Sorry about that, I was on my cell phone at the time and the reply slipped away as I was typing. As you know, there is no post send editing with substack...
Article III, Section I of the Constitution states that “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”
Although the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court, it permits Congress to decide how to organize it. Congress first exercised this power in the Judiciary Act of 1789. This Act created a Supreme Court with six justices. It also established the lower federal court system.
Since Congress is empowered to change the court, changes are not court-packing
Over the years, various Acts of Congress have altered the number of seats on the Supreme Court, from a low of five to a high of 10. Shortly after the Civil War, the number of seats on the Court was fixed at nine.
Today, there is one Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court. Like all federal judges, justices are appointed by the President and are confirmed by the Senate. They, typically, hold office for life. The salaries of the justices cannot be decreased during their term of office. These restrictions are meant to protect the independence of the judiciary from the political branches of government.
I think gay marriage is popular enough that even a failed effort to try and get it passed in the senate would create useful talking points for democratic senate candidates. With 70% support nationally for gay marriage, even a senator who's representing the 60th percentile most conservative state is likely to get some political backlash for voting against it.
I agree that democrats should try and do this. I've seen a number of political commentators suggest this, and I don't know why congressional democrats haven't.
The Idea that gay marraige or rights are "under attack" is absurd hyperbole.
The "threat" is based on Clarence Thpmas saying that recent cases should be "revisited". That's entirely because Thomas dislikes legal arguments based on the 14th amendment, and thinks any such ruling should be tossed aside and the opinion(s) be re-written from another starting point in the Constitution., to be valid.
His objections are technical, not meriticious. It's all a bit esoteric, legal scholars can explain it better.
But media and fund-raising Democrats and the Twitter cassandras are declaring it a crisis.
Alito's opinion says that this decision doesn't change anything re contraception, gay marriage, etc but doesn't have any real solid reasoning for that. I don't agree with Thomas but he is in fact following the logic of the majority decision where it leads.
I don't think anything will change with gay marriage, because it's popular and I expect the justices (on both sides) to operate with a view towards partisan politics. Overturning Obergefell would make gay marriage a much more salient issue, it divides Republicans and unites Democrats, and would lead to state-by-state fights.
On contraception, they might not overturn Griswold (even though, like Thomas says, it's open to attack on very similar logic, and like Roe has long been an object of scorn for conservative legal types) but I wouldn't be surprised if they "decline to extend" it and say that it doesn't apply to certain *types* of birth control.
"On contraception, they might not overturn Griswold (even though, like Thomas says, it's open to attack on very similar logic, and like Roe has long been an object of scorn for conservative legal types) but I wouldn't be surprised if they "decline to extend" it and say that it doesn't apply to certain *types* of birth control."
I agree about the legal logic. That said, a supermajority of fertile age American women not only approve of contraception, but are actively using it.
"In 2015–2017, 64.9% of the 72.2 million women aged 15–49 in the United States were currently using contraception."
I expect that if SCOTUS overturns Griswold, they will find out what the phrase "third rail of politics" means. I'd expect that such a ruling would generate enough outrage to force _some_ change in SCOTUS, though I don't want to guess at what form it might take.
SCOTUS can't overturn Griswold unless someone challenges Griswold, which would at this point I think require passing a law banning some sort of birth control that could then be litigated up through the Federal court system. And I don't think there's a legislative majority in any state of the Union that's going to sign up for banning anything much past "morning-after" pills.
Probably one of the Red States will try to ban morning-after pills. But if that's all they do, SCOTUS has the easy out of saying "post-conception, so that's abortion not contraception, Dobbs rules, Griswold irrelevant".
"which would at this point I think require passing a law banning some sort of birth control"
I'm not sure - there might be a red state which still has a birth control ban on the books from before Griswold, and might just need to start enforcing it. Given how the political winds have shifted since 1965, I think we can safely rule out Connecticut as the challenging state.
Yeah, there is a hazard that some states may ban contraceptive methods that prevent implantation of a zygote, and SCOTUS might call that abortion. Yetch.
Intracoalition bargaining. It's also why weed isn't legal. The Democrats have a wing who are explicitly pursuing (in David Shor's words, a former adherent) the idea of being as left wing as is viable and waiting for a recession or Trump or something to sweep them into power. Then they can pass a relatively far left agenda. These people are effectively accelerationists who will block good legislation in the hopes of losing the cause but winning the issue to get more Dems into power. More cynically, they want to bundle their unpopular ideas into their popular ones.
It was always a bad strategy in my opinion. Not the least because some traits of the Democratic party make that less likely. The Republican strategy of slowly and steadily building institutional power in local politics and the judiciary and all that always seemed to me like the more sensible option. And I unfortunately appear to have been right.
In more normal times this group is simply ignored or pressured. It's a subset of the progressive caucus so it can be outflanked (just as hardcore moderates can be) if you have some spare votes. The Democrats have no spare votes though. It's a dead tie in the Senate and pretty close to a tie in the House. This means the only things that get done are what Joe Manchin and AOC can agree on. And there's not that much in that category.
Because doing more than one thing a month is too taxing for the gerontocratic powerbrokers (a criticism that applies to both parties for the past ~20 years)
You are both partly right. trebuchet is right that it is often used in such a manner, but I didn't read Int's post that way at all... It was more of a 'why is this guy so obsessed with culture war issue X when his expertise is in unrelated subject Y'.
No, trebuchet is just plain wrong here. If you actually respect your interlocutor, you should take their words at face value, regardless of how *other people* speak and what ideas they usually link together.
It's harmful for discourse to uncharitably read into others' statements. If we accepted this norm, it would be literally impossible to say anything adjacent but not identical to a popular position.
If you didn't intend to signal the "I bet he's in the closet and compensating" insinuation, your comment was made in a way that I perceived that insinuation. I think you are inadertantly making a homophobic slur, and if it was my I'd probably want to edit my comment.
Indeed. I think his obsession with us and with enforcing his specific concept of masculinity (which is closely linked with the former) is to the point that it negatively impacts the quality of his core work in international relations, because he clearly has a significant bias against governments and countries that he sees as "woke" or with leadership that is insufficiently masculine to him and he intuitively likes and respects countries that position themselves as anti-woke or which engage in more masculine posturing.
Hanania thinks he's got it bad? I have to cope with Boris Johnson deciding (or having it decided for him) that he's Catholic (for however long this marriage lasts, anyway): 😣
Seemingly as a baby he was baptised Catholic (because his mother was) but he was pretty much raised as an Anglican and, hey, Church of England, you can keep this one. No, really, no need to thank me.
Most people in 1985 were huge homophobes (though one party had fewer of them and still does). This is not surprising in the slightest. Most people in 1985 also didn't know someone that they knew was gay and hadn't met an openly gay person in a normal context. Once they did (as more gay people came out), many of them changed their views on gay people over time. It's hard to viscerally hate a group when you know members of the group and they're just normal people like you. This is almost certainly a big part of the reason for the shift in opinions on gay people since 1985, enabling the larger social shift from homophobia being the enforced default to it being un-cool to be openly hateful toward gay people, outside of specific circles.
I can see the Scott review: "Turkey, Now By Prescription".
I notice that a great many of the common tryptophan-rich foods are not vegetarian and/or not vegan. Anecdotally, there's a lot of overlap locally in a Venn diagram of "people I know who are/have been suicidal" and "people I know who are/have been vegetarian or vegan". Wonder if coincidence. Of course, >suicide and >control for confounders is...challenging, to say the least...
Tryptophan is not rate-limiting above a certain point, you need to supplement 5-HTP (which theoretically lets you get into physiologically dangerous levels of serotonin). It seems like a red herring tbh.
"Suppose we ask: where did spacetime itself arise from? Then we can go on turning the clock yet further back, into the truly ancient "Planck epoch" – a period so early in the Universe's history that our best theories of physics break down. This era occurred only one ten-millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. At this point, space and time themselves became subject to quantum fluctuations. Physicists ordinarily work separately with quantum mechanics, which rules the microworld of particles, and with general relativity, which applies on large, cosmic scales. But to truly understand the Planck epoch, we need a complete theory of quantum gravity, merging the two.
...But our focus here is on explanations which remain within the realm of physics. There are three broad options to the deeper question of how the cycles began. It could have no physical explanation at all. Or there could be endlessly repeating cycles, each a universe in its own right, with the initial quantum state of each universe explained by some feature of the universe before. Or there could be one single cycle, and one single repeating universe, with the beginning of that cycle explained by some feature of its own end. The latter two approaches avoid the need for any uncaused events – and this gives them a distinctive appeal. Nothing would be left unexplained by physics. "
" It makes no sense, or at least is very difficult to conceptualize that this timeless cause would create the universe *at a specific point in time*, and then let that universe *evolve* on its own *in time*."
The simple (idiot's) answer to that is that there was no 'time' before the universe began, so it was not until *after* the creation of the universe that we had time, or specific points in time for it to begin at, or to evolve in.
My understanding is that the materialist/non-religious answer to 'what was there before the universe?' is 'this question makes no sense, because there wasn't a 'before' or an 'anything' to exist'. So if the sciences can get away with that, why not religions?
I think one difference between science and religion is that science says, "These equations have accurately predicted every observation we've tried so far. Yet, when we run them backwards past the Planck time, we get a very sophisticated version of division by zero. Therefore, there is some significant aspect of reality we do not yet understand; and we will forbear to speculate on it until we can devise some way to express our guesses in terms of testable predictions. Clearly, there is a lot of work yet to be done". By contrast, religion says, "Certain things, such as the origin of the Universe, are a priori unknowable; and therefore you must take it on faith that one specific deity performed one specific miracle to get the whole thing started. Yes, it just so happens to be the one deity we believe in, lucky us. And no, you don't get to ask any more questions -- which part of 'unknowable' did you not understand ?"
One problem with the religious approach is that they have applied the same kind of reasoning in the past to things like life, consciousness, the motion of the planets, lightning, disease, and pretty much every other phenomenon that we understand extremely well today.
As a Catholic, I understand God to have created continuous time as we understand it, but for causality to have existed prior to that. That is to say, things happened in sequence, maybe as "integer times" where each "action" happens instantaneously, and each being gets as long as it likes to think in between any two actions.
God isn't bound by the same rules as reductionism - under reductionism, anything possible is necessary (sort of), but God can be capable of things without doing them. I don't find the fine-tuned argument convincing, but if I did, the fact God might have created other universes wouldn't convince me that he did. (I'm not convinced by the fine-tuned argument because I don't know why the universal constants took the values they did, so I don't know how easily they could have varied to give us an uninhabitable universe).
I think that most measures of empathy are probably bogus and the fact that you can read the emotions of your close friends well sounds to me like you have empathy, but the fact that you apparently can't imagine what it's like to be someone else is intriguing, though it could be just a misunderstanding of what that means. Have you ever tried the Ideological Turing Test [0]?
No Official Diagnosis(tm) for me...it's so damn expensive as an adult, and may require shopping around. I only learned a few years ago that basically my whole family and teachers in early school thought I had autism, but chose not to pursue cheap diagnosis in childhood because "does well in school so who cares, lol". #welp
I guess I'd phrase my experience as...finally letting myself not feel bad about treating other humans as NPCs by default. (Good friends become PCs, fellow party members.) There had been lots of second-guessing of whether I "really" "felt" "empathy", and sometimes that made me feel like a soulless cyborg or whatever. So getting permission to think of it as just how I am, and not some easily-fixed defect, let me shrug off a lot of guilt and pain that I'd not really been aware was on my back for years. It actually became much easier to work on interpersonal skills once I ceded that task to System 2, rather than trying to force System 1 to step up in ways that it simply wasn't designed to. (Rationalist writings have helped me fill in a lot of those social-understanding gaps, something I'll forever be grateful to the community for.)
Emotional empathy isn't fully experiencing what it's like to be another person. It's feeling some emotion similar to the emotion you perceive that another person is feeling, although your emotion might be more muted and definitely not exactly the same.
Examples:
1. Experiencing discomfort when you watch a person injure themself
2. Experiencing happiness when you watch a person smile and laugh, especially someone you care about
3. Experiencing "secondhand embarrassment" watching an embarrassing situation
Emotional empathy is definitely influenced by cognitive empathy. For example, if you realize that an injury is not real. Still, to me it feels very crude and potentially inaccurate compared to cognitive empathy. But I may have some sort of ASD myself.
That prose sounds familiar...did you also (attempt to) read the (doorstopper) "Notes on Empathy" LW post back in May? I *think* it got linked to by Scott in a links roundup or open thread or something, but can no longer find the correct pingback. It was a weird read, knowing this is how Typical Minds are Supposed To Feel, Apparently. Humans are very strange.
My understanding was that there are two components of empathy, affective empathy and cognitive empathy, and it seems that you seem to have a high cognitive but low affective empathy.
I really like the three examples Jared gave and would be curious to hear your experiences with them.
To chime in from the more "empathy is a real thing" angle though, I definitely imagine what it's like to be someone (in limited scope), and feel their feelings (as best as I can copy at least) in certain situations.
It's decidedly not an "always on" kind of thing but I know some people for whom it nearly is. The better I know someone and the more I care about them though the easier it is to feel what theyre feeling.
It's typically not, like, an overwhelming emotion. The first shadow of it is pretty weak and involuntary, but I can choose to lean into it or pull out of it. And if I really deliberately try to simulate their situation with careful cognitive effort I can make it way stronger. (Usually for negative emotions more than positive ones sadly).
In normal situations, I can imagine how another person might (or might not) be feeling. For me, it's not all that different from imagining how I might feel if something happened to me. For example, I was once part of a group activity where I didn't mind skipping the last half hour so I could do a different activity, but I had a friend who attended the first activity and skipped the second activity. When I suggested that they skip the first activity, they said they'd feel bad about it. I didn't feel like I understood their reasoning until I imagined myself feeling obligated to attend something, and I imagined/predicted/simulated the sensation of guilt I would feel if I was missing something like that.
Put another way, when I notice that someone is happy or I reason about them being happy, my idea of "happy" contains an emotional "video" of how I would feel if I was happy.
(By the way, is it really unimaginable for you to ask what it would be like to look out the back of your head, or was that just a throwaway remark? That's quite natural to me - if I close my eyes and imagine what's in the room I'm in, I always imagine how it looks from some point of view. Even if it's just a schematic view, I imagine it as a space I'm looking around.)
I was never officially diagnosed, but have it by all accounts, and learned empathy much later in life. There are at least 3 kinds of empathy: Cognitive (understanding another's perspective, even if it is very different from yours), Emotional (feeling the same emotions) and Compassionate (the urge to support and help). You probably understand and feel at least some of those. You can start with the analytical approach you are talking about, but, assuming you yourself are able to feel strong feelings, as most people do, you can learn to map what another person feels on a similar feeling you experienced. Of course, one needs to learn to recognize and name their own feelings first, which is something a person with Asperger's should be able to do, because it is analytical work ("oh, this thing I am feeling is conventionally called anger/fear/jealousy/resentment/grief/...").
There is a danger to this approach though! Once you learn proper empathy it is very hard to modulate it, since you don't have a natural immunity to overdoing it, unlike those who grew up with it. And so you may be prone to being sucked into helping others too much, at the expense of your own health and needs, often without even realizing it.
I relate to that. My Grand Theory of Cognitive Empathy ("putting yourself in someone else's shoes") is that cognitive empathy = having a good model of yourself + having a normal enough brain that you can project this on others.
Consider this scenario: imagine you are a person with a fairly typical brain, preferences, and patterns of emotional expression (for your culture/gender/social position/etc.), and you have a pretty good internal model of yourself. When you end up in a situation where you need to anticipate someone else's emotional response, all you need to do is input the scenario into your self-model. Because you're pretty typical, most of the time this will work - things that cause you pain cause other people pain, and things that make you happy make other people happy.
On the other hand, if you're a person with an atypical brain this doesn't work. The things that cause me pain don't actually cause other people pain (fuck vaccuum cleaners), and the things that make me happy don't make other people happy. As a kid I tried modelling other people as agents who work like me, and discovered very quickly that this is a terrible idea and ends up making bad predictions almost all of the time. Instead, I have to maintain a second model for neurotypicals that includes things like "okay with loud noises" and "enjoys being in crowds" and "likes surprises" and "feels sad when people try to engage them in parallel play instead of interacting". Like you, I often feel like I have to apply these corrections per-person, though as I've gotten older I've picked up some more general rules of thumb.
But, notably, there isn't a difference between these two people's ability to "put themselves in someone else's shoes". I don't have any trouble imagining a person who is in a room with a vacuum cleaner and predicting my own response. The problem is that *other people respond to vacuum cleaners wrong*. Because I can't use the shortcut of modelling myself in the scenario, it ends up being more costly for me to predict other people's responses, and I'm more likely to end up being wrong.
One piece of evidence for this view is inter-cultural communication. Neurotypicals are frequently absolutely baffled by situations where they interact with people from other cultures. Norms about personal space, tone of voice, volume, eye contact, physical touch, etc. vary widely around the world. This often leads people to misread signals and accidentally cross boundaries. If cognitive empathy actually worked straight out of the box, this wouldn't be an issue - neurotypicals would be able to recognize discomfort or approval regardless of cultural background. (The solution? Learn a new model for people from another culture, or better yet learn how to model many individuals from that different culture and then notice patterns.)
Other examples include men struggling to understand women and vice versa, gaps in cultural understanding between young and old people, and what's sometimes called the "autistic double empathy problem", where autistic people are often much better at modelling/communicating with other autistic people than with neurotypicals, which suggests that some fraction of "autistic communication issues" are actually "autistic-neurotypical communication issues".
Imho the lacking empathy piece of aspie diagnosis isn't getting at the fact of or the ability to experience empathy and instead is making an observation about how an aspie processes emotions (via verbal analysis) and expresses them verbally. From an aspie perspective, if you make a comment of rich observation with a lot of detail that is accurate and provides knowledge and good feedback, that's expressing empathy (see how much I understand and can relate! see how I'm explaining to you why you feel the way you do!) but to those on the receiving end for whom emotions are experienced via feelings and not words, having their feelings explained feels way too direct, cold and not empathetic at all (almost as if they are being called out and being accused of malingering/faking/playing the victim). In other words, the disconnect is in how aspies communicate and share their empathy with others, not the fact of being able to understand and relate to another's feelings and emotional needs. Even the way I've just expressed this here displays this very tendency.
This at least is how I've experienced it; perhaps it is just one of many ways to see it, but I am convinced that the disconnect is about the how of communicating/identifying feelings and not the fact of feelings/emotional needs themselves. I'm currently working at finding ways to reign in my verbal over processing and identify actual emotions and the physical feelings that go with them in a bid to be more approachable and open, aka to get out of my head and be present. The struggle is real yo!
You are definitely missing something that's a common experience for me; I'm very high in affective empathy, so I experience other people's emotions quite frequently. I'll describe a couple of typical scenarios, to hopefully paint a picture of the thing I experience.
Suppose I have a list of tasks to do to prepare for a family trip, and I miss something on the list by accident. When my wife is running down the checklist and hits the one I missed, her facial expression and body language changes slightly to express disappointment. I don't actually see those changes though; instead, I immediately feel a void of disappointment mirrored from her (and probably amplified from her experience.)
Suppose I'm turning on a kids show on TV for my 2-year old. He's not very verbal, so he can't ask what I'm turning on. He stares hopefully at the TV as I cursor through the apps, and then a big smile slowly grows as I pick 'Netflix' and then even bigger when I pick 'Cocomelon'. I don't really experience this as 'he's smiling'; instead I experience his growing excitement and anticipation myself.
Actually seeing facial expressions and body language changes for me is like actually reading letters when I'm reading a book. I just don't SEE letters usually; I see words, or even skip words directly into meaning sometimes. I can see letters if I slow down and carefully pay attention to them, but it's not part of the normal 'reading experience' (till things get confusing and I have no idea what a word is/what emotion is making someone do what they're doing.)
I think it's important to note that having empathy doesn't make you *good* or *better* than not having it. It has an unjustified positive valence in our culture in my opinion. Affective empathy is a brain tool. It's a superpower for navigating some social situations, and kryptonite in others.
I'd think about it in a practical way and as a skill many people have to varying degrees. If you care about and have done well in predicting what makes those around you happy and you have pro-social values and actions over the years, then there is no problem.
The world is full of assholes and uncaring people who don't have any sort of diagnosis. Often differing values and cultural contexts are pathologies needlessly into disorders. But what is disorderly in one culture to challenge other people to duels and kill them is entirely orderly in another culture or in a different historical context of our own culture(s).
So while it can be an interesting intellectual game to imagine yourself in others feelings or other peoples emotional states or thought patterns...it may be less of an existential issue than it appears to be when delivered from the high priest of mental diagnoses...which are themselves categories and boundaries which HAVE changed dramatically over time and have near zero application in other cultures.
What was right or how much empathy existed in PNG cannibals who hunted and ate their enemies and were celebrated as great warriors by their people?
So if this isn't causing a problme for you, then that's fine. Maybe you'd make a poor author and be unable to imagine or write about the inner emotional lives of others, or maybe you'd end up with a strange or avante guard or simply different novel if you wrote one or have written alerady.
But it really falls into the so what category and doesn't seem like something that is likely to change and is a semi-fixed category and/or simply part of who you are. Autism types do well as long as they are not indoctrinated into violent or anti-social cults. If anything I'd guess the crime and murderer rates of austism spectrum types is lower than the general population, but it'd be interesting to know. I also think the outright abusive asshole personality and behavioural types are less common in autistic people since sadism is an emotional drive they lack or are limited in having....in my experience of asberger types and functional autists at least.
Same reaction, and really questioning the design choices including the pointless initial landing page. The first article I saw didn't fit properly in the frame, but I guess one can just click through to the source.
Wow this website is amazing. I will definitely have to spend some more time on it vs on Twitter.
I have tons of blogs saved that I should visit. I tend to listen to podcasts, though I have realized that I listen to too much and sometimes having quiet time to have my own thoughts that aren't related to my content consumption to be peaceful.
I agree, an RSS feed would be good. The site is fairly accessible with javascript turned off. Reading on a phone I prefer not to have to scroll inside of a frame. Curating online articles is hard. I have no good advice on that. Best of luck to you.
This is pretty great. Reminds me a lot of StumbleUpon, which I spent many many hours using in my youth.
Some means to curate what does or doesn't get shown would be helpful. I'd personally love to see tech and psychology content, while others might prefer politics or history themed posts. Either way, great job, hope you keep working on it.
Oh dear, I'm not sure I can get past your name. How am I sure you are not out to infect me with your ideas, which then cause my brain to explode, and your ideas travel on?
Agree with others. How about four compelling blurbs from 4 options I could go read, with links to those essays? Use some method to generate 4 different blurbs every day.
My experience: click site, see weird text being changed real-time. Whatever. Click ENTER. Wait 15-20s while nothing happens. Close tab.
Agree with the compelling blurbs that Philo mentions. See https://www.aldaily.com/ for an example of what not to do (unless increasing general readership is your goal, in which case, probably do what they do).
Agree with most others on removing the landing page.
New suggestion: paired contrasting articles. Help us counter our confirmation bias by making us curious about contrasting points of view.
Related examples:
https://www.pairagraph.com/ actually commissions contrasting submissions (and on less relevant topics, so did the final page of the New York Times magazine - perhaps they still do);
A reason to think that your definition of interesting intersects with mine.
Before clickling the link, I'm going to guess it defines "interesting" as rat-adjacent like AI, crypto, EA, vaguely progressive politics, the happenings of the tech sector, and blue-tinted cultural comentary, etc, and I don't find any of those things to be particuarly intersesting when not written by unique voices like Scott. I'll click now and report back.
It appears to load PutANumOnIt in a hosted frame, and when I reload loads up a bunch of rat-related content. I click on About and am greeted by a history lesson, but no explanation of what your website is about. I have no interest in getting past the history lesson to see if you actually say what the website is actually about.
So, I don't see anything interesting to me here. This is probably a good resource for people who think exactly like you do, but of minimal value to the rest of us.
Also, the UI is just abominable, as others have mentioned.
I used to check longform.org and longreads.com almost daily, and read on average 3-5 linked longform articles a week. Unfortunately longform.org has ended its article recommendation service and is now just a podcast, and longreads.com posts less frequently and has changed its website layout to something messy and complicated. It's hard to tell what an article is about without opening it, and because it might be featured several times in the layout and for several weeks, it's hard to tell if I've already read it.
So - features I would like to see in a longform aggregator:
- Simple layout where new posts appear in chronological order, so I know what I have already seen and what is new
- Works well on mobile: most of my reading time is when I'm away from large screens
- Brief summary of the article (not clickbait or blather) so I can make an informed decision about whether it's worth my time
- If it's behind a paywall, or requires a login, or the linked website is especially egregious on mobile, I would like that to be in the article summary
- Wide range of topics and viewpoints
- Either update really often, or update on a set schedule, so I know I can go there at x time and probably find something new to read.
I just had a look at your site - I like the random article concept a lot, but I would probably be a much more frequent visitor if I could also just find a list of stuff in chronological order, perhaps searchable or categorised by topic. If that's on there, I couldn't find it quickly.
The content is good, and I found a few articles I enjoyed. The landing page is unnecessary, and I kept getting articles that weren't viewable from your website.
I always and forever will knee-jerk away from EA stuff, and I'm not always sure why. I'm sure with the bigger "EA" branded writer-funding; they've already decided on a "best" philosophy and are pretty much just hiring PR people to promote it (i.e., Utilitarian Leftism, afraid of AI, depersonalized giving structures, etc.).
But where I'd like to think that's reasonable, I have a lot less reason to dislike the idea of people like Cowen/Collison promoting various kinds of research/tech and I have the exact same reaction. Why? It's not sour grapes, probably; I don't think Cowen gives much to the few rationalist types he funds for writing, and I wouldn't expect the others to fund that kind of thing at all. It's not that I disapprove of the tech funding - I'm not that familiar with it, and I don't understand most of it.
It's not just me - there's this pretty big and growing anti-EA sentiment going around. What is it that makes it such a turn-off?
> people give charitable donations to the opera or to poor people in their home town, and that's a complete waste of money.
that is quite idiotic presentation and not really effective. And not really true ("complete"). Proper way to introduce it is something like
> people give charitable donations to the opera or to poor people in their home town, which is great but one can make far more good with the same amount of money
See also https://xkcd.com/871/ which seems to demonstrate that it is not an isolated mistake.
I would say that EA does, by its very nature, have a tendency to take over people's lives. Once you've accepted the premises of EA then you're morally obliged to rearrange your whole life to support it rather than selfishly serving your own interests. If you hang out with other EAs then you'll feel social pressure to get drawn ever more deeply into the cause -- are you only donating 30%? Why not 60%? Do you _really_ need that fancy electric toothbrush?
Speaking to the most virtious options, and not the worst ones:
- Christianity recognizes a variety of ways that Christ calls people to follow Him - this is explicitly in scripture. Neither the workman, the king, the beggar, the soldier, the vineyard owner nor the vineyard worker are shut out from following God's plan for their life.
- The Church allows for different roles specifically providing different levels of commitment - we have monks & hermits, we have professed laypersons, we have students, husbands and wives all living out a calling in their daily lives. It is part of the discernment to identify a calling to monasticism to identify other possible callings and responsibilities - such as family, debts, etc - that must be addressed in order for a person to take on the role of a religious order (monk/nun).
- In a way possibly not giving enough credit to EA - Christianity specifically steps off the rat-race & materialism treadmill by emphasizing 'time, talent, and treasure', so that chasing more money is not more holy than spending more time in prayer.
But EA also says that you can earn to give through pretty much any occupation, and ostensibly has varying levels of commitment, like the "giving what we can" pledge at 10%. Still, whether you subscribe to utilitarianism, or "loving your neighbor as yourself", it seems straightforward that the more you give, the better you are as a person.
I guess the important difference is that there is the Church as the ultimate authority on interpreting the scripture, which sets the norms that the community actually follows.
The point when Christianity had grasp of real power, the strong demands were lost to selective reading and cognitive dissonance. Some mendicant monks took the passage about eye of the needle seriously, but taking it too seriously was condemned heretical.
No doubt, some will soon "realize" (some already have) that the effective altruism would be more effective if the EA community had more power and influence, if the leaders and decision-makers have more resources and servants, if their high-status people are of high enough status to attend cool parties and mingle with the high-status societal elites (to spread the EA message to rich people effectively, you see).
They already seem to have elements of this - not the servants etc, but the EA people being more powerful as an intermediate (for now) goal of their movement.
The problem is, all of this is true. Effective altruism, like any other community, *would* be more effective if they had more power and influence, if the leaders and decision-makers have more resources and servants, if their high-status people are of high enough status to attend cool parties and mingle with the high-status societal elites. So is there a way out of the trap, or is every idealistic movement doomed to become an excuse to make money and dominate others?
Also, important note: Christianity promises eternal life, and full reconciliation with God, for those who accept Christ's lordship and His forgiveness for sins.
I am not entirely sure what EA promises as a long-term reward for those who follow its guidance well (I do not identify as EA myself), but I imagine it is not *that*.
I suspect because tithing isn't the primary moral virtue in Christianity. Also Christianity has a fair amount of moral infrastructure around humility. It's a fairly complex and evolved religion. EA is explicitly about exactly one thing so it's sorta predictable that people have started status-jockeying by virtue signalling about that one thing.
That being said, I'm not sure it's fair to say Christianity completely avoided it. Various denominations have fairly extreme ideas about personal deprivation. Puritans, monastic orders, etc.
A very limited set of people were able to or allowed to read the christian text through history and they were usually a ruling class who had many of their own interests and were not necessarily fanatical.
The beginning of christian rule was in ancient Rome and they inherited a large amount of the Roman model of rule and their values. Many works show the saint model which isn't mentioned anywhere in their religious text was a syncretic transferal of roman gods and demi-gods into the christian panethon which was the same in many ways, but not formally called a pantheon.
