.
The connection of cold weather to cardiovascular issues got me thinking. Cardiovascular health and mental health are closely intertwined. Things that are good for cardiovascular health (like exercise) are also good for mental health. Perhaps temperature is an independent contributor to seasonal affective disorder (not only light). I thought back to a time last year when my shoulder was so severely injured that I couldn’t put on a shirt so I had the thermostat set to 80 degrees 24/7 for a couple of months. I felt I was sharper than usual during that time. So yesterday I ran a self experiment where I raised my thermostat from 70 to 76 and I felt a bit better after a day. (Maybe just a placebo). Are there any good studies yet of temperature-based interventions for seasonal affective disorder? I couldn’t quickly find any on google due to the results being flooded with irrelevant stuff.
I've reviewed a puzzle game on Less Wrong which I'd consider to be a rationalist game, i.e. one where playing it requires practice of rationalist skills like forming hypotheses, noticing confusion, etc. Link to the review: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/39Ae9JEoGCEkfiegr/recommending-understand-a-game-about-discerning-the-rules
(I already posted this in the last open thread, but late enough that possibly no-on saw it. Will not repost again.)
Thank you for that! I have a friend that likes games like this, and I never heard about Understand before, so thanks.
That sounds great! I was about to recommend the tabletop game Zendo as fulfilling a similar role, but I see your review already credits Zendo as one of the inspirations for Understand.
+1 to that recommendation, I've played through about two dozen levels and enjoyed it a lot so far. Agree with the praise about the core skill being hypothesis generation and testing. I do wonder how much the skills generalize...seems at least plausible!
Proposal for a Secured Zone in Haiti
See TinyURL.com/HaitiZSS
In 2010 an earthquake killed 220,000 Haitians. In 2016 Hurricane Matthew killed thousands more. In July of this year the autocratic President of Haiti was assassinated by a squad of Columbian mercenaries who were probably hired by other members of the Haitian government. In August another earthquake struck Haiti.
I live in the Dominican Republic with a Haitian family. I am always concerned about Haiti, but particularly so lately.
I have written (or quoted) over 7000 words on a plan to help Haiti. I want to make it as useful and realistic as possible. I am requesting feedback.
Please think of my request like an appeal for donations, except it will cost you time rather than money. If my ideas have some merit, an entire country might be helped. How much is that worth?
How much is that worth to you?
Almost anything you might say, positive or negative, would be helpful to me as I endeavor to improve the plan.
I hope to read your comments.
Peter Robinson
Basic criticism: a quick summary at the beginning of your proposal would improve it, I think. Maybe organize the information another way would help too, though I'm not good at that, I just see that the text feels less organized than some of the stuff I read online.
I will certainly add a brief summary at the beginning.
I would argue that the proposal is quite organized. (Try reading only the subheadings.) But that doesn't mean I chose a good organization.
Nation building is hard and usually fails. Why would this plan succeed when so many others have failed?
* In the Zone Sécurisée de Sud (ZSS) plan we propose to start in only one department (Sud) which is 5% of Haiti.
* Sud is the farthest department from the corruption, gangs, and turmoil, and thus the easiest to fix.
* Building an international airport in Sud is both a huge bargaining chip and the key to economic success in Sud.
* 95% or more of the personnel paid by the ZSS would be Haitian.
* By pairing Haitian government personnel one-to-one with Haitian ZSS personnel, we both support the government and eliminate corruption.
* US military forces would be used only on occasion to back up the Haitian/ZSS police force. They would rarely be seen by ordinary Haitians.
* Because we are operating in only one distant department, it would be much easier for corrupt officials and gang members to move to other parts of Haiti than to stay and fight.
Why do this?
So that Haitians can go home to their own country and not be resented and persecuted in others. The enormous 3.5 million Haitian diaspora is both the motivation and the means to success for this plan.
I kept my talking ponts and wrote a new intro:
The ZSS plan for Haiti in brief
Haiti has been much in the news in recent years, and for all the wrong reasons. Faced with a never-ending series of disasters, both natural and man-made, Haitians are desperately trying to flee their country and enter the US and other countries. Far better if they could live safely and productively in their own country.
We believe that Haiti is failing because of long-standing inequality, government corruption, and unrestrained gangs. In this plan we propose to eliminate corruption and gangs in the most distant Department (Sud) which has 5% of the population of Haiti. A functioning government in Sud could begin to address inequality. Success in Sud would provide a model for the other nine Departments.
The funding would come from the United States. Five year cost: $3.2 billion. About one-thousandth of the cost of the Afghan War.
The US would provide a small military force which would back up the Haitian police in Sud.
Eliminating civilian guns in the Sud is key to eliminating the gangs. (Have you ever heard of a gang with no guns?)
We propose to empower government employees (including the police) while eliminating corruption by pairing each employee with a Haitian (Creole-speaking) auxiliary. Government pay would be matched for those employees with auxiliaries. Auxiliaries would be hired and paid by the US.
By guaranteeing security throughout Sud, tourism would be greatly enhanced. The entire Department, not just tourist enclaves.
We propose to decentralize government funding and authority so that Sud can succeed even if the central government is failing. Value-added tax revenue would stay in Sud and would be used to fund basic services: security, roads, water, sanitation, electricity, and trash collection.
We propose to fund the project (announced in 2013) to expand the Les Cayes airport to international status. This would enable tourists to reach Sud without passing through gang-controlled areas in Port-au-Prince or taking a prop plane.
The offer to fund the airport expansion also serves as a bargaining chip to encourage adoption of the plan.
TinyURL.com/HaitiZSS
I agree with Lucas, a quick summary at the beginning would be very helpful.
Unfortunately I simply don't think that your plan is likely to work. If you've followed American military history recently, you'll notice that we are completely unable to rescue failed states that lack basic structure- it's just not something that we know how to do, or that anyone knows how to do. I am 100% sure that this proposal would receive bipartisan criticism in the US. And- I'm just being honest with you here- what would America get out of this occupation plan? A rich or poor Haiti, failed or successful, simply doesn't impact America very much either way. Why would spend time & money for an insignificant return? The mood is against more foreign adventures here
Thank you for your comment.
The estmated cost of the military part of the plan is less than ten percent of the total. If the plan is successful the military forces would seldom see action.
98% of the personnel involved in the intervention would be Haitian. We have never done anything like that before.
The advantage to the US is to eliminate Haitian refugees.
The big difference in this plan is that we start off with only 5% of Haiti, and the easiest 5% at that.
I hope you read the new summary.
Tinyurl.com/HaitiZSS
I have not read through the 7000 words yet. Here are some preliminary thoughts:
- There could be some interesting dialogue with the Charter Cities movement (e.g. Prospera in Honduras). In both cases, there is an attempt to build better institutions in a small portion of the country, rather than reforming the country as a whole.
- Some of the most effective US military interventions have been in the Caribbean: the invasion of Grenada in 1983 and the invasion of Panama in 1989. In Grenada, the invasion took 4 days and the next elections after the invasion were 14 months later. In Panama, the invasion took a little over a month and the next elections after the invasion were 4.5 years later. Both countries have remainded democratic since. It would be worthwhile to look at these two examples in detail to see why they succeeded more than other American interventions, including the invasion of Haiti in 1994.
Good points. The brief summary is in the published plan now.
http://tinyurl.com/HaitiZSS
In the middle of researching the background of multiplayer speedruns in Diablo 2 for one of those video essays on YouTube, I found one of the early organisers had “stashed” a quote from Elizier Yudkowsky in his post history back around 2010. So for the longest of shots: MFB from indiablo - do you happen to read these comment sections?
So what are the US fallback solutions if we can't defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion or blockade? Is there a way for America to punish China for the (presumably successful) invasion, while stopping short of a full naval engagement with them in the South China Sea? This is for the next 5-20 year time span (I believe that we could still defeat China's navy today, albeit at probably great cost).
The most common response is that America's blue water navy could simply blockade China, the world's largest trading nation, and brutally punish their economy by blocking imports & exports. (Somehow a landmass the size of China doesn't seem to have large-scale oil reserves, so they import a ton of oil. They do of course have a strategic oil reserve, but it would run out eventually). I guess I'm just a bit skeptical that the US could successfully blockade them for a long period of time. The world relies on trading with China, and a real blockade would seem to usher in a serious global recession. I'm sure global opinion would turn against China if it invaded Taiwan- I'm sure it would turn again against the US if, say, Europe & Latin America & Japan entered a major recession due to losing the Chinese market. Not to mention the effect on the American economy itself! Doesn't seem like a long-term solution.
Any other tools in the American toolbox? Some long-range bombing to flex muscles & look tough while not engaging in a full-on naval battle? Just seizing all Chinese financial assets on Wall Street under the Trading With The Enemy Act from the 30s? (How much cash does Alibaba, Tik Tok & Huawei keep in American banks, anyways?)
I don't have a military background.
It seems to me that US submarines could sink any Chinese troop ships that tried to invade Taiwan.
A Virginia-class submarine carries 25 torpedoes, then it has to sail back to Guam (or wherever) to re-arm. Also, by launching its torpedoes it will give away its position to Chinese submarines and warships so it will be in great danger immediately afterwards. Any sort of realistic amphibious invasion of Taiwan would involve many hundreds of troop ships, so submarines could only take out a small fraction, and would be better off saving their missiles for larger Chinese warships anyway.
The war would be won in the air, I think. Trying to move an army across the Taiwan Strait without air supremacy would be impossible, and defending the island against invasion if the Chinese have air supremacy would be impossible too.
Thank you. Could you imagine a drone torpedo that could travel for miles before striking?
The Long Lance, the Japanese type 93 torpedo in WWII, had an official range of 11 km, an actual range considerably longer than that. Not, of course, a drone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_93_torpedo
Great reference. Add GPS guidance to that plus visual for the final leg. Then line a coastline with this type of torpedoes. A country becomes impossible to invade by sea.
Electric power.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39008/the-russian-navy-has-gotten-its-first-new-electrically-powered-torpedo-since-the-cold-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpoon_(missile)
I note that the ROC is one of the countries listed as using these missiles.
Oh I'm sure they are. They have an obvious reason to be interested in anti-ship weaponry ha ha.
In a similar vein, many believe that manned air dogfights are a thing of the past. So air superiority will depend on unmanned fighters.
We're just finishing up that debate on DSL, and no. "Dogfights", in the sense of close air combat maneuvering, were pretty much a thing of the past by 1940, though they cropped up a few times through the 1980s for various reasons. Even in World War 2, air combat was mostly done by hit-and-run attacks against an enemy that almost literally (and sometimes literally literally) never new what hit them.
But this sort of fighting absolutely depends on the sort of complex situational awareness that drones are nowhere near capable of dealing with. Obligatory XKCD is https://xkcd.com/1958/ , except in this context most people are stone-cold professional killers with teams of experts trying to figure out how to make them better killers. Drones will either never know what hit them, or be so paranoid that they'll spend all their time dodging or shooting at shadows, or both. There's no middle ground yet, and not likely to be any time soon.
Drone torpedoes would not need to be launched from a submarine. With ten miles range they could come from the coast of Taiwan. Thousands of them.
Shore-launched torpedoes sound like a better idea for taking out thousands of small boats than sub-launched torpedoes.
The problem then becomes defending your torpedo launching/storage facilities to stop them becoming one of the first things destroyed by the PLAF.
https://fuentitech.com/heavy-drone-that-can-carry-torpedoes/255599/
Looking at the size of the Long Lance, one could have a dozen of those in a very small area. Excavate a launch chanber with sea access in a way that the surface is undisturbed. (Imagine burying into a rocky cliff. I suppose you could start the excavation from under water.)
Would be very hard to attack by air.
After thinking about it a bit more, I think that the reason we don't hear much about shore-launched torpedos is that they are inferior to good old fashioned artillery, which gives you much more bang for your buck (in the most literal sense) than torpedos over the same sort of range.
Cheaper, faster, easier to move around, similar-to-better range, and probably not significantly less likely to hit the target, with no need for secret Dr No undersea bases.
Why no reason to hide them? Is artillery invulnerable to missile attack?
I'm not in favor of punishing China if they occupy Taiwan. A vigorous defense and if that fails, accept the status quo.
If China is going to take Taiwan, should the US first destroy all of Taiwan's high tech factories?
The rumor is that Taiwan has explosives prepared to detonate TSMC's factories in the event of an invasion
Interesting, but it would never be in the interests of Taiwan to detonate.
The Samson Solution would never be in the best interests of Israel, and the entire theory behind MAD requires you to assume that both parties are willing to do something that would never be in their interests either. People are willing to put some pretty vigorous deterrents down and force the other party to call their bluff in geopolitics.
Most of Taiwan's critical infrastructure is designed for easy placement of demolition charges.
There's an oil pipeline from Russia to China, so I don't think the US could stop China from importing oil.
Looking at other invasions, we can see that what happens when the US invades some country is that the rest of the world does nothing about it, and what happens when Russia invades some country is that the rest of the world implements sanctions. If we consider China to be more powerful than Russia but less powerful than the US, we might expect the reaction to be somewhere in between, so some kind of mostly symbolic sanctions followed by an acceptance of the new status quo.
> There's an oil pipeline from Russia to China, so I don't think the US could stop China from importing oil.
Surely oil pipelines are pretty fragile and a few bombs dropped at strategic locations on the Chinese side of the border would make a mess that would take a long time to clean up?
It would piss off the Russians.
Sure, but selling oil to China, while the US was sort-of-in-a-state-of-war with China, would also piss off the Americans, wouldn’t it?
"Is there a way for America to punish China for the (presumably successful) invasion, while stopping short of a full naval engagement with them in the South China Sea?"
Yes; sanctions, including secondary ones (similar to those on Russia). This won't be as effective as it could be for, say, Iran, though, due both to China's greater capabilities and the U.S.'s greater dependence on China.
"The most common response is that America's blue water navy could simply blockade China"
This will never happen, China makes too much stuff that the U.S. imports, and because Asia's economies rely too much on China. Same reason why China won't go to war with Japan.
"I'm sure global opinion would turn against China if it invaded Taiwan"
I don't think that at all. I think opinion will be divided as on the Xinjiang issue, with rich countries largely opposing China and poor countries largely in support.
Pretty sure that China would regard a general blockade of its ports, i.e. including sinking shipping entering or leaving, as a declaration of a general war and respond at the strategic level, e.g by nuking Pearl Harbor or something. The Chinese themselves might be thinking along similar lines:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57995185
They might take it as a declaration of war, but they have a no-first-strike policy with regards to nukes, so they wouldn't move immediately to that.