Modern text based fundamentalists deeply misunderstand the context, role, culture, and other factors which went into the formation, continuance, and changes in a given religion over time. Such modern perspectives make little sense and in the context of evangelical christian bible study groups where everyone is literate compared to illiterate peasants being spoken to by priests speaking in a foreign language.
Strict linguistic analysis, often in texts which have passed through 5 languages, empires, and cultures over the past 2,000 years which is done through a purely modern and myopic lens is rather....limited as an approach to understanding.
That said the other comments on EA and its Vegan-like and often actually Vegan methodology to demand much from the people is a big turn off. It isn't just some fun philosophy or idea to think about like 'is this a simulation' or 'will xyz future tech cause problems'. It instead demands a lifestyle and practical changes if you truly believe the ideas. For those not willing to or wanting to make such changes, the ideas associated with that call to action are also a turn off.
EA is and does not want to be some intellectual bauble we put on a shelf in our minds to play with when it happens to come up in discussion. So a cult comparison is far more apt than to interact with it merely as an ideaspace.
Well that, and even the intro pitch is a bit silly. “People are super hyper rational about their decision making, so they should be super hyper rational about their giving”.
A simple argument, but the first clause is wildly false.
Seems like that has been the intro pitch I have always heard for it in a couple different contexts. “Think about how much time you spend deciding what car to buy. You should spend just as much time deciding which charities to give to.”
Which is an odd exhortation because I kind of suspect the amount of time is quite similar for most people.
Right, I see. I suppose I have heard that style of pitch, particularly in regard to choosing a career.
I suppose it’s meant to introduce what I think is a core EA idea: that you should decide such things by explicit reasoning, rather than picking charities based on say, how much they mean to you.
As you say, it’s certainly no slam dunk argument, but I’m not sure pointing out that humans aren’t always super rational leaves the EA advocate flummoxed here
They’d probably say, ‘Well, all the more reason to try. The more rational we are about these things the better!’
And a counterpoint would be, why should I spend more time on my altruism than I do other much more personally important decisions?
Which sure then you can collapse EA back to “people should generally be more thoughtful/rational/deliberative”, but what kind of philosophy is that? No one disagrees with that.
I think it's unpleasant to see people getting very large amounts of money. In theory it should be fine when people deserve it and are going to do good things with it, but nobody will always agree on when this is. And Silicon Valley's MO tends to involve giving a lot of briefcases full of more money than most people see in their lives to untested college dropouts, and although this definitely works sometimes it's not going to win the affection of people who have to work sixty hour weeks for years to make a tenth as much.
Also, large carefully-run well-oiled operations that have good PR people are inherently suspicious, and EA has definitely become one of those.
If it was just people getting large amounts of money wouldn't there be similar resentment over government grants? Or traditional charitable funding? Or any number of other things? "Gives large amount of money to untested projects" is not unique to EA.
No, I don't think so. The government waste critique is usually focused on the idea it's tax money. It is bound up with an idea that it's money taken from the people or what the proper role of government is. That obviously doesn't apply to EA.
Put another way, if Bezos decides to build a bridge to nowhere is anyone going to care? If it turns out to be a corrupt project to employ his brother would anyone care? No, because it's not public money. Likewise no one really criticizes Branson for his lavish private island but people attacked Ben Carson for his lavish office spending.
Not that I think that's unfair, mind you. But I don't think they're in the same category as far as criticism.
To be fair, nobody (to first approximation) actually attacked Ben Carson's office spending because they _actually_ gave a shit about five-figure amounts being spent on furniture.
I would care that Bezos builds a bridge to nowhere. Imagine someone lighting money of fire. That bothers many people (including me). Intentionally destroying or misusing resources is frustrating. Huge wastes of resources on personal whims highlight the fact that the person with the resources only has them because they’re good at accumulating resources, not because they actually know how to use them in ways that benefit society.
Should individuals be able to waste resources? Absolutely. That’s where this differs from public money: there’s a duty to use public money in the public interest that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) exist with private funds.
But building something, even something pointless is in fact hiring people to do work.
In the example of building new technology, Bezos is doing exceedingly great work for humanity overall, Blue Origins provides work for highly talented engineers and technicians. These people are creating new technologies, new materials, solving new problems and advancing human knowledge.
But burning money doesn't destroy any resources. It's actually the opposite, by burning your money you renounce your claim to resources, and redistribute your share of wealth to everybody else. Building a bridge to nowhere is another matter.
The interesting part about lighting money on fire is that money is not a resource, just a medium to exchange for resources. So the only thing you do is make the currency more valuable.
I've seen people very angry about the hyperloop as a waste on money, and also people who are just angry at billionaires being able to make decisions about large sums of money.
1.) I almost brought up the far left idea that billionaires spending money is objectionable. But it seemed like a waste because it's a very fringe belief. Pew shows that something like 75-80% of people have no problem with billionaires spending their own money how they wish while over 80% oppose government waste. So the median position is "government waste bad, neutrality on billionaires wasting their own money." Apparently it's more common among the readership which, I think, speaks to the far left nature of San Fransisco and founder effects.
2.) I think the attacks on Ben Carson, while politically motivated, spoke to a genuine distaste for government officials living it up that doesn't exist for athletes or billionaires.
"The government waste critique is usually focused on the idea it's tax money. It is bound up with an idea that it's money taken from the people or what the proper role of government is."
That's most of it, but I think there's a bit of what Scott's describing too. For instance, I get the impression that there's a not-insignificant number of Americans who would rather see the federal government burn a giant pile of money or toss it into a shredder than give another dollar to the NEA.
In my experience, 'government waste' is linked to almost everything except funds and grants: the budget for civil servants being to big, MEPs travelling around the world for meetings, ministry X organizing big fancy conferences or spending six/seven-digit-numbers on external advisors, huge infrastructure/cultural projects that cost x-times as much as planned, too much spending on supporting social security, too much spending on supporting business, and overall: why does the government have so much money, and we get so little value.
I don't think I've ever heard somebody complain about funds and grants to research and NGO as waste of government money - rather the contrary. Maybe it's because the recipients are seen as deserving their money. Probably even more, because government grants, especially at federal and EU-level are (comparatively) hard to get, and require an enormous amount of input and bureaucratic work. So it's usually not: why does the goverment waste so much money on those research/NGO projects, but rather: why do those poor organizations have to work so hard (and/or lose so much time in competitive calls they end up losing) to get the money they need for their work. Still criticism of government, but not of the 'huge sums are waste' sort.
As usually, that's a mostly German, somewhat Central European perspective.
Arts grants and social science grants are frequently labelled as wasteful, especially from right-wing pundits with an axe to grind, but the total spending there is really low so honest people - even ones that really hate government spending on basically anything - generally have bigger fish to fry
Fair enough. There are people who hate NGOs or research as such (only social science or generally research or pharma research to name another well-known example hated passionately by certain groups of people). Also, as Aurelien mentioned there is criticism of how money in development cooperation is spent ... and of course there are also those who would like the government to focus only on securing the functioning of the market and keep out of anything else. Obviously in those perspectives, money spent on the specific area of 'distaste' is a 'waste' at best.
I'd still uphold, that overall - including the reason you give above - grants and funds are comparatively low in the 'government waste' hierarchy; outrage is low while positive acknowledgement is comparatively high.
I'd be willing to bet, that if we'd ask 20 random persons across different living areas in my city if the government is wasting money and on what (2 answers possible), funds and grants would be mentioned by max. 2 persons. (I think max. 1 is more likely, but as this is not a representative sample ...). I guess this actually agrees with your view above.
Okay, I might not have heard anybody complain, but now I read of it ... some more details in my answer to Thor's comment.
Besides, my experiences rather supports Scott's point from the earlier comment ... German/EU government grants don't come in 'lot of briefcases full of ... money' ... 'to untested college dropouts'. The acceptance might be high (as far as it is), specifically because they are associated with hard work and lots of expertise on the recipients side.
- any form of donation requires both a donor and a recipient, and few recipients are entirely passive, waiting to be discovered. The aid industry is a great example: a massive swarm of NGOs and "civil society" groups competing for donations, by developing projects that make donors feel good, and can be publicly defended as progressive. Whether such programmes are useful is, in my view and that of many others who've been involved in them, highly questionable if you are talking about value to the recipients.
- altruism isn't about them it's about you. When Jesus of the Buddha recommended poverty, it was not about making others wealthier, it was about losing your concern for worldly goods. So the only real test is whether you become a better person as a result. My recollection is that St Paul said basically that: if I give all my goods to the poor and have not love etc; etc.
I don't know where you got this idea, to my knowledge the government grant space is hundreds of billions of dollars a year, orders of magnitude larger than the private
It's not so much that they are large, well-oiled and have good PR, it's that they appear to be now at the stage of having grown sufficiently that it pays them to take in each other's washing. So now you're getting a job working for an organisation researching EA in order to set up organisations that will research EA and so on and so on. There seems to be an awful lot of "want to apply for a scholarship to our Oxford university programme that will steer you to an internship in an organisation that awards scholarships to our Oxford programme?" type jobs and not so much of the "hi, we need someone to fly out to Burundi and run our net-distribution centre there".
If you're jetting between Oxford and San Francisco to hold conferences to form committees to write papers on "who should go to Burundi and do work on the ground?", I think you've lost sight of "we started off to help the people of Burundi".
I like the EA crowd, but it attracts very smart and deeply eccentric people and “good PR” notwithstanding I’m not getting a sense that it’s aware that weirdness cuts both ways. Yes, you might find innovative answers to hard problems, but it’s also inherently alienating, as are a lot of the research areas under its umbrella.
I really enjoy hanging out with EA people, but I’ve heard some moral perspectives that diverge wildly from my own. Effectiveness can be shown with data, but I’m unsure how much I agree with any given group within EA about what constitutes altruism. This makes me skeptical of the whole enterprise. I also know I couldn’t sell this movement to anyone in my family or 99% of my hometown, and that probably isn’t a good sign.
I was also a little dismayed to learn that EA was footing the bill for a recent ACX meetup. It was silly of me not to realize whose funds we were using until after the fact, but I’m uncomfortable with ACX and EA merging in this way. I don’t think EA is bad or want it to fail, but I wasn’t interested in joining EA either deliberately or by osmosis. It has been valuable to remove financial barriers for the meetup, but I’d like to find some other way to address this.
EA's promises and claims far outreach its realities and results. It misrepresents itself in flattering ways. It's also had a fair number of problems/scandals and its response to criticism so far has been less than ideal. It's shaping up to be a supremely well funded and self-confident movement with a well oiled PR machine that has shown itself to have a strong immuno-response to criticism. Which is why it appears to some people like Jack as a cult. It's also why things are likely to go terribly, terribly wrong in known failure modes that are being ignored.
(For you specifically, you should see Scott's reply to me about conservative participation in EA for why a conservative should be suspicious of EA.)
I propose that an EA organization holds a $5000 essay contest on 'Why was EA awful last year?', every year. Word count: 2000 to 10000.
Several paragraphs of mostly non-specific critical comments on a blog aren't going to familiarize the majority of us with much of anything, scandals or otherwise.
This really just doesn't seem right. With regard to having "shown itself to have a strong immuno-response to criticism," I think EA's handling of criticism and negative data is much better than that of almost any charitable movement. For example, Evidence Action shut down its No Lean Season program after a study found poor results regarding its impact https://blog.givewell.org/2019/06/06/evidence-action-is-shutting-down-no-lean-season/. I think that kind of transparency and action in response to criticism is pretty rare!.
Moreover, I think EA's results in the global health and development space are pretty strong. GiveWell has moved ~$250m to its top charities in its lifetime [edit, I read their page incorrectly here, that was the amount they moved in 2020, not their lifetime https://www.givewell.org/about/impact], and the impact of those top charities has been monitored really rigorously. I honestly know less about impact in the animal welfare cause area, so I can't really speak to that. On global catastrophic risks, it's entirely reasonable to say that early MIRI was kind of a mess and Yudkowsky made some overly grandiose promises. I think more recent efforts on technical AI safety haven't shown good results yet, but I do think EA's involvement has raised the profile of the issue from a random fringe thing to something US senators are talking about, which should count for something https://homelandnewswire.com/stories/627890045-portman-peters-introduce-bipartisan-bill-to-ensure-federal-government-is-prepared-for-catastrophic-risks-to-national-security
Real criticism of something you love shouldn't feel right. It should feel uncomfortable. So the fact your immediate reaction is disbelief is actually a good thing.
> I think EA's handling of criticism and negative data is much better than that of almost any charitable movement. [...] I think that kind of transparency and action in response to criticism is pretty rare!.
You make a comparative claim here but don't actually supply a comparator. No, it's not rare. Judging charities on performance and shutting them down is bog standard even in the bureaucratic morass that is the government. You could perhaps show me that the way EA shuts down projects is better than the alternatives. But when you expect credit for doing it at all that just tells me you don't have broad experience of other ecosystems.
> GiveWell has moved ~$250m to its top charities in its lifetime, and the impact of those top charities has been monitored really rigorously.
So orders of magnitude less than mainstream charitable organizations. As for rigorous monitoring, this has yet to be proven. I can think of a tens of millions of dollars in projects that ultimately turned out to nothing. And then were back-justified with something like "raising awareness." (This is all a bit of a non-sequitur anyway since GiveWell's claim is to outsized impact, not to attract outsized donations. Or is it? Because this is a claim the EA Has A Lying Problem claims.)
Look, I'm not some EA hater who thinks EA has nothing to offer or does nothing good. I think it has its good points and its bad. But there's clearly an overly grandiose vision by people who are either fanboys or whose salaries rely on EA being the greatest thing ever. And I do not think that bubble is good for EA, let alone the people EA claims to serve.
"For example, Evidence Action shut down its No Lean Season program after a study found poor results regarding its impact"
Reading those reports, it sounds exactly like a case of one of the book reviews: well-meaning do-gooders implement policy without sufficient knowledge of facts on the ground.
So there were bribes to officials, probably some skimming off the top as well, people who weren't supposed to get the subsidies to migrate for labour did (under-18s) and people who got the subsidies in the lean period probably didn't migrate but instead used the money to pay for food etc? And this came as a surprise to the organisers back in the USA?
"We give a travel subsidy of $20 to very poor rural laborers so they can send a family member to a nearby city to find a job during the period between planting and harvesting. This is the time in rural areas when there are no jobs, no income, and when families miss meals. This seasonal poverty affects 600 million people around the world."
If this is meant to impress me with how they operate, I'm afraid it doesn't, It's good that they recognised how they screwed up, but it would have been better to figure out local conditions in the first place (e.g. did they ask the rural poor if they would prefer to spend the money on sending someone to get a job in town - which may include paying a slice of that money in kickbacks to people to get you a job - or to use it to buy food for the lean period?) and the fact that it all collapsed due to forged documents, bribes, and people not co-operating with the investigation makes it sound like yet another well-meaning failure.
Costly enough. I don't know how much money they blew on this, but for the poor rural labourers who first got grants of money and are now left high and dry, they're probably worse off than if this project had never happened.
One of the turn offs for me is that EA's don't seem to even be aware that there might be problems with the whole venture. I see it mostly as similar to the worst kind of blunderbuss NGO's utterly convinced that if they throw money at something they see as a problem, it will automatically end up more the way they desire. It's like charity on steroids and the people who benefit are the givers not the receivers. That the givers benefit isn't a problem, but that the receivers suffer most certainly is.
It'd be great if you were more specific about how EA is "similar to the worst kind of blunderbuss NGO's", and in particular any instances of receivers suffering - maybe take some of that prize money while you're at it! Surely, if it's so obvious that EA is harming the people they're claiming to help, it should be pretty easy?
Yeah, I've read through more of the rules and some of the judge's statements. I've been reinforced that what's likely to win is loyal (ie, Fifty Stalins style) critiques. Even when one of the judges says they're interested in outside critiques they admit insider critiques are most likely to get through.
It might still be worthwhile to do if for no other reason than people might still read it. But I doubt you'll win. Or maybe I'm entirely too cynical and you're right.
Let's bet: I predict that any accurate* criticism demonstrating that an ongoing EA effort is actively causing (net) harm** submitted receives prize money. $100?
* as in, isn't just made-up nonsense, but points to facts in the real world that strongly support its core claims
** by the standards of the effort/intervention, obviously, though if there's a submission convincingly arguing that the _desired_ effect of the intervention are negative rather than positive, I'll take that too, assuming it doesn't receive prize money. This does seem rather a more difficult bar to clear, though.
I'm willing to bet $100 if we can hammer out the actual parameters. As currently suggested this doesn't address my claims. My claim is that EA will not accept systematic critiques or critiques that strike at the core of EA itself. Saying "an EA effort is causing net harm" is a complete non-sequitur to this claim. (Nor would EA be worthy of any particular praise if it lived up to this standard. Mainstream charities do such assessments too.)
That's a much... harder-to-deal-with claim. is the core of EA not "saving 2 people for $x is better than saving 1 person, therefore try to be effective with your altruism"?
Anybody arguing that this is actually not true, in some important way... yeah, I would not bother taking such criticism seriously either.
Criticism that we are accidentally only helping one person when we could help more, or actually hurting people: very very serious
Criticism that the above 'core statement' is somehow false: about as serious as "1 > 2"
"Surely, if it's so obvious that EA is harming the people they're claiming to help, it should be pretty easy?"
Perfect strawman. Nowhere did I suggest it is obvious that EA is harming the people they're claiming to help. It's the non-obviousness that's the problem.
Maybe ask yourself why almost every culture has developed a taboo against unreciprocated gifts. Anybody with an genuine understanding of human beings will refrain from giving stuff to people who have an inability to reciprocate.
Can you describe how this alleged taboo against unreciprocated gifts works? I don’t see any evidence that people in our culture paradigmatically look down on (say) Oprah for giving gifts to the audiences at her show, or on people who help our victims of a disaster, or people who donate to charity.
On the contrary, almost every culture on earth has the concept of charity as a virtuous act.
Judaism even says that one of the highest forms of charity is to give in secret, meaning that you are giving only for the sake of charity rather than with the hope of reciprocation.
The Oxford historian Martin Goodman has written about the instability of Jewish rule in Judaea between the Maccabees and the coming of Rome. He argues that traditional ancient societies functioned through patron/client mutual relationships, but that the Jewish practice of charity without obligation failed to support social bonds and led to factionalization and civil war.
Of all the things that you can criticise the Jewish people for, I don't think "lack of social bonds" is one of them. That period was marked by internal dissension between powerful interest groups: the priestly families/establishment on one hand (the Maccabees and Hasmoneans after them, with later splitting into Sadducees and Pharisees as social/cultural blocs) and the Hellenized, imposed from outside rulers (the Seleucids first, then after they were overthrown and replaced by the Hasmoneans, the eventual Roman rule under the Herodians).
The main problem was the traditional one of all dynasties; internal family rivalry. When two members of the Hasmonean dynasty started duking it out for who would be High Priest/King, that led to the kind of destabilisation and power vacuum that let the Romans insert a wedge (again, when you start making alliances with outsiders to help you in an internal power struggle or civil war, it often happens the outsiders end up as the victors), end up with pro-Roman puppet administration and eventual direct rule.
"Maybe ask yourself why almost every culture has developed a taboo against unreciprocated gifts."
That's... just straight-up false. To an almost absurd degree. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history or anthropology would know that your claim simply isn't true at all.
On one hand, I think there can sometimes be a sort of smug and holier-than-thou self-righteousness from some EA adherents. "I'm doing the best possible thing", they say, "I proved it with math!" And I can certainly understand that if you've donated 80% of your net worth to charity, you certainly feel like you ought to be entitled to feel morally superior to others; but it can certainly be a turn-off to those of us who are being looked down upon.
Combined with this, there's the feeling that a lot of this money is going to very silly places, such as MIRI or wild animal suffering prevention. Individuals have idiosyncratic ideas about what the actual best use of money might be, which leads to a lot of money flowing off in random directions. So the guy who is feeling morally superior to me because he donated all his money to some cause might _actually_ have just been paying for the distribution of Harry Potter fanfiction, or something.
I sometimes think about it in meta-ethical terms. If you pick one particular value system and optimise the heck out of doing the best you can possibly do in that one ethical system, you might well wind up doing something that is either neutral or negative in a lot of other value systems. More traditional charitable giving takes a more meta-ethical approach and sprinkles money over a bunch of things that most ethical systems will agree are good.
I do want to m ake clear that someone who gives away like 80% of their money is giving away more money than me - it's not nothing, and I don't want to treat it that way. That's part of why it's confusing for me that my reflexes strike so hard against the whole thing.
The way I see it, if you're giving away 80% of your income to some reasonably-worthy charity then you're totally allowed to feel morally superior to me.
I'll even praise you for it, I just won't like you or want to be around you.
Presumably "you are doing charity the wrong way" is irritating for many, even if EA is right (and for some it would be even more irritating if EA would be right!)
I have done very little research on the specifics of the EAs stated philosophy or any specifics of how common is corruption or incompetence in any EA cause. What I am addressing below is what I have understood from EA from a handful of podcasts over the years, and my intuitions of the uncharitable or under current of skepticism that many more people seem to have.
Could EA be seen more broadly as the hyperrationality mindset that does not account for unintended consequences, or looks at unintended consequences like an old wives tale that does not apply to them. Even then, those who attempt to calculate unintended consequences will assume they know all of the variables and just have to balance the equation so it is a net positive. They do not take into consideration that there are other potential variables. I am posing this question because I was thinking about the promotions many companies do when they say, "our company is carbon negative/neutral" or "for every shoe purchased we will donate one to a needy kid in Africa." I know that this is not something most companies actually care about, though there are some that do. However, the intention alone is not good in and of itself.
I am a big fan of that cliché that I associate with Thomas Sowell that "There are always tradeoffs." I think Effective Altruism believes that they can be aware of all tradeoffs ahead of time, or be sure that the net equation results in "helping" those who need it. A common critique of that Sowellian phrase goes something like, "So you therefore think that this -horrible thing here- is ok and you do not want to help?!?"
The most notable example I can think of is the case from TOMS shoes. I assume that the issues that TOMS shoes did not account for have now been solved. Maybe now that issue will no longer come up, or that variable will be accounted for in future ones.
As I am typing I just went full circle here...I assume this would be the EA advocates response which I think is somewhat convincing though I tend to have a more tragic view of humanity than a utopian (again a sophomoric usage of the Sowell's work).
Regarding the knowledge problem. My half baked Steelman of what an EA advocate would say...
Just because there are unintended consequences that we are unaware of, (i.e. TOMS shoes), does not mean, EA is a worthy or even a moral position to take on helping the poorer, less fortunate in our world. Like any new industry or institution there are lots of issues or problems that were not accounted for, but over time we will learn more of them, learn what went wrong and why, and make sure not to do that again. Overtime the EA movement will better learn how to provide for those who are in need, without creating any unintended consequences that would have preferably been avoided.
> The most notable example I can think of is the case from TOMS shoes. I assume that the issues that TOMS shoes did not account for have now been solved.
Basically it has been found handing out shows to kids didn’t have much positive impact on their lives. They played outside some more, did less homework, or often sold the shoes for cash. In which case it would have been better to just give them cash.
Plus it made them answer slightly more positively to questions relating to expecting/depending on charity. So their are questions of learned dependency.
This feels like a directionally accurate explanation to me. Not regarding the facts (of which I know little) but of the kind of oversight people ascribe to EA's. Basically, too many proposals involving evenly spaced rectangular grids.
I do think that this criticism has at least a spark of truth to it, as (IIUC), EAs deliberately focus on "legible" interventions, which restricts their search space a lot. That clashes very strongly with the aesthetics of traditional religious concepts of charity.
Would you have predicted in advance that Scott's essay on modernism was/would be treated in the EA sphere like new important information, or like heresy?
My own imagination conjures up an image of bay area EA folk reading it and thinking "oh huh, this is a big deal, a lot of my initial kneejerk brainstem reflex is 'make stuff more legible' and this essay suggests that whole concept is horribly flawed in ways that hurt people, this is a really complicated problem, maybe i'd better spend that 10% on hosting an EA forum on the issue of legibility's downsides, and a review of past actions in that light, instead of building yet another grid of right angles in a new domain"
On the other hand, for similar projects in other fields, I would expect an essay attacking something as core as legibility is to EA, to get treated as heresy, and anyone willing to take it seriously is a political enemy
I'd have predicted the former about actual EAs, but the latter w.r.t. the perception of EAs (i.e., bystanders critiquing EAs based on these ideas, without bothering to check what actual EAs say/do)
I'm going to suggest a slightly non-charitable response: Is it possible that a lot of the anti-EA backlash is motivated by a sort of motivated reasoning? EA involves lots of people who give away lots of money or change their whole careers to try and do the most possible good with their lives. If you're not an EA and not doing those things, the options are sort of (1) the EA people are all wrong and stupid or (2) you're not doing as much good as you could be. I think it's natural to flinch away from (2) and trend toward (1) in order to preserve your positive self-conception.
I definitely don't think this is the whole story, the perception of cultyness and giant piles of money sloshing around are probably important. But I do want to put this out there, because I think it's a real effect in other areas (for example, I think a decent bit of backlash against veganism takes this form).
I'm very much not a fan of EA, but I agree with this. There are plenty of terrible reasons to be anti-EA, but they don't influence the not-terribleness of the others.
Part of it is the impression - and I'm just speaking for myself here - that their view of all other charitable work is "those maroons are doing it wrong", and if you're one of the maroons donating to a favourite charity that may not be on a list of Top Ten Superest Bestest Bangs For Bucks, that is rather insulting. "Hey, dumbass, why are you so stupid as to be giving money based on how you *feel* rather than how smart people like us do it, using Science And Statistics to work out what is the best use of your money!"
That is probably very unfair, but it is an early impression of EA.
Then there's things like 80,000 Hours which completely leave out people who are in ordinary jobs. You work as a supermarket cashier? That's cute, but you're totally useless to making any contribution to our work. We want fashion models who can use their platform to promote nuclear power ("Isabelle Boemeke started out as a fashion model, but after speaking to experts who said nuclear energy was needed to tackle climate change, decided to use her platform to promote it as a neglected solution to climate change") or people who will go into big, high-earning jobs (https://80000hours.org/job-board/). Ordinary people need not apply, you quaint little folk with delusions of being any use at all in the world.
Between that and tossing a fiver into the collection basket at church, which do you think people like me are going to do? Yeah, the church collection may not be efficient, but it doesn't feel like sneering at me.
Then the jobs that *are* for ordinary people are bananas; see this job listing:
"Relevant problem areas: Building effective altruism, AI safety & policy"
Well, that does sound exciting and important! What role do they want to fill?
"We are looking for an excited, curious, cook or chef to join our food program, wherein we make daily, from scratch, delicious, unique and healthy meals from quality ingredients. The sous chef will aid in all aspects of preparing delicious, varied, healthy, meals (lunches with potential for dinners) for an office space in downtown Berkeley. The sous chef will act in partnership with the chef to: Develop and source new daily menus that can meet a diverse collection of food requirements (allergies, keto, paleo, vegetarian, vegan, and more). Prepare/clean and cook the food - Deliver, arrange and label meals. Clean equipment and facilities as needed."
Somebody to work in the staff canteen? Yeah, I mean, that's important, just like the cleaning staff and maintenance workers and so on, but we've now moved away from "earn to give" and into "this has become a thing of its own with more emphasis on filling jobs in the organisations than the aims and goals". That is a thing that happens as you scale up and get bigger and more established, and hence sclerotic but c'mon: this is not a job that really comes under the aegis of "AI safety and policy", this is "we need kitchen staff".
Dath ilan xenohistorians now widely agree that the single point of failure which ended carbon-based life on Earth was competing dietary access needs at the AI resistance organization 80,000 Hours. Critics of the so-called "Everything but the Kitchen Staff" theory point out that sundry other mission-critical roles remained chronically understaffed, such as fashion model x-risk influencers.
...Ever since seeing the 80k, Giving What We Can, etc. banner ads on old SSC, I've wondered if it's worth any Altruism Plaudits at all for ordinary-jobbers to donate to EA etc. (Implied answer: no.) Which hints at the greater sense of, AI is a problem caused by exactly the sorts of Smart Rich Better Than You folks who donate double digit percentages of their income. AI indulgences are for them, not me. Not my favourite branch of the Rationalist Movement, which already had kinda cult-y vibes before getting flushed with Other People's Money. Nowhere else would I see "bednets for malaria" and "Carrick Flynn campaign" in the same thoughtspace.
(Conversely I notice there's been a lot of criticism of doing the "FIRE but for charity" thing, which is one of the only plausible ways an ordinary-jobber like me might become financially worthy enough to reach Minimum Viable Giving. Curious! Almost like it's not actually an all-hands-on-deck emergency...)
An army marches on its stomach, but c'mon lads, if ye are advertising for kitchen staff, this is not AI-risk mitigation, ye have become the same fat and flabby organisation that ye were criticising other charities and organisations for becoming.
It's a natural part of the life-cycle: start off small, lean and hungry with Great Idea; implement it, get a bunch of like-minded people interested; start taking off, start growing; get past the critical point where many Great Idea organisations crash and burn; now you're starting to develop the layers of management etc. that come along with getting big enough to be a recognised and influential name; become as big and bloated and self-referential as the older bodies your Great Idea was improving upon.
I'm not sure! My first question would be whether or not they are actually doing that - Republicans, Democrats, Green party and Communists claim they are doing that very thing, and I suspect most of us are worried about at least one of them.
Recently a fairly large number of EA's decided that the most effective altruism they could do at a particular moment in time was to fund the campaign of a fairly conventional Democrat. I'd be *shocked* if this ended up being dollar for dollar better for people than mosquito nets or whatever, even if we accepted that "Democrat" is the one true truth and clearly the right way for humanity, for instance.
So I think there's several questions here - do they really think they are doing good for you, or is that what they say to get you on board? If they really do think that, do they really think a particular action is the right thing for you? And if they really think that, are they right?
I'm not saying I know the answers there, but those seem to be the questions.
"I'd be *shocked* if this ended up being dollar for dollar better for people than mosquito nets or whatever, even if we accepted that "Democrat" is the one true truth and clearly the right way for humanity, for instance."
I think you're strawmanning the EA perspective on this congressional race. The goal wasn't "get a democrat elected over a republican," it was "given that this seat is likely to lean democratic, we should try and get this particular democrat who has a long track-record of working on EA causes elected." The US congress moves more than a trillion dollars of funding every year, and having someone in congress who cares about using that funding thoughtfully to e.g. prevent pandemics or deploy foreign aid to the most effective causes can do a ton of good with it.
"having someone in congress who cares about using that funding thoughtfully to e.g. prevent pandemics or deploy foreign aid to the most effective causes can do a ton of good with it"
That's great. Meanwhile, I'm a voter in the new district in Oregon, what's in it for me? All very well sending off a guy to Do Good, but that's not going to pay my bills or get me a job or even preserve the local forests and fauna. This is the nuts and bolts stuff of politics, and if you don't learn that at the start, you're going to remain scratching your head about "why don't the people here vote for me to worry about people in China?"
I think that's a much better critique of the Flynn campaign than Resident Contrarian's, but it's still not quite all the way there. If you look at even an early archive version of his campaign's issues page, you'll see that most of the issues look very much like a standard democratic candidate's:
Flynn's pitch to voters was "I have an inspiring life story of growing up in this district, facing hardship, and achieving impressive things. I'm going to go to Washington and make your lives better in [long list of ways that includes preventing future pandemics]." It's not a crazy egghead pitch at all, it's 90% standard stuff with a little bit about existential risk in the middle! EAs naturally read that and say "man this guy's value above the replacement democratic candidate is huge because he'll actually pay attention to some big important issues that most congresspeople ignore." But that wasn't the core of his messaging.
So I don't think funding Flynn was crazy at a surface level: I think he could have done a lot of good if elected, and some basic fundamentals were there in terms of his possibility of getting elected in the primary. I think the things that EA donors got wrong were more about the nuances of the race. First, he hadn't been back in the district for long, so he hadn't done a good job of renewing his local roots and making local connections. I think EA donors overweighted on his having grown up there and underweighted on his having not been back for long. Second, I think EA donors underestimated the negative publicity effects of turning the race into the most expensive house race in the country with EA donations (mostly from SBF). I think it's a totally reasonable critique to say "EA donors really should have spent more time analyzing whether his candidacy was actually viable and analyzing the impact of their donations before pouring millions of dollars into the race." But I think both you and Resident Contrarian were making slightly lazy arguments.
You're correct about a version of his campaign website, but I thought that one was *later* rather than an early version; at least, when I was looking up his campaign site, the earlier versions to me were all about "send me to Congress so I can get on a think-tank about pandemics" and it was only the version pretty much at the *end* of the campaign which emphasised the 'jobs, equality, etc.' part.
And *all* the Democrat candidates were doing the "jobs, equality, pro-choice" bit so he didn't stand out there. Flynn may have had a message that appealed to EA outsiders who weren't in Oregon, but the reality was that even if he had been elected, he would be a freshman in the House of Representatives and like many single-issue candidates, whatever support he could garner for his issue (pandemic prevention) would depend on him going along with the broader party line on different policies. The only reason to say "Carrick Flynn can get the attention of party big-wigs" was "because he has billionaire money behind him, and party big-wigs like listening to billionaires in the hopes that they'll donate fat sums to the party coffers". And precisely because his backing *was* "outsider billionaires who don't give a damn about Oregon but he catches their fancy because he shares their views" is why locals didn't vote for him.
If some guy backed by extremely wealthy outsiders was running for election in my own district, I'd want to know "why should I vote for you? why should I believe you will represent my interests and not those of the rich guy who paid for your campaign?" and I don't think Flynn was able to answer that (due to inexperience) and his more seasoned political rivals were able to make hay out of that (I do appreciate the fun in how, for instance, they used accusations of being anti-environment against him; this is the kind of politicking that he just had no idea would even happen, or how to counter it):
"As organizations who have been fighting for decades to uphold the strong environmental values held by the people of Oregon, we are stunned and deeply saddened to hear Carrick Flynn, a Democratic candidate running for Congress, make comments mocking critical environmental protections, sympathizing with a far-right group that has ties to the January 6th insurrection, and referring to our state’s iconic land use system as “insane.” Flynn’s comments are far out of step from the values of Oregonians, who care deeply about protecting our natural legacy. In making these disturbing comments, Flynn reveals his clear lack of understanding and knowledge of some of Oregon’s most critical environmental protections, perhaps unsurprising given that he has spent almost none of his adult life in the state.
When Flynn says, “It’s an owl, looks like other owls,” he doesn’t grasp how protecting endangered species and old-growth forests is not only about ensuring healthy ecosystems needed for wildlife, but also for people who depend on clean drinking water. Or that our old-growth trees are phenomenal at storing carbon, making them one of our best resources for protecting our climate.
Flynn remarks that Timber Unity is a group “I’m obviously really sympathetic to emotionally,” and completely misses the fact that Timber Unity is anti-environment, anti-democracy, and awash in racism and violence. It would be bad enough that Timber Unity went to the extreme to kill climate action, but it’s inexcusable to sympathize with a group tied to violent extremism. An investigative report “found extensive ties between its leaders and Far Right figures, as well as the use of racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and violent rhetoric by its supporters.” In addition, “The organization already has a history of and association with groups who have either made violent political threats or have supported violent actions.” (Source: Mother Jones)
Flynn even goes after Oregon’s iconic land use system: “I think there’s a lot of what Oregon does with land use that is insane and causes a lot of unnecessary damage and harm to people.” Flynn is wildly off the mark on land use, clearly not understanding that Oregon is the place we all love because we protect thriving farmlands, vibrant forests, and awe-inspiring open spaces. And, that very land use system creates walkable, bikeable, and connected neighborhoods by requiring cities and towns across Oregon to plan for Oregonian’s health and safety, like requiring housing production strategies. Flynn has attacked the very heart of what makes Oregon the state we all love to call home. Living here goes hand-in-hand with caring about the natural environment all around us. If Flynn doesn’t understand that, he shouldn’t be representing us in Congress."
There you go: the EA candidate is a dirty, rotten, right-wing insurrectionist! Beautiful, just beautiful 😁 I believe, though I could be mistaken, that one of the "environmental groups" that protested Flynn's alt-rightness was a logging union, given that the successful victor has strong union ties. This is how it works in the real world, guys, and throwing money at it simply because "this guy is sympathetic to our ideals" is not the best use of funds. And by the bye, did EA donors give permission for funding to be directed towards domestic political campaigns rather than charitable projects?
EDIT: One of the signatories to this letter was "the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (the Northwest Tree-Planters and Farmworkers United)", "one of the largest organizations representing Latinas and Latinos in Oregon". So I beg their pardon, they are not a logging union, they're farm- and forestry workers union, Totally coincidental that the eventual winner of the Democratic primary was a Latina with strong family ties to unions! 😀
I think the Carrick Flynn campaign was a good example of how EA falls down. They were so enthused about having a guy who shared their values (he worked in think-tanks! he wants to work on pandemic prevention!) that they totally overlooked what the actual voters on the ground might want. And it turns out what the voters on the ground wanted was someone already wired in to local politics, with a solid union backing, who talked about "I'll get you $15 an hour wage rates" rather than a guy who was all "When I head off to Congress I'll work on some egghead stuff that sounds like yet more government regulations to stop you doing things in your ordinary life".
This is, of course, the EA approach: the greatest good for the greatest number, so long as that number is far away (such as overseas in Africa) and not near to home. There's nothiing wrong with that, but when you try switching from charity (and even rednecks in Oregon will be familiar with doing good in Africa from church missions) to politics, then you *do* have to learn that "charity begins at home". The problem was that it was very obvious the EA interest, and the outside money, didn't care a rap for local Oregonians in District 6 but were using them as a stepping-stone to what they *really* cared about - getting a like-minded guy into Congress. If I'm a local logger or viticulture worker, why should I vote for *your* interests, Mr. Billionaire?
An argument about "we should help people overseas" is intelligible to people, especially people who are accustomed to hearing such exhortations to charity at church.
An argument about "we should vote this man in to help people overseas" has a lot more work to do to persuade voters. I'm voting for my local representative, not a representative for Africa or China. Are people in Nigeria voting in officials to help the people of Oregon? No. I'm voting for someone to govern on my behalf, which includes governing in my best interests, not to spend my tax money abroad.
Also it’s not remotely clear that the vast majority of people, even rational altruists should care the same for people far away from them. That isn’t the way human psychology works, and human psychology is pretty much the basis for 90% of ethics. The rest of ethics is just pragmatism and that isn’t going to point in that direction either.
"This is, of course, the EA approach: the greatest good for the greatest number, so long as that number is far away (such as overseas in Africa) and not near to home"
I haven't heard on many EAs focused on saving people in Japan or Australia, despite those places being further away than Africa for most of them. Has it occurred to you that perhaps EAs focus on Africa rather than the US not because it's further away, but rather because people in Africa are more likely to need the help?
I could come back at you with "Isn't it rather patronising and White Saviour-ish to think the poor benighted Africans can't solve their own problems, but need young white people to solve them for them?"
But let's not get into trading jabs. I think EA doesn't bother with Japan or Australia because they feel those are wealthy countries that can sort out their own problems. The various African nations are in varying degrees of mess and do need outside help.
The problem is (a) there are people who do need help at home as well; how about if EA decides to take a crack at the homeless problem in SF and Portland, as per the recent book review? Certainly there is room for a new approach to the incorrigible/long-term homeless who suffer from drug addiction and mental illness and lack of ability to look after themselves so that simply dumping them into a room with no supports and leaving them there isn't much better than leaving them on the street and (b) if the reply to (a) is that governments etc. in those cities should be taking care of their citizens, why doesn't that apply to the governments of African nations taking care of their citizens? Which circles right back round to "we know better" and then you run smack-dab into things like the "No Lean Season" which crashed and burned for what seem foreseeable reasons, and the Carrick Flynn campaign, which totally undercuts 'this is not our responsibility to sort out US problems, it's the responsibility of government'.
When you're putting resources into getting a guy elected to the US government, then you are opening yourself up to "okay, so what are you doing about US problems and US needy?"
To me EA is a turn-off because the recent pivot to AI safety and similar areas smells of motivated reasoning, because it just happens that most of the people who would benefit from the funding and talent are in the same small ingroup as the EA people.
Also the pivot away from donations and towards career advice (even when by their own admission these career paths are highly competitive) makes it a much harder sell. You can easily decide to give 5% instead of 10%; you can't easily decide to "go halfway" with a career choice.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm moved positively by "pay attention to the consequences of giving", and severely antagonized by Peter Singer style "be utilitarian to the max or admit you're being sub optimal". I don't think maximizing consequentialism is settled philosophy *at all*. I don't think the drowning child problem is settled philosophy *at all*. There's plenty of room for moral philosophies where a comfortable life doing some good is ideal, and EA acts like these are all ancient racism. BOO.
Singer is frankly a weirdo, and it’s kind of amazing he has got so many people in board.
Human caring drops off wildly with interaction/distance. It is how literally everyone lives their life and makes perfect sense.
If your cousin is freaking out about her upcoming test, and it’s in your field you help her. You don’t say “wait is there anyone else in your class who is even in worse shape than you? because I would rather help them”.
Your cousin's perception that you have betrayed her in favor of a stranger - and the lasting impacts this perceived betrayal has on your family relationships - can be weighted for inclusion in a utilitarian calculation.
That way, in theory at least, utilitarianism isn't limited to things priced in dollars or lives.
Meh that type of thing gets very awkward and silly for utilitarians. Where you try and pretend that people don’t value different people differently.
You get sort of stuck in a dilemma where you either validate most pre-existing decision making, or what they tend to do which is pretend that natural and ethical to care just as much about the happiness of someone in Burundi as it is your neighbor or sister.
This mostly seems to lead utilitarian thinkers into either confirming intuitively obvious moral positions or trying to convince other people of obviously cockamamie moral positions, and since sometimes they succeed at the latter, I'm sorry but it's kind of clearly a net loss as reasoning systems go.
That way, in practice at least, requires math that is intractably complex as you attempt to address a nigh-infinite number of mostly-but-not-entirely-infinitesimal value. Also nigh-immeasurable value, since you've excluded the two standard quantifiable metrics.
Or you just use your intuition to decide which terms to focus on and which terms to ignore, where "intuition" invariably means "I feel bad about betraying my cousin; obviously there must be some math terms that say it's wrong to betray her, I'll focus my analysis on finding those and then my intuition will say I've covered everything important".
Instead you might assign different weights to the utility of helping different people, based on their distance from you in a concentric circle schematic. A very simple one would say that 5 is for close relationships, 4 is for other relationships, 3 are those in your area, 2 are fellow citizens, 1 are foreigners, and violent lawbreakers temporarily get 0, i.e. their welfare can be ignored until captured.
This would account for some of the negative effects of betrayal on one's relationships. Thus if the cousin is a 4 or a 5, and the classmate of hers is a 2, this sort of utilitarian could justify helping the cousin study for the test.
I estimate that, in Western countries, there are far more people who evaluate moral consequences in a concentric circle model than there are either a) relationship-blind utilitarians or b) people who think that morality never extends beyond ingroups. Barring a huge increase or decrease in social trust, I also predict the ratio will stay this way.
My understanding is that the EA movement is overwhelmingly comprised of a), while anti-Enlightenment conservatives are overwhelmingly b).
That complicates the math, rather than simplifying it. You can maybe discard a few terms because they only involve violent lawbreakers, but now every other term has another weighting factor that needs to be evaluated.
Since the math is already too complex for real humans to handle without gross oversimplification, this proposal doesn't help.
"Your cousin's perception that you have betrayed her in favor of a stranger - and the lasting impacts this perceived betrayal has on your family relationships - can be weighted for inclusion in a utilitarian calculation."
Right, and the moment you perform that weighting accurately, you've reinvented conventional morality, completely eradicating utilitarianism's asserted selling point.
I am not a part of any organized movement, but the reason I stopped donating to EA is because they pivoted more closely toward AI safety. I believe that the Singularity is about as likely as a demonic invasion through a dimensional rift on Mars; and thus donating money to any organization that is trying to stop it is less efficient than spending that money on lottery tickets.
Because there's still a large contingent of EA aligned organisations that do non AI safety work, GiveWell or Animal Charity Evaluators haven't stopped doing their thing, and won't for the forseeable future (I assign <1% that they start redirecting money to AI safety), so if one believes those to be aligned with one's own altruistic values, that's still a good donation opportunity.
I have it on good authority that both GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators _will_ transitioning to funding AI Safety, shortly after the first bombs fall in the Great Robot Wars.
In addition to AI safety, Animal Charity Evaluators presumes a whole bunch of messaging about valuing animals in terms of humans, vegetarianism/veganism, and other areas that I consider silly urban-elite topics. I have a very hard time thinking of an organization seriously when it can look at the billions of people worldwide in poverty and think "Let's donate to helping animals in the US!" and not notice the disconnect.
I get that not everyone in EA even cares about animal welfare, let alone makes it a major focus. But between that and AI, I do not get a strong impression that they are nearly as good at "best possible use of charity dollars" as they think/claim.
Oh, I never donated to EA. But some of their analysis convinced me to donate to for example Against Malaria Foundation.
Their arguments for unconditional money transfer have not convinced me, and donation to AI safety is not going to happen with me (while I consider it as possible, there are many other blockers before it would become reasonable to donate)
I believe I heard Tyler Cowen express the idea recently that EA is "underrated" by the general public and "overrated" by MOST who subscribe to the practice. This leaves me to believe that his general impression is that its a great idea that is not well followed through on most of the time.
I’m an ignorant American, but it seems to me there is a gradient of humor/lightheartedness/satire that runs from west to east in Europe with Brits on one pole and Russians on the other. The Irish are funny but also heavy, perhaps providing the ballast that prevents Western Europe from flying into the sky.
Czechs are perhaps the best balance of funny and deep. On the Russian side, Gogol can be funny, but not without heaviness even when he is just joking around.
Or is that merely how things seem to an English language perceiver? Are there a bunch of great lighthearted Russian and German artists that I don’t know about because the humor doesn’t translate?
I have an English copy of “The Galosh” that’s fairly recent and quite good. There are quite a few collections of his work available in English. I actually went to his house museum as a student.
I made this point above, but I found Russian comedy strikes Americans as naturally funny. I think it speaks to some hidden commonality between our cultures, and I’ve never been able to appreciate French comedy in the same way.
Then again I majored in Russian, so I’m obviously really weird.
I wonder how Emir Kusturica's comedies (e.g. Black Cat, White Cat) come across to the West - not exactly the same kind of humour as in northern/eastern Slavic countries, but it has a lot of similar vibes.
But why isn't it translated? It would be if someone thought there were a market for it, right? Czech comedy is translated. Old French comedy like Molier is.
I don't mean exclusively artists one thinks of as essentially comic. For Czechs we have Hrabel, Hasek, Kafka, Kundera, Havel.... not all of those writers are exclusively comic, but they are extremely comic nonetheless and all somewhat popular in English translations.
For starters, many of the jokes are about culture-specific situations which aren't properly understood if you don't know how these situations work and which part of some straight-faced absurdity is satire and which part is likely reality. Thus jokes from not-that-far (foreign but understood) cultures get translated because they are translatable, and those from more alien cultures are not.
Most in-jokes about the old soviet system don't make sense if you don't know the system - some do, and those were translated (i.e. Reagan made some of them), but others don't, so their translations aren't interesting. Jokes about conscript life don't make much sense unless you know how it works (and no, USA boot camp doesn't count); many jokes about student life don't transfer well (in both directions) because the student life in Russia and USA is fundamentally different in so many key aspects. Etc, etc.
I think there is a general lack of interest in the lighter side of Russian culture which prevents commercial translations. Russia's brand abroad is largely suffering, sadness and stoicism in the face of the above. Why would someone in the West be interested in Soviet-era comedy, when Soviet era is all about putting people in Gulag and stifling dissent? (Life wasn't actually THAT bad in USSR, but there is a risk in saying so - you might end up being labeled Stalin's fanboy!).
As for Russian comedy being hard to understand due to differing realities, I don't believe that to be quite the case. We do have some texts/movies that require a lot of understanding of the local norms (there is a work-in-progress translation that I'm not sure I'll ever finish of a comedy song by Vladimir Vysotsky on my desktop; it includes quite a lot of notes on Soviet TV, psychiatric facilities and events from 70's; then again, I'm not sure I get ALL references in Tom T-Bone Stankus's "Existential Blues", either, and I'm better versed in American culture than an average American in Russian culture). But we also have a lot of comedy that deals with international matters.
The few English-language comments I've read on Soviet comedy movies, for example, seem to be mostly positive - they're not that inaccessible to the western audience - but there is no breakthrough piece of media that would lead to an explosion of interest, so there.
There is also sometimes the matter of language - some authors are REALLY hard to translate due to amount of language-wrangling, puns etc. they do. My favourite is Max Frei, a Russian comedy fantasy writer (actually, a team of two under a common alias), whose books were translated into English and German. I've tried to read the English translation and... I understand the low ratings it receives. The clever ways in each his characters needle each other or make fun of situations simply did not make it across the language barrier. It's a bit like... Imagine Terry Pratchett, but translated so you lose most of the puns, and everybody talk like sensible boring people. Actually, the same applies to the recent adaptation of "Witcher" series into a TV show: on TV, it comes off as almost-serious dark fantasy. In Russian translation (I guess Russian is just closer to Polish than English, so it went better, or we lucked out with a great translator, while English-speaking people didn't), it's much more of a comedy (a dark one, for sure). Even the way a lot of characters speak is funny-ish - they use low style, country bumpkin, old-timey speech patterns, which didn't make it into the show AT ALL. To provide an example, once again, imagine Henry Kuttner's Hogbens talking like modern city people!
Do you think one way to help bridge this gap is to look at Russian productions where Western audiences are already familiar with the source material? I know nothing about Russian comedy traditions but I find the Vinni Pukh cartoons delightful. Russian Eeyore is the Eeyoreist.
Notice how the saddest, most suffering character is the one you remember best ;)
There is a joke going round: "The Russian literature is founded on suffering: either the characters must suffer, or the author, or the reader. If all three suffer, than this is the Great Work of Literature and the Eternal Classic".
Actually, this is a fine idea (about familiar source material). I wonder what the British would make of our version of "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of a Dog)" (they made it into a musical comedy with a romantic sub-plot, so it's considered heretical even by some Russian lovers of Jerome K. Jerome's work, which had a cult status in USSR). Also, there is this great mixed cartoon/live-action version of "Treasure Island": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKRG7PF73UA
There's the 70s Russian version of "The Three Musketeers" which is both very faithful to the book, very Russian, and very funny, especially as they turned it into a musical version:
There's also the 80s version of Sherlock Holmes, their version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is hilarious, especially the Canadian Sir Henry Baskerville, who is every American cliché they can cram in:
Come on, comparing suffering of a permanently indentured underclass to suffering of people who couldn't buy American jeans and had to avoid criticizing their government too loudly is such as stretch it's not even funny.
I'd much rather be born in 60's USSR than a black man in antebellum South. Hell, even 30's USSR is preferable.
Rich and privileged youths missing jeans are of course not at all analogous to black slaves. Russian peasants, only freed from serfdom in 1861, basically reverted to that condition in USSR - until 1974 they had no passports, and travel without passport was a felony. Obviously almost any place in 1960's is preferable to 1850's (surgeons wash their hands, and there's an off chance for antibiotics), but beyond that I feel it's disrespectful to dismiss suffering of unfree population as "hankering after American jeans".
This state of affairs predates USSR in fact. Dostoevsky, the "heaviest" one, is seen in the West as quintessential Russian writer, while in Russia he's just one amongst many, whereas the likes of Pushkin or Chekhov are virtually unheard of abroad.
Correct on the Witcher books - in original Polish they're... perhaps not lighthearted, but do have a lot of charm (country bumpkin is a nice description, actually). The Netflix adaptation is almost universally hated around here.
Someone whose native language was not European and whose English was less than perfect once recounted to me something he'd read about an ex-pat female Russian spiritual writer who was fondly known by those who read her as "the baroness". She'd married an Irishman, and once the two were having a conversation about whether the Irish or the Russians were more prone to (humorous?) exaggeration and/or outright lying. Her husband (whose name, like hers, history does not relate) advanced as evidence for the Irish superiority the expression "only half-alive" for someone on the point of death. She responded with the following story (presented in rough paraphrase):
A Russian horse-trader comes into a lonely tavern late in the night. it is winter, and the tavern is located on the edge of some frozen waste or other. His clothes are in tatters. He gives a harrowing account of encountering a gigantic pack of (siberian?) wolves (perhaps several packs driven into a conglomeration by weather and starvation?) while leading some high number of very fine horses (perhaps 20). He tells in gruesome detail (here elided) how first the wolves pulled down the rearmost of his horses, then the next, then the next. Yet despite the number of horses the rapacity of the wolves was not sated, and they kept leaping upon whichever horse was rearward until only he and his own horse were left, both in a lather and fleeing for their lives in utter terror. Finally the wolves pull down his exhausted horse and he flees on foot. The wolves pursue him still. The tavern is rapt at his story, and he pauses for dramatic effect. "What happened then?" someone asks. "I was eaten!" he triumphantly concludes.
Moliere is translated because he is the Classic of Renaissance Drama, second only to Shakespeare, and gained his fame in the era of French cultural dominance, the era before Anglophone culture became more inward-looking (due to English having become the lingua franca and America having grown so big and dominant.).
Even Moliere's Italian equivalent, Goldoni, who is considered a giant here in Italy, does not seem to have good translations into English for most of his stuff.
The more an author relies on form, the more is lost in translation. I find it just disheartening to read the English translations of Italian poets, or merely of nuanced prose stylists. They’re so, so much worse than the original. (Ask what Dante is famous for. Americans will say: he mapped out Hell. Italians will say: he's such a great wordsmith!)
Humor is the same; it just doesn't translate well. Back in the late 90's I was browsing English language forums for the first time, and I remember the shocked American reactions when I asked: “what is Seinfeld?"
I had never heard of Seinfeld, and with that in mind you can see why I don't expect foreigners to have heard of, or have access to, top Italian comedians like Fiorello, Crozza, Zalone, even though they are incredibly funny. Or Russian ones. British comedy is big in the US because it's in English and needs no translation. Monty Python doesn't remotely have the clout in Italy it has in the US; the same spot in people's hearts is taken by equivalent Italian comedy classics (which foreigners have never heard of).
But this doesn't just apply to comedy and poetry. In most countries domestically successful media of any kind is not necessarily exported, and if it is America is at the bottom of the list of likely importers due to having saturated her own cultural market.
I'm sorry to sound like the typical smug European, because I really like Americans, but Americans have a giant blind spot here. They tend to underestimate how stuff that's successful or available differs from country to country, even within the West. They'll say that something is popular/niche/unheard of/overappreciated/underappreciated/the best/the worst "in the West" or even "in the world" when what they really should say is, not "in the west", not "in the world", but... in America.
I don't disagree with anything you say, yet, while I may not be familiar with top Italian humorists and comedians, somehow the notion that Italians are often hilarious in a lighthearted way has always been my perception. For instance, the 1997 Italian comic film "Life is Beautiful" was very popular in the USA and won multiple Academy Awards. It's director, Roberto Benigni, seems downright silly. The 1962 film "Mafioso" is a comedy classic in the Criterion Collection. Perhaps the most famous Italian American rock star is Frank Zappa, who managed to be a serious musician and silly satirist at the same time. Fellini, probably the Italian filmmaker most familiar to Americans, may not be foremost a humorist, but he seems to show that there is a lot of humor in Italian culture.
For comparison, the most popular Russian filmmaker in the USA is probably Tarkovsky.
Perhaps this is simply a matter of cultural distance, which many people have pointed to as the explanation for my perception that there is a geographical lighthearted-humor gradient. Americans aren't very exposed to Italian culture, but we are a lot more exposed to it than we are to Russian culture, perhaps simply due to geography.
I recently watched Cisaruv Pekar A Pekaruv Cisar (it's available free on youtube with English subtitles). It's amazing that a 70 year old movie made me laugh my ass off several times. It's a great example of Czech humor and I highly recommend it.
Ummm....have you heard of the cold war? The iron curtain has been very real. Scott talks about how there is a whole different set of over the counter drugs an while an american reaches for pepto bismol or xyz for a headache, Russia has other drugs. The scientific and cultural divide cannot be understated with only a handful of james bond villain types being the anglosphere cultural touchstone for Russia.
The USA is also simply far removed from Russia with no long term trade history or exchanges through 'royal' families marrying each other over centuries with limited carry over from England.
So the decades of super super hostile anti-russia ideas of the people who are still in charge of most media companies today has had a big impact. It wasn't so long ago or evven today with a rabid russiagate media or the old anti-red anti-commie setup where you could get blacklisted for even thinking about importing russian comedy and banned from working in media!
So yea...that continues today in less grandiose ways and doesn't fall into a simple economics 101 ideology of supply and demand taught to the neophyte children of the economics religion where culture, history, context, and human life do not matter in the face of someone trying to make money.
As an American who studied Russian, I was delighted to learn that Russian comedy both exists and is *funny*. By this I mean that I instinctively got the jokes and they genuinely made me laugh. Humor doesn’t always work cross-culturally on that level; I’ve drawn blanks at a lot of French or Italian comedy that native speakers assured me was hilarious.
There are plenty of Russian comedy movies on youtube, the older ones not too terribly subtitled. (The auto-generated subtitles on newer videos are pretty bad, though.)
What kind of light-hearted British humour are you referring to? If it's things like Monty Python it's kind of unfair to compare it to Gogol who was a contemporary of Dickens. A comedy like Election Day (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1198196/) would be a better comparison, and it's certainly not heavy.
Chesterton wrote lighthearted humor and "Punch Magazine" existed. Chesterton wrote that it's harder to write a joke for Punch Magazine than a book-length essay, giving evidence to the state of British humor in the 19th century. And the French wrote lighthearted humor much earlier with Diderot ("Jacques the Fatalist") and Rabelais in the 18th century. Not to mention the contributions of Shakespeare and Cervantes a couple centuries earlier to Western European humor.
This is interesting, I only knew Chesterton as a philosopher and the author of Father Brown detective stories.
I think that a lot of Russian authors who wrote satire/humour (Ilf and Petrov, Kozma Prutkov, Sasha Chorny) are indeed not well known outside of Russia.
>it seems to me there is a gradient of humor/lightheartedness/satire that runs from west to east in Europe with Brits on one pole and Russians on the other
And what do those poor Poles have to say about it?
The 'Russians are humourless' idea looks like a Cold War holdover to me. Classic Russian literature often has a much lighter and wittier style than you might think.
The Ukrainian show Servant of the People (still on Netflix, with excellent English subtitles) starring the current President, is a good representation of the kind of humor that is popular in Russia (or would be, if Putin allowed it).
You have a point though, that the "just for laughs" style of stand-up is a lot less popular in Russia than in the West. Sadly, a lot of Russian humor is still at the expense of minorities of various kinds, and there is little or no sympathy for them from an average Russian.
We all want to save the rainforests, but then we get hungry and want some pork.
Some solar panel salesman tried to get me to install panels on my roof but the analysis required I cut down trees for more sun exposure. I said forget it. Birds and squirrels live in those trees.
Birds and squirrels will settle just about anywhere. Trees will also grow anywhere that's not solid rock or pavement as soon as you stop driving over it or mowing it. Leave a patch of your lawn without mowing for a season and see what happens. (We tried to save money by doing this once and ended up paying extra to get rid of the trees.)
The real challenge is keeping trees off your lawn, birds out of your carport, and squirrels out of your attic.