I don't think the PRC's announced no-first-strike policy -- or anybody's -- is worth the paper it would take to print it out. I'm kind of gobsmacked that you *do* take it at face value. What's your reasoning?
If they were going to nuke us, why wouldn't they threaten to do so beforehand to get the benefits of deterrence? I agree they might change their minds and say "actually, we will nuke you if you keep doing the blockade (or whatever)" but I don't see why they would do it as an immediate response to the blockade.
This has been well-studied during the MAD era. You get greater deterrence by being ambiguous. That's *why* the US never had a "no first use" announced policy, and why we have been ambiguous about Taiwan since forever. Generally speaking, your enemies (if they are rational) have to plan for the worst case. *We* certainly did, during the Cold War. Despite the USSR having a "no first use" policy statement, we planned for how we would deal with a sneak unannounced attack. That's just sensible defensive thinking. So if you keep your enemies a bit in the dark about what the worst case actually is, this forces them to more costly and complex defensive measures. (It also raises strategic tension, of course, and the risk of accidental conflict, which is its major drawback).
As for why they would strike instead of bluster first: first, because the threat is not credible unless you have a history that way (which they don't), which means you're going to have to follow through anyway, and warning people first just give them time to soften the blow. You're also putting your credibility on the line on the details, e.g. if you say we're going to obliterate Honolulu but you only end up killing 500 sailors at Pearl, you look weak *if* you have announced your intention first, but not if you haven't. Second, the Chinese don't really do bluster, it's not their thing. They like action, and unannounced action at that -- this has been the history of the PRC for a long time.
To set against this, though, they also know the (recent) history of the US, which is that we have endless resolve and pride when it comes to to the short term, to a surprise like 9/11, but we don't have the stomach for any kind of protracted conflict even if low-level, e.g. in Syria or Afghanistan. So they will probably usually conclude the way to beat the Americans is to wear them down over time, take advantage of their short attention span and low stamina -- but at all costs do NOT do something abrupt and shocking that will cause them to rally themselves and do something drastic in the short term.
Interesting. Well, you seem to know more about this than I do. I am wondering though, why do you think China has a no-first-strike policy if as you say they would get better deterrence from an ambiguous policy like the US has?
I’m a bit confused, though. If nobody’s no-first-strike policy is worth the paper it would be printed on, then why would being ambiguous give greater deterrence? If everyone plans for the worst case, it shouldn’t matter what your (announced) policy is, should it?
I mean, it can matter for PR reasons, but why should it matter for military planning reasons?
The main deterrent for China invading Taiwan is that Taiwan would put up a strong defense all by itself, which would inflict substantial damage to the invaders. This has been the case since the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan. Yes the US obviously has military and/or economic resources that could turn the calculus, but also obviously a full commitment of such resources into a conflict against China would be likely to have massive downsides. Pretty much the same dynamic was also already played out in the 1950s battle over Korea.
The American "toolbox" for Taiwan isn't entirely empty, but the tools held by the direct players in the region are the most crucial ones.
I've been listening to things about China having really screwed itself with the One Child policy-- I'm not sure whether this means China is less likely to engage in military adventurism.
Is it "the army is irreplaceable workers, don't get them killed" or "unmarried young men, nothing but trouble"?
Per this argument, China is more likely to attack in the next decade precisely *because* they are a stagnating power, and that is partly due to the One Child Policy.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/24/china-great-power-united-states/
You're in the wrong forum, this is something for Scholar's Stage or CDR Salamander crowds and both wrote about various aspects of this extensively.
https://scholars-stage.org/
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/
Diamond is strong because it is pure and its carbon atoms have a regular, crystalline arrangement.
However, pure metals are weak thanks to their regular, crystalline arrangements, and can be made stronger if alloyed with other elements.
Why does the crystalline arrangement of atoms have such different effects on hardness and resilience in different elements?
Graphite has a regular crystaline arrangement and is soft. Same element. I suspect the shape of the arrangement is more important than the element.
The bonds in graphite are stronger than in diamond. It is soft because the macromolecule is two-dimensional, and the different layers can move pretty easily against each other, and can be broken much more easily
In other words the substance is soft (not the bonds) because the arrangement is different.
Diamond's hardness has almost nothing to do with its regularity. Rather it's hard because its bonds are fully covalent: it's essentially one big molecule. Metallic bonds are not really covalent: rather, there is a sea of electrons that binds the nuclei together, that can only partially be modeled as covalent bonds. As a result metals are malleable (moving the nuclei a little is not that energetically expensive) while the nuclei in diamond are very energetically expensive to move. As a general rule, the heavier the element, the more metallic its bonds will be. So carbon, as the lightest element that forms four covalent bonds, forms the hardest macromolecule.
Excellent explanation.
Are the bonds between pure metal atoms ionic?
No it's a third type of bond (though it is sometimes classified as covalent). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_bonding
A moncrystalline piece of metal would be incredibly strong. However, metals are composed of many crystals, at different angles from each other and they also contain other imperfections. It's these imperfections moving around that lets the metal deform.
I think the difference is that particular carbon atoms in a diamond are bonded to each other, whereas metal atoms are held to each other via a soup of electrons which don't belong to any specific atom. Thus the meal atoms can slide around past each other.
> A moncrystalline piece of metal would be incredibly strong
It would be strong, but not nearly as strong as a diamond. Iporphyry's comment is correct.
This is incorrect: metals are stronger with a fine grain structure. This is because metals deform by moving dislocations and the dislocations get stopped at grain boundaries.
We use single crystal metals only for special cases: high temperature turbine blades in particular.
If you could create a metal crystal with no flaws--- no empty slots or other defects in the lattice it would indeed be very strong. However, thermodynamics is against this, so: not gonna happen.
From the atomic point of view, it doesn't. The two sources of the strength of the C-C bond are (1) C has 4 valence electrons (most transition metals, which is what most people mean by "metal", have 1 or 2), and (2) C is a much smaller atom (about half the size of a typical Period 4 transition metal), which allows for much stronger interaction between the C atom and valence electrons. Neither of these have anything to do with lattice structure.
Where the lattice structure matters is that it is relatively easy to prepare a macroscopic piece of diamond that is a pure crystal, because carbon isn't that reactive with oxygen, and because it is very finicky about the direction of its bonds, so it's quite difficult to generate grain boundaries (their energy cost is high), and relatively easy to avoid impurities, both of which tend to make a macroscopic chunk of material have far less than the theoretical strength its bond strength could give it.
Metals by contrast are not particular about the direction of their bonds, so grain boundaries are almost impossible to avoid, and they are very reactive with oxygen, so impurities are also common. But even a hypothetically pure and perfect metal crystal would generally not be as strong as diamond, because of the underlying difference in the strength of the bonding interaction.
Maybe I should add there's nothing special about C forming very strong bonds to itself, all the Period 2 nonmetals do, for the same reasons. However C (along with B) is different from the others in being willing to form extended chains of C-C bonds, which allows for the diamond solid allotrope. Carbon's neighbors to the right, by contrast, prefer to form multiple bonds with each other to satisfy their valence, and this prevents formation of extended chains. But the O=O or N≡N bond is just as strong, indeed much stronger than, the C-C bond.
I just bought an Oculus Quest 2 and have been experimenting with it. I'm not a gamer and was mildly skeptical about the recent "metaverse" buzz. But now I think this is going to be a huge deal, especially as the tech improves. And it's already pretty good.
I could absolutely see this turbocharging the work from home trend. Virtual conference room meeting will be like real life- miles better than Zoom calls. It could eliminate a ton of business travel. Hell, travel in general- if you're traveling to see the sights and talk with people. The VR tours they have of historic urban centers are already pretty amazing.
I've also played a bunch of ping pong on it. Not quite perfect yet, but pretty damn impressive.
Would be interested to hear other thoughts on the future of VR tech and the metaverse concept.
Wouldn't the point of virtual conferences be lost if everyones face is obscured by a clunky headset?
The headset isn't visible. There's no need for your VR avatar to be a photorealistic representation of you, but that will be possible before long too. You'll just take some photos of yourself and the avatar will be generated from it.
https://twitter.com/schrep/status/1454151694682521607?s=20
It sounds a bit uncanny valley.
I think the other big issue is that I don't really have a burning desire to become more engaged or engrossed in meetings. I'd rather have a meeting happening on my laptop screen than get sucked into a VR world just so that I can look down and see my colleagues' simulated feet.
Not denying that a really good (and somehow non-nauseating) VR headset would have a lot of great uses, but I don't think that ordinary meetings are among them.
I can see the market being huge for porn and not much else. Maybe exercise, if the games are exciting enough and there's a way to do it without crashing around bumping into things and hurting yourself in real life. I'm not sure why anyone would want to sit in a virtual conference room for a meeting. The only benefit of Zoom is to see people's facial expressions, which you wouldn't on an avatar -- absent that, no one actually really wants to be around each other, do they? I'm having a hard time imagining that going to a fake national park or fake city would be that popular...you can already look at amazing photos of those places. The physical experience -- smell, temperature, etc. and being able to say you were really there is a huge part of it.
I guess in general I don't see it being popular as a replacement for actual experiences, whether positive ones (visiting a national park) or negative ones no one wants to replace (i.e. meetings). But for experiences that one has zero ability to experience in real life have...sex with a thousand gorgeous porn models who do whatever you want...then sure.
Exercise would require much less cumbersome equipment that gets a lot less hot than what is currently available. It would also need to withstand being sweat on repeatedly.
>absent that, no one actually really wants to be around each other, do they?
Yes? There are lots of people who found work from home less-than-awesome. It's isolating.
> The only benefit of Zoom is to see people's facial expressions, which you wouldn't on an avatar
Project Cambria is supposed to have eye and facing tracking so you can see people's expressions in VR.
https://www.warremains.com/
Want to see what WWI trench life was like? VR is going to better than visiting Flanders field.
"Virtual conference room meeting will be like real life- miles better than Zoom calls."
So, all the real world disadvantages of having to attend yet another pointless meeting, with none of the advantages, plus I have to pick a suitable avatar (one thing I think Zuckerberg's 'Metaverse' video demonstrated is how damn foolish you can make yourself look, and I don't think a workplace meeting will tolerate robots and astronauts) and pay attention as some busybody will be prodding me about 'where are you drifting off to? the performance monitoring metrics show a lack of engagement!'
I mentioned this last time, but I'm now happy to share that my new podcast has officially launched. It's called "Rock Docs: A Podcast About Movies About Music". Every week we discuss a different music documentary. Episode 1 is about "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese". https://linktr.ee/rockdocspod
Anyone know some good original sources to get an insight into how the political elite of the European powers reasoned during the begining of World War One?
BYU's WW1 Document Archive is a fairly comprehensive online compilation of major primary sources related to WW1, organized by time period (pre-1914, each year of the war, and post-1918).
https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page
If you're also interested in secondary sources, I'd suggest "Dreadnought" by Robert Massie and "Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark. Both cover the diplomatic context of the lead up the the war, with an emphasis on placing the decisions of major actors in biographical, political, and institutional context, concluding with a blow-by-blow of the July Crisis. Massie focuses on Britain and Germany with a heavy emphasis on the Dreadnought race, while Clark pays a lot more attention to France, Russia, Austria, and Serbia and is more directly focused on the question of why and how the war happen.
Thank you! I'll look into this!
Are there any parliamentary systems that don't have snap elections? As a committed anti-populist who's skeptical of too much direct democracy, I think presidential systems are maybe a bit too high-stakes (the US is currently in the middle of proving this old saw correct), and I'd like choosing the executive to be removed from them. However, as an American I find foreign snap elections & the constant coalition collapses baffling and fundamentally just weak, if I can be frank.
Could this system work at all- we have multiparty elections in the House and the subsequent winners form a coalition and select a Prime Minister, possibly with a Constitutional time limit (2-3 months, say) to prevent interminable negotiations. The House Reps serve for 4 years, and the PM once picked serves for 4 years with them. (I'm not sure whether to include a Senate here or not). There are no snap elections or dissolution of the government- if the coalition partners encounter issues after the fact, tough. The PM is there for 4 years, so you have to get along somehow.
This system would hopefully combine the strength & decisiveness of a fixed term with the anti-populist element of not directly electing the most powerful office. Would this work at all? Has it ever been tried?
A couple of comments:
1. Parliamentary democracies can easily wind up in the stable equilibrium of having just two parties of any significance; e.g. Australia. A situation like Germany or Italy where there are many parties is not a direct consequence of parliamentary democracy, it's... something else. A two-party system might well be the stable equilibrium that all mature parliaments will reach eventually, because once it's established then it's very difficult to dislodge.
2. In most parliamentary systems that I'm aware of, there's nothing constitutionally important about the office of "Prime Minister". The Prime Minister is just the person chosen by the largest party or coalition to be its leader, and has various other powers purely through convention or legislation. If the governing coalition decides half way through the term that they actually want someone else to be their leader, then there's nothing that can really force them to listen to the officially designated "Prime Minister" instead, even if you've made a rule that the Prime Minister can't be swapped out. They'll simply invent a new title like "First Minister", give all the Prime Minister's powers to the First Minister, and ignore the Prime Minister.
3. The idea of a parliament which cannot reach an agreement but also cannot be dissolved sounds a bit scary to me. It seems necessary to have a relief valve in cases where the parliament becomes so deadlocked that it can't do basic tasks like procuring funds. (Without a constitutional relief valve, that relief valve probably just becomes the army, who will raise a coup when their paycheques stop coming in.)
Re: 2. So my idea is that the PM here would Constitutionally be the Commander in Chief, have similar legal powers to our US President now, etc. It's not something that can be ignored or switched
3. I mean, that's how the US functions (or doesn't) now, right? Divided government is the norm, the two factions hate each other, but they still pass a budget and authorize the Defense Department separately every single year. I don't see how lack of a relief valve is different from current US politics, maybe that means the American system is doomed, I don't know.
Matthew Yglesias had a recent post entitled 'Secret Congress' which basically posited that, contra everyone's perception of America, the two parties pass a surprising amount of bipartisan legislation every single session. It's just the less partisan, less publicized stuff- once an issue becomes a partisan flash point, forget it
2. What parliamentary systems are those? I just checked four constitutions (Sweden, Malta, Finland & Germany), and they all spelled out an important role for the prime minister. I'm not, however, aware of any system in which coalitions play any important constitutional role (the word "coalition" is not mentioned in any of those four constitutions) – what particular majority of MPs happened to elect (or tolerate) the prime minister doesn't really matter.
I think a ruler that cannot be removed by parliament is typically called a president rather than a prime minister, and since the US president already fulfils the role of a prime minister, I don't see why you'd change the name; better to just have the president elected by the House of Representatives and be done with it. I think the likely result would be that elections would be treated by the voters as presidential elections (which they would essentially be), and nothing much would change, other than that the executive and the legislative branch would now always be controlled by the same party.
Norway don't have snap elections.
Does anybody know much about the International Phonetic Alphabet? Can it express the sounds of all the world's top thirteen or so languages by GDP (English, Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, French, Portuguese, Malay, Turkish, Korean, Italian)? Can it it be used to write specific accents? Is it worth me learning it?
1. yes, absolutely; 2. pretty much, at least insofar as the accents manifest in different sounds as opposed to e.g. modifications of length; 3. it won't really impact ordinary practical life for someone not in a related profession, but it's also not difficult to learn at all (at least for the sound inventory of your own native language). It can help slightly in terms of learning a second language (largely in terms of being understood when you're speaking), however you have quite a few other things you also need to worry about when learning another language - it is very much not the step to start with. But if you intend on being fluent in 5+ languages...
Thank you, poster.
Yes to all your questions. Half the IPA is just regular Latin letters pronounced like they are in most languages, and the other half you can just learn as you go (like, you probably don't want to learn the clicks and implosives unless you're gonna use them, or all those weird central vowels).
I'm not sure it would expedite learning the world's top thirteen languages. I studied linguistics at university. IPA describes combinations of sounds from the throat, nasal passages, tongue, teeth, and lips – bodily sounds inherent to every language. As a previous poster mentioned, IPA can sometimes help with precise pronunciation when combined with an understanding of native accents. I would not make IPA a priority; internalizing grammatical rules for each language will help you speak and write spontaneously, so I would focus on these areas and make IPA an afterthought.
I generally refer to the Help:IPA/$LANGUAGE pages from Wikipedia's style guide as and when I need to.
Wikipedia is unreliable.
This has bugged me since I was a kid. Did Captain Kirk die whenever he went through a transporter?
https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/does-captain-kirk-die-when-he-goes.html
Only in the sense that you "die" when you fall asleep or unconscious - something that interrupts your conscious experience just as surely as being disintegrated by a teleporter does. Which the blogger, to their credit, admits is a possibility - "It seems that there has to be a difference between these two cases. But if there is no observable difference, then this just means we’re wrong in thinking that being yourself is continuous to begin with."
My take is that, since no outside observation can tell the difference between the Kirk who went into the teleporter and the one who came out, the only person that this problem could possibly matter to is Kirk himself - if he's okay with being disintegrated and doesn't consider it to be suicide, then who am I to tell him otherwise?
> the only person that this problem could possibly matter to is Kirk himself
Well yes. But if I'm Captain Kirk and I'm trying to decide whether or not to enter the transporter, I want to know whether my current conscious experience will continue down on the planet's surface, or whether I will die and never again experience another sensation, while a new being with all my memories pops up planetside. It makes no difference to any external observer or to New Kirk, who swears he just dissolved in one room and popped up in another, but to Old Kirk who is now dead it makes all the difference in the world.
Of course this might also happen every time you fall asleep (warning: thinking about this is an infohazard for those inclined towards insomnia!). I think the added complication is that it's easy to see how a transporter accident could result in multiple Captain Kirks (surely this has happened in some Trek episode, right?) Each of them remembers being the Captain Kirk that steps into the teleporter, but surely the consciousness of the Captain Kirk that stepped in could only be continuous with one of them. Since it seems ridiculous that your consciousness just goes to one of the copies at random, it's easier to assume that the consciousness of the Kirk who steps in really does end each time he does so.
With sleep you can reasonably assume that the fact your brain keeps ticking over during the process is enough to keep your conscious experience continuous. At least, you can assume that if it helps you sleep.
The answer seems simple: it is purely a matter of habit and common expectations. Everybody has been sleeping since before time they have memories of, so everybody is used to consciousness interruptions by sleep to such an extent that it almost never occurs to them to wonder about whether it "creates a new self" etc., regardless of philosophers' musings on the topic. Presumably a world where teleporters were commonplace and everybody used them would work similarly. There might be a phobia of first-time teleporter use ("null phobia" in Strugacki brothers' universe), like there is with parachute jumping today, but given a successful personal experience and an overwhelming common expectation that it's nothing special it should wear off quickly in most individuals.
> Each of them remembers being the Captain Kirk that steps into the teleporter, but surely the consciousness of the Captain Kirk that stepped in could only be continuous with one of them.
Why on earth would it be continuous with only one of them? If I pause a VM, make a copy (including memory and vCPU state) and resume both, identity and computational processes will be continuous from the original to both copies. I see no reason why duplication of a brain would work any differently (yes, I am a physicalist). Experience with near-death states involving a cessation of electrical activity in the brain supports this idea, and cryonics / uploading makes no sense without presupposing it.
Turning back to fiction, duplication of an individual involving continuity of consciousness to both copies is the main plot device in Clifford Simak's Goblin Reservation.
Cryonics definitely means cloning you. You will die. The computer program will live.
My point is that cryonics implicitly assumes physicalism. If people had souls that went to heaven/hell at death, say, what do cryo enthusiasts imagine will happen when a cryo-preserved person is rebuilt and revived? Will the psychopomp angel say "oops", fish the soul out of the boiling brimstone and throw it back into the sublunary world?
To all my responders: but what what does it feel like, even momentarily, while your body is being scanned and disintegrated? And since the transporter process is creating a complete picture of mind's mental state at the time, would you carry that momentary memory of the pain of being disintegrated into your new body? If this were the case, it seems like Kirk would need to be knocked out with some pretty strong anesthesia before he underwent the transporter process. ;-)
Also, if were able to obtain a picture of a mind with all its electro-chemical states, and its thought and memory patterns that they represent, at a particular time, could they be edited? This is not an original question. Charlie Stross used this idea as a McGuffin in his novel Glass House—which takes place in a future society recovering from the "Editing Wars" where state players and non-state players had inserted code to manipulate peoples' memories during the transporter process for political gain...
Keeping in mind that we're talking about completely speculative technology
> could they be edited
certainly they will be editable, although I bet that making enough sense of the "brain dump" to edit it is going to be vastly harder than scanning and reconstructing it. The relevant analogy is with genomes: with existing technology, a complete scan of a genome is cheap and very reliable, and complete synthesis from a digital copy is already possible for bacteria, but our ability to make sense of the data in the genome is sufficient only for the most rudimentary edits. Human genome is probably not globally intelligible by humans anyway.
Nerve conduction is a fairly slow process. If scanning/disintegration takes a few milliseconds, the brain will most likely not notice that anything untoward has happened. In fact, unless reliable and painless methods of shutting down brain activity prior to scanning/disintegration are developed, it arguably *has* to happen too quickly for nerve conduction to work. Otherwise, as you evidently agree, it will be an agony comparable to being hanged, drawn and quartered, which will definitely preclude the development of the kind of habits and common expectations I mentioned above.
I don’t think that outside observation doesn’t matter. The Kirk that goes in dies. His existence ends. The other guy will think he’s a continuation.
The best way to prove this is to understand that what’s been sent to the surface is information about Kirk, which is reassembled. There’s nothing stopping them creating a dozen clones, they have stored data about people. (The atoms don’t matter. )
Let’s say that a transporter accident means that (for whatever reason) Kirk is transported but also stays or reforms on the transporter machine. Since we are sending data that could happen. For a split second there are two kirks. You realise that you should vaporise him and so you do. He dies.
That’s what transporters do. They vaporise and kill you, then transmit a clone.
The fundamental contention here is, what is "you". Your argument implicitly assumes a reified, soul-like entity which has independent existence from the atoms its made of. The physicalist view of Candide III is that "you" is, in identity, in essence, the physical configuration of atoms in your brain. Your conscious experience is not a "consequence" or "product" of this configuration, it IS this configuration, with no indirection there, no independent thing that can "end" and then "restart". If the same configuration is restored, then it's the same "you". If it's copied 100 times, then it's still just one "you", subjectively indistinguishable, until the clones' sensory inputs cause their thoughts to diverge.
After all, if you go down to the timescale of quantum fluctuations, you could argue that the processes that make up your thoughts are noisy and discontinuous. Do "you" die then?
My ideology doesn’t believe in a soul at all. The idea that Kirk’s consciousness is being transferred to the surface however, does. I believe he’s killed and cloned on the surface.
How is it different from when Kirk jumps a meter to the left?
Because he is being vaporised and killed.
From what I can gather from your comments, either your ideology believes in a soul, just calling it "consciousness", or you're mixing different levels of abstraction. Compare my comment about candle flame above. At the level where you talk about information sufficiently detailed to reconstruct Kirk, it does not make sense to simultaneously talk about Kirk as a single "thing" that "exists", can be "killed" etc.
I don’t believe in a soul at all. I believe the first Kirk has a consciousness that is clearly bound to that one body and mind - which is killed when he is vaporised. It’s the people who believe that consciousness is transferred who believe in a soul.
Yes. A useful analogy is a candle flame. It makes a certain amount of sense to talk about the flame as a single "thing" that starts and stops, as long as we're not paying too close attention to what it is. But if we think of it as a bunch of atoms moving around, it becomes difficult to maintain that it is a single "thing", and starting/stopping will refer to properties of sets of positions and initial velocities of atoms. If we were able to measure and instantiate such sets with sufficient precision, we could duplicate the flame and it would even flicker for a bit after being duplicated in the same way as the original - although not for very long, because the motion of gas in a flame is turbulent and Lyapunov exponents would magnify even small measurement / copying errors quickly.
This kind of argument doesn’t explain consciousness or death. If a living being is just a bunch of atoms it’s pretty much in the same state before and after death. Just atoms largely in the same place. And even after many years those atoms survive. So who is to say that anything actually dies?
But that’s clearly tosh.
I don't understand what you mean by *explaining* here, but note that "pretty much" and "largely" are doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. A pan of water conducting heat without convection cannot be distinguished from a pan of water carrying heat by convection by measurements of velocities of atoms in a given local parcel of water, because convection is a large-scale spatial correlation of minor deviations of the atoms' velocity distribution from Maxwellian. But it does not mean that convection does not exist or that we cannot tell if it is occurring or not.
I think canon transporters transmit the original atoms, specifically to forestall the "wait, aren't you just printing out a new Kirk?" question. But my answer remains the same - I wouldn't consider Kirk to be dead when there's an exact copy of him present, and if Kirk is okay with being vaporized then I should be too.
Also, I think the identity problems being posed have more to do with the ability to construct people than with teleportation specifically. Like, suppose there's no teleporting involved at all - Starfleet just wants to print off a dozen Captain Kirks because he's really good at his job and they want him to command their whole fleet. You'd still have the exact same questions - what status should those clones have, is it meaningful to say that "Kirk is dead" when there are a dozen other Kirks alive and kicking, at what point should they be considered their own person, which one ought to keep the identity of the original (such as the right to captain the Enterprise), etc. If you can arbitrarily construct new people, the fact that you can use it for teleportation is almost an afterthought.
The broke that canon a number of times. There are two Rikers. So it’s just data.
"The original atoms" is not the hill you want to die on. First, because your body swaps out atoms *all the time* [epistemic status: very confident]. Second, because as I understand it physicists have determined asking which of two identical fundamental particles is which is meaningless [epistemic status: I read the QM sequence a few years ago].
> physicists have determined asking which of two identical fundamental particles is which is meaningless
What's more, at high enough energies the number of particles is no longer conserved.
I think that in the case of the teleporter accident where there were two Kirks for a split second, *both of them* would be "the real Kirk". They both have the same personality and memories as the Kirk that went into the teleporter, and I think that's what fundamentally defines the continuity of identity.
So the one Kirk that goes in suddenly will be seeing out of two persons. Or a dozen persons?
Looking at it from the point of the clone(s) is wrongheaded. Of course they will think they are Kirk, but they aren’t Kirk.
Hmm, it's not that one person is seeing out of two sets of eyes per se.... it's that there are now two identical people each seeing out of their own eyes. If they ever see or otherwise experience anything different (which they certainly will quite soon in any realistic scenario) then they will become two distinct people. But I don't think that either of them has a stronger claim than the other of being the "original". If I knew everything about Kirk before this experiment, except for which side of the duplicator he walked into, what experiment could I do to determine which was the real Kirk? (Let's say he was blindfolded when he walked in so I can't just ask him.)
One helpful intuition pump that influenced my thoughts on this matter is Yudkowsky's analogy of a species (the Ebborians, see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WajiC3YWeJutyAXTn/where-physics-meets-experience) with flat brains that reproduces asexually by splitting down their thickness. Each of the two resulting Ebborians has a brain with identical connections to the original. If Kal divides in this way, which of the resulting creatures is the real Kal? I think the correct answer is "they both are equally original".
Hehe you know this is a central thought experiment in a famous philosophical book? "Reasons & Persons" by Parfit
I don't usually succeed in communicating this to people, but if there's any place worth trying, it's here.
In what sense is it different to get teleported, than it is to just advance a millisecond in time?
In both cases there is a clump of atoms you recognize as "I" somewhere in the universe. In both cases the clump has changed position in space, and also its relative arrangement in a meaningful way. The two states are not identical.
In internal terms, you experience the current arrangement, with both past and future existing only as mental constructs right now.
Did Kirk die? Well, not anymore than you did since starting to read this sentence.
Yeh, except I wasn’t vaporised a few seconds ago, which tends to kill you. What’s being sent to the surface is data - there’s nothing special about the atoms. Replicators can assemble anything and people have been stored as data. Since data is all that is being sent, the vaporised Kirk is dead.
(I also think the new Kirk is dead as it’s probably impossible to send and restore mind state).
We agree on the technical details completely, but not on what dying means.
The atoms aren't special, we agree. In that case, why is the old Kirk dead? The data which is the important part, remains.
Ok thought experiment.
Test 1:
Kirk goes into a transporter room to test the system. He’s is transported to another side of the room. Kirk walks out.
Test 2:
Kirk goes into a transporter room and he is analysed and transported first before being vaporised. There’s two kirks for a few seconds. The first Kirk is then vaporised.
Kirk walks out.
In the second case i am 100% sure the Kirk that walked in lost his life. In the first case I think the same but could be convinced.
> In the second case i am 100% sure the Kirk that walked in lost his life.
Both Kirks are Kirks that walked in. "The Kirk that walked in" doesn't specify a unique individual, and can't be said to have lost "his" life.