Philosophy, Irish politics, aesthetics from a rat-adjacent perspective. I know it looks a bit light on content at the moment but I'll be posting at least one new post this week.
In the San Fransicko post, Dianne Feinstein High School was mentiomed. Is it usual in the US to name public schools after active politicians? I never heard this happen in my country and it's proably illegal here. In the US, how do public schools get their names, and who decides to name one after an active Senator?
I believe it's a local decision, so in San Francisco it's up to the school district, as SF has an independent school district.
I say this on the basis of the fact that the same school district decided (to considerable public opprobrium) to rename that and several other schools during the pandemic to names considered less "problematic."
(To expand, the school district is controlled by a board of... something. Functionally directors, but maybe they're called supervisors or something. Those positions are elected. Not all school districts are done this way; in other cases they might be appointed by the county or, I don't know, I assume there could be an elected dictator for life of the school if someone decided to set things up that way. Basically, when a city or county forms a school district, it can set up governance of that school district how it likes.)
((Conceivably, superior forms of government (so in this case the state) could put some rules in place about what allowable forms of school district governance cities and counties may enact. I have no idea if they do -- it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that people probably are doing a lot of crazy stuff with. I assume that most places, when they set up their school districts, copied one of a few templates that everyone used.))
There is an old tradition against putting living people's names on public buildings. But it's weakened significantly in the past couple of decades. Especially in Democratic areas. There's certainly no formal rule nor could there be due to Federalism.
In a way, the naming of public schools after active politicians seems like an even worse sign of social decay than the junkies shitting in the street outside them.
It is much less about the politicians wanting it. (Ideally they would realize they'd better to reject such offer.) The problem is their supporters and the rest of the society are brownnosing to propose such things It betrays an assumption that they think their "hero" so perfect it is unimaginable they would do something wrong to tarnish their reputation.
Streets should not be named nor coinage/banknotes portray nor monuments erected for living people, especially ruling politicians. It is not a coincide such things happen in banana republics and dictatorships. British monarchs on banknotes get a pass because they are so powerless and this point represent the state apparatus more than themselves. It would be a bit more worrying if Elizabeth II ruled with same powers as Elizabeth I.
More than that, it's worrying that people either genuinely idolise politicians that much, or else have so much to gain from patronage by sucking up to them that this is worth it.
"The problem is their supporters and the rest of the society are brownnosing to propose such things It betrays an assumption that they think their "hero" so perfect it is unimaginable they would do something wrong to tarnish their reputation."
nit: This isn't limited to living politicians. It is perfectly possible for a scandal to come to light concerning some politician long after they are dead and buried. Also, there have been quite a few cases recently where political winds have shifted and actions or views of a centuries-dead politician which would have been considered perfectly reasonable by their contemporaries have been vilified ex post facto.
If nothing else, you'd think politicians would be wary of putting their name on an institution that for all you know might end up in the news for something terrible that's not at all your fault, but...
Is this really a rule? For example, in the US ex-presidents get a library named after them even while still alive and have since at least Herbert Hoover.
That’s a bit different because those are archive/museum type places for stuff connected to their presidency, not an average public library that you’d walk into and check out a book from.
I also tried to come up with some examples. Of course, it's hard to come up with examples of something not happening, so this will inherently biased towards naming things. The Hoover Dam was referred to as such by congress before it was even finished and was officially given that name well before Hoover died (though it was originally called something else by the Roosevelt administration). The Eiffel tower was named after its engineer but I can't find out when this officially happened: it sounds like people just started calling it that and it quickly stuck? The only other public buildings I can think of named after people are airports. Dulles and O'Hare were both named shortly after their namesakes died. Harry Reid was renamed after the death of its namesake but the previous name was McCarran, which it bore while McCarran was still living. Charlotte Douglas was named after Douglas while he still lived. At that point in the list of largest airports in the US I got bored.
So I think the exceptions to this rule are numerous and not recent.
I think there's a big difference between naming an unrelated building after someone to honor them vs building a library specifically dedicated to the history of a certain presidency, given the norm that every presidency is always going to get such a library.
>Whatever aversions one might have to naming a building after someone living should apply doubly so to making a museum dedicated to them.
I think you're confusing two different definitions of "dedicated" here.
If you name a high school after a famous mayor or senator, you are nominally "dedicating" it to them, but the actual mission of the place is educating(*) adolescents.
If you establish a library or museum to archive works related to [X], then you are literally and actually dedicating the library/museum to [X]. And you're probably going to name it accordingly, if only to avoid confusion.
If [X] is sufficiently important and worthy of study, it gets a library or museum. If [X] is also a living human being, then waiting until they are dead risks losing something important. Presidents, and the sum total of the works of a Presidential Administration for 4-8 years, are really kind of important. It's probably a good thing that we didn't e.g. wait until 1994 and only then say "hey, where did all the stuff from Watergate get off to?"
I guess I picked the wrong example since my others in another reply are more mundane, but I don’t think characterizing these as archives and only archives is valid. They’re museums with an intentionally positive spin on the president from what I can tell from the website alone. I don’t think that’s awful but it’s not just an archive. Why do you think that a museum saying Obama was a good president is more okay than naming, say, a courthouse after him? I’m pretty neutral on both but the museum seems like “the same but more so” so your view seems inconsistent.
I also that think trying to draw conclusions about societal decline (as others were) from these is very suspicious, particularly since the exceptions seem to be as common as the rule. Does the norm against naming after living people exist? Probably but only weakly with everyone making exceptions all the time.
At this point, it is a tradition, restricted to a single library, and the ex-presidents are generally supposed to be retired from high-level day-to-day politics when they get the library.
There are a few different common patterns for naming schools. A lot are just named after the towns or neighborhoods where they're located (some of which are thus named indirectly after people, as many US locales are named after early settlers or developers or notables the founders wanted to honor), while others are named after public figures who have some connection either with the locale or the school itself.
California in particular seems to do a fair amount of (re)naming stuff after living politicians, often but not always connected with their retirements, e.g. San Jose International Airport getting renamed after former San Jose Mayor and outgoing US Secretary of Transportation upon his retirement in 2001.
During a recent visit to San Francisco, I was rather startled to be directed to turn onto "Nancy Pelosi Drive". Definitely the first time I have encountered a street named after a politician who is not only alive but currently sitting.
There are other good answers in the replies. I just wan't to note there are 13,800 school districts in the US. Each one likely has its own rules on this.
When it comes to the US, almost nothing is standard throughout the country.
> And although I condemned Hanania’s admission that he sometimes endorsed putting his personal aesthetics above objective utility, commenters brought up situations that don’t seem so clear-cut: for example, would you destroy a beautiful rainforest so farmers could raise pigs there?
Pull on this thread, and it brings into question the very distinction between "objective utility" and "things (like aesthetics) that people value for other reasons." Who determined that the latter don't also count as utility? Don't the puzzles around "utility monsters" arise precisely because there is no principled way to exclude "things that people value" from utility?
I read that example and immediately thought: This is an incredibly SHALLOW conception of utility. The kind of shallowness I expect from economists defending the trickle down theory and austerity measures, but not the kind of shallowness I had expected from rationalists defending effective altruism. If this is typical, then color me unimpressed with that movement.
For reference, the value of a rain forest does not lie in the tourists🤦 it attracts, but in the scientists that might visit it in the future. A rain forest contains a trove of pristine and unique information, different from the information you would fine in another rain forest. If that information is destroyed to farm pigs, it is gone and can never be recovered. Pigs can always be farmed later or somewhere else.
> For reference, the value of a rain forest does not lie in the tourists🤦 it attracts, but in the scientists that might visit it in the future.
Also, I would remind everyone, in the countless living things in it who would quite like their entire world not to be destroyed.
But both of these are passing the buck again, though. I think a lot of people still don't think you should destroy the rainforest even if all it does is sit there and look majestic, and even if (for the sake of argument) we abstract away the death and suffering of the animals that would ensue. People value the continued existence of unsettled natural spaces, for their own sake. Not all people, but certainly a lot of people. That's a common human preference and should be fulfilled for its own sake as part of any decent preference utilitarianism.
If you look specifically at animals suffering and dying as a bad thing, that's actually an argument in favor of destroying the rainforest since over any significant timespan more animals suffer and die than would if it were destroyed quickly. Respecting their preferences to exist and the other general value of the forest is more defensible though.
I am a preferentialist, yeah. The animals, as far as we can tell, would rather carry on existing. This should, insofar as it is possible, be respected. (This seems to me analogous to the fact that *I* would prefer that superintelligent aliens let me continue existing as I am, instead of wireheading me, let alone euthanise me to "put me out of my misery", even if they've determined from their higher-dimensional lotus thrones that Earthly life isn't worth living.)
I don't see why their "preferences" should be respected. Their preference is that they aren't killed and eaten by other animals - should be go in an intervene to stop them being killed by predators? Or would this violate the preferences of the predators? What about our preferences?
> I don't see why their "preferences" should be respected.
…Because my moral utility function is in fact about making sure other thinking/feeling beings' preferences are fulfilled as much as possible? Because the Golden Rule yields the same result if I put myself in the place of an animal over whose fate some eldritch aliens are debating? This is too high-level a question to answer better than that, I think.
> Their preference is that they aren't killed and eaten by other animals - should be go in an intervene to stop them being killed by predators? Or would this violate the preferences of the predators?
An all-seeing all-powerful AGI programmed according to my utility function would try to work something out to stop them being killed without harming the predators, yes. However, we humans don't have the means to do that sort of playing-god well, and in the meantime, I feel quite certain that insofar as their brains can process the question, most prey animals would rather have lived and loved and bred and felt the sunshine only to end up in the jaws of a bear, than never lived at all.
I also believe it would be ethically preferable to end human mortality, but that doesn't mean it's unethical to let new children be born mortal. Same question.
> What about our preferences?
Well, *I* have an altruistic preference for the animals' preferences to be fulfilled so long as it doesn't overly harm me or mine, so that's sort of self-resolving in my case. But should we be dealing with humans whose preferences overwhelmingly conflict with the animals', I mean, that's just the general problem of some people's preferences clashing with others'. You deal with it in much the same way you deal with it when it's preference-conflicts within the human population rather than between the human population and another set of feeling creatures.
I don’t find this line of reasoning particularly persuasive; all I need is to be convinced that an animal was _on net_ getting more pleasure than suffering to be fine with rainforests. Just the mere presence of suffering without any reference to counterbalancing pleasure is insufficient as an excuse to terminate a life.
If you could show that actually life in the rainforest is mostly suffering for animals, that would bring this argument back into play.
As with everything, you need to do cost/benefit; you can’t just point to a large numerator and be done with it.
I too was startled by that and felt a disconcerting drop in the utility of reading the blog for both pleasure and mental sharpening.
I sense that a connection to nature is lacking in the very online.
I mean this without judgment. Most of us now live off freeway exits that look interchangeable.
I grew up in a suburban neighborhood that had been carved out recently enough that it was still sort of native-woodsy - and there was a deeper strand of "woods" along the bayou we could (via trespassing) escape to when we chose. I think having this in the background made nature something I yearned for - and insofar as I've steered my life, it has been in that direction. But I can readily see that without this exposure, however attenuated and ignorantly pursued, I might not have done so. Now, four decades later, that area has changed and - combined with kids spending so much less time outdoors (you'll just have to trust older generations when we say we were basically not particuarly welcome inside what were our *mother*'s houses, and played indoors chiefly when it was rainy, but not if the mother had "just mopped") - I expect it no longer produces those "last child in the woods" moments.
It is my suspicion that this sort of thing is more important than the fabulous vacations that may immerse people in nature, in a tour-guided sort of way, and are much more commonplace for families nowadays. And of course plenty of lower socioeconomic urban kids probably never leave the city at all.
I don't believe we're ever coming back from our screens, and that a smart person like Scott said something so mindless, is really demoralizing. It's like the whole environmental movement just went poof, forgotten - which I guess is more or less true, based on the exclusively gray heads one sees at meetings.
The early environmental movement was a good thing. There were real problems, and most of these were eventually resolved. Today I see the environmental movement as a legal extortion racket standing a thwart the road to progress shouting stop, carrying the weight of law behind it.
Coming from a farming background I'd say that proximity to nature certainly didn't endear me with a love of nature as something majestic to be protected at all costs, but instead the impression that it is an adversary who is trying to screw you over constantly (to be more realistic it's more like an elder god who has no animus but will crush you without a thought). Two items that still stick in my brain from that upbringing: Animals generally are not delicate sprites but resilient brutes; and what is natural is not necessarily what is good.
Having moved to a smaller town/suburban lifestyle in adulthood, I appreciate the aesthetics of nature when I engage with it, but I struggle with why someone would care about something they'll never see and why their aesthetic preferences for something that is purely in their imagination should override those of the people who live in the environment. The arguments above regarding a kind of "veil of ignorance" approach to valuing the preferences of the other life forms make sense to me, even if I don't fully embrace them.
It's funny that most of the arguments I heard growing up about regulation were against the city folk forcing their aesthetic preferences on us who live on the front line, and yet here is an argument that these same city folk are so far removed that they don't care at all. I don't know where I'm going with this, apologies.
"to be more realistic it's more like an elder god who has no animus but will crush you without a thought"
Strictly speaking it's the other way around. Lovecraft invented those elder gods as a metaphor for how horrified he was by the way nature has no animus but will nevertheless crush you without a thought (another thing which it does not have, in fact).
It's not just that the particular example is weak. It's that the distinction in play can't be made in a principled way. Attempts to do so always smuggle in intuitions from outside of utilitarianism.
>The kind of shallowness I expect from economists defending the trickle down theory
There is no "trickle down theory". You're attacking a strawman. If you think there is a theory that could be described as 'trickle down', then call it by what said economists call it - not some bad faith label designed to make your opponents sound evil and/or stupid.
Meh, Reagan's economics people first used the term 'trickle down' in some kind of speech or policy platform explainer, I can't quite remember the details but I do know the term originated from its proponents.
Of course, it was just one phrase, describing a single phenomenon, a single mechanism in some huge multifactor tax bill or ssomething, and the left is a bit disingenuous in seizing on it and making it out to be the whole an entire philosophy of the right on economics...
But it's not *quite* a bad faith label designed by blues to make red economists sound evil and/or stupid
The distinction isn't so much between aesthetics and utility, but between offering rational persuasion versus "I just don't like it" knee jerking. In particular Hanania has no reason to.associate rational.persuasion with utilitarianism ... that was an idea Scott brought in.
> rational persuasion versus "I just don't like it" knee jerking
Sure, but if that's Scott's main point, it's a rather obvious and trivial one. Of course we prefer rational persuasion to knee-jerking. What I reject are the presumptions:
1) that Hanania's concerns could not be given rational arguments, regardless of whether Hanania himself chose to do so;
2) that such rational arguments ought to take utilitarian form.
Yeah, I also thought that was a bad example. People like camping (and ecotourism in general) and will pay decent money to do it, so it's not obvious that forests being cut down is going to raise overall utility. Also, pigs are inefficient protein factories compared to legumes (and are smarter than dogs, presumably with similar capacity for suffering)
It's not just the particular example is bad. It's that the attempt to partition between reasons that rest on "utility" and those that don't, can't work.
Ah, I didn't get that it was trying to separate the reasons for valuing those things into different categories. The way I interpreted the example was that society would get more utility from the pig farm than the rainforest, but we have a selfish preference to keep the rainforest rather than allow pig farmers to farm pigs. My response being that, actually, society gets utility from rainforests also. But I see what you mean. My utilitarian brain just automatically converted "aesthetic preferences" to "utility from aesthetic things" without me noticing.
Right. One can have an object-level debate about the different utilities of different things, but that's actually the less interesting discussion. The greater meta-level dispute is that Scott is trying to distinguish between "us rational utilitarians" and "the bad thing that Hanania is doing," and I'm saying, no man, that doesn't work. All of Hanania's preferences could be cast in utilitarian terms and given rational arguments. Hanania doesn't bother with that steelman, but that fact is orthogonal to whether utilitarianism per se lets us distinguish between rational and irrational preferences. (Spoiler alert: it doesn't.)
A self-observation I had a while back that others might relate to: I've come to find the predictive processing model helpful to understand why seeing bugs (spiders etc) can worry me so much. There are always bits of movement, dust motes, pieces of fluff etc in the background or sides of one's vision which the brain rounds down to nothing. If I see a spider in my flat the prior probability that some movement is a spider goes up, so for the next while I'll be extra aware of all those things and get the sensation that there are bugs everywhere, making it hard to relax in what's normally a 'safe' space. Same thing when you're lounging outdoors and first notice how many ants there are in the world.
A rainforest is a physical and concrete thing with specific coordinates in space.
I think an anti woke aesthetic could be similar to an argument for preserving regional accents or dialect, but not to a rainforest. The reason this analogy seems to work is that Scott picked something with more immediate emotional resonance (probably, to pro woke people) than social cues / mores. The two aren’t *really* that comparable- there’s uncountable utility on side of the rainforest, and countable utility on the other side. Are we saying that Hanania admits that woke is the pig farmer, achieving “more pigs” utility?
Scott included as an assumption in the premise that the forest "doesn’t get enough tourists or novel-pharmaceutical-product hunters to be as valuable as the pig money", which I think should be extended to "the rainforest is, for the sake of argument, not useful as an instrumental part of getting further utility later; the question is whether we value its existence for its own sake".
Which I say we do. I certainly feel a moral preference for surviving patches of the natural world to continue to exist unharmed and un-tampered-with, quite unrelated to a belief that they can be put to use later. I think this is common, though not universal — watching (or thinking of) trees getting uprooted and forests burning down makes people sad, is the thing, to strip away all the high-faluting moral-philosophy jargon. Preference utilitarianism can and should account for this, and count the continued existence of rainforests as a moral good in and of itself. Not unbounded, but far from nil.
> Are we saying that Hanania admits that woke is the pig farmer, achieving “more pigs” utility?
If I recall correctly, Hanania doesn't admit this, but says that *hypothetically* he would still be anti-woke even if wokeism did indeed lead to a better world, and this is what Scott is taking issue with.
Ask traditional people of wherever how they feel about drag queens educating their children, I'll wait.
I suppose African countries get a free pass because colonialism but it'll end soon, and African ethno/nationalists will join all the others in being an outgroup.
Huh? What do drag queens have to do with traditional dialects and accents? Wokism asks for preservation of distinct minority cultures, and even (through the problematic “cultural appropriation” idea) tells people that they shouldn’t assimilate to other cultures. It’s true that other strands of woke ideology are at odds with this, by encouraging people to express individual desires and get out from their traditions. But the anti-woke idea is usually about assimilating to mainstream traditions, not preserving local ones.
> Wokism asks for preservation of distinct minority cultures
For the preservation of a shallow caricature of them that conforms to their values, sure.
Traditional dialects and accents are mostly cherished and preserved by the exact kind of people wokists would gladly launch into the Sun - and the sentiment is increasingly mutual.
Yes indeed. I often think back to a linguistics professor I had as an undergrad who said she had faced much more discrimination in her life for her Alabama accent than for being a lesbian.
I am not sure I understand the rainforest scenario. Human wellbeing cannot be quantified in GDP and it seems to me that a purely economic definition of utility is lacking. In the rainforest scenario I would be claiming that total utility would be going down even if the pig farmer benefits economically
Yeah, I think I'd be tempted to say something like "even if I never visit, it makes me happy to know that rainforests exist". Then you could challenge that with "well, what if we were going to wipe your memory, so you would never know whether the rainforest was preserved or not, would you still prefer it?" At that point you either need the rainforest to produce a sort of floating utility, unmoored from any particular human enjoying it, or admit the pig farmer is in the right.
But probably my simply going to sleep each night vaguely aware that there is one extra square mile of rainforest in Guyana isn't going to provide more utility to me then having a new lucrative one-square-mile pig farm gives a Guyanan. So you would have to argue that maybe the benefit to millions of people like me combined is worth it. But that's not really how my brain treats this problem - it feels like the rainforest is good and important even if nobody else cares or agrees with me.
This seems broadly equivalent to Hanania's problem. Suppose he likes some specific unwoke thing - let's say traditional gender roles. Maybe he enjoys seeing people who embody traditional gender roles, or maybe he just enjoys knowing that they exist.
I don't really think the two are comparable. The rainforest is endangered -- there's a very limited amount and once it's destroyed you can never get it back.* Traditional gender roles are not endangered. I agree with Rj that preserving a dying language / accent / culture is a much more relevant comparison.
*I like my traditional gender roles like I like the rainforest -- very far away.
Really? When a supreme court nominee says she can't define what a woman is because she's not a biologist? (and I don't blame her dodging this question, but the fact that this question *can be asked* and *has to be dodged* demonstrates that there is a *big* change in sex/gender understanding).
When "a woman is someone who says they are a woman" is the kind of circular reasoning that is now considered a sufficient answer, and which would be accepted in no other instance when definitions were required, then we are moving into "traditional gender roles are not on firm ground".
I think traditional sex/gender roles will survive, because so much of the current activism is so damn stupid in what it demands of people (obviously male-sexed person with full beard and no attempt at all at presenting in feminine manner is described as a 'woman') to bend the knee for accepting that the backlash will come. And things like FINA denying transgender athletes from competition (on the reasonable biological grounds that if you were entering races as a man last year, you still retain certain physical advantages over cis women competitors) is one such example of common sense.
I think the key point is that the rain forest can't be rebuilt once destroyed (not with anything like the same complexity, at least, unless you're willing to wait a loooong time), while gender roles presumably could change back in a matter of decades if the cultural wind shifts. In fact, since he views traditional gender roles as natural products of human biology, Hanania has reason to expect they'd re-emerge over human timescales even if they were somehow to disappear altogether. Therefore the rain forest is not a good analogy, since part of the reason to be cautious about destroying it is that it can't be replaced. In that sense traditional gender roles are not endangered.
>part of the reason to be cautious about destroying it is that it can't be replaced
I notice that I am confused. Has there not been a modern cottage industry of thinkpieces (even in the MSM! even written by leftists!) documenting the rise of Troubled Young Men caught in the uncanny valley between so-called "toxic" Traditional Masculinity(tm) and progressive Maletopia[1]? Do we not see a rise in membership of groups like MGTOW, Blackpill, incels, etc? Is there not a popular piece of advice telling lonely guys to turn to tradcon-type communities, because at least there the gender rules still apply sanely and they can find acceptance as capital-m Men?
(I'd have argued that modern gender norms heavily favour women, but the apparent recent sharp uptick in gender nonconformity among young women makes me question this Conservation of Gender assumption. Things seem to be troublesome for both genders now...and that's after decades of progressive victories on the gender front. Coincidence?)
It sure seems like traditional gender roles are very difficult to replace once destroyed. Only time will tell if it's truly impossible. The fact that even having a ready-made set of replacement norms on offer doesn't seem to be working is...not terribly reassuring.
An important point is that once traditional roles reassert themselves they do so without all the cultural programming that is supposed to mitigate their downsides.
For example, take violence. I grew up in a rather traditional culture. I had a strong implicit norm, from observing my father, that because I am a man, I am a physical danger to others if I don't get myself under control, so I got myself under control. I was shown that people will rely on me to keep my cool and navigate a crisis, an attitude which was immensely helpful in adult life and relationships.
If a boy is raised in a "just be yourself sweetie" vibe by clueless parents, and the boy suddenly becomes a man with surging testosterone, that can be a fast lane to jail or worse.
As a counterpoint: there was a movie released, actually quite recently, where a man goes around asking people "what is a woman?"
I have not seen it, but as I understand it, there is a large segment of the population that cannot answer. I further assume this bears some relationship to the segment of population that can elaborate on what a traditional gender role is, both for men and women.
Are you quite certain traditional gender roles are not endangered? Or perhaps is your asterisk'd postscript the answer: you do not see their utility, so for you, their loss is a net positive?
The point is that a simple, straightforward question with an unambiguous and obvious correct answer *shouldn't be* a gotcha question. If people started getting shifty-eyed and evasive when you asked them whether the world is round, or make bizarre prevaricating statements like "you mean the same way a disc is round?", that would *in itself* be a sign of deep rot in our culture and intellectual climate.
Traditional gender roles are dying, but only within the small segment of the population with it's head buried in the metasphere.
When one ventures out into the real world, where people have to do something like real work, gender roles exist. But you have to realize that gender roles exist because there are real differences between the genders. Yes I'll admit that the strongest quartile of women are stronger than the weakest quartile of men, but this is easily resolved by observing that the strongest quartile is the strongest quartile because of weight training. And that the weakest quartile is so due to health problems.
Just as water flows where it does because of geographic and geological reasons, gender roles flow where they do for physiological and psychological reasons.
"When one ventures out into the real world, where people have to do something like real work, gender roles exist. "
What are you counting as "real work"? A _lot_ of jobs, from cashier to programmer, don't require much physical strength, and aren't very specific to one gender. I count them as real work. What is your view?
There certainly _are_ biological differences between the sexes. You are quite right that physical strength is one of them. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17186303/
I'd claim that even "androgynous" jobs pay a non-negligible premium for STR, and thus tend to self-sort along gender lines anyway. Working in retail, I can't count the number of times I've done a double-take after a new hire has worked for some time, and they turn from a waiflike college student into Actually Pretty Buff. This happens to everyone, male and female...and yet the most physically demanding tasks are still suspiciously masculine-dominated, and vice versa. Even more curious, when feminine folk do take over the male-dominated duties, there's a higher rate of injury and accident, despite them being stronger than the average non-blue-collar man.
It's hard to give voice to this reality at work though. Most instinctively turn their eyes from such "sexist" observations, and double down on insisting that everyone has the same official, equally-valuable job duties. Which is technicaly true, but not an appropriate counterargument to the claim...
(I will note that there's a lot of Conflating Sex And Gender going on in this thread, though. Muddies the arguments significantly; guilty as charged for rhetorical expediency.)
That's fair. I'm not claiming that _all_ jobs are androgynous. I've also read of "higher rate of injury and accident" (specifically in construction jobs where pieces of equipment weighing >50 pounds had to be manually lifted into place).
Yes, the population of mechanical engineers is 6.6% female and the population of preschool and kindergarten teachers is 98.7% female, but e.g. the overall category of management, professional and related occupations is 51.8% female.
The upper quartile of women is a billion people*. At the scale of all humans, “exceptions” are GIANT populations of people even if they don’t exist on the fat part of the bell curve. This is why pigeonholing of most kinds, including gender roles, is bad if your ethics system is anything more mature than gene propagation.
Maybe that one square mile will be the one that will lead people to feel that the rainforest ist no more.
Or, to put it more realistically, when it comes to the perception of "rainforest exists", there are lots and lots of different thresholds, and and there is a chance that removing a specific square mile will trigger one of them. For example, some travel blogger will get to see that piece of forest and post pictures to his 100.000 followers, or he will get to see a a pig farm instead. Or some cute animal will either get photographed and seen by 50.000 people, or not, because that missing square mile reduced its numbers.
These analyses exhibit a horrible combination of the tyranny of the quantifiable with the idea that man is the measure of all things. Not once has the idea that the rainforest is providing vital services right now that keep all life viable come up. Its only value, apparently, is in aesthetic contemplation or undiscovered pharmaceuticals.
It's difficult, but not impossible, to quantify ecosystem services. Costanza et. al. estimated in 1997 that the aggregate value of ecosystem services was 2x world GNP. If we actually took their value into account, however, we would do very few new projects at all because we're in ecological overshoot and the first rule of holes is to stop digging. As vealham said so well, "then we get hungry and want some pork", so we simply ignore the externalities.
Thank you! The rainforest has a lot of ecosystems in it that we know about but don't fully understand. It also has impacts on the climate of the whole earth. It has massive utility, some of which we understand, plenty of which we don't.
The analogy would work a lot better if it were some particular obscure sculpture that has appeal to the reader but not to any particular location's economy.
Even if I am unaware that it exists and someone is destroying it, that is not changing that my preference is that it would be stay untouched rather than destroyed (other preferences will also apply!).
Even if I am unaware specifically that blue-nosed group of aliens on a far away planet genocides yellow-nosed group, then I am still preferring no genocide.
> one extra square mile of rainforest in Guyana isn't going to provide more utility to me then having a new lucrative one-square-mile pig farm gives a Guyanan.
The problem is that turning all rainforest into pig farms is likely to produce problems, both for us and Guyanans. See lake and filters example.
Are we just forgetting that animals exist here? Or are we just assuming that being a wild animal in the rainforest kind of sucks, so destroying the rainforest probably isn't net-negative for them?
> so destroying the rainforest probably isn't net-negative for them?
I am not buying this argument.
> Are we just forgetting that animals exist here?
For me it is bundled with "I prefer not destroying all that", personally I do not give animals high importance (for example, I have no problem with eating meat, though I am limiting it a bit)
I put a lot of importance on animals (I don't think 1 animal = 1 human, but there are lots of animals and I do think that more complex animals very likely are conscious and can feel pain/pleasure). At this point, I find myself very uncertain as to whether life in the wild is net positive or net negative for the average animal. It seems pretty tough - a very large fraction of animals are killed at a young age, and lots of animals suffer from hunger, disease, and injury. I don't know how it balances it out, and I definitely wouldn't advocate bulldozing rainforests over it right now, but I think it's a legitimate possibility. See Brian Tomasik's writing if you want more info https://longtermrisk.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/
Well, does being a wild animal in the rainforest kind of suck?
An animal should be well-adjusted to its environment, with a neutral "happiness" corresponding to its average situation. I'd assume it views the ups and downs of its forest life more or less the same as humans view theirs.
I have, and I disagree based on my intuitions about neural calibration as described above.
I also think focusing on insects is a mistake - you can easily go lower, as far down as C. elegans before you start running into any sort of boundary based on information processing. And C. elegans is not that far from an organism without a nervous system at all, and you're soon left wondering if bacteria are conscious...
EDIT: actually, the author makes my point for me:
> it seems unlikely that species would gain an adaptive advantage by feeling constant hardship, since stress does entail a metabolic cost
Stress is a signal that something is _wrong_ and there's a plausible path to fixing it. It is the sprint mode, not the marathon mode. I'd expect a deer that's eating grass in a field with its young, vigilant but not currently confronting a predator, to feel about as good as a human on a Sunday walk with their family.
Okay that's all fair! As I said in my other comment chain, I think the "wild animal lives are on net negative" position is plausible but I'm very uncertain about it. I just wanted to make sure you weren't dismissing it without engaging.
I would add that applying the same "well-adjusted to their environment" argument, we should expect that the average modern human is less happy than the average hunter-gatherer, despite being infinitely better off materially. Which is consistent with the anecdota that whites that were absorbed in native american community rarely went back
You're assuming "economics" to refer to a study of practical utility. Arbitrario is assuming it to be something like the actually existing academic discipline and/or economic system.
Hence, you're assuming the point to be about some sort of not measurable, subjective aesthetic pleasure the rainforest provides people, outside of objective utility. The actual point is that a rainforest obviously provides more utility than a pig farm, and the only way you could assume otherwise is if you view the world through some narrow lens of economism where things which aren't commodities, which can't be exchanged on the market and monetized, literally have no value.
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"Would you destroy the Sun so farmers could raise pigs there? (assume the farmers get some money from it, which raises their utility..."
"I am not sure I understand. The total utility would be going down even if the pig farmer benefits economically."
Western people hold outsized value on biomes which are depicted in specific emotionally narrated television specials. These biomes tend to be visualized in an atomic manner, existing of its own accord, instead of existing as the sum of the terrain, atmosphere, geology and climate.
You can distill the scenario down to even simpler terms: that pig farm will allow N peasants to survive with adequate nutrition. How many peasant lives is your aesthetic enjoyment worth ?
How much does it cost to offer all the peasants cheap and effective birth control, and say "if you decide to produce more new peasants than the presently-arable land can support, that's on you"?
You can't, in practice, say that in present society, though. Simple proof: a few states of India are currently desertifying themselves by draining their water tables for agricultural purposes, which will lead to mass starvation and death down the road, entirely aside from the ecological devastation. Try telling an average liberal that this is fine because it's their own fault for producing more Indians than the environment can bear, and we should do nothing about it except let the Gods of the Copybook Headings do their inevitable work against hubris. That's completely outside the Overton Window.
This does seem to rely on humans being the only meaningful loci of utility in all of existence. This is culturally a strange notion and the natural world has been valued by native people's for its own sake for tens of thousands of years. While short term slash and burn approaches are a quick way to ruin your environment on a long term basis.
Native people's cultures evolved over time and the somewhat technologically static periods allowed for a deep deep harmonisation with longer term consequences of various approaches. The 7th generation planning of native peoples and deep connection to the land are in stark contrast to the extractive and selfish short term goals of our current system.
While native peoples were successful in living in the same area for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, we have managed to put the entire planet in jeopardy in less than 150 years with our current model.
It seems the dumb ideas and destructive patterns of shitting where you eat are killing us and as a society there is a strong and real chance that our very short term experience into grand global civilisation will fail. But the same cannot be said for native ways of living which are time tested and known to work.
You speak as if pre-Columbian peoples didn't also convert the land for their own use. Some of the pre-Columbian cities held 1.6M inhabitants. They cut down rain forests, quarried stone, disturbed the land, built reservoirs and canals, built and irrigated truly impressive farms. Not long after abandonment, these works were quickly gobbled up by the rain forest, and some are only recently rediscovered by use of foliage penetrating radar.
You seem to neglect that your very online presence requires consuming vast amounts of natural resources, minerals mined, synthetics extracted from fossil fuels, fossil fuels power our entire lives ... contrary to what solar & wind lobbyists would have you believe.
An acre, or even a mile of land converted to some intensive animal husbandry scheme will be quickly reforested when abandoned.
"Then I will wish you this fortune for your comfort, Gimli" said the elf, "that you may come safe from war and return to see them again. But do not tell all your kindred! There seems little left for them to do, from your account. Maybe the men of this land are wise to say little: one family of busy Dwarves with hammer and chisel might mar more than they made."
"No, you don't understand," said Gimli, "No Dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap - a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day - so we could work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in Khazad-Dûm; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let the night return."
Actually, I'd say that human well-being can be quantified in GDP. For the same reason that money may not make you happy, but when you can't afford the heating bills, you're going to be really unhappy.
Unless you already live in a warm climate and don't need to pay for heating.
I mean, on one hand, you can still use GDP as a yardstick to measure things it doesn't measure directly (see: Michael Feltes above). On the other, it does not in fact measure them, in itself.
Some of the current discourse in America is based around the idea that the Republicans want 'Christian-style morality' based on 'Biblical principles' and the Democrats don't want that. Why would the Republicans want this? Why don't the Democrats agree to this and start setting up institutions to make it happen? That is, objectively separation of church and state seems like a good thing to me. But from the point of view of the Republican and Democrat party, combining them seems like a near-certain way to move further from the median Republican platform and closer towards the median Democrat platform.
I can sort of understand that - if you squint extremely hard at it - the Bible might just about be seen as recommending exclusively heterosexual relationships and prohibiting abortion (although I think you could argue the toss about both). However the Bible repeatedly and unambiguously demands that you treat all people the same, are kind to criminals and immigrants, give up all your money as tax / charity. I see these latter points as being closer to a Democrat wishlist than a Republican wishlist.
One possible explanation is that the Democrats are just fundamentally more principled than the Republicans and so refuse to take this obviously-good-for-them step because it would be bad for America as a whole. Without wanting to start an argument, that doesn't model the Democrat's normal behaviour amazingly well, so I don't see why it would here. Another possibility is that the Bible contains something that I've overlooked which is fundamental to the Republican platform and antithetical to the Democrat platform. Candidates for this might be slavery or women's rights (although obviously the Republicans are against slavery and pro-women, the Democrats have more of their base in black and female communities, so might legitimately be more worried about this). But I don't think this is a great explanation either - Republicans already justify some of their policy platform on the basis of 'Biblical morality' and haven't started calling for the re-instatement of slavery, so there's no very good reason to think they would begin if the Democrats started calling for radical redistribution on the basis of Biblical principles.
Is there something going on here that isn't obvious from a UK perspective?
I agree. Also I ctrl-f'd for "from each" (as in "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs") to see if anyone had made the argument that socialism is from the acts of the apostles. I won't make it here, but thought I would throw down a marker for it.
This is really interesting, thank you. You're absolutely right I'm mostly getting the sense that these decisions are religiously motivated from left-leaning American news sources telling me that they are religiously motivated. In hindsight I maybe should have been a bit more critical about where I was getting my information!
Yes, a large chunk of the Republican base is Christians from Evangelical Protestant denominations. Evangelical Christians claim that their ideology is the ideology of the Bible but of course that is debatable, as you point out. Anyway, when people talk about 'Christian-style morality' and 'Biblical principles' in a US political context they actually mean 'Evangelical Protestant-style mortality' and 'Evangelical Protestant principles'. (Or even, frequently, 'the morality and principles of people who self-identify as Evangelical Protestants, even if not actually consistent with Evangelical Protestant doctrine'.) What's actually in the Bible has nothing to do with it.
"Jesus says "give all your money to the poor", checkmate evangelicals" is a pretty distasteful argument IMO, especially when it comes from internet atheist with a surface level understanding of both the bible and of evangelicals. The argument assumes that evangelicals doesn't understand their own religion (the more likely position is of course that the person making the argument doesn't understand evangelicalism.)
Second, you're making an interpretation of what the bible repeatedly and unambiguously demands. This is your interpretation. Other people make other interpretations. There's the entire field of hermeneutics dedicated to this. Your confidence in your interpretation does not match the glaring holes it has: the biggest is how it takes things that the bible (arguably) demands from *individuals* and applies them to the *state*. Calling for "radical redistribution on the basis of Biblical principles" is fine, many Christians do that, but (most) evangelicals do not. This is not because they are stupid or lack understanding of the bible: it's because their interpretations and understandings are different.
Your first point is well taken - thank you for the link and that is probably getting close to resolving my confusion. I suppose I'm still confused why the Democrats don't make Biblical arguments just on a tactical level, but maybe "That's not the sort of thing we do" is a powerful enough force to prevent it from happening
On your second point I'm afraid I don't understand at all. There is surely no reasonable interpretation of the Bible which claims that Jeremiah 1:5 (“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you") is more explicitly anti-abortion than Matthew 19:21 is explicitly anti-rich (“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”). I wouldn't be surprised if *no* party used the Bible to motivate their morality - the Bible is a complex document and it is sometimes difficult to understand its relevance to modern moral dilemmas. I wouldn't be surprised if *both* parties used the Bible to motivate their morality - the Bible has great weight of authority, particularly in an American context. But I am really surprised that the Republicans are the *only* party using the Bible to motivate their morality, when their interpretations of the Bible are - charitably - less obvious than interpretations which support (certain planks of) the current mainstream Democrat consensus.
I really appreciate that you've given a specific example of where I might have gone wrong. I have a fairly good understanding of the Bible (I wouldn't consider myself an 'internet atheist' and I think you're characterising my position a bit unfairly), but the point about the difference between states and individuals is new to me. But while I think this supports your position that the Dems *should not* be trying to use the Bible to justify radical redistribution, it doesn't resolve my confusion about why the Republicans *do* use the Bible for that. The Bible only ever demands things from individuals (Governments are only mentioned once or twice in the Bible, and only in vague terms that don't imply anything about how governments should act), so the Republicans should be equally unable to translate "Abortion / homosexuality is disapproved of in the Bible, so we should legislate to ensure no abortion / homosexuality".
Here's a reasonable interpretation of the Matthew 19:21 that is not anti-rich: Jesus is talking to a single person who has uphold all commandments and still feels lacking. This person has great (implied unhealthy) attachment to their wealth. Jesus tells him to give his wealth away to be *perfect* (note that Jesus says that this person has already achieved eternal life). Thus there's nothing wrong with rich people, but you should get rid of your unhealthy attachment to wealth. I did this interpretation myself in two minutes and I'm not even christian. Just read the relevant verses yourself, this interpretation is pretty obvious.
White southerns evangelicals are a big voting block in the US. The republicans have aligned themselves to this block, and thus use their rhetoric. There's no matching big block of christian voters that the democrats are aligned with, so they don't need to use christian rhetoric.
If democrats would try to use the bible to justify their positions, it would read to evangelicals like an obvious insincere fakery. Kind of like how left-wing types react when libertarians try to use Marx to justify liberal gun laws: it's obvious that these persons lacks a deep understanding of the material they are using to opportunistically promote their political viewpoints. (But note that there are progressive christians who believe that the bible justifies more redistributive taxation etc.)
Hmm... this doesn't seem like an obvious interpretation to me, considering the follow-up verse is the famous "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (talking about rich people in general). But fine - happy to accept your interpretation for the sake of argument.
My point is that verses often used to justify preferred Republican policies are amenable for the same kind of non-obvious exegesis. For example it is perfectly obvious God knew me in the womb - He is omniscient, so he knew everything about me before I was in the womb too. Consequently this passage tells us nothing about the Biblical morality of abortion. If we are merely weighing up which 'side' has the most and more obvious interpretations of what is written in the Bible, it really does seem to me like it is closer to the Democrat platform. My confusion is that the Democrats don't behave as if this is true. Am I wrong or are they?
Agree about your point about fakery, if they started doing it tomorrow it would clearly be a sham. I guess I should have been a bit more sophisticated in my first question, and asked eg why the Dems don't fund think-tanks for progressive evangelicals so they could do this sort of thing legitimately.
The follow up verse is a poetic way of saying that man cannot be saved without god. But with god, all things are possible (including rich people entering heaven). Once again, this is a perfectly reasonable interpretation, I'm surprised you don't see it yourself.
There are a bunch of white southerns evangelicals. They are an important voting block. They have a long and rich history of interpreting the bible in their way. (They know that there are other interpretations of course, but they considered those interpretations wrong.) You can interpret the bible in a progressive way (and there's plenty of progressive Christians who do that), but that rhetoric does not appeal to a big important voter block so it's not very useful politically to do that.
Remember, the USA has had *huge* fights over "the separation of Church and State" that European countries have not had, or not in the same way. Public prayer in schools, even the most anodyne expressions of watered-down religious expression got challenged. The big case here for everyone is the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, about the teaching of evolution in schools. Where this got sorted out in Europe with little fuss (especially in Catholic countries, ironically enough - I went to a convent school and the Reverend Mother was the one teaching my secondary school biology classes and there was no problem with learning about Darwin etc.), there was a big to-do in the USA - and even more ironically, *both* sides played it up for their own reasons; the pro-evolution side to establish this in science classes, and the rest of the town as 'if we have a big show trial, it will attract visitors and reinvigorate our dying little town' so the Town Fathers were willing to act the part of religious red-neck rubes denying evolution all for the sake of attracting money.
These kinds of fights are still going on about "no establishment of religion", which means that Democrat politicians can just about get away with vague invocations of Civic Religion (e.g. "God bless America!") but anything stronger than that will unfailingly draw the face-aches in their own party who will start complaining about "this is establishing Christianity as the state religion!". Republican politicians have more leeway to be explicitly religious, and since America is majority Christian, this means explicitly Christian.
This goes rather beyond the US case, to any society in which some people believe their religion is literally true and others don't. For believers (and we have this problem with some Muslim radicals in Europe) religion is just true, and you cannot ignore it, any more than you can ignore gravity: it's the basic explanation for the world. So if you are a believer in any of the world's major religions, you believe that human beings have a soul, that that soul enters the body sometime after conception, and after that the foetus is a living human being. This makes abortion say, complicated, but it's a purely logical deduction from religious belief. The problem arises from the centuries-long movement by Christian Churches (not yet the Muslims) to downplaying the religious side of religion, and treating it as a set of humanistic ethics like any other, finding support for current ethical orthodoxies in the Scriptures, which of course all ages have been able to do for all purposes.
I really like this framing for why religious beliefs continue to be important in a modern era, but I don't understand why this automatically means the Dems cannot possibly use the Bible to motivate their policy platform, even if only on a tactical level.
For example there are plenty of fairly unambiguous demands in the Bible which both Republicans and Democrats treat as merely metaphorical (or literally irrelevant) - for example passages about slavery, or menstrual hygiene. I think this is what you're talking about when you talk about 'humanistic ethics'? But then there are also some fairly unambiguous demands which the Dems would like to be a literally true description of reality, like gravity (which is a really informative analogy by the way - thanks!). For example if it was literally true that everyone would be better off if they gave all their money to the poor then the Dems could institute a 99% marginal top rate of tax, justify it as being a fundamental law of the universe and then redistribute all that money. Why isn't this done? Why aren't the Republicans worried about the Dems doing that?
> I don't understand why this automatically means the Dems cannot possibly use the Bible to motivate their policy platform, even if only on a tactical level.
The Dem coalition includes a lot more Muslims, atheists, Jews, etc, than the R coalition, and this would alienate them. Its Christian contingent also includes proportionately more "Chreasters" (referring to people who only show up to Church twice a year, i.e. cultural Christians who aren't terribly influenced by their religion), who wouldn't particularly care about the moralizing. As such, the math works out in favor of not doing this.
So one answer to this, on the theology side, is that Jesus was once specifically asked about tax policy, and very specifically said "Listen, there's government things, and there's God things; they are separate things, and you have different responsibilities to each". Mark 12, if you were to look it up.
I write about David French a bit, and he *frequently* implies that you can't be a good Christian unless you are anti-trump, or pro-reparations (or something like reparations), pro-welfare, pro-legalized-demand-side-abortion, etc.: I argue the opposite, that the bible usually doesn't have clear demands on how someone should vote. Basically to the extent it mentions government in a way relevant to us at all, it says "pray that leaders will give you the space to be Christians" and "Obey laws", mostly.
Theology stuff aside, it's actually pretty easy for you to see why what you are saying doesn't work on a practical sense - it's that by-and-large the people who are trying to do what you are saying aren't Christians, don't respect them, and often hate them.
So when they come in and say "Hey, I spent five whole minutes on your religion, and know you should vote democrat" the Christian usually can accurately parse that these people only care about religion to the extent they think it can promote their own positions, and where they don't think they can manipulate it in their favor will oppose it with whatever they have available to do so.
If I came to you and said "Hey, you know that viewpoint you hold? It's stupid and fake. But I care about it just enough to have learned a tiny bit about it entirely for the purpose of trying to get me to do what I want - here's what I think about it" you'd probably go "He's probably wrong, but in any case he's not the guy I'd listen to; I'd be better served finding a guy who *doesn't* hate me to inform my opinions, really."
Agree with your first point (plus a bunch of stuff in Romans about how government is legitimated by being installed by God) - but that's exactly my confusion; the Republicans *do* think God's things should be government things, and hence work to eg make it harder to be gay, harder to get an abortion etc. So what theological secret sauce have they discovered that lets the Republicans make Biblical policies while the Democrats have to always make secular arguments, even if the religious argument is a sitter?
Another commenter suggested that the Republicans actually *don't* think that - they want to make it harder to be gay / harder to get an abortion for reasons completely unrelated to the Bible and it is the Democrats who are characterising this as just being Bible-thumping from the Republicans, which would explain my confusion.
Agree completely with your second point, except to note that I think that's downstream of the effect I'm describing - I don't think the Democrats would be so anti-religion if there was massive religious-driven voter pressure to enact Dem-supporting policies. But happy to be told I'm wrong about that, I obviously don't understand American politics as well as actual Americans do.
Two-parter, first handling why democrats "have to make secular arguments"
It's not a "theological secret sauce" - the Republicans are willing to do what the Christian people are asking for. The Christians say "I'd like this, please, and I will vote for you if you do that" in the normal way voting works, and the Republicans at least somewhat do that thing they asked for, and it works out. So Christians end up voting for the party that, say, would be reliably expected to side with them when the Dems side against them on any number of issues.
The dems don't *have* to side against Christian interests, they've just shown they are consistently *going to* do that on basically ever issue - they have absolutely nothing but contempt for religion. The case in point is that your framing was "What if the democrats could use the Christian's own scriptures against them to bend them to the will of the DNC?", rather than the Republican framing of "Christians are asking for a thing - let's see if we can't get it for them, to secure their votes".
To put that into a practical example: Say someone came into a hypothetical place of business I worked at and said:
"Hi, I am a militantly political member of your outgroup, and I find your religious views intolerable. I would like to force you to do things I know go against those religious views, or else put you permanently out of business - I will brook no disagreement. Religious rights are only valid so long as they don't bother me at all; they are subordinate to every other kind of right."
In pretty much every case, Democrats are going to say "Yup, sounds right - let's fuck those Christians over" as a party. And they will then talk about scripture and suddenly care about it, *but only as a method to try to get Christians to do what they want, or to do things against their own interests, but for no other reason or purpose*. Meanwhile the Republicans will at the very least superficially go to bat for us, and often substantially go to bat for us.
There's basically no place this isn't true. Republicans will defend the Hyde Amendment, Democrats will try to loosen it or get rid of it. Republicans will vote for things like backpack funding (which makes it much easier to raise your kid religious) and Democrats will try to smack it down. Hobby Lobby/Catholic organizations will be forced to pay for birth control by the democrats - republicans will fight that. And so on and so forth, with religion only being of interest to democrats in that it's a hurdle they think is obviously stupid to get around.
So where you say "the democrats aren't so anti-religious so long as there's massive religious-voter pressure to give them exactly what they want, anyway, without making a single concession to the religious - i.e. the democrats are fine with religion so long as that religion is liberalism", the republicans say "Oh, you want X, religious folks? We'll get right on that".
So that previous post handled, basically, why the democrats "must" make secular arguments, or "can't" make religious ones - they are interested in making the former, and completely uninterested in the latter except as it allows them to pursue secular goals without having to do what religious voters want.
Then there's that "religious voters want" piece.
So I first don't want to pretend that there aren't religious voters who say "The bible says this is the moral law for Christians, and thus it must be that way for everyone; I must impose Christian values on everyone". They certainly exist.
But then you get into a sort of complex morass that's different depending on what angle you look at it from. So, consider these two domains:
God's: Be nice to your neighbor. Care for orphans and widows. Support the greater goals of the kingdom of God in regards to evangelism.
Caesars: Pay taxes so we can expand the glorious roman empire at the tip of a gladius.
In this case, it's a pretty clear dichotemy between areas - there's little superficial overlap. You pay your taxes, you follow laws, and this gives you space to do the God-stuff.
Now consider this alternate ceasar:
Caesar: Determine for yourself what you want the government to do. Then argue that to your fellow citizens. Then you and the citizens vote for people who say they will do those things.
Very different system, right? Now you have a government you can influence in real significant ways, where a big part of your obligation "to Caesar" is to *tell him what you want so he can do it*.
That makes shit more complex, because previously Caesar was deciding what he thought was right and telling you, and the big decision you were making was just "have a rebellion or don't".
So now look at something like, say, a trans bathroom bill. The Democrats are going to say something like this:
"The trans people in our party say it would make them very uncomfortable and unhappy to have to use bathrooms that coorespond to their birth gender. We think everyone should either believe or be forced to pretend to believe that their assumed gender is the "real" one, and thus we are stating our want that anyone be allowed to use whatever bathroom they say is most appropriate for them".
And everyone goes, OK, cool, no worries. You have a moral system (that you assumed for whatever reason) and it tells you to want something, and you tell the government. Check and check - that's good enough.
Then the religious republican says:
"I think that the birth gender is the good one, and that bathrooms should be segregated by gender. So I am expressing my want to the government - bathrooms should be segregated by birth gender as they've been since forever."
And then and only then people say "But wait - now it's very, very important to me that you explain your entire moral system to me - preferences aren't enough anymore". So where the system is built around people disagreeing about what's right - even within a context where most people were Christian-ish at least - and resolving that by seeing who had more people on each side, now there's another level of abstraction that (broadly) doesn't apply to anyone else in american politics.
When I run into that on a personal level, I usually present something like this:
"I don't think the bible requires that I vote for anything in particular - like it never says "vote this way" or "vote that way". But it does say to give to the government what I owe to the government, and what the government wants, in part, is that I tell it what I want. And what I want shaped in part by what I think God wants.
Now, when the secular person says "I don't believe in absolute morality, that 'right and wrong' are real concepts that exist abstractly, so I decide on what I think is moral for myself, for any reason I see fit'. He then turns around and tells me that my reasons for deciding what's moral (and mine alone, out of all reasons) are not good enough, and thus I shouldn't be able to express my wants. But if he can choose his morality based on preference and what seems right to him, I should at minimum be able to do the same."
This is *insanely* jumbled, but extreme TLDR of both posts:
1. Republicans often try to do what religious people (for religious reasons or otherwise) ask them to do.
2. Democrats often oppose what religious people want, almost universally so. To the extent they care about religion at all, it's to use religion to *make sure the religious DON'T get what they want".
3. Religious people react accordingly to this and often vote Republican.
1. Christianity says that God is owed certain things, and the government is owed certain things, and that you give them those things separately.
2. Our government's big ask is "Vote for what you want".
3. When secular people vote for what they want, that's considered enough, full stop.
4. When secular people are asked what morality underlies their votes, they say "I have decided this is right (in a world where abstract right does not exist) based on what seems right to me, based on things I've considered. To the extent anyone even asks for this, this is accepted.
5. When the religious person says "I voted for what I wanted based on what seems right to me based on things I've consided, as the government demands of me" then and only in that case is "I wanted this due to the moral system I like" considered inadequate.
6. The religious person, after seeing this isolated demand for rigor, should probably just try to win on numbers and defeat his enemies.
"So what theological secret sauce have they discovered that lets the Republicans make Biblical policies while the Democrats have to always make secular arguments, even if the religious argument is a sitter?"
From an outside view, and speaking about the Catholic members of the Democrats, a heck of a lot of them - when it came to abortion - were all "personally opposed but...". Now, part of that was a hangover from John F. Kennedy when the opposition did try the good old "he'll be ruled from the Vatican", and Kennedy had to make it clear that he would be bound by American law. This set the mould for Catholics in Democrat party politics.
Part of it was being liberal on sexual matters because of the Zeitgeist, and part of it was "what the voters will swallow". If the voters want legalised abortion, then you had better nail your colours to "although my religion - of which I am a member in good standing - says abortion is murder, while I may be personally opposed to abortion, I will follow the law of the land, which says it is legal". Pro-life Democrats do exist, but for a while they were literally being run off party platforms:
"At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, anti-abortion Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania was allegedly "barred from addressing the Convention because of his antiabortion views". The official reason given by the Convention organizers was that Casey was not allowed to speak because he did not support the Democratic ticket. Kathy Taylor, a pro-abortion rights activist from Pennsylvania, instead addressed the convention. Taylor was a Republican who had worked for Casey's opponent in the previous gubernatorial election."
"That raises the question: Who are the Republicans who support legal abortion and the Democrats who oppose it, and how else do they differ from their fellow partisans? One major difference involves religion. Republicans who favor legal abortion are far less religious than abortion opponents in the GOP, while Democrats who say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases are much more religious than Democrats who say it should be legal."
The 'religious' vote in the Democratic Party tends to be the black vote, and they are solid enough to rely upon that the dissension between the party's official stance on, for example, gay rights and the historically more socially conservative black churches doesn't split them off.
What I noticed, back in the whole Anglican Wars over LGBT issues, was that the same liberal Christians who were very happy to regurgitate the 'gotchas' about the Bible to conservative Christians (e.g. "do you eat shellfish? do you wear mixed fibre clothing? when are you going to stone witches?" and if you do any of these, then you're breaking Biblical prohibitions and are hypocrites about the prohibitions on homosexuality) were equally eager to quote the parts about the stranger and the alien, charity, and so on. I saw The Shellfish Argument quoted so often, I started calling it that to myself.
The irony being that for all the mockery of Leviticus and Numbers, the lines about "welcome the stranger" were often in the same paragraph as the ones about witches or shellfish. And nobody (yet) has argued that if we don't keep the rule about shellfish, then it's okay to break the rules about incest. (If you read Leviticus 18 there are a *ton* of "these are all the female relatives you can't fuck" rules while there is only one line about "and no fucking men").
Leviticus 19 has the rule about "You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material", which gets mockingly quoted for the whole "so if you wear polycotton clothes, you're breaking the rules of the Bible!" when it comes to "the Bible is clear on homosexual sex", but it *also* has the parts about "And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God" which get quoted by liberal denominations. "You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" is *very* popular when talking about illegal immigration and how such people should be treated.
So who is cherry-picking the parts they like and ignoring the rest? At a minimum, both sides.
>but I don't understand why this automatically means the Dems cannot possibly use the Bible to motivate their policy platform, even if only on a tactical level.
Because "things that Evangelical Christians believe" and "things that are in the Bible", are two different things with only coincidental overlap. Evangelical Christians believe what they learned growing up, from the teachings of their pastors and coreligionists. Who believe what they learned growing up, ad infinitum, and historically a fair bit of the Bible leaked into that process. But not all of it, and not entirely accurately. They mostly read only a subset of the Bible, the parts that their pastors etc pointed to and said "this is the good stuff", and they interpret it in their own particular way.
This is not unique to Evangelical Christians; most members of most religions do this. I'd argue that Evangelical Christians do a bit less of it than most other religions. But they still do an *awful* lot of it.
Which means that if you point to some words in a Bible and say "these words are telling you to believe something different", they don't believe you and they don't believe your interpretation of the Bible; they continue to believe what they learned from their pastors and their coreligionists when they were growing up, and they add to that the belief that you are a damned serpent twisting scripture to your own ends. With sufficient confidence that they'll feel justified ignoring you rather than examining your arguments or crafting a rebuttal.
And if "the Dems" institute a 99% marginal tax rate, they'll be voted out of office by the ~100% of Democrats who don't think they are obligated to put up with that because the Bible says so *and* the ~100% of Republicans who don't think they are obligated to put up with that because some Democrat says the Bible says so. They'll get the socialist and communist vote, but that won't be enough.
That's really interesting. So you think a typical Republican-voting evangelical Christian could be shown words in the Bible which explicitly say to do X and respond that their view is that Y (what their pastor believes) is 'truly' what is written there? Do you have any insight into what is motivating that?
I remember reading an SSC article a while ago (I think it was SSC) about how the author just literally doesn't believe any interpretation of history that isn't totally 100% mainstream and above board regardless of the evidence presented to them, because they were self-aware enough to know that bad actors' ability to generate plausible evidence for untrue / motivated historical hypotheses was greater than his ability to critical appraise those claims. Is that a plausible model of what is happening here? "I know I don't understand the Bible as well as my pastor *or* this suspiciously Democrat-looking guy telling me about giving up all my money, so I'll defer to my pastor who I trust for unrelated reasons"?
A big part of it is laziness and loss aversion - nobody likes to change their mind and admit they were wrong. They don't have to; they always have the option of saying that you haven't earned enough of their respect for them to devote any of their time seriously considering your argument, so that's what they'll do.
But for Christianity, it gets more complicated because the New Testament is rather short on *explicitly* saying X for any value of X that's still politically relevant. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar", fine, the Bible says that, but we don't have Caesars any more and we don't put living politicians' faces on coins any more so the *explicit* command is moot. Much is *implied* by the language, which was clearly intended to be a broad parable rather than a narrowly specific command to Roman taxpayers, but implications are fuzzy and negotiable. Is the 98th percentile of my income *really* Caesar's just because he demands it, or was Jesus just suggesting we should pay taxes within some generally accepted legitimate range? No explicit guidance in the Bible for that, but their pastor told them that communism is bad and we don't have to pay 99% marginal tax rates.
The Old Testament has lots of explicit stuff, like when it's OK to rape POWs and how it's never OK to eat lobster. But one of the things the New Testament is close to explicit about, is that Christians don't have to obey the explicit commands of the Old Testament any more, only the fuzzy implicit ones of the New.