If the time during which there are two Kirks is extended such that they diverge enough to be meaningfully distinct that objection fails, but that assumes away the identity question entirely. You're left with a different, much easier problem. (Killing someone's identical twin is bad.)
Yeh? So so the first Kirk somehow only becomes a different Kirk to the cloned Kirk if he lives longer than a few seconds?
Let’s do a another thought experiment.
Test 3:
Kirk goes into a transporter room and he is analysed and transported first before being vaporised. There’s two kirks for a few minutes, and they have coffee together. The first Kirk is then vaporised.
Is the Kirk that walked into the room dead? Yes he is.
I much prefer the case (from Hofstadter's "The Mind's Eye") where you are digitized, transmitted, assembled, and then you can chat with your new self to verify that the transportation was successful.
At that point you have to press a button to destroy the original. Do you?
Generally speaking, sure.
I'm not sure I really like the treatments of the problem that handwave in the obligation to destroy one instance, though. It feels like asking if I'd be willing to accept a billion dollar gift contingent on purchasing a billion dollar flight to Paris. The flight's not the interesting thing there, and you haven't really learned terribly much about how I value money!
Aella's short story about this is good. https://knowingless.com/2016/11/20/opia/
James Blish wrote an original Star Trek novel about this, but it doesn't answer the question posed: "Spock Must Die!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock_Must_Die!
For this discussion I highly recommend "I am a Strange Loop" by Douglas Hofstadter. He goes through a lot of transporter scenarios as well as the Ship of Theseus paradox. My own take on this is that I, despite being an atheist, am effectively immortal and my current body is only one of possibly many instantiations of my immortal soul (I don't remember if this was his own take).
Although I doubt he was aware of the Greek philosophers (but he may have been), Nagarjuna effectively put the Ship of Theseus Paradox to bed. If you can wade through his tetralemas (and they're quite challenging) he came up with an answer similar to Heraclitus, except Nagarjuna would say that the ship exists as a dynamic system of dependent arisings —i.e. carpenters constructing it from wood harvested by loggers, from trees growing, from the seeds of trees being scatterer, and so on backward—and going forward, the ship's existence is bounded by the elements gradually disintegrating it. So, the idea of the ship is a useful placeholder for what we perceive in a relative sense. But in the ultimate scheme of things it doesn't really exist, because all the components of the ship, and all the sub-components of the ship, and the sub-components of the subcomponents of the ship, down to atoms down to the underlying relationships between energy and matter—which he didn't speculate about other to imply that there's a substrate of reality that we cannot perceive—are all ultimately arbitrary arrangements dependent arisings—which we as the perceivers of the larger dynamic structure, cannot ultimately perceive nor comprehend (because we are also dynamic systems of dependent arisings that can only perceive and comprehend the world as abstractions of deeper processes that we don't have direct perception of). And from that perspective the ship does not really exist. (My apologies to Nagarjuna for mangling his elegant arguments!)
He may very well have been. There was much trade and exchange of information between India and the Hellenistic world, particularly Ptolemies' Alexandria. Greek mathematicians visited India and some have been conjectured to have emigrated there after Ptolemy VIII dispersed the scientists of the Library. Buddhist figurative art shows strong Greek influence, probably via the Bactrian kingdoms of the diadokhoi. Diogenes Laertius writes that the philosopher Pyrrho went to India with Alexander the Great where he studied with the gymnosophists, and Pyrrho would have known about Heraclitus. Pyrrhonism as described later by Sextus Empiricus shows very strong similarities with Nagarjuna's treatise - there is a Wikipedia page specifically about this.
Did Nagarjuna match these powerful deconstructive arguments (wherein I find nothing to disagree with) with arguments about why and when it still makes sense to talk about the ship as something that "exists"? His object presumably having been the achievement of nirvana, he might not have been concerned with that, though.
I think Nagarjuna would agree that there's something there that we would label a ship, but I think (if I read him correctly) he'd claim that calling it a ship is just a convenient label that hides a conglomeration of dependent arisings. ;-)
But does he have a theory of such labels and labeling or does he simply say something like "see, I've demonstrated that it's just a convenient label that hides a conglomeration of dependent arisings; there is no need for us to inquire into this labeling process because we have to reject the labels anyway on the way to nirvana"?
It would be the latter. The Mahayana philosophers wouldn't have gotten hung up on words being required to articulate thought — unlike various schools of 19th and 20th Century philosophy. And they'd probably chuckle at someone like Wittgenstein trying to attach reality to words. (Apologies if I'm grossly oversimplifying his TLP!)
I have written a brief explainer for the Bible; is it good? While writing it, I have noticed that listening to the Bible via audio is generally superior to reading it silently. https://eharding.substack.com/p/what-is-the-bible
Given Boris Johnson's recent claim that “When the Roman Empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration" (an arguably true, if definitely silly claim), I would also like to point out I have also written a brief explainer for the fall of the Western Roman Empire; I would also like to hear your thoughts on it:
https://eharding.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-the-western-roman-empire
> an arguably true, if definitely silly claim
Why do you think it's silly, if it's arguably true?
The fall of France in 1940 was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration.
Arguably true, but definitely a silly way to relate events. The Roman example is far more complicated both historically and definitionally, but it's a comparable disconnect.
"It’s a sort of kudzu that parasitized already highly developed Roman civilization and helped contribute to the destruction of much of it, with obvious parallels to leftism today."
Come on down, Edward Gibbon!
The first part of your Bible Explainer is a fun read that provides a nice historical/archeological framework for Tanakh. I wouldn't call it an explainer, though, because it's too high-level to understand the early Israelites' belief systems and their religious and political motivations in detail. I haven't gotten to your Christian Bible explainer, nor your Roman Empire explainer, yet.
Not sure about the Bible thing but I´ve enjoyed your other explainer, on Roman Empire
> While writing it, I have noticed that listening to the Bible via audio is generally superior to reading it silently.
Is there a particular narrator you can recommend (preferably on Audible)? There are some truly dreadful performances out there!
In case anyone is curious, ACOUP recently had a post explaining how the Roman empire *actually* fell.
https://acoup.blog/2021/07/30/collections-the-queens-latin-or-who-were-the-romans-part-v-saving-and-losing-an-empire/
Imo only very partial explanation
Just wanted to get some eyeballs on some amateur fiction I've written:
https://www.fanfiction.net/u/10075429/Bugscribe
The first story is something I hope would make Rod Serling proud, the second is based on the video game "Little Nightmares". Constructive feedback is welcome.
Dreams: does anyone else commonly have dreams that they are NOT in? In that either "you" is an entirely different person that is nothing like you, or "you" are not in the dream at all (whether as yourself or anyone else) and are just watching in an omniscient role like you do when you watch a movie?
This never used to happen to me, but the past couple years I am not in about half of my dreams. I fear this is from consuming too much media and my brain learning to be too much of an omniscient, outside viewer. Wondering how common or rare this is.
I occasionally have dreams that feel like watching an immersive holographic movie about other people. Sometimes, I can even control them to a certain extent.
Interesting. Mine are sometimes like that, sometimes just normal type. I too sometimes have lucid dreams I can control, but never considered those things to be related.
All the time. I often feel as though I am the only audience member attending a vivid theatrical performance.
I wonder why this seems rare? You never hear or read about this, and no one I've asked IRL experiences this.
Absolutely. In movie-like dreams I can even pause and rewind sometimes. There's also book-like dreams with a narrator. I also sometimes have dreams that look like playing a strategy game.
Mine have never had pause or rewind functions, but they do have other movie-like elements such as soundtracks or, sometimes, the same scene is replayed but with new and revealing information like you might see in a movie with a plot-twist when shown from a different perspective.
I can't decide how to feel about this. On the one hand, given it took so long for this to happen after decades of "normal" dreams, it makes me think I've warped my brain by excessive consumption of media. On the other, I'm tempted to congratulate myself that I've graduated past dreaming of narcissistic emotional dramas and moved on to pure entertainment.
A third possibility is that I honestly just don't have many personal dilemmas or emotional issues to work out in my sleep anymore, since my life has become so stable...perhaps my brain is freed up to dream about more decadent and immaterial things. I noticed a huge increase in dreams I'm not in, once Covid started...maybe life just became more boring and problems were reduced, so no need to work them out in my subconscious.
Not ever that I can remember of.
Does the ACX community contain any aspiring playwrights, screenwriters, poets, or novelists? Are there are other literary types here who happen to enjoy STEM subjects and Scott's perspective?
yes, I'm a screenwriter. But I'm also into STEM and enjoy coding and math.
I've published three novels. I've also written a good deal of poetry.
I like to fancy myself a literary type, but I've only written privately and nothing published or even put up on fanfiction sites. Did do some guest posts on an Evangelical religious blog about Catholic practices and beliefs, but that's not the same thing 😀
Why not self-publish something? You write well, judging by your posting history on SSC, and self-publishing nowadays doesn't cost anything. It's unlikely to make any significant amount of money but it does put your writing where more people can see it.
There are a like of people who like the way you write.
I've seen a bunch of discussion of the Roman Empire, across ACX/SSC, especially when it comes to civilisational fall and inflation fears. At one point Scott (if I'm recalling correctly) worried in a post that the COVID debt we were taking on might be something like Roman coin debasement , and we wouldn't be able to control the resulting inflation - and perhaps whatever political destabilisation it brought along with it.
This became the personal research project that launched a thousand tangents, but a series of posts is finally coming out. Because deteriorating Roman economics is nothing like the common picture.
Because first up, Roman debasement, inflation, and political instability are centuries out of sync. They're not causative. I don't think we can even say they're related.
https://armariuminterreta.com/2021/10/24/inflation-in-the-ancient-world/
I enjoyed your article. I don't think modern economists like Paul Krugman would be surprised that Roman coin debasement didn't lead to sudden inflation. One couldn't hoard wheat and wine since it would deteriorate, so if there was an ample supply then even when the money supply increased it would not lead to inflation. You can hoard donkeys, but you have to feed them, so maybe that is why donkey prices were more volatile.
I'm confused, doesn't wine usually improve with age?
To a point. It goes bad eventually.
I'm so glad someone can think of a reason to explain the donkeys. I found their volatility both hilarious and bemusing.
No, I definitely don't think that proper economists would be much bothered by debasement. But this idea seems rampant in the popular discourse, even beyond ACX (and the people actually concerned with triggers for civilisational collapse). It's become a kind of pseudo-intellectual "gotcha" against high-debt, high-spending governments in crisis. Which is just. I don't think people understand what debt is.
I can think of one or two years where the wheat supply would have dropped pretty radically - there were some bad Egyptian harvests across the first two centuries - but I'm still looking further into them. Even if they led to briefly higher prices, they never kickstarted sustained inflation fears. And I do think you could store wheat pretty effectively, if you kept it dry - Rome had pretty impressive wheat stores to resist sieges, if I recall correctly. What kind of timeline are you thinking for wheat and wine consumption?
Good post.
"Why didn’t inflation start earlier? Why did it start at all?"
Inflation didn't start earlier because, as this article points out, silver mining collapsed precisely when the coinage was debased:
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/22/5726
Kulikowski (in "Imperial Triumph") attributes the inflation starting at all to the end of the linkage between gold and billon leading to heightened money velocity. Could be true, but the fact that Aurelian's coinage was used so widely in the West until the early fourth century suggests he minted it in an overly large quantity. The emperors from Diocletian to Constantius II almost certainly used billon coinage for seigniorage purposes.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed reading it!
After the fractured period of the 3rd C Crisis, the re-integration of the empire under Aurelian could have sped up money velocity. I'm not sure about gold and bullion; I'll look into Kulikowski. I think Aurelian put other factors into play as well, both in his minting and in his clear lack of confidence in the existing coinage. Both the supply side and the psychological side might have had their effect.
That article on silver mining is great, much appreciated!
Great post - I think in general economic history requires a lot of Fermi-type estimations but is underutilized criminally in analysis. Homer and Sylla's History of Interest Rates is a pretty amateurish book in some ways but has some incredible data in it, for comparison.
The debasement vs inflation graphs have three big problems:
1. The silver content of a denarius doesn't seem to agree between the two graphs. The first shows a roughly linear trend with some bumps, while the latter shows pronounced stairsteps. This suggests to me that we have two different data sets for debasement of the denarius that broadly agree on a multi-decade scale but radically disagree on a scale of years or even single decades, making me suspicious of both data sets unless I know more about how they're derived and why they look different at first glance.
I can think of good reasons for divergence that don't impeach data quality. For example, the smoother graph might be based on the dates of the digs the coins were found at (as a proxy for overall debasement of the mix of old and new coins in circulation at any given time), while the latter could be the silver content of new-minted coins at any given time. If this is the explanation, we should probably weigh the former more heavily when estimating the effects of debasement on inflation.
2. The data should be plotted on a logarithmic scale. Using a linear scale implies to a casual observer that debasement of a coin from 90% silver to 50% silver should have the same effect on inflation (given a naïve hypothesis about debasement leading directly to inflation) as a debasement from 50% to 10%, whereas in actuality the former predicts 80% inflation while the latter predicts 400% inflation.
3. The data for purchasing power is incredibly noisy, varying by factors of 2-3:1 at the same time period. It's going to take a shit-ton (technical term) of inflation to show clearly through that much noise.
Quibbles about data quality and presentation notwithstanding, that was an interesting article. I'd independently arrived at the conclusion that the Crisis of the Third Century arguably represented a "Fall of Rome", with the Dominate better regarded as a successor state to the Principate than a reformed continuation of it. And the question of correlating debasement to inflation is definitely worth asking, and the author's attempt of answering it is a good first step if that's the best data that's ready to hand (I freely acknowledge that abominable data quality is a persistent problem in the study of pre-modern history).
Here's a game I invented in a dream last week, maybe someone here can tell me how many times it had been invented before and how complex and interesting it might be:
The game is played on a regular chessboard, with 31 black and 31 white pieces. At the start all pieces are on squares of their respective colors, save squares a1 and a8.
White starts.
A valid move is a skip over an enemy piece, like in checkers, only orthogonal (up-down, left-right), not diagonal like in checkers.
A piece skipped over is removed, just like in checkers.
Chain captures (jumping over several pieces in sequence) are allowed but not enforced.
To clarify: you can only skip, simply moving pieces is forbidden.
The player with no valid move to make loses.
I played a couple of games with myself and it seems interesting, but I'm very bad at strategy games so I'm not even "probably" but "definitely" missing a lot of basic stuff re. strategy and playability.
Anybody have an alpha-zero handy for this?
That's very similar to Kōnane, an ancient Hawaiian board game. I first heard about this game from the book "Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays", recommended if you like math and games. Differences are that in Kōnane the rules for setting up the board are different and chain captures can only be done in a straight line.
Here’s a question for those of you who think that machines will replace all workers.
Why do we still have baristas?
Insufferable snobbery around what is, in effect, chain store standard coffee, used as a marketing device by said chain to make it sound as if "We do REAL, PROPER coffee unlike the McDonald's drive-thru, so paying premium prices for our stuff is worth it" to appeal to the customer with the marketing/advertising imagery of being a sophisticated cosmopolite, who can easily imagine themselves sipping an espresso in a Roman café rather than buying roasted bean water made to a formula that doesn't vary no matter what part of the country you are in.
Also the trend to give retail workers fancy titles ("our associates", really? as if I'm an outside contractor working on a merger with you?) rather than better pay and conditions
Actually I think baristas bring some utility to cafes beyond making coffee. They clean the machines, clean the tables, make sure the milk and beans are in supply, and do the stream thing with the late. Some other stuff no doubt.
since somebody on min wage has to be there to do that then you might as well train them to be a barrista.
I did actually go to a cafe with a machine once, they had an employee selling cups, you then joined a line to the machine. Since it was a busy cafe (part of a golf club although I don’t play golf myself) this was slow and error prone. The line was only as fast as the slowest person at the machine, the buttons didn’t always work, the machine ran out of milk so you’d be forced to a black coffee, americano or espresso (or complain and hold up the line), and everything cost the same. Which was €3.
Not great and they eventually got a barrista.
Oh, yeah, making coffee is a small fraction of the actual labor involved. They're security to make sure no one steals stuff and rowdy customers get removed, they're cleaning staff, they're emotional labor to boost the brand identity, they do inventory management, they take weird and individualized orders that we can't easily automate, etc. etc. etc.
Which is your common-or-garden retail worker, be it wait staff in cafés and restaurants, cashiers in supermarkets, or shop assistants in other stores who are also expected to do cleaning, inventory, stop people hoicking stuff out the door, represent the brand, etc.
Calling your workers "baristas" was meant to evoke the imagery of highly-skilled professionals along the same lines as sommeliers (or Apple Geniuses); these weren't your ordinary low-wage staff, these were reminiscent of European culture and expertise on blends and roasts and different methods of serving coffee. All a branding exercise.
Is it just the name that annoys you? I think everybody knows they are low paid.
I am reminded of a hair-raising incident at Sofia coach station a few years back, where they had a little newsagent/convenience store, with a coffee-dispensing machine near the front. I put my 2 leva or whateva in the slot, pressed the button, then, as it started to make mechanical noises, I realised to my horror that this was a coffee-dispensing machine but not also a cup-dispensing machine. Luckily the till attendant was used to this and came dashing over with a little plastic cup just in time before the machine could splurt hot coffee all over the floor, but ... surely that must have been a several-times-daily occurrance, and they should have put the machine behind the till where oblivious tourists can't operate it? Or do the Bulgarians just think that coffee needs to come with a dash of danger?
Because coffee machines still suck, they can't even replicate Starbucks-quality coffee, let alone good coffee.
There's three key tasks: pulling an espresso shot, steaming milk, and pouring milk. You'd think that pulling the shot would be easy, but it requires you to watch carefully for the moment the coffee reaches a particular colour, it's not just a goddamn timer. (Note: actually at Starbucks it is just a goddamn timer, which is one of the reasons that their coffee tastes so appalling.) I have trouble getting this right at home, but I'm better than a machine (or a Starbucks "barista".)
Steaming and pouring the milk properly requires you to react appropriately to what the milk is currently doing and rearrange what you're doing in response. This would be a much harder task for an AI, it requires an intuitive grasp of fluid dynamics.
The best machine-poured coffees I've had are from 7/11s in Australia, which are... reasonably drinkable considering the $1 cost, probably on a par with Starbucks, but definitely not something I'd drink when decent coffee is available for just $3 more.
I do think it would be possible to build a robot that could make decent coffees, but nobody has done it yet and nobody is likely to for quite a while because all the good robotics technology is in countries with appalling coffee and vice versa.
"Check what color a liquid is" definitely sounds like something automatable, and probably worth it at Starbucks scales.
You'd think so, but nobody at Starbucks from the CEO on down actually has any taste in coffee so they have no idea that they're doing anything wrong.
Because most of the tasks they spend their day on are not automatable, at least not at high quality and low price, at thr moment.
How have you managed your mental health while traveling? I find traveling more than 2 weeks tends to be quite stressful for me.
I'm not Scott but I do go on speaking trips, or did before Covid, and I set a limit of about two weeks.
Has anyone seen a good discussion of sanctions? In fairness, I'll tell you that I tend to be anti, on libertarian principles.
Do they tend to work to achieve their stated purposes? How much do they hurt third parties or otherwise harmless people? Do targeted sanctions work to just hit specific people or organizations? If a sanction is ended, how long does it take for ordinary trade to resume?
In case you haven't already seen it, Richard Hanania published an article on sanctions last year, "Ineffective, Immoral, Politically Convenient: America’s Overreliance on Economic Sanctions and What to Do about It" (https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/ineffective-immoral-politically-convenient-americas-overreliance-economic-sanctions).
Even if you have read it, the endnotes identify a lot of other material on the topic, mostly from the last thirty years.
Thank you very much. If I find more material, I'll post about it.
I wonder whether sanctions should be filed under purity culture-- they're an example of not getting involved in the messy business of conquest, and they're a way of detaching from countries the government doesn't like.
Another ask for information-- I've never seen a book or other major source about bounties on animals. Anyone seen anything?
To the CIV players (or EU / CK): If an epidemic appeared with the stats: "fast, universal infection; killing 0.5% of population, 80% of which over 60 years." - would you consider any action or even start worrying at all? ( I did move the capital in CK2 when the bubonic plague came close). Would you close ports? Stop trade? Demobilize? - Sorry for sounding trolling-like. I really do wonder. And got vaxxed first weekend shots were open for my age group.
Don't think this is very analogous to the real world. In Civ you don't care that much about the life and happiness of your individual citizens. You only care so long as it helps or hinder you in taking over the world (or colonize space). In the real world lots of people don't even wanna take over the world.
Also in Civ you want the people in other countries to die and be unhappy, but in the real world most people don't want that.
You are obviously right. I try reframing, as just last night I read up about "dath ilani" and got Eliezer's story about Keltham https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cujpciCqNbawBihhQ/self-integrity-and-the-drowning-child - Keltham might have objected to "Lock down everything right now" on the ground that this leads to huge human cost (and giant economic losses tend to mean huge human losses, too). Instead: just "hammering down" on the "irresponsible side" of the argument. I was (and still am retrospectively) more of a pro-lockdown - but now after a nearly two years my town (tests, lockdowns, masks, vaxx, we really worked on it) had 477 Corona-deaths+/-. Same time 7000 +/- people died their usual other deaths. With full spread we would have likely maxed out at double covid-deaths (0.4 mortality). Was the difference worth the sacrifices? Really really? You CAN play CIV for getting overall-happiness-points in your people. I sometimes play CK "tall" - going for peace, prosperity, development instead of expansion. Would I have ignored such an epidemic for the better of my people? Clearly. - "Ignoring Covid 2020" could have meant: Let them bring the vaccine to the people asap. Asap was: March 2020. And let ppl take care about their life. (Most are still kinda careful now.) - I am fine though - losing my job let me to find Scott. His stuff is worth that. My kids though ... .
There's a very culture war topic I've been thinking about for a while, that I was hoping to get some thoughts on from this community. It's about vaccine mandates, and the purpose/drive behind at least some of them.
I'll say up front that I think that taking the vaccine makes a lot of sense, especially for certain groups (the elderly, people with comorbidities) and also that requiring a vaccine for a deadly virus is justifiable in fields where risk of infection and spread is of particular concern (nursing homes, hospitals).
It occurs to me that due to the divide between those seeking vaccination and those turning it down, and specifically that the divide breaks along legible political lines in many cases, it may be easier for Democratic leaders to insist on a vaccine mandate, and difficult for Republican leaders to allow it. In the least charitable interpretation, Democrats realize that they can get Republicans fired en masse from a wide range of professional positions, and pick a policy that allows them to do it. Also speaking uncharitably, Republican leaders like Greg Abbott of Texas see the same political ploy and therefore make a heavy-handed rule the other way (he outlawed vaccine mandates). Somewhat more charitable, it may not be an intended consequence, but more of a desirable side effect of a policy that would still be sought otherwise.
There are other political situations with similar intended effect versus beneficial side effect situations. Voter ID seems to fall into this bracket, where it may be good policy on its own, but at least some accuse Republicans of pushing it so that less minorities vote. Similarly with the SALT tax deduction caps from 2017, which create a weird inversion in politics due to how they tend to penalize rich Democrats from high tax states. Republicans raised taxes on the rich, and the Democrats are the ones who want to lower the taxes. I think the SALT situation is a much clearer example of the least charitable interpretation, and I think the least charitable version is the true version.
The overall question is not whether the vaccine mandates are purely to get Republicans fired, as that's unlikely to be the main motivating factor. What I'm curious about is the idea that certain policy choices become much easier when it benefits your tribe and/or hurts the other tribe. Arguably vaccine mandates do both for the Democrats, and may explain why Democrats seem so willing to push a mandate that would get people fired even during a major labor shortage. Nurses are extremely hard to find at the moment, for one example, yet they are also being fired from their jobs if not vaccinated.
Political tribalism poisons everything. And the more polarized society you have, the easier it becomes to design laws that hurt your opponents. Because even if on some level many people care about fairness, they are less likely to notice people being hurt if none of the victims is their friend or colleague.
The SALT limit is a particularly interesting one. It hurt the rich, a fact generally ignored by people describing the changes as Republicans helping the rich. It hurt rich people likely to be Democrats, which Republicans might like. But it also made non-tribal sense for those Republicans who really believed that too much government spending was a problem, because it reduced the federal subsidy to state and local spending, so could be expected to result in less spending by state and local governments.
The limit on mortgage deductions had the first characteristic but not, I think, the other two, so I'm not sure why it happened.
I know it's different people a decade apart, but I still find it ironic that Republicans were so keen to eliminate "double taxation" of dividends but to *institute* double taxation of state taxes.
I know a lot of people probably wont see this post so many days later, but I thought it was interesting that - in accordance with the least charitable reading of the vaccine mandate - government employees, including state and local (heavily Democrat leaning) and remote workers (also lean Democrat) are exempted from the mandate. The remote workers at least makes perfect sense to limiting the scope, but removing all government workers does not. It may be arguable that OSHA does not have the authority to mandate local governments (public schools, for instance, are not under OSHA to begin with), but that may just go back up a level to the decision to push the mandate through OSHA instead of the CDC or another government organization.
Again, not to say that this is definitely the reasoning, but it becomes more suspicious when the end results hurt the out group more than the in group, even if the underlying purpose may be legitimate.
I predicted the future well enough to make a lot of money on the stock market using superforecasting. I also used memetics to start a religion online. This are both fringe sciences that I've been dabbling with for the past 10 years in order to create mathematical rules that quantify group behavior.
https://questioner.substack.com/p/victory-lap-results-of-the-stock
https://questioner.substack.com/p/why-smart-people-believe-dumb-things
A lot of people expect me to show the math. But I'm not an altruist and I don't work for free. I dislike the current power structure of society and I'd like to gain fame and money and power of my own which I can use to change our cultural norms into something more healthy. I am reiterating my offer that if anybody disbelieves me, all they have to do is put me in touch with a reporter or hedge fund manager. I'm willing to prove my claims in person to anybody who can help me obtain large amounts of either fame or money.
Until then, I plan to continue using my sciences exclusively to benefit myself while harming the elites in charge of our society.
You missed an important step on your way to world domination. You also need to create some more accounts on Amazon, buy your own book, and write positive customer reviews.
Ugh, the SEO part of this supervillain shit is so tedious! Thanks for the tip.
Ultimately I think that as long as I deliver quality advice, my results will speak for themselves, but I suppose every little bit helps. Have a good one!
Sorry, until I see your Minion, Henchperson, and Assorted Toadies, Lickspittles and Functionaries sample contract and conditions of employment, I'm not interested in signing aboard.
Well, this is an Open Thread, so I guess we can have fun with this as a thought experiment. If I *were* to draft such a contract, and wanted to craft it in such a way as to be game theory optimal to both of us, what conditions should it have and why?
When it comes to creating a mathematical model of future human behavior, why would I want competition?
Hari Seldon ain't no fool!
>I also used memetics to start a religion online
Which religion? And did it get more followers than, say, the Universal Life Church?
Just read my blog. You'll figure it out pretty quickly, if you're smart.
Did you come here to talk, or just to drive traffic to your blog?
Okay, I found the relevant posts and you appear to be claiming to be the author of QAnon. A completely unverifiable claim, since QAnon is, well, anonymous. Anyone can pretend to be him.
It does raise my belief that you are actively trying to manipulate people rather than simply delusionally claiming to control the world through the medium of internet shitposts. I just don't know if you're manipulating people by doing what you claimed, or manipulating people to read your blog by taking credit for random internet phenomena.
Well, I can easily prove some of it, that's why I'd like to speak to a reporter. Typically that is the approved method of distributing "Big News", unless I'm mistaken.
Do you think it would be easier to get a reporter's attention if you had some preliminary proof you could dangle?
Like, there are lots of people who claim to be in control of world events. There's a lady who claims to be Queen of Canada, for crying out loud. I don't think you're as crazy as her, but how is a reporter supposed to tell the difference?
Maybe you could do a smaller-scale demonstration of your memetic skills, like spreading an unusual phrase through a community. Can you make "fetch" happen?
Why don't you just make your portfolio public, reporting all your trades as you make them? If you're right, you should then soon become rich and famous.
That's kind of what I did in these two posts.
https://questioner.substack.com/p/reality-plus
https://questioner.substack.com/p/victory-lap-results-of-the-stock
I used to do it on Facebook too, but my annoying wife (and soon to be ex-wife) forced me to delete any posts that gave away too much personal information.
Those are both after the fact and therefore difficult to evaluate. What I would do if I wanted to prove that I had a superior trading strategy would be to simply use a broker that allowed me to automatically make all my trades public, or, if such a broker wasn't available to me, just post each trade as it happened (at least the same day) somewhere that people could trust that I couldn't tamper with the record.