Jews, who don't have the New Testament, have several millennia's worth of Rabbis very creatively interpreting the commandments of (approximately) the Old Testament. So you still can't eat lobster, unless maybe your life depends on it because they can find a clause for that elsewhere. And you can maybe theoretically rape POWs except the conditions are now so narrowly defined as to be impossible in practice. If you tell a Jew, "no, you're wrong, the Torah plainly says X", he'll tell you to take it up with his Rabbi. If you tell a Rabbi "no, you're wrong, the Torah plainly says X", oh, Lord no you oughtn't have done that :-)
It would (rightly) seen as cynical, in an era where most of the Democratic coalition seems pretty down on religion. Or at least down on Christianity.
Yeah, there are ardent black Christians, but they are a captured voting block, and the Democratic party has become accustomed to ignoring the religious side of their preferences.
And there are some Catholics, but they have the same problem as most mainline protestant liberals - they don't really care about religion that much when it comes to politics.
Overall it just won't be convincing. it will clearly just be a 'try to make Republicans look bad' stunt.
There have been specific efforts by the Republican Party over the years to claim Christianity as their own territory. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority movement in the 1990s are one (Republican Christians encouraging other Christians in particular denominations to become politically active Republicans, often over panic-type issues such as abortion or porn.) Before that, the Southern Strategy of Nixon et al in the 1970s, exploiting southern white racism to peel southern white Christians off the Democratic Party. Then “Reagan Democrats” a similar thing.
Prior to this it went back to the 1960s- “stable” Christian traditional social order versus upheaval and activism; 1950s “stable” Protestant capitalism versus “godless” or non-Christian socialism/communism. Google says it goes back to the late 1800s.
Many leaders in the mid-1900s Civil Rights movement were Christian religious leaders first, due to churches as organizing institution in Black American cultural life. This continues (ie Rev. Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign.)
Different Christian denominations have now had decades (for some, centuries) to position themselves vis-a-vis mainstream American political power and trends. So we have (historical) Quakers and Shakers as anti-war, conscientious-objecting pro-redistribution live-your-conscience folks at one end and traditional Southern Baptist and some Catholics as pro-rule-following, pro-government (this has meant pro-war), pro-conservative morality (anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, pro traditional gender roles). The conservative end also staked out a position of specifically not becoming aware of or responsive to experiences and concerns of non-white and/or non-christian Americans, and positioned these concerns as anti-American (hence Happy Holidays as anti-American because it isn’t Merry Christmas, etc). Religious groups and social groups with Christianity-inflicted historical trauma then faced a tall barrier in terms of finding a home as Republicans.
So Democrats’ political machinery in response to this accumulated every interest or identity group that wasn’t Republican-controlled. The polarization increasing in the 1990s meant that socially there was very little middle ground. Saying “I’m Christian” meant everything from “I hate non-Christians, LGBT people, career women, the arts, and everyone except for rural white people” to “I am pro-war, pro-leadership, anti-communist, pro-Army and pro-Confederate revival.” This coincided with the screwing of labor by neoliberalism; suburban middle class democrats May have thought they were making progress on DEI, internationalism and the environment, while rural people, those in industry, social conservatives decided they were being abandoned, used or in a culture war.
Hence the origin of people who in the 1970s were pro-union blue collar Democrats, now Republicans and then Trump voters.
For the Democrats’ political machinery to specifically court Christians on biblical grounds would be seen as a betrayal at the very least by many D, and as a specific insult by many others. Black Christian groups can do it because of the historical trauma of US Black communities and the role of the church in fighting it. Unitarians do it and some other denominations are carving out progressive niches on those grounds (sheltering undocumented people against ICE for example, I think UCC does this.) Quakers do it because they’ve always done it. Ordination of LGBT clergy and whether they would perform LGBT marriage ceremonies was another test.
The idea of America as inextricably Protestant goes back hundreds of years and has been exploited for various purposes.
I think the consolidation of Christianity as a Republican and socially conservative territory in the 1990s accelerated the abandonment of the institutional church by many center-left Americans. It became something one had to explain to one’s friends and receive pushback for (but the Spanish Inquisition, they attack LGBT people, etc).
So yes you’re not wrong, a biblical Christian approach to poverty alleviation might match well with the idea of Democrats as a left party. But there’s a lot of sociocultural stuff that cuts against that.
There’s another wrinkle to this - where the individual positions “care for the interests of others” against “care for the interests of myself/my community (however one defines that.)” D has taken “care for the interests of others” to an art form, with most of those interests being economic-adjacent, or the consequences of disregard for those interests manifesting mainly in the economic realm, hence the proliferation of income gap and wealth gap statistics. Money is the canvas on which social inequalities are made visible. So if one is interested in doubling down to protect one’s own interests, or thinks that money can reveal inequalities that are not social in origin or conclusion, one discovers “conservative” sympathies.
Hence one side sees homelessness as addressed better by grant-making bureaucracy, while the other side suspects it’s an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual degeneracy, solvable best by the application of religious precepts of worship and labor.
If you’d like to solve it with money but don’t like bureaucracy, you have to be hyper local and well-funded. I think this is some of the roots of EA.
The U.K. has an official religion based on the bible. Does that cause it to do better on those bases than the US? What about other nations with state religions?
As recently as the 1970s, the US had strong movements on both the religious right and the religious left. The first evangelical president was Jimmy Carter. One of the most important Civil Rights organizations was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King. Since then, the Right has continued to make religious appeals, while the Left has largely turned to atheism.
PEW's survey of religion found that between 2007 and 2014, the number of evangelical Protestants increased from 59.8 million to 62.2 m (but fell slightly as a percent), the number of historically black Protestants stayed steady from 15.7 m to 15.9 m, the number of Catholics fell from 54.3 m to 50.9 m, and the number of mainline Protestants fell from 41.1 m to 36.0 m. The recent shift away from Christianity in the US occurred mostly in white, liberal churches. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
I would expect that this decline would be most prominent among the elite, but the PEW survey indicates that there were similar declines among college educated and not college educated Americans. I do still think that the intellectual leaders of the Left are significantly less religious than the rest of the country.
The number of Christians in the Democratic Party has fallen dramatically, so there are a lot fewer people to make these appeals to. Of the Christians that remain, most of them are racial minority groups, who are appealed to with promises on racial issues. There are just a lot fewer people for the Left to motivate with religious language than there were.
It appears liberals like to think of themselves as above religion. What really upset them about the Dobbs ruling is that Roe v Wade was their 'validation', their moral affirmation of birth control. For some unchurched liberals, Roe v Wade was a secular imprimatur of abortion. It let them off the hook for making a personal conscientious decision. Conservatives want to engage and exercise personal moral choices, and vigorously object to the state removing an opportunity for them to make personal moral choices. In an inversion of post-war 1950s society, liberals have become conformist squares and conservatives have become the radicals.
I'm sorry, how on earth do you interpret bans on abortion as "an opportunity for you to make personal moral choices"? That's the opposite of a choice - the government has decided that abortion is immoral and will enforce that decision at gunpoint if necessary.
Read the decision. It says there is no mention of abortion in the constitution. Roe v Wade was not constitutional, and it is not the court's job to tell people what to do with their bodies. Legislators make laws, and you vote for legislators. Vote for legislators who will write laws that leave such choices to the woman, if not the couple. The jurists are on the right track. They're not in the validation business.
"It says there is no mention of abortion in the constitution."
True, both as a description of the decision, and of the Constitution.
"Roe v Wade was not constitutional"
Reasonable. I think SCOTUS overreached in Roe v. Wade, though I liked the resulting policy.
"it is not the court's job to tell people what to do with their bodies."
Actually, by _upholding_ the Mississippi statute, that is indeed what Alito _did_. Roe v. Wade did not compel any person to get or not get an abortion. It compelled States to cease enforcing laws limiting individuals' options.
"They're not in the validation business." How did validation get into this??? SCOTUS issues decisions, typically on whether laws are constitutional or not, sometimes on which of two constitutional rights takes precedence. Roe and Dobbs decisions differ on whether certain state laws about abortion are constitutional. As nearly as I can tell, neither one has anything to do with whether a woman who has an abortion considers her decision "valid".
The court's point is it is not within its mandate to approve or disapprove abortion. Abortion is not a constitutional issue. If people want to pass laws approving or disapproving abortion, they need to do it at a local level.
Fuzzy thinkers insist it's all about contraception. It's about jurisdiction.
It's unproductive to attack the Republicans for not being Christian - the ways their policies are not Christian are a subset of the ways their policies are bad. Convincing someone that a Republican policy is bad is almost always easier than convincing them it's not Christian. In contrast, many Democratic policies are intended not to be Christian. Politicians are attacked very (overly) harshly for hypocrisy, and it would be politically difficult to argue for some policies on Christian grounds while holding admittedly non-Christian policies.
<quote>That is, objectively separation of church and state seems like a good thing to me. But from the point of view of the Republican and Democrat party, combining them seems like a near-certain way to move further</quote>
The first problem here is that this is not just a policy difference, but something in the constitution. Changing the constitution is a very big hurdle.
I see it as a proxy issue for a cultural divide. "Biblical morality" is an applause-light phrase for the white southerners who form a substantial part of the Republican base (as conspicuous Christian piety is seen as laudatory within that subculture), while simultaneously being a boo-light phrase for the coastal/urban professional class which forms a substantial part of the Democratic base (as atheism/agnosticism are fashionable in that subculture).
Thus, for Republican politicians to talk approving about Christian values and Biblical morality is a signal to their base that "I'm one of you, and I'll stand up for your interests against urban liberals". Likewise, for Democratic politicians to attack Rebublicans as Christian fundamentalists is a similar signal to their own bases.
There's also a secondary "effect around the signal where many of the targeted people also care about the rhetoric on the object level, not just as a signal of cultural affinity. Many evangelical protestants see their own morality as being grounded in and guided by their faith, so a rejection of faith may be read as an overall rejection of morality. Conversely, many cultural liberals see traditional Christian morality as flawed and outmoded at best and dangerously oppressive at worst, so Rebublicans talking about "biblical morality" are read as a dangerous menace which must be opposed in order to preserve personal freedom.
To throw in my two cents and raise a few points in no particular order. I’m basing my views off of what I’ve learned from my (southern evangelical) church. I am agnostic tho, so I could be wrong on a point or two.
1) First off, US parties are (as far as I understand) far less coherent than a UK party. We only have two, so they have a big mess of policies, many of which I expect evangelicals would disagree with in either party. So, not every Republican platform represents the evangelical beliefs.
2) Let’s talk interpretation. I think a snarky evangelical might say “obvious does not mean correct.” A less snarky one would say that you need to interpret scripture with scripture. Take your “give all your money to the poor and follow me” story you mentioned in another comment. Jesus is canonically perfect. But, he also seems to have had some possessions (clothes for example). So, this seems contradictory to “you should give everything to the poor.” How you resolve this apparent contradiction is going to depend on your denomination.
3) I think many of the Republican monetary policies are largely unrelated to evangelical christianity beyond that most evangelicals would probably rather give their money to the church than to the government.
4) In terms of the more “morality” policies, let’s just use abortion as our point for the conversation. First off, if one believes the bible says that babies are people and abortion is murder, I think it’s clear why it would be opposed, since most people oppose murder. But there’s also a second thing going on, which is that, to paraphrase as best I can, “sin affects those around you.” There are plenty of old testament stories where a king/warrior/etc does bad things, and all of the Jewish people get hurt until the sin is dealt with. If you accept this, there’s clear reasons why you might not be okay with more private sins like gay sex, that might appear not to be hurting any innocents.
What you're missing, is that Republicans are the party of Lincoln and the original home of the abolition movement.
Democrats were the party of slavery, the klan, and fought the equal rights amendment.
Black people were 100% Republicans until about 1900, when their union bosses convinced them to become democrats. Because the democrats sided with big labor.
The last of the democrat's klansmen (Robert Byrd died off a few years ago). As we recently saw with the last Supreme Court kerfuffle, many democrats still retained the N-word for use on Republican nominated Justice Clarence Thomas.
>Some of the current discourse in America is based around the idea that the Republicans want 'Christian-style morality' based on 'Biblical principles' and the Democrats don't want that.
I agree with you that this what some of the current discourse is like, but I only hear it from my Blue Tribe friends. None of my Red Tribe friends talk about that outside of my snake-handling inlaws who have zero political power or participation in discourse (they still call my wife to get the photos off their phone, for example)
Everyone has political power if they vote, and there are enough religious voters that people who believe in this sort of thing can get elected to Congress.
It's Independence Day in the USA. Anyone else in the situation of no longer being able to authentially enjoy fireworks after learning how environmentally devastating they are? Is this one of those "hard-to-decarbonize" sectors that lacks an efficient green solution?
I wrote a more detailed explanatory reply to a different commentor in thread[1] (tl;dr: brainwashed by hairshirt environmentalists as kid, feeling deeply silly now, mea culpa) - but, yes, I do vote pro-nuclear whenever given the chance. I'm sad about Diablo Canyon being on the chopping block; at least the San Andreas fault is a "plausible" failure mode rather than some bullshit like freak tsunamis. Don't think anyone will ever build a nuclear plant in San Francisco County*, but I'd be on board to canvass for such a proposal.
(I'd consider lobbying if I wasn't being represented by Arch-Neoliberal Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who seems hellbent on serving for life. Maybe it'd be more fruitful to move to Darrell Issa's jurisdiction, idk.)
I figure the once-or-twice-a-year tradition has such a minimal impact compared to constant things, and makes such an aesthetic difference to me, that I'm willing to sacrifice some environmental quality for fireworks. But it'd be great if we found greener options.
Hmm. Now I'm wondering what Richard Hanania would think about anti-fireworksism. Worse than genocide? And does this imply Scott would condemn a fireworksist as a "bad person"?
This is basically my exact take but with regard to the noise issues. I totally get the complaints and most of the year they are valid, but one (technically two I guess but I've never been much into New Years fireworks) day per year there are going to be fireworks.
I haven’t actually heard any accounting of the environmental issues with fireworks.
Does a fireworks show emit more or less carbon than the vehicles of the people who drive to see it? Is it orders of magnitude more or less? I actually don’t have a sense at all.
Or is it different environmental devastation? Do bits of wrappers and fuses get scattered into local wild spaces afterwards? Or do the colored powders need the extraction of difficult materials? (These seem less likely to be significant to me.)
I had thought the main reason to deplore fireworks is the noise they cause, which clearly causes huge amounts of distress to most of the dogs in every city, but likely also to many sensitive people, and perhaps wild animals as well.
>which clearly causes huge amounts of distress to most of the dogs in every city
Do you have a cite for that? *Some* dogs definitely get distressed at the sound of fireworks, but "most" sounds way too strong and doesn't line up with my experience at all.
Good point. I do know some dogs that aren’t scared of fireworks (in fact, both of the dogs I spend time with most often these days aren’t). It looks like about half is right?
I wonder to what extent the half that's scared by fireworks overlaps with the half that is neurotic, annoying, poorly-trained, and precisely the kind of animal that makes some wish that the Fourth of July lasted all year.
I *think* that public fireworks probably pass a cost-benefit pretty easily? Greenmatters.com, which is not going to be biased in favor of the fireworks, says "fireworks in the U.S. emit about 60,340 metric tons of CO2 every year. To put that in perspective, that's a bit more than what 12,000 gas-powered cars emit in a year." https://www.greenmatters.com/p/fireworks-environmental-impact. If 200000000 people enjoy fireworks at some point in the year, then the CO2 impact per person is like driving a car a mile or so. That feels like it clearly passes a cost-benefit. I'd need more data to evaluate the non-CO2 pollutants.
I think that drone shows can replicate some of the experience of fireworks without the pollutants, but they're not quite the same. Hybrid drone-fireworks shows might give you an equal or better experience with less carbon
I grew up in a seaside town reknowned for its picturesqe views, wildlife, beaches, nature trails, etc. The environmentalist movement surrounded everything; we had a sorta-infamous case of the town being unable to build a new middle school for decades, all because it would negatively impact the local endangered Red-Legged Frog. Another time, a prominent VC millionaire bought private beachside property that just happened to contain the only serviceable access road to a popular local beach. He closed it at some point cause the traffic annoyed him, and - the government threw an absolute tantrum. Tried to sue, it made headlines all the way to national-level papers like WaPo, etc.
Yet despite being a fairly conservative town, incidents like these were considered completely ordinary and perfectly logical outcomes. Generations of kids were raised on the importance of marine biology, there's still an active fishing and farming industry, and it was just hard to find anyone making good-faith arguments that the needs of humans might possibly outweigh those of some random animals. So that's the local culture I was steeped in since childhood.
We'd get a lot of extracurricular presentations in school about how Oceans Are Neat and We Must Protect Them. When I was 8 or so, it was about how horrible, awful, no good, absolutely bad plastic water bottles end up in the ocean. I was literally traumatized for life, and have never willingly taken a drink from a disposable plastic water bottle ever since, even when actually dehydrated. (Ridiculous, but still a hard habit to break decades later.)
More relevantly for this thread, at some point the factoid got lodged in my head that Fireworks Kill Sea Turtles. Weirdly specific, but I was perfectly primed to react with horror, and ever after that have found my enjoyment of fireworks much diminished. At best it'd be a guilty pleasure. It's hard to overemphasize how even a dubious claim like this could really fuck up kids from my town. Even the smart ones like me, who'd normally respond with a healthy [Citation Needed].
And...now at age [REDACTED], it finally occurs to me from getting an unexpected number of non-joke ACX responses that This Has To Be Bullshit, Shut Up And Multiply. That I've spent decades not enjoying something I used to enjoy, all because of a loosely thrown around shoddy claim that I never bothered to look into empirically. That's honestly pretty sad! And it makes me wonder how many other Bullshit-grade things 90s Environmentalism drilled into my head, causing meaningless suffering for no profit. Like the holy rituals of Proper Recycling.
It sure was an idealistic dream to inherit, though. I very much wanted to believe in it...map accuracy be damned. "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be."
no, I don't think I have ever been able to authentically enjoy them... I mean, in my youth I enjoyed being on the beach with friends, and I don't think fireworks added to that enjoyment.
If the GHG released by fireworks causes you this much unhappiness, I can't see how you aren't opposed to nearly everything all the time.
E.g. immigration results in orders of magnitutde more emissions (moving people from low carbon footprint lives to higher carbon footprint lives) than fireworks ever could, so I would hope that you're fanataically anti-immigration, but I'm sure you're got some reason why helping a small number of brown people be wealthier is suddenly more important than the supposedly catastrophic enviornmental impact of climate change.
That...sure is a strongly worded wrong assumption about my beliefs, which in any case I've now decided to update by removing [Category: Sacred Cow] protection, and do feel appropriately sheepish about[1]. (So thank you, indirectly.) But I'm familiar with your posting style and won't take it personally. I hope you'll allow me the courtesy to respond similarly (tone-wise) though - with perhaps one standard deviation less kindness than usual?
For the sake of argument, let's assume I continued to be really upset about firework GHGs, to the point where it neutered my enjoyment of fireworks. I feel like you're too eager to pattern-match this as "oh, God, another Greta Thunberg cultist, time to disabuse a naive progressive (oxymoron!) environmentalist (oxymoron!) with Facts And Logic". (Is that excessively uncharitable? I apologize if so, hyperbole is difficult to calibrate properly.) It's certainly one possible explanation, and I agree there's more fun to be had trying to box your rhetorical opponent into defending a type of incoherent Repugnant Conclusion, thereby conclusively winning both the argument and a minor victory against Outgroup.
However, I'd like to advance an alternate hypothesis which better fits the evidence - perhaps my prior level of fireworks-enjoyment wasn't particularly high to begin with, so the utilons gained from fireworks shows were indeed outweighed by concerns over GHG emissions and other negative externalities. At minimum, I think we'd agree there's also some light and noise pollution. In such case, any honest cost-benefit analysis on my part would come out against fireworks. Equally valid causal chain of reasoning; much harder to turn into a Gotcha.
Note also that even in this hypothetical, I'd never call for imposing my mere aesthetic preferences as some sort of Official Anti-Fireworks Policy. I couldn't call myself a libertarian if I made Special Pleas just for things I dislike...as the Marxists say, no one is free until everyone is free. One can be "opposed" to many things, yet limit that opposition to simply choosing not to support or enjoy said things rather than trying to ban them.
I will freely grant that I was being hypocritical in my previous views, since I conveniently classified Chinese New Year firecrackers as "not fireworks" and had no trouble endorsing those celebrations. It's now easy for me to see that that same sort of cultural-relevancy argument works for everyone else and regular fireworks, so I should be consistent one way or the other. Fireworks For Me, And None For Thee simply won't do.
As to immigration: I'm pro-skilled immigration. Talent shouldn't be wasted in unsupportive environments, and people should recoup the full value of their worth to humanity. Outside that narrow band of immigration policy? Big Shrug. I often find Bryan Caplan compelling, but get really uncomfortable whenever he goes on the Immigration Pays For Itself (It's Self-Evidently Obvious) rants. Even more reasonable takes on unskilled immigration hit close to home. Hard to abstractly intellectualize the issue away when living in California...
...and because, as a 3rd generation immigrant, I kinda wouldn't exist at all if not for unskilled immigration. My grandparents fled a miserable subsistence-agriculture village in Communist China for a better life in the Land of Opportunity, America. It was a difficult uphill battle, against rank discrimination, constant poverty, and major world shocks like the Great Depression and WWII. And even though great sacrifices were made - not a few of my relatives endured child labour to make ends meet - by God, we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps to reach the vaunted Middle Class. Of *course* I'm naturally inclined to be sympathetic to "helping a small number of brown people be wealthier" - I'm one of them!
At the same time, it's plainly obvious that not all stories end successfuly like my family's. Many Such Cases! Even strictly on economic terms, whether the median immigrant is a societal profit or loss overall continues to be vigorously debated. Culturally, there's been a strong backwards pendulum swing against "assimilation" and the "melting pot" narrative, which I view as a sort of shitty Balkanization of the public into self-assortative ghettos (ideologically if not always geographically). I spent my whole youth wanting to be accepted as an American like all the other native kids, only to reach adulthood and suddenly find that was, like, "internalized racism" and "defending White supremacy". If the whole idea is to only be Asian even while actually living in America, then potential immigrants may as well be Asian while staying in Asia proper. At least that's honest.
(In carbon terms specifically, I hold more or less the same views as Scott[2] - that the potential for human flourishing and, yes, making a difference on climate change is a compelling counterweight to the GHG impact. It's not a negative externality I handwave away, I just think it's worth taking a Pascalian Wager on more humans rather than less humans to solve our human-made problems[3]. Even if immigration is worse carbon budget-wise than native natalism.)
Thanks for debating. I've honestly been looking forward to scrapping with the heavy-hitting critics here. Hope it wasn't a disappointing showing for a community noob.
No, because I haven't learned how "environmentally devastating" fireworks are. And I'm quite skeptical that they are anything I would recognize as "devastating", just on a matter of scale. Earth is huge, fireworks are puny.
At the moment some quantity of my neighbours are making loud noises, and terrifying my dog. They started this on Friday, and if past experience is any guide, won't run out of fireworks for several days after the fourth.
Hopefully none of these bangs are in fact firearm discharges rather than fireworks. (I can't tell them apart, and at least one mass shooter has already taken advantage of the 4th of July this year to exercise his hobby, with people in the targeted area slightly slower to react than they would be if they hadn't first mis-recognized the sound as fireworks.)
For added joy, I believe (without checking) that these street level, non-professional fireworks are locally illegal, due to the dangers involved - all the obvious, plus the extra risk of fire thanks to drought.
None of this has anything to do with environmental devastation other than potential wildfire.
I have been known to enjoy large professional displays, particularly when I'm too far away to smell them. I would be interested in information on the environmental costs of e.g. an annual big display per city, particularly compared to any other common activity of similar scale cities. Also compared e.g. to the particulate pollution from our now annual, multi-month fire season.
The local ban against the retail, on the street stuff should be enforced. And I'd be just as happy to see it everywhere, not just local to me.
OTOH, I'd like to find room in an environmental budget for the occasional major display.
I mean, the more obvious ethical issue is that you're scaring dogs in your neighborhood. Carbon emissions from fireworks are a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
Does anyone know of good writings on how organizations decline? What happens culturally within a company with a trend of negative profits and declining market shares? How does a political party change when it loses voters each election? How does the leaders of a religion react when membership is falling?
My gut instinct is that this kind of decline is really bad: organizations starts finding scapegoats to blame and messianic figures to reverse the trend and save the organization. Talented people exit, leaving psychopaths and careerists to fight over the scraps while the idealists become more and more cut off from reality. But instinct is often wrong. Is there a good book or blog post or something on the topic?
A classical text on this problem is "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" by Hirschman. [It describes corporations](https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Exit-strategies) and how people within it, or people buying its services, have basically three options when faced with a perceived problem: they leave (exit), they argue against (voice), they stay and weather the storm (loyalty). Hirschman's text has become used in other contexts too, like in government, where especially the exit option is much tougher (to emigrate is a bigger issue than resign), and academia, where there is much fewer uncoordinated options.
Something a bit more sociological in nature is [the Peter principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle). This is often summarized as: "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence". If true, this principle means that a non-growing firm will converge towards a state of incompetent managers at all levels. This is a pessimistic account, but rather than your dire suggestion of psychopaths and careerists, it paints a picture of stalemate, risk-avoidance and unaware incompetence. As far as companies go, this is more like what I have experienced.
A lot more structural is what Geoffrey West has said and written. [He studies scale in different systems](https://www.edge.org/conversation/geoffrey_west-why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-and-people-always-die-and-life-gets), and he notes that some systems (cities) tend to grow more, invent more, as they grow, while other systems (corporations) tend to plateau and then by competitive pressure decline as they scale. In his theory this comes down to "dimensionality" of the system, that if greater size creates more growth surface, it scales, while more one-dimensional and focused, greater size makes growth less likely. This doesn't get into the sociology you ask about, arguably in this theory it does not matter to ultimate outcomes.
Robin Hanson has [shared his case](https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1421212798881722368) for the decline of Silicon Valley, that when tech became high-earning, high-status, "top school kids" took over and forced out the "nerds".
Your use of scapegoats and messianic figures sounds a lot like René Girard or some interpretation thereof. I know too little about that, though.
I suppose I don't have a definitive source to read because I doubt there really is a single unifying theory. It may very well be that the better question is why some things do not decline, that's the deviation from baseline in need of explanation.
Thanks for the links, I've touched on some of them before but some where new.
I'm not looking for an unifying theory as much as just observations of the phenomena. I think a book on the subject would be interesting even if it was just some case studies and some conclusions and open questions.
It would be nice to have an unbiased sample of people inside flawed organizations. Tricky thing is that even people who have left are disincentivized to speak candidly, since to have the reputation as a complainer isn’t good (I know). The reviews on Glassdoor are most likely very skewed. So strategic behaviour blurs the data. And the many “leaving google” blog posts are often self-promotional. The closest I found to insightful was Peter Warden from the hardware group who described his departure to academia as caused by the hurdle to launch products due to reputational risk for Google, a form of large organization dysfunction, but of a different nature than what you asked about.
I've heard good things about William H. Whyte's "The Organization Man", despite being 50+ years old, if you wanted a classic ethnography-style text "from the inside".
Some topical ratsphere writings off the top of my head, Good But Long:
tl;dr institutions fundamentally exist to perpetuate their own impersonal existence; when this fails to happen, it's often because some sociopath found a loophole to cash out a life insurance policy on that institution. Other times it's just stochastic systemic failure, hard to causally explain as anything but general metastasizing of coordination problems. Good organizations are simply hard to come by and require Constant Vigilance.
As I'm sure some of you know, Yann LeCun has published a longish paper in which he describes his game plan for the next decade or so. Section 8.3.1 is entitled "Scaling is not enough." He gives two reasons: "First, current models operate on “tokenized” data and are generative. Every input modality must be turned into a sequence (or a collection) of “tokens” encoded as vectors. While this works well for text, which is already a sequence of discrete tokens, it is less suitable for continuous, high dimensional signals such as video." And then: "Second, current models are only capable of very limited forms of reasoning. The absence of abstract latent variables in these models precludes the exploration of multiple interpre- tations of a percept and the search for optimal courses of action to achieve a goal. In fact, dynamically specifying a goal in such models is essentially impossible."
It has elicited some discussion, through registering at the site involves giving up more than just a name and an email address.
I have posted the following comment to the discussion:
Why are symbols important? Because they index cognitive space.
I want to address the issue that your raise at the very end of your paper: Do We Need Symbols for Reasoning? I think we do. Why? 1) Symbols form an index over cognitive space that, 2) facilitates flexible (aka ‘random’) access to that space during complex reasoning.
Let me quote a passage from the paper you recently published with Jacob Browning:
"For the empiricist tradition, symbols and symbolic reasoning is a useful invention for communication purposes, which arose from general learning abilities and our complex social world. This treats the internal calculations and inner monologue — the symbolic stuff happening in our heads — as derived from the external practices of mathematics and language use."[1]
I agree with the second sentence. Symbols are not primitive to the nervous system, they are derived. Initially, from linguistic communication, but then, as culture evolves, from mathematics as well.
The first sentence is true, but not entirely adequate for understanding language (where I consider arithmetic, for example, to be a very specialized form of language). Back in the 1930s the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, gave an account of language acquisition that moves through three phases: 1) adults (and others) use language to direct the very young child’s attention and actions, 2) gradually the child learns to use speech to direct their own attention and action, and finally 3) the process becomes completely internalized, e.g. inner monologues. I spell this out in more detail in a wide-ranging working paper I’ve recently posted to the web [2].
Now, what is the nature of cognitive space? That’s a complicated question, but much of it is defined directly over physical objects, events, and processes and that is, I believe, differentiable in the way you desire. Here I believe the geometric semantics developed by Peter Gärdenfors [3] may prove useful in seeing how cognition is linked to symbols and I utilize it in my working paper.