When I look at one such site where portfolios are automatically published, I see that in a sample of 10k portfolios, over the past three years, 20 had returns >1000%, 80 had returns >500% and 301 had returns >250%. Looking after the fact, I am not convinced that any of those investors are skilled (i.e. I am not going to immediately start copying their trades), but if I started following one of those investors and their portfolio continued to perform on that level, I would consider that strong evidence that they had skill.
I spent much of the afternoon reading your blog. It was quite interesting. I believe your claim to have made money on the stock market and to have used many psychedelics. I am not sure that I believe your implicit claim to be Q, of Qanon fame, although I don't doubt you are involved with Qanon on some level.
You give the book you published as a reason for your credibility, but there are two problems with this. First, there is no proof that you are the person that wrote that book- nothing on the writer's amazon page links to your blog, for instance. Second, it is possible to update kindle books after publication, so even if I were to buy the book, I might be reading something you wrote after the fact.
You write in one of the linked posts that you knew the coronavirus pandemic would occur, but took no action to help others. You justify this by stating that you are discriminated against and consider this just recompense. I will point out here that if your intention is to build a better world, you must BE better than our current one. I don't doubt that our current world contains many people who would willingly sacrifice others for their own gain; if you are just another of them, you are of no help in constructing a world where people no longer take advantage of others.
Not only this, but you also claim in your posts to have mastered memetics, to the point of being able to manipulate American elections and start new religions. If I take your posts seriously, the only reasonable option for me is to run away from you as fast as possible. A person who has mastered memetics in this way and who also shows the lack of moral scruples you claim to have is a person who my life is better without.
Enjoy your cash.
I'm really saddened to hear that you think I have no moral scruples, because I am simply trying to better my position in society by imitating the most popular and successful people in America - people who have some quality that I admire.
The demagoguery? I'm just copying Donald Trump - after all, it seems to work out pretty well for him.
Positioning myself as a victim? I learned that from one of my favorite entertainers, Taylor Swift.
Insisting on getting full credit for my talent? That was something I learned from my other favorite musician, Kanye West.
A relentless focus on money and profit? That came from observing entrepreneurial genius Jeff Bezos.
Now obviously I can't hope to become EVERY bit as successful as these famous luminaries - that's the reason I call myself "Humblerando" instead of "Arrogantrando" but I don't see anything wrong with striving to emulate the behavior of famous and successful American icons.
You have a grudge against neurotypicals, but neurodivergent people are dying and taking permanent damage in the pandemic, too.
I know, it's really sad. But you can't win a war without any collateral damage, and ultimately the end result will be good for them because they'll be able to live a life free of normie discrimination and persecution. It's kind of like how we could only eliminate slavery by fighting a massive civil war. Should we have decided that it wasn't worth freeing the slaves because the death toll of doing so would be too high?
Ultimately, there are some ideological principles that are worth fighting for no matter HOW high the death toll gets, and this is one of them. A society that treats people like me as second class citizens is a society that either needs to change or die.
I also dislike all of those people, but to each their own.
Well then, it sounds like you're very much out of step with modern society. Instead of criticizing people like me who are more in tune with the cultural zeitgeist, you should work on changing yourself to fit into the new paradigm.
Excellent summary of Gain of Function research in this week's issue of Nature! The author discusses all the different ways viruses can be manipulated, and how the lack of a precise definition for "Gain of Function" can inhibit the development of regulatory regimes for viral experimentation (which I think is necessary on a national and international level). And as an aside, one researcher in quoted in this article pointed out that that creating a viral vector vaccine like AZT by splicing a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on a harmless Adenovirus backbone falls under the definition of Gain of Function (because it involves the creation chimeric virus that has new functional properties that the original Adenovirus didn't have). So, regulation of GoF and GoFRoC (Gain of Function Research of Concern) processes will require creating a more precise listing of the different techniques used to manipulate viruses.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02903-x
Can you explain the Skopje "doesn't count" thing? Why am I not seeing scads of comments from offended Skopjeans?
Hey, at least we got a shout out:) Now I should guilt trip Scott into making a virtual appearance at the "doesn't count" Skopje meetup...
Scott wanted to put out the survey without waiting for an outlyingly late meetup, presumably so the meetup experience would be fresh in people's minds.
The depiction of Skynet's rise in "Terminator 3" is more confusing and open to interpretation than you think.
https://www.militantfuturist.com/review-terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines/
I came late to the post mentioning intransitive dice (#10 at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-october), but I was curious whether anyone sees a link between these dice and Simpson's paradox (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox). A simple example of Simpson's paradox occurs when you are comparing two treatments, A and B, for two subpopulations, X and Y. It is possible for treatment A to be the more effective treatment both for subpopulation X and for subpopulation Y, but for treatment B to be more effective across the entire population X + Y. It feels like this phenomenon violates our intuitive expectation for an "associative property" of statistics in the same way that the dice violate our intuitive expectation for a "transitive property" of statistics. But I'm curious whether the mathematics behind the two paradoxes is similar at all.
Nitpick: you mean that it is possible for B to *appear* to be the more effective treatment across the entire population X+Y. In Wikipedia's kidney stone example, B only appears more effective across the entire population because doctors disproportionately prescribe A for larger stones; if you take a random person who hasn't yet been prescribed anything, then we should expect A to be more likely to be effective on this random person, even though we don't know which subgroup the person is in.
Why doesn't every power plant and factory have a bank of Nitinol Engines to convert waste heat into electricity?
https://youtu.be/3MfTJVAtx6w
Hum... maybe because it's not cost effective? Most of these waste heat conversion to energy schemes are so expensive they will never return their capital cost.
Also, any heat-to-energy conversion system requires putting your converter across the thermal gradient, where (if you're adding it to an existing power plant) it will slow heat dissipation from the heat output of your power plant to the outside heat sink. This makes the rest of your power plant at least a little less efficient, since then your steam turbines or whatever have less of a heat gradient to work with.
This effect isn't necessarily a net loss if the power captured in the additional heat-to-energy conversion stage outweighs the loss of efficiency in earlier stages (c.f. triple-expansion reciprocating steam engines), but it can be a net loss in some cases, and in cases where it's a net gain it's often significantly less of a net gain that a naive calculation based on the power output of the added stage would imply.
What booster are folks getting, esp. if they started out with a Moderna series?
https://twitter.com/ScientistSwanda/status/1450855893176922112
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.10.21264827v1.full.pdf
^ These suggest that a 100mcg Moderna booster is ideal - not offered in the US today (boosters are 50mcg, additional dose, which is an altogether different thing, is 100mcg). 2nd best and almost as good, seems to be Pfizer.
Is this about the net conclusion reached by most folks ?
There seems to be a substantial chance of being crippled by COVID, if that goes into your calculations.
I don't know how likely really bad long Covid is, just that it can hit various body systems, including breathing and the brain.
For what it's worth, I'm working on staying hydrated-- there's at least some reason to think it makes strokes less likely.
There are materials about low tech suicide if you want to look them up. You *don't* want a stroke or anything else incapacitating.
Expiration dates are yet another thing to be cynical about. As I understand it, they're either extremely conservative and/or rigged to push buying replacement meds. I'm not sure how you'd find out whether your meds were still good.
It's still pretty easy to get COVID even after being vaccinated.
How so? I thought the vaccine was ~95% effective (though I admit I don't know precisely what this means)...
Well my parents both got COVID despite being fully vaccinated and very cautious about masks, etc. and they know a lot of others with breakthrough infections as well.
Either Delta's has partially escaped vaccines or immunity wanes with time, but clearly *something* is different now.
I have a platform to talk on a radio-ish/podcast-ish thing, about rationality and adjacent topics, to a college audience, in a location where there is only a small rationalist/EA presence. I would like topic suggestions, methods of approach, texts to just straight up read out loud, and any other miscellaneous thoughts you may have, including whether or not this seems like a worthwhile opportunity to take advantage of for reasons other than "it might be exciting for me personally".
Can anyone suggest a good discord for discussion purposes? The one linked to on this substack is admined by a pompous loser who seems to have have nothing to do with Scott anymore.
Scott: This one should be in your wheelhouse:
"Madness for Decivilization" by Michael Shellenberger | 31 Oct 2021
https://quillette.com/2021/10/31/madness-for-decivilization/
"Liberals and progressives had gone, thanks in part to the ACLU, Foucault, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, from advocating humanistic psychiatric care to opposing it. Part of the reason progressives demand proof of mental illness in the form of violent assault, murder, or suicide is that they have lost faith in our capacity to recognize it and at times even denied its existence."
Excerpted from "San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities" by Michael Shellenberger (Harper, 2021)
I remember slowly "waking up" at some point around 18-20 y.o.
I get a solid impression that I didn't have qualia and/or self-awareness for a long time.
I remember having emotions, experiences, but I don't remember *interacting* with them in self-aware way. It was all like autocomplete spewing out thoughts, words and actions.
Probably normal people can get similar realisation after finding meditation, and peeling off layers of illusion. That's how I was able to relate to that previous feeling. But I feel like I really has come from the bottom of not-being, even not-being a silent observer.
Obviously I am feeling like I'm a special snowflake, but maybe everyone has this, just doesn't talks about it much? Can someone relate to this?
Oh, fascinating, I'm kind of in the same situation - that is, it seems to me that my younger self was on autopilot without much (any?) meta-consciousness - and I've often wondered if this is a relatively rare experience or not. But I also wonder if I really didn't have this awareness or if I don't remember it, because, perhaps not coincidentally, I also have a very poor episodic memory, the one that records personal experiences, while my semantic memory is quite good.
I seem to remember someone on ACX describing a similar experience, i.e., developing self-awareness as a young adult. In his case, this development was related to a conscious effort he had made to develop his internal monologue, which he had previously lacked. Do you have one yourself?
Coming back to this, I feel that I just didn't have separation for self and world. E.g. I wasn't very popular, but was oblivious to that fact, and oblivious to the fact that it might be bad. I have always stuck to the "cool guys" even after they clearly make me understand they're annoyed.
Later, it was having zero empathy to other people I interact with. I have had a model of how you should behave, so I wasn't doing obvious bad stuff, but I wasn't registering others' feelings at all, and in corner cases it had shown.
Sometimes I worry that I still do this nowadays, it's just that I don't know what I am missing.
Anyway, this is a bit different from my original point, but it doesn't reduce to bad memory.
Thanks for your sharing, it's interesting that somebody has similar feelings. "being on autopilot" exactly describes what I remember
For the internal monologue, now I have one for sure. I think I always had it, because I was never bored alone. I think I might have even been talking about consciousness, brain, mind upload problems etc. Like a "qualia zombie" – I can say words out loud, but they're not connected to any inner experience.
I am not sure what actionable test can I have to check whether my claims are true. Obviously it's a bit easier than testing another person for being a zombie
This reminds me of this older post:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/03/what-developmental-milestones-are-you-missing/
I know it is years old, but maybe there were similar experiences in the comments.
How can I condition myself to be more tidy?
My problem is that when I'm finished with a thing, I let it lie around, instead of putting it into its place. Like Prentice Mulford (or whoever) said, a place for everything and everything in its place.
E.g. I come home, take off the shoes, leave them in the middle of the corridor. Leave a book on the living room table. Leave tools somewhere random when done with them.
My son is even worse, and no amount of nagging can bring him to put the nail scissors always back to its place when he's done cutting his fingernails. (Which he does strangely often. If I need the manicure set, my best bet is looking for it on his desk, rather than the bathroom.)
So, we need some intervention. It drives my wife crazy, and I agree she is right and would like to change. But it's very hard to fight against my own absent-mindedness.
Are there any neat tricks?
As childish as it is, I find arbitrary rewards based on performance can help. I was pathologically unable to remember to unplug the toaster after using it, and it really annoyed my girlfriend. To fix it, I made a deal with myself that if I did it 45 times in a row, I got a prize (3 guilt-free starbucks cookies). It took me about 3-4 months, but it's now second nature and I notice automatically if it's left plugged in, even if it wasn't me.
This technique is better at targeting specific behaviours, but if you target enough of them then presto, suddenly you're a tidy person.
Childish is good! Does a reward work better than a punishment? E.g. if I forget do clean something up, I pay some amount to a charity?
For something as concrete as your toaster example, I have also had good success with a reminder, e.g. putting a funny photo of Alfred Hitchcock on the wall behind the toaster, which would serve to remind me about the unplugging. But the messiness is all over the place, and I cannot put Alfred Hitchcock everywhere.
To me, rewards do work better. I can't really say why - I really beat myself up about mistakes, so theoretically I should learn to avoid them. I think rewards work because they tie happiness to the task, whereas punishment at best ties neutrality.
Also, if you add enough Hitchcock pictures then maybe they will be distracting enough that nobody even notices the mess?
This is interesting, because you learn that this is also true when educating dogs. And probably children, too. It's much more fruitful to reward good behaviour and ignore bad behaviour, although it's only human to get angry at bad behaviour.
Re Hitchcock, now I only have to teach my wife to enjoy Hitchcock's face... Also, a great conversation starter when we have guests!
Buy a floor-cleaning robot and schedule it to run automatically every day. This will force you to keep the floor clear enough for the robot to run.
Counters and tables are harder. The best I've figured is to annex regular maintenance for them to other tasks that have forcing functions requiring you to do them regularly. For example, I will tidy up the kitchen counters any time I cook something that has more than a few minutes of wait-time in the cooking process, and I'll generally combine loading the dishwasher, making my daughter's lunch for school, and tidying the counters together with washing up pots and pans from dinner.
Depending on how old your son is, your best bet for the nail scissors in particular is to buy him his own pair. That way, he doesn't have to steal yours, and whether he puts them in a drawer or leaves them on his desk is his problem, not yours.
Another idea is to put 15 min a day aside for "tidying up": Just looking for misplaced things and putting them in their place. And looking for things without a proper place (Mulford called them "nomads"... I can't find the English original; German here: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/mulford/unfugleb/chap011.html) and assigning them a place.
Your kitchen example is similar. I like cooking a casserole, because while it is in the oven, I have 20 minutes time to clean up the counter! Much more fun than doing it after dinner.
Wise solution about the nail scissors, sure, but that was only an example. And I can't duplicate all our household for him. Like, if I need a pen and don't find any, best bet is to go in his room and pick up half a dozen pens from his floor.
A question for people who know about "Dune" - How did the Atreides forces make the basic mistake of clustering all their forces in one place on the surface of planet Arrakis? Worst of all, their space ships were on the ground, parked side-by-side, making them easy targets for bombardment. Why wasn't some fraction of the fleet always parked in orbit to shoot down any enemy ships before they could land on Arrakis?
Also, how many Atreides military forces remained on planet Caladan after the expeditionary force went to Arrakis? Surely they wouldn't be dumb enough to leave their home planet unprotected. Why don't the forces on Caladan counterattack the Harkonnen planets in retaliation for the latter's attack on Arrakis?
I just watched the "Dune" movie but haven't read the books, and as a novice, I'm confused over what appears to be comically bad military strategy.
I haven't seen the movie, and it's been a long time since I read the books, but I think I basically remember them.
House Atreides only has one planet at a time: first Caladan, then Arrakis. They have to pick up everything and move to Arrakis, because the Emperor shuffles the houses around every now and then in order to weaken them. House Harkonnen is wealthier; they have more than one planet at a time. It so happens they keep their home planet in this particular shuffle.
None of the houses own their own ships. The Guild has a monopoly on space travel. So leaving troops in orbit isn't an option. Nobody attacks any ships, because if you piss off the Guild you're trapped on whatever planet you're on. I guess this is something they changed in the movie.
A while back a read a blog post with a military analysis of Lord of the Rings, arguing that the books make more sense than the movies, mostly because what makes sense doesn't always work on film.
The Guild had a monopoly on interstellar space travel, but not on travel within a solar system, right? If a government in the Dune universe wanted to set up a weekly space ferry from its main planet and its moon, would the Guild have to pilot those ships?
It's hard to believe a rule would have forbidden the Atreides forces from keeping some of their ships in orbit of Arrakis, where they could have been able to attack incoming enemy ships and less vulnerable.
This actually wrong, in the book it is established that the Guild has a monopoly on any and all space travel, and they are explicitly forbiding orbital sattelites around Arrakis, because of their deal with the Fremen. It is, however, also established that this monopoly is established by law, not because the Guild has a unique technological know-how needed for any space travels, since smugglers exist.
What the hell?
The emperor controls the guild and the guild controls space. No rebel house can ever threaten the emperor. The most they can do is take a planet into rebellion, and then, if he wants to, the emperor doesn't even have to fight the rebel, he can just drop rocks.
That is very much not how it works in the books. The Emperor, the Guild, and the great houses collectively are described as a "tripod" who share power because none of them can defeat the others.
The Emperor's army isn't big enough to beat the houses if they team up. But the houses aren't united enough to beat the Emperor. (The Emperor wants Duke Leto dead because the Duke is a potential unifying figure.)
No one can outside the Guild can rule over the Guild; they'll cut off anyone who tries. But the Guild depends on Emperor and houses for food and supplies, because they're the ones who control planets.
There's a fourth leg of the tripod. If you're an important lord or the Emperor, basically every woman in your family is a member of the Bene Gesserit, who tightly control their members and teach their members mind control, among other powers. None of this is secret, but it doesn't seem to occur to the men that Bene Gesserit are a major power.
It is imho worth noting that Dune was written before the moonlanding, so perhaps difference between interplanetary and interslellar travel did not seem as salient then as it seems now
The Guild Navigators' psychic power is specifically what allows them to operate faster-than-light drive properly.
Though perhaps being written before the moon landing explains how they have spacecraft of any sort without computers.
Also, what is the approximate population of Caladan and of the Atreides family / loyalists / nation? Did the entire population of Caladan have to relocate to Arrakis?
Not nearly the whole population. Nobility, military, some other people. I'm pretty sure the Atreides family doctor moves with them, but their palace on Arrakis has local servants.
You know the bit about how at Pearl Harbor all the American fighter planes were lined up wingtip-to-wingtip because the American commanders were more worried about sabotage than air attack? Kind of that, except that here the Atreides *know* that the Harkonnen have spent years planting spies and saboteurs and suborning the civilian population.
Also, the Atreides have effectively impenetrable force fields that they can use to protect small areas, but not entire planets. So concentrating their military assets in a shielded base, occupied only by trusted insiders they brought with them from Caladan, would have been a reasonable decision except that they brought a traitor within them who sabotaged their main shield generator. Why Dr. Yueh was a traitor, and why that was a bit of idiot plotting on Herbert's part, we can discuss later.
Also also, there's not a whole lot of room to disperse their forces on Arrakis. There's the Arrakeen spaceport and citadel, which has a certain amount of room and can be kept mostly traitor-free. There's the rest of the city, more room but more traitors. There's the city of Carthag (not in the movie), with *way* more traitors - that was Harkonnen central while they ruled. There's the desert, where anything you park gets eaten by worms unless you have Fremen-level desert power. And there's the small rocky northern polar region, where you can set up bases given a bit of time but there's zero logistical support at the outset.
Also also also, if the Atreides distribute their forces, the Harkonnen distribute their attack accordingly. It was, particularly in the book, a massively overwhelming attack prepared years in advance and at ruinous cost, and again it includes lots of spies and saboteurs and traitors who can report on where the Atreides have set up their bases. I presume they didn't have literally 100% of their forces in Arrakeen, but we don't need to see the secondary attacks on secondary targets.
Ships in orbit, it's not clear whether they are any less vulnerable to surprise attack than ships on the ground. There's a shortage of detail on how space combat works in that setting. But in the books, the Guild has an explicit rule of no satellites over Arrakis, which would presumably rule out ships in parking orbit. Yes, Leto could order his own pilots to put a ship in such an orbit, but then the Guild would say "OK, no more interstellar transport for you, have fun starving".
The Guild does this, BTW, because the Fremen are bribing them with lots of spice. The Fremen don't want anyone to see how many of them there are or that they've started terraforming, the Guild wants a supply of spice that doesn't depend on the Great Houses or the Emperor, they'd both be happy to let whichever Great House is ruling Arrakis starve and be replaced in a few years by one more willing to abide by the "no satellites" rule.
And the Atreides were ordered to relocate entirely from Caladan to Arrakis; some other Great House is ruling Caladan now. Given a year, maybe even six months, Atreides would have made an alliance with the Fremen, rooted out most of the spies, built up their local infrastructure, learned desert power, and dug in for the long haul. I think in the book they got three months.
> Why Dr. Yueh was a traitor, and why that was a bit of idiot plotting on Herbert's part, we can discuss later.
Do tell? :-)
Dr. Yueh was a traitor because the Harkonnens had abducted his wife and threatened to torture her until he agreed to betray the Atreides. Secretly, he planned to betray Atreides and Harkonnens both, the former only as a means to the latter, but ultimately it comes down to "you will betray your lord because we've got your wife".
That was idiot plotting because "Is your wife in one of our enemys' dungeons right now?" is, let me check, the second question in section 13 of my last SF86. And they don't just take people's word on it. It's not something Thufir Hawat would have missed.
But, OK, the Dune Universe has something called "Imperial Conditioning", which has been trusted for thousands of years as an absolute guarantee against people ever becoming traitors, so Dr. Yueh can't be a traitor and everybody trusts him. It's only because Baron Harkonnen figured out the extra clever way of beating that conditioning that he was able to slip a traitor into a position of high trust among the Atreides. That extra clever trick being...
"Do what we say or we'll torture your wife"???
Really, people were going to explore every variant on that one within a decade of "Imperial Conditioning" being a thing. Including the false-flag and double-treachery versions where you let the traitor think he's really going to be pulling one over on the villains who kidnapped his wife. If "Imperial Conditioning" doesn't absolutely cover the "even if they torture your wife" contingency, people like Hawat are not going to trust it and Yueh is not going to have access to the Atreides inner circle and/or shield generator.
For the first bit, I hadn't heard that, but I haven't read the Brian Herbert books or the Dune Encyclopedia. (I'll probably read the DE at some point.)
For the second bit, there's an early scene in the book where Leto and Jessica meet in the Arrakeen great hall, and discuss the new household servants, and she asks if anyone from Dune can be truly safe, and Leto says "Anyone who hates Harkonnens." Later, Jessica and Wellington meet, and he tries a number of tricks to keep her from guessing what's really agitating him. One is that he restricts himself to literal truth, because he knows she has a limited ability to detect lies. So he tells Jessica a bit about his wife Wanna, but he breaks down before he says what the Harkonnens did to her, and Jessica fills in the blanks incorrectly. In a later scene, after Paul stopped the hunter-seeker, when he and Jessica are in the conservatory and discussing the multiple hints that there's a traitor, Paul asks if it could be Yueh, and Jessica tells Paul "I can assure you he hates the Harkonnens as bitterly as we do." But Thufir only finds out what happened to Wanna when Jessica confronts him after Duncan gets too drunk.
(Yeah, I'm in the middle of reading it now... ;-)
This reminds me of a couple of other things that bothered me about the books:
Soldiers wear force fields called "shields" that stop anything over a certain speed, making guns ineffective. So everyone fights with knives. But why knives? Why not swords? And why does no one wear anti-knife armor under the shield?
If you shoot a shield with a "lasgun" (laser gun), it explodes with a force comparable to an atomic bomb. (It's not clear which device explodes; maybe the blast radius is so big it doesn't matter.) Everyone's takeaway from this is just "don't use lasguns". No one uses a lasgun and shield to make a nuclear-strength IED.
Yeah, in the movie they at least used shortsword and I think I even saw some half-spears in there, which was more reasonable. Proper phalanxes would have been a better response to the stated limitations. And maybe when Herbert said "knife" he was envisioning shortswords as well, but I still think he started with the desired end result (fancy hand-to-hand combat that fit the neofeudal setting) and did a half-assed job of coming up with technobabble to justify it.
Shield + lasgun, they both explode unpredictably, sometimes but not always with nuclear-equivalent yields. It's mentioned in the book that doing this with your own shield and lasgun in a single package, looks enough like a nuke that people generally avoid this for fear of triggering MAD. People do occasionally use lasguns, so presumably "Harkonnen ornithopter and Atreides outpost simultaneously explode a kilometer apart" is a thing people will recognize as the Harkonnens having been a bit overeager.
And, most of Arrakis being a no-shield zone, it's mentioned in the books that both sides have started bringing out some of the old weapons, artillery and surface-to-air missiles and the like. That might make it into the second movie, but they probably won't spell it out.
The dictionary entry in the back for "kindjal" is "double-bladed short sword (or long knife) with about 20 centimeters of slightly curved blade."
20 cm is roughly a Ka-bar or bayonet. 20 inches gets into gladius range, and starts seeming more like a shortsword to me. But people talk about strapping them to their calf, which makes 20 cm sound like what the author had in mind...
And yeah, group combat seems to be on the level of "devolves into chaotic melee". Shield walls seem like they'd be a great idea. Maybe even phalanxes, although I think there might be problems with too many shields in close quarters, something about ozone and oxygen interchange? Although the Sardarkaur apparently have a practice of fighting in groups of 3, back-to-back-to-back, so it can't be *that* much of a problem.
I could see this if the military units involved were small, like what a "War of Assassins" implies. But a legion is defined as about 30,000 soldiers, and I just find it hard to imagine getting that many soldiers fighting hand-to-hand in the same place at the same time, without some sort of formation, and tactics and weapons that make use of that formation.
They use rapiers plus knives in the early training session with Paul and Gurney. But why no one carries swords, or wears light body-armor on a regular basis, I have no idea. Maybe it's "just not done", or would be seen as a sign of weakness? It's a very static, conservative society, and in modern terms it seems like there's lots of opportunity for disruptive innovation.
As for lasguns and shields, the book says both explode. Early on, the Atreides capture a Harkonnen shipment of lasguns onto Arrakis, and someone brings up the possibility of the Harkonnens attaching a mechanical timer to a lasgun aimed at the house shields. The conclusion is that this would be indistinguishable from an atomic explosion, which would be a violation of the Great Convention, and therefore the Harkonnens wouldn't dare to do it. Which I think implies that the retaliation by the other Great Houses would be so great as to make it a suicidal gesture.
Later in the book, one of the Atreides notices that the Harkonnens are sweeping the desert with lasguns, so they leave a shield out there. Boom. So I guess that's the sort of thing you can get away with when you have nothing left to lose? :-/
Overall, this strikes me as part of the world-building that seems implausible; it's just too unstable to last for thousands of years. Eventually some nutjob is bound to get their hands on a lasgun. But the book was written in the height of the Cold War, and one of the currents back then seemed to be that some people really wanted to believe that MAD could work long-term. *shrug*
So yeah, I agree that one of the secret ingredients in breaking the Imperial Conditioning was getting Wellington to want to kill Vladimir himself, and Wellington thinking that he might actually have a chance at it. Vladimir was a bit of a narcissist, and of course he believed that he managed to do something that no one else had ever done, and didn't realize that the process involved putting himself at significant risk (if Leto had been set up a bit further from the Baron's private door, if the Harkonnen HVAC hadn't been quite as good, if Vladimir had turned off his shield briefly to hear Leto's mumbling...). And given Jessica's assessment of Piter's attitude toward Vladimir, I'm inclined to suspect that Vladimir got lucky and that the only reason he lived out the year was that two of his blind spots cancelled each other out.
The other secret ingredient seems to be something to do with Wanna being Bene Gesserit. I think there's an implication that something about that made Wellington care more about her than normal; maybe it's one of the hints about mind-blowing Bene Gesserit sex that lurks in the background of the first 4 books. Or possibly it's that the training she had been giving him had cancelled out some of the Imperial Conditioning. (Just how common *is* it for Bene Gesserit spouses to train their loved ones??? Paul, Wellington, Hasimir... I think the only ones mentioned who don't are Gaius Helen and Irulan, and they both seem like natural exceptions.)
More broadly, yeah, it's hard to understand why Thufir wouldn't have picked up on this. I've been re-reading Dune and re-attempting to deduce details about galactic society. My impression is that Thufir's investigation may have stopped after confirming that the person calling himself Dr. Wellington Yueh was indeed the same person who graduated from the Suk School with Imperial Conditioning. Jessica says she's known Wellington for 6 years, so that must be when he joined the Atreides, because she's been around for at least 15 years. It sounds like Jessica and Paul hadn't heard about Wanna, and hadn't met her, which implies that she was captured before Wellington joined up with the Atreides. Which implies a degree of long-range planning on the part of Vladimir and Piter that's bordering implausible, but maybe Piter really was that good?
(Jessica's history has a similar problem: who chose her for Leto? The Bene Gesserit wanted those two to breed, but Leto was the one who sent "buyers" to the Bene Gesserit school. Wouldn't he have had some say in who was picked to be his concubine? But it's relatively easy to believe that Leto's Bene Gesserit contacts were just that good at manipulating him and his buyers, both into wanting a Bene Gesserit concubine and into picking the "correct" one.)