Still, let me mention one complication. Here’s an example that was much discussed in the Old Symbolic Days: What’s a chair? Chairs are obviously physical objects, but when you consider the range of objects that are recruited to serve as chairs, it becomes difficult to imagine a single physical description that characterizes all of them, even a fairly abstract description. Perhaps chairs are best characterized by their function, that is, by the role they play in a simple action. The concept of “poison” presents a similar problem. There’s no doubt that poisons are physical substances, but they don’t have a common physical appearance. Nor, for that matter, do fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables play certain roles in cuisines and poisons are most generally characterized known by their effects. And so forth. It’s a complicated problem, but a secondary one at the moment.
Will your proposed H-JEPA architecture support such symbols? I find the following passage suggestive [p. 7]:
"The world model may predict natural evolutions of the world, or may predict future world states resulting from a sequence of actions proposed by the actor module. The world model may predict multiple plausible world states, parameterized by latent variables that represent the uncertainty about the world state. The world model is a kind of “simulator” of the relevant aspects of world. What aspects of the world state is relevant depends on the task at hand."
That sounds a bit like natural language parsers, where partial parses will be developed and maintained until enough information is obtained to decide on one of them. I tentatively conclude that, yes, your architecture can accommodate symbols, though you will have to deal with the discrete nature of the symbols themselves.
I really should say something about how symbols, but well, that’s tricky. Let me offer up a fake example that points in the direction I’m thinking. Imagine that you’ve arrived at a local maximum in your progression toward some goal but you’ve not yet reached the goal. How do you get unstuck? The problem is, of course, well known and extensively studied. Imagine that your local maximum has a name1, and that name1 is close to name2 of some other location in the space you are searching. That other location may or may not get you closer to the goal; you won’t know until you try. But it is easy to get to name2 and then see where where that puts you in the search space. If you’re not better off, well, go back to name1 and try name3. And so forth. Symbol space indexes cognitive space and provides you with an ordering over cognitive space that is different from and somewhat independent of the gradients within cognitive space. It’s another way to move around. More than that, however, it provides you with ways of constructing abstract concepts, and that’s a vast, but poorly studied subject [4].
[2] William Benzon, Relational Nets Over Attractors, A Primer: Part 1, Design for a Mind, June 20, 2022, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4141479
[3] Peter Gärdenfors, Conceptual Spaces, MIT 2000, The Geometry of Meaning, MIT 2014. For a quick introduction see Peter Gärdenfors, An Epigenetic Approach to Semantic Categories, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (Volume: 12, Issue: 2, June 2020) 139 – 147. DOI: 10.1109/TCDS.2018.2833387
[4] For some thoughts on various mechanisms for constructing abstract concepts, see William Benzon and David Hays, The Evolution of Cognition, Journal of Social and Biological Structures. 13(4): 297-320, 1990, https://doi.org/10.1016/0140-1750(90)90490-W
I don't know enough about US politics to offer much of a reply, but I think that it would be allowable to point out tactically that, if you are going to take your rules of life from a supernatural deity's revelations, you have to take account of all of them, not just the ones that support your prejudices. But of course Christianity, not to mention Buddhism and Islam, have been wracked for millennia by controversies of precisely this kind, without a solution. I fear, though, that it's the secular Left itself which would be the problem: anyone who used this kind of argument would be accused of traumatising behaviour by referencing mumble mumble patrimony mumble mumble misogony etc. There 's a strain of political thinking, well represented in todays secular Left, unfortunately, which puts ideological purity above actually, you know, getting stuff done.
I agree with this, but anyone with that attitude is significantly weakening any of their claims along the lines of "political position X is really important because my belief system says so".
It's impossible to have a reason other than your beliefs. I suspect you implied separate categories of accurate and inaccurate beliefs, but nobody voluntarily holds a belief they consider to be inaccurate, so you're not going to convince anyone by this line of argument.
I'm not sure how your conclusion follows from the premise. You do realise that social justice isn't actually a religion with a supernatural diety who can reveal truths, right? It has some elements resembling religions, its ability to weoponise the righteous fury of the followers, for instance, but you strated from the one that is definetely not fitting.
"would you destroy a beautiful rainforest so farmers could raise pigs there? (assume the farmers ..."
If it were the only place the pigs could be raised (unlikely) and there were no other way those farmers could support themselves (unlikely) and those pigs were ESSENTIAL to the common good (unlikely). Those who would destroy irreplaceable resources for unnecessary, temporary gain deserve neither.
“ Tertiary desires– These are desires that do not compel any action. Examples include “I want the situation to evolve in such a way that my present skills and capabilities are sufficient for making me rich, successful, etc”
I have desires for those sorts of things all the time. I want to be able to be as popular as Bruce Springsteen. I want all women to find me attractive. I want to play chess better than Kasparov.
But I don’t think of that as narcism. I just know I don’t have that particular talent or amazing good looks.
You still thinking you are a narcissist? You really don’t seem like one. At least in the way I understand narcissism.
“Learn about the Bush Family’s respected tradition of public service, famous Presidential places and symbols, and fun facts about popular First Pets Barney and Miss Beazley.”
Richard Hanania's article and your response gt me thinking... why are some preferences so strongly valued by society and others not?
Person with male genitals (presumably trans) want to use the women's change rooms at my wife's gym. My wife should just look away if she doesn't want to see male genitalia right? She doesnt want to be a transphobe, even if it makes her uncomfortable.
But why would asking the person with male gentalia to use the male change rooms be wrong? Because they're more comfortable in the women's room and comfort trumps all? Why is one person's comfort so much more valued than that of another?
Is it all just aesthetic preferences and some people think one is just better?
Hey there. You seem to be this comment section's hated-but-tolerated rightwinger. I hope that's not a mischaracterization. In the interests of good argumentation, I'd like to acquaint you with the stronger form of your point.
> why is one persons's comfort so much more valued?
"It's not. There isn't even any evidence that the trans experience comfort in this situation, and if they do it is surplus to the system's requirements. The purpose is demoralization. They've taken a page from the old Soviet playbook, and force you to mouth obvious and laughable untruths to degrade your sense of your own courage and your sense of your own integrity. You prove yourself a coward every time you pretend a mutilated or hormonally-poisoned man is a woman, and become less capable of fighting a system that wants you poor, exploited, divided, and cowardly." (Bonus points for anyone who can identify whose argument this is -- it's not mine.)
The stronger counter-argument goes like this:
> why is one person's comfort so much more valued?
"It's not. The good that the discomfort of the others is serving is not the comfort of the one, but the message of hope for all of us: no matter how broken, how wounded, how unfortunate we may find ourselves to be today, yet even now there is hope of transformation and acceptance. No matter how wretched, how alone, how despised we may think we are, the greater community of humankind is here to tell us that we matter, that our beliefs about ourselves matter, and that there will always be a place for us even if we make others uncomfortable with our wretchedness."
1) I'm perfect aware that isn't what you're getting at. I didn't say "oh excuse me did you actually mean to say [...]?" now did I? Someone else reading this may understand why Dalrymple's conceptualization of the problem is more insightful and interesting than what you said.
2) You might be careful using the phrase "word salad" on a psychiatrist's blog, as it has actual meaning. The topic under discussion, however, is discomfort -- specifically how much discomfort we can expect others to endure on our behalf. It is entirely possible that nothing about you, your physique, or your personality causes discomfort to anyone else, and you move through society requiring no acceptance from others. I congratulate you if so.
It's certainly true that there are cases where people appear to want to revenge themselves on real or perceived mistreatment by making others as uncomfortable as the law will condone, but I would hope these are exceptions that prove the rule. Most people who cause discomfort to be around appear to be keenly aware of it and hate it about themselves. Mostly they appear to try to solve this problem by avoiding locker rooms entirely, and perhaps one day architectural changes will have eliminated the locker room in favor of more private spaces.
Anecdata of n=1, but...personally, I'm much more comfortable with "rightwingers" and their open disagreement/hostility, compared to lefty "allies" who mumble mealy-mouthed acceptance even if internally they don't actually conceptualize of me as a woman. (Dating prospects tend to make this painfully obvious.) Maybe it's just due to autism, I dunno, but the latter feels much more like a cruel lie, and therefore despicable, than the former's so-called "hate" or "bigotry". I just really like knowing where I stand with people, clearly and firmly! Clarity of communication is good!
And I think it's more valuable to play on the "free market of gender" anyway, to compete in the Skeptical Leagues. It's fairly easy to pass in San Francisco, because everyone and their mother will bend over backwards to coddle your nascent fragile female identity, and if they don't then Authority will often make them. Even if one absolutely doesn't pass, society will generally pretend that you do, to no one's net benefit. Elsewhere, one must actually put in the effort to produce a Minimum Viable Presentation. I think this inculcates good habits, and helps meet the median American where they are, aesthetics-wise. What right do I have to force others to accept me, if I don't even try to make a good impression?
There are multiple factors taken into account. Most of the time the math works out, as far as I'm conсerned.
In your actual example, there are the questions of the strength of the preferences, how easily they can be compromised and other consequences. The ability to recontextualize nakedness is known to be much easier than explain oneself out of gender dysphoria. Even when trans person with a penis is in the same locker room, it's expected that you won't see this penis often unless you will deliberately try to. So it's quite easy to satisfy both preferences most of the time if trans person is in female locker room. Also male locker rooms are known to be much less safe for trans women than female locker rooms with a trans woman for cis women.
Notice that in cases where these assumptions are not satisfied, our intuitions changes as well. Suppose that the person in question is actively making everybody uncomfortable by showing of their genetalia. Or is actually dangerous for other women. Or isn't actually a trans person and just wants to be in a women locker room for less justifiable reasons. In such situations society tend not to allow them in the women locker room.
Post-op trans women have been using women's locker rooms since sexual reassignment surgery became a thing back in the 50s. And even for trans women who still had male genitalia, there were some places that would accommodate them as long as they were passable, had undergone some degree of physical transition, and made some effort to avoid showing their private parts. It wasn't a universal rule by any means, but nor was it an exceptional rarity. Saying "society would not have allowed them in the women's locker room, period" is definitely overstating your case.
>The number of self-identified left-handed people was microscopic until we applied brutal levels of social and even legal pressure to stop parents and teachers from beating left-handedness out of children.
Is that so ? Is there any evidence to support that being left-handed was something to hide or be ashamed of and that that was only reversed after widespread "left-handedness acceptance"?
Anyway, that kind of progressive fallacy always annoyed the living shit out of me. Somebody says "X was unheard of before X-ism, X is just a trend", and so, presumably to own them, a progressive replies "Oh yeah ? well, that other thing Y was unheard of before Y-ism as well. But Y isn't just a trend is it? gotcha".
But... but... the first person never asserted "everything which was unheard of before then was suddenly everywhere after a movement campaigning for it is just a trend"?, they're simply asserting that X is 1 particular case of that happening, which must be true for at least some of the things mustn't it ? Boney M fans were not a thing before Boney M, and then there were suddenly tons of them after the band got popular.
In order to demonstrate that transgendrism is more like left-handedness and not like Boney M, you have to (a) identify which traits make Boney M a trend and whose absence or negation make left-handedness not a trend (b) Prove or argue plausibly that transgendrism is on the same side as left-handedness is of those traits.
>nobody gets disowned, severely bullied, targeted with spite laws, raped or beaten to death for being left-handed nowadays.
Well to be fair, left-handedness is something you are born with, doesn't involve cutting off healthy parts of your body, doesn't involve breaking millennia-long world-wide social norms of sex seperation in certain critical areas, is objectively verifiable with an extemly simple test requiring no more complex tools than a paper and pen, doesn't have a disproportionate number of its members or defenders screaming obnoxiously at the top of their keyboards online and being favored unfairly by mega tech corps, doesn't result in suspiciously high profits for certain giant medical sectors,etc....
Also, the "raped or beaten to death" bit is throughly debunked, transgenderism is no better than random chance at predicting this when you control for other much more relevant factors. Your socio-economic status (e.g. a poor guy/gal living in a crime-infested city) and profession (e.g. a drug dealer or a prostitute in said city) predict this most reliably. As for "targeted with spite laws", I guess every law is a spite law when you can't understand why its supporters feel its necessary, you might as well ask a billionaire what's his or her opinion on taxes.
Good points and I appreciate you taking my musings seriously.
But then I have to ask... is the gym accommodating one persons preferences by interfering with many other peoples? Is the male change room less dangerous because of the fewer xy individuals there, so spreading them into the female room doesn't seem to be a fair solution.
And then you've got people like Richard Hanania who seems to have the preference with the strength of a thousand suns.
I think a large part of the problem is that there appear to be a lot* of sex abusers who suddenly seem to discover they're trans women when it comes to which prison they should be put in. While this is a rational choice on their part (they're much more likely to have the shit kicked out of them if they are put in a male prison), it doesn't make life better for the cis women who will end up as their cell-mates or serving time in the same prison as them.
If X has been sentenced and convicted because X raped women, does it make sense to send X to a women's prison? Even if X claims to be a woman? Even if X has (perhaps) started hormonal transition? Because in some cases, all that is needed is for X to declare that they self-identify as transgender, nothing else.
Swedish study on transgender offenders (all crimes):
"It is crucial to emphasise that this study looks only at those who have undergone hormonal and surgical transition, which is a much tighter group than individuals who self- identify as transgender.
MtF transitioners were over 6 times more likely to be convicted of an offence than female comparators and 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent offence. The group had no statistically significant differences from other natal males, for convictions in general or for violent offending. The group examined were those who committed to surgery, and so were more tightly defined than a population based solely on self-declaration."
Piece in "The Spectator" which tries to take a balanced look at the situation in the UK:
I broadly agree with the conclusion; there has to be some way to differentiate between those who are transgender and those who are exploiting that status to avoid criminal punishment or for other reasons. The trouble is that at present, we're stuck in a polarised situation where you either have to 100% accept "trans is if they say they're trans, and a woman is someone who feels they are a woman" with no doubts or caveats, *or* you are a transphobe TERF who is engaging in genocide.
There is no room for "maybe this person does identify as a different gender, but their biological sex is male and they are not safe people to have around biological females" or "I don't agree that trans women are women simpliciter, but I am willing to accede to such things as using their preferred pronouns in public". You have to be on one side or the other. And the really terminally online activist types are pushing for more and more extreme positions, so that if you're at all uncomfortable with what is being asked of you to accept without question, you don't really have anywhere to go other than full-on opposition.
*Not intended to mean any particular number, just "crikey this is more than once I've seen this one"
Some people take people's feelings or emotions as of utmost importance. "Feeling unsafe" is as, or more important, than "safe." I'm not one of them, but I do think that argument in society is gaining steam (or its proponents are ascending to higher positions, not sure).
I think there's a lot of complex situations which make this difficult. My own view would be:
(1) Person with male genitalia in female-only space like changing rooms, who otherwise passes close enough for female, and behaves modestly (e.g. wrapping a towel around their waist so nobody sees what is under it) - yeah, okay, let's not get too bent out of shape here
(2) Person with male genitalia who engages in behaviour as alleged at the Wii Spa (and if ever there was 'one person said/another person said' situation, here we go) or as alleged in other instances, e.g. walking around with it all hanging out and replying to requests to cover up with accusations of being harassed, of transphobia, and "maybe teach your six year old not to look at other people's junk" - boot their over-entitled backside out and let them change in the car park or wherever
The problem seems to be that all the cases we hear about are the type (2) cases, where's it's very difficult *not* to think "Maybe Blanchard's typology isn't that far off the mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard%27s_transsexualism_typology#Autogynephilia", are the cases that we hear about and that get into the media, so those form the impression of "this is the typical transgender person".
There's also the extreme cases where government bodies lean over backwards to make themselves look ridiculous in accommodating people, and while they are probably constrained by law so they have to do this, it again makes the entire topic look absurd: if this is an example of "this is a woman, don't believe your lying eyes", then there really is no point trying to be willing to compromise on "are trans women real women" or not:
Yes, if you're trans and still have the genitalia corresponding to your natal sex, you shouldn't go around waving your genitalia at people. More broadly, "don't expose your genitals to people" is a pretty good rule in general, and I fully support punishing those who violate it, trans or otherwise. But it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking "Group X bad" if all you hear is cherry-picked news stories about people from Group X doing bad things, regardless of how disproportionate those instances are. After all, none of the 99,999 other times where trans women used women's locker rooms without any issue (and in many cases weren't even recognized as trans) made it onto the news!
As for your links: I'll admit, I can't get behind the idea that someone's public gender identity should be determined *solely* by how they choose to self-identify and nothing else. Honestly, I think it borders on incoherence. But I don't see that as an inevitable result of trans identities existing. In fact, I think it actually contradicts trans identities by making them functionally meaningless - by the logic of self-identification, there's no need for anyone to transition and no real (i.e. non-arbitrary) difference between trans and cis people.
It's all about status gradients. Privilege is the metric by which progressives weigh competing interests. Those with more social privilege are expected to acquiesce to the preferences of the less privileged. It's the idea behind "don't punch down", but taken to absurd levels.
It's one of the metrics, yes. But the statement that it's the only thing that's going on is a strawman. I'm not even sure that it's more prominent amoung progressives than the opposite sentiment is among conservatives. We just pay it more attention because it contradicts the more familiar order of things where it's the less priviledged who are supposed to sacrifice their preferences.
I think from utilitarian perspective progressive aproach makes more sense. Logarithmic nature of utility functions means that extra preference satisfaction for already priviledged person gives less total utility than extra preference satisfaction from opressed one.
If one wants to make it a utilitarian argument...would it be incorrect to classify the "hard to accommodate" trans women as utility monsters? Ignoring the whole other valid line of argument about self-selecting into oppression, since at the end of the day, transgenderism fundamentally comes down to beliefs rather than biomarkers.
I mean, if you stretch the definition hard enough - sure you can call people with strong preferences utility monsters. Why would that be a good idea, though? Also as far as I know, trans women are generally not that hard to accomodate.
As a thought experiment, imagine meeting alien creatures who have twice as strong preferences as we do. Is it correct to discount these preferences in expected utility calculations? I'm not sure. Unless, these aliens' preferences or their strength were changed specifically to manipulate us, - this is where, I think, the intuition not to satisfy utility monsters comes from.
I'm not sure how self-selecting into oppression is a valid line of reasoning. Also I don't think one can separate beliefs from biomarkers in a meaningful way so that transgenderism became a fact about beliefs, instead of biomarkers. It's pretty clear, that being a transgender is qualitatively different from being a Christian, for example.
Epistemic status: gosh, personally-relevant culture war stuff irrationally upsets me, I think I'll bow out after this. Arguing from emotion rather than empiricism.
The way I mean to use the term is that - trans person wants to walk around in public like everyone else? Doesn't want to get fired from job, denied housing, etc. other situations where gender should be irrelevant*? Request (not demand!) basic courtesy like a preferred name? That kind of stuff seems mostly uncontroversial, even moreso as "passing privilege" accrues.
But that's just the motte. The bailey actually seems to be, based on modern activist agitation, to force complete equity across the board such that trans people (women usually) are treated exactly the same as cis people, even in situations where natal sex, genitalia, etc. should matter quite a lot. And such advocacy includes public pillorying of opponents as Hateful Bigots, ending careers over minor failures of orthodoxy, casting non-True Believers out of the contracting Leftist tent, censoring dissenting views (e.g. de-transitioners, unhappy parents of trans folks), etc, etc.
That's why I regard it as becoming a utility monster - ratcheting up the strength of preferences way beyond what most average people might consider reasonable accommodations. And then having the gall to insist that People Will Die if <x> policy isn't implemented, <y> norm isn't changed, <z> dissenter isn't deplatformed. (Did the movement forget trans people have existed for millennia without being "legal"?) Plus the gaslighting of any possible negative externalities, and handwaving away the suffering of people felled in the name of Progress as valueless deplorables anyway, i.e. their preferences don't matter. "Stop killing us", "you don't have the right to debate my existence". It's just too much.
(Aliens are a good thought experiment, since I'm pretty sure that's how a lot of conservatives view trans people. Maybe even the median person, though they might mouth along to tolerance after doing a cost-benefit analysis. They read the news, they know what happens when you speak up. I've come to realize that even so-called progressive "Allies" tend to have no real clue what it's actually like to be trans. Strawmen and -women abound, on both sides.)
Self-selecting into oppression: a somewhat uncharitable interpretation of transgenderism being defined by belief, and therefore, one could simply choose not to be oppressed by not believing one is trans. In this way it's similar to Christianity - one could stop being religiously oppressed by simply giving up faith. I'm skeptical of the evidence produced thus far about biomarkers, brain structures, etc. being causative of transgenderism rather than the reverse, and/or merely correlative; even Christianity is "heritable" to a degree. And if the social contagion theory has any meat - which I think it does, anecdotally anyway - then Confounders Abound.
(Yes, I'm fully aware many trans people don't view it as a "choice", and would experience immense suffering if required to forego their preferred identity. I'll readily concede this is a conspicuous weakness of my claims, since I'm not one of the choiceless trans and have trouble with that particular version of Typical Mind-ing.)
*Some jobs do have gendered/sexed requirements, and I think those are probably gonna be the most intractable cases. Like it seems reasonable if a strip club wouldn't want to employ a pre-op trans woman, if that's not the "product" they sell. It did upset me some years ago when Victoria's Secret got canceled because they didn't wanna feature trans models. That's dumb, VS has informally had an in-community reputation for years as one of the most friendly places for trans women to buy lingerie. Precisely because it's designed for uber-conventionally-attractive natal women, the ideal many trans women aspire to embodying!
> That kind of stuff seems mostly uncontroversial, even moreso as "passing privilege" accrues.
I don't think it's uncontroversial. There are lots of people for whom even this is too much. I could say that conservative motte/bailey is claiming that biological sex is a real thing/treating trans people without basic dignity, but I really dislike the motte-bailey framing, it can make a completely honest and valid preference revelation look like manipulation and fallacy.
What is actually going on, I think, is that there are people with quite different preferences toward trans acceptance, splitted into two opposing factions. Both factions are not monolith, there are more or less radical views in them held by different people. In general people with preferences for more trans acceptance are in pro-trans faction and vice-versa, but, due to the nature of polarisation, it's not very surprising when you meet a person with basically the same preferences but in the opposing faction. And of course, preferences of even one person is a spectrum. There is minimal acceptable for me level, median and the one after which I'd say that the society went too far. My personal Overton window. And while from the outside it may look like motte-bailey type of goalpost shifting, it's a completely valid way for desires to work.
Trans-activists are horrified by people whose Overton window includes constant misgendering of trans people considering them degenerates and so on. They see lots of them in their opposition. And thus the claims not to debate their existence is completely valid, and doesn't have to be some bad faith attempt to silence their opponents. Similarly for conservatives who judge progressives on the actions of the most crazy of them. Their concerns are valid in a sense that such people exist. It's still wrong to assume that all the other faction is like that. Suffice to say, that the memetic climate is extremely messed up and finding out the actual crux of disagreement between two factions is pretty hard.
I think that even amoung the most radical pro-trans activists it's a generally understood fact that biological sex is a real thing. Even more, I believe they could agree with the statement that in situations where natal sex or genetalia actually matters trans people shouldn't be treated the same way as cis. The objective disagreement, however would be in what are these situations. For them an example of such situation would be a transman visiting a gynecologist. For a conservative a transwoman with a penis being in a women bathroom.
> it's similar to Christianity - one could stop being religiously oppressed by simply giving up faith.
The important difference is that you can change your religion by the act of your will. You can't change your gender identity like that. There are transgenders who would like to just be okay with their assigned gender but they can't. In this sense having a gender identity is more like a belief in the color of the sky. It's not just a matter of faith, this belief is actually corelated with reality, and you can't change the belief without changing the reality.
> I'm skeptical of the evidence produced thus far about biomarkers, brain structures, etc. being causative of transgenderism rather than the reverse, and/or merely correlative
I'm much more skeptical about social contagion theory. Its unsuccessful attempts to explain sexual orientation and failures of conversion therapy do not give it much credit, its evidence are anecdotal and the theoretical mechanism doesn't make much sense.
With heretability of Christianity it's clear that the reason why children of Christians become Christian themselves is very dependent on nurture. We can also talk about some genetical factors favouring religious belief in general or more specific class of Christianity-like memplexes. But we know that Christianity itself wasn't in our ancestral environment thus we know that causality works like that: specific though patterns were evolved because they increased reproductive fitness->memetic selections finds a memplex fitting these patterns->Christianity spreads among people->Parents are passing their religion to their children mostly on memetic level.
But sex, sexual orientation gender identity, the feeling of ones body - these things existed in ancestral and were quite likely very important for the inclusive genetic fitness. Thus we expect that biological evolution actually created a specific patterns in the brain related to them and causality works differently than with Christianity.
“The male and female brain have structural differences,” he [Dr. Altinay] says. Men and women tend to have different volumes in certain areas of the brain.
“When we look at the transgender brain, we see that the brain resembles the gender that the person identifies as,” Dr. Altinay says. For example, a person who is born with a penis but ends up identifying as a female often actually has some of the structural characteristics of a “female” brain.
To my knowledge, most of the "brain differences" data we have is similar to with stuff like Alzheimer's...it predominantly comes from dead people. Which is cool, it just doesn't do much good for questions among the living of "can we find a better standard for assessing transgenderism than mere statement of belief?" There's stuff using, like, MRI scans and whatever, but...well, Scott's written over and over on how neuroscience is great at finding statistical artifacts and building massive edifices around them, only to fall apart years later when they don't pan out in practical reality. Colour me skeptical. We did this dance before with gays and lesbians and that largely went nowhere. Who could forget "born this way"? It was a great slogan!
Besides which, transgender advocates probably wouldn't stand for "gatekeeping" like requiring a brain scan before being prescribed hormones. I feel confident that the current implicit consensus is for access absolutism, no matter how much they appeal to the Official WPATH Guidelines(tm) or whatever. Having actually been through the Official Process myself - no, I can state pretty clearly that it's easy to game, especially in a more-friendly locale like the Bay Area. It's exactly the sort of "Guess the Teacher's Password" thing, where if you wanna be transgender and aren't a total idiot, it's clear which sorts of answers you're supposed to give, which sorts of life experience you're supposed to emphasize.
(Why would an accurate empirical test be useful? Because the most potent and convincing conservative critiques of gender ideology rely heavily on the "self-diagnosis of disorder" bit. And conversely, progressives couldn't use trans folks as a wedge to shift gender norms for everyone if it turns out they actually are biologically predetermined to be variant. Then it'd just turn back into a medical disease with medical solutions.)
"only to fall apart years later when they don't pan out in practical reality. Colour me skeptical. We did this dance before with gays and lesbians and that largely went nowhere."
Ouch!
"Then it'd just turn back into a medical disease with medical solutions." Yeah, that was the direction I was hoping for.
"I think from utilitarian perspective progressive aproach makes more sense. Logarithmic nature of utility functions means that extra preference satisfaction for already priviledged person gives less total utility than extra preference satisfaction from opressed one."
"Privilege" rarely is used by Leftists to refer to individual differences like some people having more money than others. It's more usually "I deserve the job and you don't because someone else who looks like you has an even better job."
This sounds as an obvious strawman. As if you haven't actually tried talking to many leftists to understand their views.
The Left considers privilege a systemic advantage which benefits one group of people and not the other. It's not about individual differences per se, but can approximate them very good in most of real life situations. Like it's not about one person just randomly being more wealthy than the other, but about all the ways how some people systemically tend to be more wealthy in our society and how being more wealthy in principle creates more opportunities to satisfy ones preferences.
Both? Priviledge is often used by leftist while talking about individual differences, they just do it, considering how systemical issues create individual outcomes and vice versa. And in my experience its talked about more often than specifically affirmative actions at work.
Your description of affirmative action is taken out of context, at best. It's not because "someone else who looks like you has an even better job" but something like "because of a historically unfair system that tends to give better jobs to some sungroup of people".
You may be able to find a leftist who said something very resembling your version of the statement due to not having time to explain or not knowing better. That would still not make it a fair description of leftist position. An analogy that comes to mind is explainig capitalism as "thousands of people dying of hunger so that one could have a very big yaht". Like yeah, sure, technically this thing may be happening, but that's just a bad side effect and doesn't actually have to be true for every capitalistic system. And of course it doesn't really give an understanding of what capitalism is.
There's one enormous flaw with these sorts of arguments: People are going to be really uncomfortable if a passable trans person uses the bathroom meant for their birth gender. A male-to-female trans person with visible female breasts going into a men's room is going to make the men there deeply uncomfortable. A female-to-male trans person with facial hair and a totally flat chest going into a woman's room is going to make the women there deeply uncomfortable.
In fact, I'd argue that making trans people use the bathroom of their natal sex is actually *more* uncomfortable for most people (not just the trans person) than the alternative. In a bathroom, you shouldn't be seeing other people's genitals at all unless you're peeking in a stall. In a locker room, the situation is a little different since people are naked in front of each other, but it's still easy enough to avoid seeing other people's genitals and prevent them from seeing yours by going to a corner and facing away. If you're really adamant about not being seen, you can just change in a toilet or shower stall and then bringing your clothes to your locker in a bag. (I've been going to gyms and spas and public pools for years, including some in relatively conservative areas, without any issue.) But seeing someone's gender presentation - their clothes, their breasts, their facial and body hair or lack thereof - is pretty much unavoidable from the moment they step into the bathroom/locker room. What's more likely to freak people out, a slim chance that a woman might briefly glimpse a penis if she happens to glance in the direction of an MTF at the wrong time, or the certainty of every woman in the room seeing a burly, bearded FTM (who they'd likely perceive to be a natal male, since they'd have no way of knowing he was born with a vagina) coming in to change?