Overall, I really wonder about how much wiggle-room there is in a galactic empire with thousands of planets but no mechanical information processing network. How easy would it be to conceal events in your past? How easy would it be to assume a new identity (assuming you could pull it off)? When spice hunters leave Arrakis during the transition, where do they go and what do they do? Who could check their background?
>It sounds like Jessica and Paul hadn't heard about Wanna, and hadn't met her, which implies that she was captured before Wellington joined up with the Atreides.
Yeah, that part would make Thufir borderline incompetent. If someone comes to you midlife and asks you to trust them with your biggest secrets and access to your greatest vulnerabilities, you *check out their past*. And double-check, asking the people you know about whether there are any other people you should know about. It's never going to be a perfect process, but if you miss the fact that they used to be happily married but nobody's seen their wife for six years, you fail Counterespionage 101 forever.
If it's the bit where Thufir stops checking because he finds that yep, Yueh has Imperial Conditioning, then it's every Evil Baron and Mentat *before* Thufir that's borderline incompetent. If Imperial Conditioning is a thing, and it's proof against "but I have your wife, bwuahahaha!", then if you're in the Evil Mastermind business you check and see if that still holds for people with the extra-special witchy wives. And you check and see if it still holds when you do a false-flag recruitment where they think their treachery will destroy the people you've tricked them into thinking kidnapped their wife. And every other plausible permutation of that. The annals of kanly should be filled with examples of treacherous Imperially Conditioned doctors, if that's all it takes.
2 more bits that don't look so good for Thufir. There's a brief bio in one of the headers:
> YUEH (yü'ē), Wellington (weling-tun), Stdrd 10,082-10,191; medical doctor of the Suk School (grd Stdrd 10,112); md: Wanna Marcus, B. G. (Stdrd 10,092-10,186?); chiefly noted as betrayer of Duke Leto Atreides.(Cf: Bibliography, Appendix VII [Imperial Conditioning] and Betrayal, The.)
--from "Dictionary of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
So he was 109 years old when the book started, and they estimate Wanna died 5 years previously, which would be one year after he joined the Atreides. So she may have been abducted right around the time he joined! It's unclear to me whether Irulan knows what happened to Wanna, though - the uncertainty might be that she knows of the abduction and is estimating how long Wanna survived, or it could be that as far as anyone knows, Wanna just vanished one day. (I forget whether Paul eventually gains access to all of Vladimir's memories...)
Also, from the bit where Jessica confronts Thufir:
>"It’s not you, Thufir. It cannot be Paul. I /know/ it’s not me. Dr. Yueh, then? Shall I call him in and put him to the test?"
"You know that’s an empty gesture," Hawat said. "He’s conditioned by the High College. /That/ I know for certain."
"Not to mention that his wife was a Bene Gesserit slain by the Harkonnens," Jessica said.
"So that’s what happened to her," Hawat said.
"Haven’t you heard the hate in his voice when he speaks the Harkonnen name?"
"You know I don’t have the ear," Hawat said.
So yeah. Thufir didn't know what happened to Wanna, and he knew that he didn't know, and he didn't think it mattered. And it wasn't even a mistake about trusting people who hate Harkonnens. :-(
1) That movie battle scene is silly. In the book, their forces ARE dispersed thorought the part of Arrakis which is not sandworm teritory (pretty small zone around north pole). They are nevertheless destroyed, of course, but their strategy makes much more in-universe sense.
2) Leto was forced to abandon Caladan due to imperial decree which gave him Arrakis instead. I thought to it was clear even in the movie, but apparently not.
The movie didn't make it clear that the Atreides forces had to forfeit Caladan. I was under the impression the Emperor gave them Arrakis as an addition to whatever planetary possessions the Atreides already had.
I've heard a lot of people got confused by the 1984 movie, because they had no clue what was going on. I only saw it decades later, after I'd read the book a number of times, and it all made sense to me. I guess the new movie is the same way, at least to some degree. I really do wonder what the movies seem like to people who don't already know the story.
They should have added one or two short scenes to make these facts clear.
Wow, the book must be wonkier than I thought.
Depending on what you mean by "wonkier", YES. :-)
It has several appendices, so it can be as wonky as you want. Around here, we read the appendices. There's also a semi-canonical "Dune Encyclopedia" with more detail for the true wonks, but that's hard to find these days.
Has someone written about what's the fairest way to tax a multi-income household, where the number of income earners > 2?
I feel like taxing in pairs may disadvantage, say, a throuple - like say a situation with 2 breadwinners and one live-at-home caretaker. Is there a way for say, a 3 - 4 adult household to enjoy similar benefits of joint taxable income as a 2 person couple?
A throuple with two breadwinners filing married-jointly and a live-at-home caretaker getting refundable credits, etc., seems like pretty solid benefits- certainly more than many real life couples get. Not exactly 50% more benefits than the 1 breadwinner + 1 SAH caretaker, though, I'd expect.
Jordan Peterson: I really like Jordans intellectual capacity, his world view, his ethics, his rationality, he is a guy I would like to trust seeing as a leader of a huge country, the climate change issue, the WHO, the UN what else. BUT: from about 10:00 in this video he looses me when he is talking about 'a god's, about 'a genesis' and stuff. I was raised as well by my parents that I should believe that there is a Christian god, but it made never sense to me even as a child. So what shall I do with him after he discloses he is believing in an old white bearded men floating in space and creating life and universe in 7 days???
https://youtu.be/dPQj93sqGaI
Well, try to bear in mind that although he mostly centers on Christianity, he'll talk about Marduk and Osiris and other gods in much the same way, as if the legends and myths were real things that happened. But I think he keeps coming back to Christianity for much the same reason that he gives speeches in English - it's the culture in which he's working, and in which he lived his life, and which has influenced him the most deeply. Put another way, maybe try looking at Christianity from the same perspective that you look at ancient Babylonian religion or ancient Egyptian religion?
He's also got a biblical lecture series that you might find interesting, especially the first bit, where the question he opens with is literally, "why bother with this strange old book at all?"
https://youtu.be/f-wWBGo6a2w
Interesting ethnological point of view - but - I still cannot cope with my cognitive dissonance seeing an extremely intelligent, ethical, educated, eloquent arguing human being who takes every ungrounded false believe apart in two sentences - and then he starts to cite old ferry-tales like it would be the same like citing E = mc² Its just not getting into my head how a person can be so impressing intelligent and at the same time believing in ferry-tales invented by kleptocrats 2000-5000 years ago. My inner model just has no slot for a human being like that.
PS: just recently a very intelligent friend of mine was pissed of after I shared an article about a local pastafarian church announcing its religious services right beside the local Christian churches. OMG, please help us stopping people believing in you and hurting other humans in your name...
Don't want ferry-tales? Then don't pay the ferryman!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqZEp4Fb6qw
Hm. I don't want to give offense, but...
If your inner model has no slot for a person like that, then perhaps you should expand your inner model?
I don't want to get into politics too much, even on an even-numbered thread. So to speak generically, I am often tempted to look at a side of politics that I detest, and to make sweeping negative judgments about everyone who takes that side. But sometimes I am reminded that there are good people on that side, who interpret their politics in a way that is good and healthy and makes the world a better place. And it's hard for me to keep this in mind, and it's easy for me to forget. But I like being reminded that those people exist, because it helps me realize that the world is a better place than I thought it was. It snaps me out of my small viewpoint, and gives me a glimpse of the wider world, and gives me more hope than I had before.
Just in the process of expanding my inner model. Nearly all the time by the way... Generally speaking I was growing up as a naive optimist but would call me now a optimistic realist trying not to get a cynic. Quite a lot of things and learnings since the COVID pandemic in my professional try to convince me of the opposite...
Well, first off, nobody does believe in old white bearded men floating in space (unless you're hoping to become a space tourist in your old age when Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson finally build their hotels on the Moon), so you're safe there.
Creation in seven days is something endlessly argued over, and Young Earth Creationists get quite enough pushback. If that really does concern you, you can stand instead with St. Augustine in the 4th century:
"In City of God, Augustine rejected both the contemporary ideas of ages (such as those of certain Greeks and Egyptians) that differed from the Church's sacred writings. In The Literal Interpretation of Genesis Augustine argued God had created everything in the universe simultaneously and not over a period of six days. He argued the six-day structure of creation presented in the Book of Genesis represents a logical framework, rather than the passage of time in a physical way – it would bear a spiritual, rather than physical, meaning, which is no less literal. One reason for this interpretation is the passage in Sirach 18:1, creavit omnia simul ("He created all things at once"), which Augustine took as proof the days of Genesis 1 had to be taken non-literalistically. As an additional support for describing the six days of creation as a heuristic device, Augustine thought the actual event of creation would be incomprehensible by humans and therefore needed to be translated."
Sorry, but that was not the point. Guys I should coin it "meta level discussion" or so. JP seams to be a very reasonable human being to me. Very rational, very informed, very you name it. I would expect him to post exactly here. But then he tells about magical old ferry-tales. That bothers me. I'm trying to understand the world, reality, humans. I'm not happy with "all men are dumb" and similar platitudes. I try to understand human behavior, reasoning, rationales asf.
This is pedantic nit-picking, and English may not be your first language, but it is "fairy tales" not "ferry tales". A fairy is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy
A ferry is this:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ferry
I'm not familiar at all with Peterson's writings, so I have no idea how much he believes in God or a god. It may be that he is a conventional Christian, it may be that he is a liberal Christian. It may be that he is doing the "scrap the mysticism and miracles, but Christ was a Wisdom Teacher and we can use the stories as ethical guidelines, as well as interpreting them metaphorically and allegorically, and enjoying them in the same way we enjoy stories and movies about magic without believing in wizards and dragons".
He may not be as literalist as you are taking him to be. Think of all the talk about Buddhism on here and the benefits of meditation, where some at least of us don't believe in Buddhism as a religion but would practice the mediation for mental health benefits. That could be where Peterson is coming from: "these stories are how people of the past made sense of the world and struggled with the same questions of how to live, and they codified it as 'don't do these things' to maintain a healthy society".
Just stumbled over this interview with him after he had "3 more years to study...." said topic: https://youtu.be/YxQiCYWE3jk
5 minutes into the topic he is literally crying about his own amazement that he feels so deeply overwhelmed by this historical stories. Mysticist?
Sure, not my mother's tongue, typing on a smartphone while doing the homework and the kids, auto-correct set to another language and switching random words - so I hope you can forgive me for now...
So, I think the thing about Jordan Peterson is that he's a mystic. He managed to synthesize insights from psychology, neuroscience, and mythology, and now he's trying to explain the results as rationally as he can. It's a rare and fascinating combination.
And one of the things about mysticism is that, when you have an insight, you can see it reflected from innumerable facets of the world around you. And to some extent, that's what I think is going on with him and religion - he's come to some insights about human behavior, and looks at religion, and sees those insights mirrored back at him. I have no idea whether the things he says about Christianity and the Bible are historically accurate, or how much they reflect the teachings of any of the modern strains of Christianity or Judaism (or Islam, for that matter). But on some level, it doesn't matter, as long as it helps him reveal true things about the world. Does that make any sense?
And I don't know what exactly he believes, and I'm trying not to look it up because it would be unsporting. :-) My suspicion is that he believes something that, if you squint at it the right way, could be called Christianity, but that bears little resemblance to orthodox (lower-case-o) theology.
Like, if you asked him about that bit in the New Testament where Jesus sums up the law as "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.", and you asked him what it meant, I think he'd say something about how the second bit is fairly straightforward and explained more in the parable of the Good Samaritan ("go and do likewise"), while the first bit is about how the most important thing in life is orienting yourself toward the highest good possible, putting yourself in correct relationship to it, and not letting other things come between you or distract you from it.
Which I think is really good advice, and also a generic high-level description of the goal of many religions, while also being something that most actual practitioners of actual religions would say is fatally incomplete. And if someone pointed out that a lot of non-Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions don't conceptualize things that way at all, his answer might be that that's what's so fascinating about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, and part of why they've been so successful, etc.
(I dunno, at this point I think I've exhausted my mental model of Jordan Peterson, and it's becoming more about what I've taken from him than anything else...)
Wow, pretty damn awesome. I'm not into mysticism nor was I interested much in this thing before - but I remember darkly I once was curious about an often cited man called Master Eckhart. According to Wikipedia he had a crystal clear logic and got in conflict with catholic church in the middle age.
Seeing or observing Peterson from this perspective makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for the discussion.
My friend and I both have an issue sometimes where we hear a song, and can't tell whether it's in our heads or we can actually hear it. We have to ask someone else to find out.
We both assumed this happened to everyone -- but from asking other people it sounds like this is unusual. Anyone understand this or have any information?
Sounds to me like you and your friend are quite close. Close enough to share a large spliff? ;)
Would very much like to hear your thoughts on this Scott: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/
I don't think posting in open threads tends to be a very good way to get Scott's attention, but in any case he has posted about body integrity identity disorder before: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/18/typical-mind-and-gender-identity/
(https://twitter.com/f_werning/status/1456616585418915842)
How would Taiwan credibly pre-committing to attacking the 3 gorges dam in the case of a Chinese attack on Taiwan work?
Taiwan could use some sort of bond that works regularly the majority of the time but if and only if China attacks Taiwan then it renders some sort of economic advantage to Taiwan if they spend x resources on attempting to destroy the 3 gorges dam. You can balance it out with another bond that renders some smaller advantage in preventing war with China but I doubt anyone thinks Taiwan could benefit from war with China.
Also would the US plan over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan ever not include retaliation with India towards China?
If Taiwan loses that war, the terms of their bonds won't matter.
The money could be in escrow.
Attacking the Three Gorges Dam with what? Taiwan has no weapons that could plausibly breach the dam, and would have a hard time even reaching it with weapons capable of destroying the powerhouse.
In June a certain Leonid Chuzhoy posted about an online discussion on why parliaments appeared in Europe. I have been searching for something similar since, but I've never seen anything.
Does anyone know of events like this? I thought it would be a great way to make new friends.
I will read your link and reply later.
The reply system here is either broken or very confusing. I got an email that Zorba had responded to the last thing I said in our thread. I clicked on Reply. It gave me a mostly blank screen with a comment box. So I wrote a comment. "I will read your link..."
But that comment was not added to our thread. I will go back to the slow method that I know works: click on View and use Find in Page to search out the end of the thread.
For me it's annoying.
.