A few years back, a Facebook friend of mine trolled a conservative group by posting a picture of FTM porn star Buck Angel - a buff dude with a shaved head, no boobs, and lots of facial and body hair - with the caption "should this trans person use the women's room?" and got exactly the responses you would expect. Some variant of "I would beat his ass to a bloody pulp if he set foot in the same bathroom as my wife/daughter" was a common answer. Now, I'll fully admit that this was a bad-faith Gotcha question that deliberately misled people into thinking Buck was MTF, explicitly for the purpose of making conservatives look stupid and cruel, but there's still an important point there. The very bathroom rules that these people support would ensure that Buck, with this XX chromosomes and vagina, would be *forced* to use the same bathroom as their wives and daughters. Do you really think that's something that most people would be okay with, even if they knew that Buck was born a woman? I don't think a lot of people would be cool with me using the men's room either, for similar reasons - including a good number of people who'd argue that trans women shouldn't be allowed to use the women's room.
Reframed in that light, the issue isn't "trans people's comfort vs. everyone else's comfort," it's "trans people's comfort and most other people's comfort vs. the insistence of people who hold chromosomes and genitalia to be the only things that matter." Now which side comes across as Utility Monsters? (Is that a particularly uncharitable framing? Sure. But no more uncharitable than acting as though every MTF is a pervy dude in a dress who clearly shouldn't be around women, and every FTM is an attention-seeking tomboy in a suit who obviously doesn't fit in with men.)
No, Buck Angel isn't post-op. He was born with a vagina and still has it. He just looks and sounds like a man in every single other regard. He's had surgery to remove his breasts, and possibly some cosmetic surgeries (though maybe not, testosterone can cause a lot of changes all by itself), but the term "post-op" usually refers to people who've had genital surgery and that's not the case for him.
I'm not post-op myself either, though I've had some fairly minor facial surgery, along with laser hair removal and electrolysis. Even my breasts aren't the result of surgery, just years on estrogen and progesterone.
If you mean that I'm "taking for granted" that most trans people have actually *transitioned* in some way, and that most trans women don't look like the people in Deiseach's links below, then sure. But I've known a lot of trans women, and the vast majority that I've seen really don't look like that.
My belief in the efficacy of *psychology* (I originally misremembered and thought psychiatry, but no) was eviscerated by this One Crazy Stat: Apparently, psychologists make up 3.4% of health professionals but account for 4.9% of suicides.
I know that One Crazy Stat analysis is super-fraught and perilous and dangerous and risky so I invite the super-smart commenters on this board (srsly, y'all impress me) to give me all the reasons why my mind shouldn't be completely blown...before I embarrass myself at some cocktail party.
I think there’s three things to keep in mind here.
Firstly, I’m not sure what their definition of “healthcare professional” is. However, since social workers and psychologists are apparently on that list, I’m guessing it’s a pretty broad definition. My guess is that psychologists (who need PhDs) are probably among the highest educated people on that list. Graduate students have 6x the normal rate of depression, so I think it’s a decent guess that the education is selecting for something mentally unhealthy.
Secondly, I think a lot of people go into a field after they have some positive experience with a member of that field. The way that happens for a psychologist is to go into therapy, which probably once again sorts you into a higher risk category.
Third, psychologists work in a fairly high stress environment. They’re hearing some pretty rough stuff, and will occasionally lose their patients to suicide.
If you look at the other positions with even higher suicide rates, notice that social workers, nurses, and physicians are all also even higher representation, I suspect for various combinations of the above reasons. Does that make you lost faith in the field of social work for example?
Hmm. I agree that this certainly doesn't look great for psychology, but I think there are at least 2 decent defenses of psychology that can be made here:
(1) The selection effect rules everything around us. It is well-known that different medical specialties have VERY different personality types, and so the fact that people who opt into a decade of training for the purposes of talking to mentally ill people all day are themselves below-average in mental health (compared to OTHER highly trained medical professionals, mind you, did the study give the rate of suicide compared to the population as a whole and/or non-medical professionals with similar IQs?) isn't the most surprising.
(2) Mental health almost certainly has a component that is socially mediated, possibly even socially transmissible. This means that talking to mentally ill people all day (& especially talking to them with the intent to understand them) would be expected to worsen someone's own mental health, all other things being equal. Thus, the suicide rate being 50% higher can in some ways be viewed as "only" 50% higher.
Again, these are possible defenses not definitive defenses. To ground them, you'd need access to more data, and that more data might or might not exist. For example, to ground (2), you'd want a natural experiment (controlling for genetics and economic factors) to see how much a person being exposed to someone who was extremely mentally unhealthy increased their suicide risk, and then from that try to bootstrap those numbers up to allow for a comparison with the elevated suicide risk of psychologists due to constant exposure to extremely mentally unhealthy people.
Similarly to ground (1) you'd need access to a pool of people who intended to go into a different specialty but somehow got randomly assigned into psychology (and all stuck with it so there wasn't a selection effect based on who dropped out).
In my undergrad days, it was common knowledge that you shouldn't date psychology students because they're all crazy. (Sure enough, I dated a psychology student and it turned out she was crazy.)
Psychology as a field attracts a lot of people who have a personal interest in mental illness. It's not that surprising to see them overrepresented in the suicide statistics.
I also got the impression that every medical specialty was populated by people with that affliction. Except that we don't allow kids to be pediatricians of course.
If "crazy" means something like "weird and dysfunctional", the demands of finishing medical school and internship or, for psychologists, university education and some kind of practical postgraduate training should filter out the crazier people, leaving something like the slightly silly party, high-functioning weirdos, to professionally work in mental health care. A good psychotherapeutic curriculum provides means of stabilizing one's own mental health a bit, too. But being weird and functional can still slip into " crazy" or "suicidal", especially under chronic stress.
There's a British documentary called "The Doctor Who Hears Voices" about a schizophrenic doctor being treated by another schizophrenic doctor on how to conceal her condition to maintain her position.
One thing I’ve heard a few times is that “it isn’t worth the time to vote” from an economic/utilitarian perspective. Could anyone give me the numbers on this? How many times more “potent” would your vote need to be to hit the break-even point from this perspective?
The key quote: "Georgetown University philosopher Jason Brennan (no relation to Geoffrey Brennan) applied the Lomasky/Brennan method to a hypothetical scenario in which the victory of one candidate would produce additional GDP growth of 0.25 percent in one year. Assuming a very close election where that candidate is leading in the polls only slightly and a random voter has a 50.5 percent chance of casting a ballot for her, the expected value of a vote for that candidate is $4.77 x 10 to the -2,650th power. That's 2,648 orders of magnitude less than a penny."
I didn't read the article, but the math here seems to be completely off. Anything in 2,650th power is not remotely comparable to 'number of people on earth', 'total amount of money' or even 'number of atoms in the universe'
The article doesn't give details. This sort of number can be calculated if one assumes something like a gaussian distribution of vote totals, and you get a probability of being the critical vote which is something like e^-(fractional lead * total number of votes).
What's wrong with this analysis is that there are always some unknown systematic biases in measuring that 50.5%-to-49.5% lead. Even if there is only a part-per-million chance of a bias which can only change the lead in a +-1% range, the probability that the race is _really_ a near-tie totally dominates the probability of casting the decisive vote.
Basically, in the real world, you _never_ know the true lead with a confidence comparable to what a gaussian model with a perfectly specified lead tells you is the probability of casting the decisive vote.
Yeah. If you look at the real data and real observed behavior, people are often surprised about the election results. They usually are off from polling by magnitude of several tens of thousands of votes.
Outside of the unlikely chance of actually changing the result of the election, voting as three benefits which made it worth it. By increasing order of importance and meta-ness
1) Even if it does not change the result, a 40/60 win is very different from a 48/52 win. Even in cases where the result of the election is a done deal, voting helps giving momentum to the politicians and ideas you support.
As an example, even if Mélenchon lost the first round of the French presidential elections, his surprisingly good score helped him build a coalition which went on to get a great result in the legislative elections (denying Macron an absolute majority in the assembly).
If your candidate wins, winning more helps him build political capital to actually achieve his campaign goals.
2) More votes = more democratic legitimacy. This is really important right now, given the threats on democracy from both internal and external sources.
3) Voting is a truth-seeking exercise. The person or party for which you vote reveals your actual political preferences which may differ from your advertised preferences. Knowing this is useful. Being forced to make a choice between equally distasteful options is also a great way to get a little introspection and a good motivation to actually inform yourself about politics.
"Why are all the parties effectively the same party with different names?"
Hmm... Similar to the old claim: "If voting could change anything, it would be illegal."
You have a point, but I think it is overstated. In 2016, I don't think that the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made _no_ difference.
( Albeit I was surprised at how little it changed. The GOP held Presidency, Senate, and House, and they _still_ were unable to repeal the ACA or to complete building one wall. )
"The primary purpose of elections is to mislead as many people as possible into believing this process can legitimize the parasitic rule. It cannot."
You have a point.
Politically, I'd prefer to see the median citizen have as much freedom as possible. Live options, which aren't punished by federal government, state government, employer, landlord, or twitter mobs. Regrettably (from my point of view), this isn't the usa as it is today, which is an extraordinarily punitive place, amongst other metrics a world leader in incarceration.
( This isn't quite the same as libertarianism. I don't think that letting e.g. Bezos use his full market and bargaining power with no limits except on force and fraud is going to maximize the freedom of the median person. )
>2) More votes = more democratic legitimacy. This is really important right now, given the threats on democracy from both internal and external sources.
No, it doesn't lol. If Republicans win an election with record high turnout, nobody on the left (i.e. the people who talk about stuff like 'democratic legitimacy') will be saying how great this is for America's democratic legitimacy. They'll go back to their usual routine of declaring that Republicans are a 'threat to Democracy' and how some policy that has nothing to with voting or elections (e.g. restriction of abortion rights) is an "attack on democracy" or "attack on democratic principles". Democracy is delegitimized when the left use ever more expansive definitions of 'democracy' that increasingly mean 'supports left-wing principles' broadly.
Regarding 1- and 2-, and outside of very small elections, your vote won't turn a 40/60 into a 48/52. It won't even change it into a 41/59, or a 40.1/59.9. I still vote, but I know my vote has near-0 value.
The real reason I vote is closer to 3-: it makes the whole experience of elections more relevant rather than simply spectate it.
Of course, but what I meant is that you can not count only the expected chance of changing the outcome of the election, there are additional benefits even when who gets elected does not change.
Are you a mistake theorist or a conflict theorist?
If you're a mistake theorist, the tricky part seems to be how to account for the possibility that you're wrong. On the slim offchance that your vote is the deciding one, there's an approximately equal chance that you've voted the wrong way as the right.
If you're a conflict theorist then you can at least have a higher chance of picking the party that enriches your team at the expense of the other.
This sentiment has always confused me, at least in real life (vs online), because the people who'd espouse it were ones whom I knew very well to not value their time highly at all. And voting seemed like a Trivial Inconvenience at best, at least if one didn't want to research much.
However, I do think there'd be a strong correlation with ease of access to voting. Growing up in the Bay Area, I assumed postage-paid early-access mail-in ballots were just how things worked for everyone everywhere all the time. Genuinely had no idea until adulthood that most people vote by...physically going to an arbitrary location on an arbitrary day and time, designed for the State's convenience rather than theirs. Even if they have the opportunity to mail vote. That's way more of a time commitment than I ever faced, so perhaps the median calculus is very different. Typical Mind fallacy strikes again!
"One thing I’ve heard a few times is that “it isn’t worth the time to vote” from an economic/utilitarian perspective."
This only makes sense if you assume that people are already using every minute of their time in a 100% optimal way or close to it, with voting as the sole exception. But that assumption is unlikely to be true for the vast majority of people, to put it lightly. If you're a renowned neurosurgeon and you have the choice between doing an additional life-saving surgery on Election Day or going to the polls, then by all means, please do the surgery instead. But most people aren't going to do that. They're just going to spend that hour playing video games or watching Netflix instead.
In my opinion, governments should clearly pay you to vote, or make voting mandatory. We don't need to tie ourselves into intellectual knots over how useful an individual vote is - we can recognize that voting, as a social practice, has extremely positive externalities, and we can ask the government to subsidize it.
Not making (at minimum) Election Day a federal holiday continues to baffle me. Is there simply no lobbying group for it? I wasn't even aware Juneteenth was A Thing until this year, and that's far less important in practical terms than minimizing entirely preventable barriers to voting.
It'd be good for the economy too. Think of the special sales and limited-time rebates! American shoppers love holidays!
2) like a proper, overeducated coastal elitist I'm in Boston, "The Cradle of Liberty"...
... I feel it's time to share my proper, overeducated coastal elitist 4TH OF JULY MUSIC PLAYLIST!!! (Sidenote: Feel free to imagine Kermit the Frog doing his nigh-epileptic-seizure "Yayyyyy!" thing with which he introduces the next act, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlJM4UhbQ7A )
Actually, only 5 songs come to mind at the moment (as well as yield to the filter "has an excellent, readily accessible YouTube version that I can find within 5 seconds"):
AREA 1 --- Hypervirtuosic Piano Transcriptions of Patriotic Music by Great Pianists of the 20th Century (as "score-videos" with the sheet music to boot!)
B) John Philip Sousa, "The Stars and Stripes Forever", arranged for piano solo by Vladimir Horowitz, performed by Vladimir Horowitz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3i1mVkqI34 (SIDENOTE: Bump resolution up to 720p to see the sheet music clearly Like all of Horowitz's hypervirtuosic arrangements that he played as encores in his mid-20th Century hypervirtuosic heydey, there's no official version of the score. All the scores in circulation have been transcribed-by-ear(-maybe-with-software-help-especially-in-regard-to-pitch-maintaining-slowing-down) by megafans with the requisite skills. As such, every comment thread for such pieces will have a few comments --- generally informed! --- about errors in the transcription at hand.)
AREA 2 - Female Singer/Songwriters Located in either in Mainstream Music (but with a reputation for being much "smarter" than the main of the mainstream) and Indy Music (and with a similar reputation for being much "smarter" than the bulk of indy music)
(Note: Both of these are semi-tragic vignettes set to music that happen to occur on the 4th of July, not patriotic songs per se.)
D) Martina McBride - "Independence Day" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuNUjy1VC3Q (content warning: husband-on-wife domestic violence and the wife's act of revenge for it... though expressed just elliptically enough it could receive mainstream radio play)
AREA 3 / E) John Stafford Smith, "The Star-Spangled Banner," arranged for orchestra by John L. Clayton (with Rickey Minor contributing some vocal arrangement), performed by Whitney Houston with the Florida Orchestra under Jahja Ling in 1991 at Super Bowl XXV (it gets a whole area unto itself): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_lCmBvYMRs
[Bonus content: As wayyyyy too much of my time these days is spent with various "music theory" Youtubes, here's an explainer of the arrangement itself by Charles Cornell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCBiTdFLuh8 . And if you need to go further down YouTube rabbit holes, here's Adam Neely's compare-and-contrast of Demi Levato's 2020 Super Bowl rendtion and Whitney's 1991: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_I8JMwAJuc ]
I'm not the right person to ask. I'm a homebody. The only times I ever --- as an adult, at least --- watched the fireworks from anywhere close the Esplanade was when I not only was doing my PhD at MIT, but living right on the riverside on the corner of Mass Ave and Memorial Drive in the original Ashdown House grad dorm (now Maseeh Hall, in honor of Fariborz Maseeh who funded its renovation -- yay! -- though the grad students got kicked out it and it's now an undergrad dorm --- boo!).
sorry I didn't see this in time, but remember this for next year. I watched the fireworks from that corner of Mass Ave and Memorial Drive last night and it was awesome.
Re: the SPLC feminist poll, at this stage I automatically assume the SPLC are wrong about everything. Their list of hate groups is pretty much "somebody told us this was a hate group so we included it". Whatever they used to be, right now they've degenerated into a fund-raising scam that relies on terrifying people that anti-Semitic groups are lurking in the bushes to drag their donors off and lynch them, were it not for the work of the SPLC, so send us another cheque please!
I find it disconcerting that in general, some specific highly romanticized biomes are generally valued as having higher worth than other less sexy biomes.
Kudzu is an invasive species, and Georgia is full of pines because they're the first trees to grow on abandoned farmland. A lot of the pine forests have already transitioned into hardwood.
1) This looks like pretty new/young growth. Give it time to fill in/out.
2) I think that and the one before it are perfectly nice scenes, I would be happy to be there (reserve the right to retract this if there's a giant paper mill just off camera or something).
Maybe another way to put it is that for me (and I suspect some others), nature is just aesthetic by...nature (ugh).
Some people say pandas are evolutionarily unfit because of how deeply their continued existence relies on human aid. I say appealing to the dominant species capable of reshaping biomes is an excellent fitness trait.
Why is this in any way remotely 'disconcerting'? Do you think virtually all preferences humans have are 'disconcerting'?
Most people think rainforests are beautiful. People value beauty. The end. Unless you think that all preferences for beauty are troublesome, then this is just special pleading.
You can't decide through logic alone that something is more preferable than other. Preferences ultimately have to be grounded in your values, i.e. ethics and aesthetics.
"Preferences ultimately have to be grounded in your values, i.e. ethics and aesthetics."
or simply in what one wants and likes. I have preferences for particular ice cream flavors over others, and those are purely sensual likes, neither ethical nor what I would call aesthetic. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Well, you're just wrong then. Sensual likes are exactly what constitute aesthetics, whether it's the visual sense telling you a slim girl is more attractive than a fat one or the sense of taste telling you that strawberry is a better ice cream flavor than chocolate.
I take aesthetics to be more nearly, as one of the definitions puts it: "the philosophical theory or set of principles governing the idea of beauty at a given time and place" I think you are extending the term to a broader set of senses than it is usually applied to.
When you wrote of aesthetics in your comment above, how broad or narrow did you intend it to be interpreted? I considered flavor preferences to be outside the usual scope of the term. Anon considers flavor preferences to be within the scope. What did _you_ intend?
...but apparenly Kant disagrees. Anyways, I don't think that it's possible to make a principled distinction, and it mostly looks like the case of aesthetics is only supposed to include lofty stuff that it's high-status to philosophize about.
Logical decision making is about the fulfillment of preferences. Or values or goals or utility functions, but those are all basically the same thing. Without preferences, logic gets you nowhere - even such a simple decision as "should I point a loaded gun at my head and pull the trigger", has no logical answer unless you admit a preference for staying alive.
I suspect what you find disconcerting is that other people have preferences different from your own. If that weren't the case, you could consider "preferences" to be some sort of universal absolute (e.g. being alive >>> being dead), pick a word more in line with a universal absolute ("utility function" works well there) and go about logically optimizing for the universal absolute utility function. But that doesn't work - even if there were a utility function that everybody agreed on, it would just be the formalization of arbitrary preferences that didn't come from logic. And since people in fact don't all agree on what the utility function should be, you have to deal with that disconcerting reality explicitly and always.
The logical thing, is we create and follow safety protocols. such as we don't point firearms at things we don't want to destroy ... whether that thing is myself, another, or some physical property. Furthermore, killing your self is illegal, so logically, we don't break the law.
We also have codified in US law—The Reasonable Person—people of sound mind would preserve their body. Thus, an EMT may not treat a person refusing treatment. However if a person refusing treatment loses consciousness, the EMT has implied consent, as a conscious person who discovers they're in failing health will logically consent to treatment which they previously refused thinking their situation was not deteriorating.
But as to preferences, yes that is where politics comes in to balance out competing preferences seeking to find a common ground.
There is such a thing as logic. It is a tool we use to achieve understanding satisfy preferences, it is downstream of preference, and it cannot ever tell you what your fundamental (as opposed to instrumental) preferences are.
We don't point firearms at things we don't want to destroy, yes. That is logic. Whether or not we want to destroy a thing, is preference. Maybe an instrumental preference logically deduced from some other fundamental preference, e.g. I like eating unmelted ice cream, my refrigerator keeps my ice cream unmelted, therefore logically I should prefer not to destroy my refrigerator and should not point a gun at it. Perfectly logical.
Perfectly useless, without that fundamental preference. Logic can't tell you whether or not you prefer eating ice cream, or even if you prefer being alive, so logic alone tells you nothing at all about where to point a gun.
A couple of weeks back, I saw a caterpillar crawling around in my room just before I went to sleep. For around 5-6 days after that, I was unable to sleep well in my room. I would wake up at around 2-3 am, and not be able to get back to sleep at all.
Exhausted and running on low, I began to sleep on the couch in the hall, but that didn't work very well either. I finally managed to sleep well in my room again after I visualized killing and crushing that caterpillar. I could sense waves of relief wash over me as I thought of pretty gruesome ways of killing the insect.
I wonder if anyone else has had similar experiences.
Well, a caterpillar is technically not an insect in the larval stage. It is a future insect though. Sorry for being entomologically pedantic. :)
I once lived in an apartment that was infested with cockroaches. I was napping in the living room when I saw one on the couch. I didn’t sleep on that couch for a long time. Not sure why those things gave me the heeby jeebies, but they always did.
I'm pondering this now. To me, it just seemed _obvious_ that even if an insect doesn't have six legs, it's still an insect.
(If you pull the legs off an insect, does it stop being an insect? If a mutant insect with only five legs is born, is it not an insect? Suppose scientists discover a species of insect that lost one pair of legs, but DNA tests determine it is still descended from another insect species.)
To you, apparently it seemed obvious that if an insect doesn't have six legs, it's not an insect.
Psychologically, what's going on here? Also, what do you think about transgender people?
As I mentioned earlier I was more or less going for a laugh. I googled it. Caterpillars are insects. They do have 6 legs and a bunch of creepy pseudo legs. As someone who overthinks things too much, I’m going to go out a limb and say you may be overthinking this.
It's almost impossible for me to sleep if there's a large-enough fly in my room, or a mosquito of any size. I end up staying awake for as long as needed to attempt a deathblow or trap/exclude the meddlesome devil. It's sort of like that Breaking Bad episode, "The Fly". But I gotta actually see the body...the mere thought of "I missed, it's gonna buzz/bite me as soon as I get comfortable!" keeps true sleep at bay.
Spiders do the same, except I generally refrain from killing them cause I rationalize they're net beneficial. (Or so the claim goes.) Arachnophobia is a serious thing though...
"Spiders do the same, except I generally refrain from killing them cause I rationalize they're net beneficial. (Or so the claim goes.) Arachnophobia is a serious thing though..."
I'm ambivalent about spiders. I'm happy to have them around to eat insects, and the webs some of them spin are beautiful. In this area, though, black widow spiders are common, and a typical spider in the house is not usually positioned so that I can see if it has a red hourglass marking or not, so it is difficult to tell if I can safely ignore one or not.
Yeah, I've gotten a number of really nasty permanent-scar spider bites over the years. "Daddy longlegs" types I find completely unobjectionable, they're kinda silly and harmless really. Anything else is...blah. I try to leave them alone as long as they stay out of "my space". But sometimes they insist on trying to paratrooper onto my bed or whatever, and then We Have Problems. Nothing quite like making a Reflex save as a spider's coming right at you...
There is no such thing as court packing
Article leaves it to Congress to organize the court
Sorry about that, I was on my cell phone at the time and the reply slipped away as I was typing. As you know, there is no post send editing with substack...
Article III, Section I of the Constitution states that “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”
Although the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court, it permits Congress to decide how to organize it. Congress first exercised this power in the Judiciary Act of 1789. This Act created a Supreme Court with six justices. It also established the lower federal court system.
Since Congress is empowered to change the court, changes are not court-packing
Over the years, various Acts of Congress have altered the number of seats on the Supreme Court, from a low of five to a high of 10. Shortly after the Civil War, the number of seats on the Court was fixed at nine.
Today, there is one Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court. Like all federal judges, justices are appointed by the President and are confirmed by the Senate. They, typically, hold office for life. The salaries of the justices cannot be decreased during their term of office. These restrictions are meant to protect the independence of the judiciary from the political branches of government.
From discussion on:
https://bachrachtechnology.com/wp/blog-family-planning-choices/
I think gay marriage is popular enough that even a failed effort to try and get it passed in the senate would create useful talking points for democratic senate candidates. With 70% support nationally for gay marriage, even a senator who's representing the 60th percentile most conservative state is likely to get some political backlash for voting against it.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/350486/record-high-support-same-sex-marriage.aspx
I agree that democrats should try and do this. I've seen a number of political commentators suggest this, and I don't know why congressional democrats haven't.
https://twitter.com/ne0liberal/status/1540643045644828672
The Idea that gay marraige or rights are "under attack" is absurd hyperbole.
The "threat" is based on Clarence Thpmas saying that recent cases should be "revisited". That's entirely because Thomas dislikes legal arguments based on the 14th amendment, and thinks any such ruling should be tossed aside and the opinion(s) be re-written from another starting point in the Constitution., to be valid.
His objections are technical, not meriticious. It's all a bit esoteric, legal scholars can explain it better.
But media and fund-raising Democrats and the Twitter cassandras are declaring it a crisis.
Alito's opinion says that this decision doesn't change anything re contraception, gay marriage, etc but doesn't have any real solid reasoning for that. I don't agree with Thomas but he is in fact following the logic of the majority decision where it leads.
I don't think anything will change with gay marriage, because it's popular and I expect the justices (on both sides) to operate with a view towards partisan politics. Overturning Obergefell would make gay marriage a much more salient issue, it divides Republicans and unites Democrats, and would lead to state-by-state fights.
On contraception, they might not overturn Griswold (even though, like Thomas says, it's open to attack on very similar logic, and like Roe has long been an object of scorn for conservative legal types) but I wouldn't be surprised if they "decline to extend" it and say that it doesn't apply to certain *types* of birth control.
"On contraception, they might not overturn Griswold (even though, like Thomas says, it's open to attack on very similar logic, and like Roe has long been an object of scorn for conservative legal types) but I wouldn't be surprised if they "decline to extend" it and say that it doesn't apply to certain *types* of birth control."
I agree about the legal logic. That said, a supermajority of fertile age American women not only approve of contraception, but are actively using it.
"In 2015–2017, 64.9% of the 72.2 million women aged 15–49 in the United States were currently using contraception."
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db327.htm
I expect that if SCOTUS overturns Griswold, they will find out what the phrase "third rail of politics" means. I'd expect that such a ruling would generate enough outrage to force _some_ change in SCOTUS, though I don't want to guess at what form it might take.
SCOTUS can't overturn Griswold unless someone challenges Griswold, which would at this point I think require passing a law banning some sort of birth control that could then be litigated up through the Federal court system. And I don't think there's a legislative majority in any state of the Union that's going to sign up for banning anything much past "morning-after" pills.
Probably one of the Red States will try to ban morning-after pills. But if that's all they do, SCOTUS has the easy out of saying "post-conception, so that's abortion not contraception, Dobbs rules, Griswold irrelevant".
I recently learned that morning-after pills actually *prevent fertilization* as their primary--or perhaps only--method of action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_contraception#Mechanism_of_action
"SCOTUS can't overturn Griswold unless someone challenges Griswold,"
Agreed
"which would at this point I think require passing a law banning some sort of birth control"
I'm not sure - there might be a red state which still has a birth control ban on the books from before Griswold, and might just need to start enforcing it. Given how the political winds have shifted since 1965, I think we can safely rule out Connecticut as the challenging state.
Yeah, there is a hazard that some states may ban contraceptive methods that prevent implantation of a zygote, and SCOTUS might call that abortion. Yetch.
Not the 14th amendment as a whole, but rather "substantive due process". He thinks the "privileges & immunities" clause instead does most of the work.
Intracoalition bargaining. It's also why weed isn't legal. The Democrats have a wing who are explicitly pursuing (in David Shor's words, a former adherent) the idea of being as left wing as is viable and waiting for a recession or Trump or something to sweep them into power. Then they can pass a relatively far left agenda. These people are effectively accelerationists who will block good legislation in the hopes of losing the cause but winning the issue to get more Dems into power. More cynically, they want to bundle their unpopular ideas into their popular ones.
It was always a bad strategy in my opinion. Not the least because some traits of the Democratic party make that less likely. The Republican strategy of slowly and steadily building institutional power in local politics and the judiciary and all that always seemed to me like the more sensible option. And I unfortunately appear to have been right.
In more normal times this group is simply ignored or pressured. It's a subset of the progressive caucus so it can be outflanked (just as hardcore moderates can be) if you have some spare votes. The Democrats have no spare votes though. It's a dead tie in the Senate and pretty close to a tie in the House. This means the only things that get done are what Joe Manchin and AOC can agree on. And there's not that much in that category.
Because doing more than one thing a month is too taxing for the gerontocratic powerbrokers (a criticism that applies to both parties for the past ~20 years)
You are both partly right. trebuchet is right that it is often used in such a manner, but I didn't read Int's post that way at all... It was more of a 'why is this guy so obsessed with culture war issue X when his expertise is in unrelated subject Y'.
No, trebuchet is just plain wrong here. If you actually respect your interlocutor, you should take their words at face value, regardless of how *other people* speak and what ideas they usually link together.
It's harmful for discourse to uncharitably read into others' statements. If we accepted this norm, it would be literally impossible to say anything adjacent but not identical to a popular position.
grumble, unavoidable reuse of abbreviations, grumble.
I assume "IR" means "International Relations" here, but I'll bets lots of STEMM people read it as infrared...
If you didn't intend to signal the "I bet he's in the closet and compensating" insinuation, your comment was made in a way that I perceived that insinuation. I think you are inadertantly making a homophobic slur, and if it was my I'd probably want to edit my comment.
"Crying Women" is good observation, though, that has been brought up by both the right and the left (the latter by including "White" in the middle)
Indeed. I think his obsession with us and with enforcing his specific concept of masculinity (which is closely linked with the former) is to the point that it negatively impacts the quality of his core work in international relations, because he clearly has a significant bias against governments and countries that he sees as "woke" or with leadership that is insufficiently masculine to him and he intuitively likes and respects countries that position themselves as anti-woke or which engage in more masculine posturing.
Hanania thinks he's got it bad? I have to cope with Boris Johnson deciding (or having it decided for him) that he's Catholic (for however long this marriage lasts, anyway): 😣
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/30/boris-johnson-carrie-symmonds-married-catcholic-church
https://religionnews.com/2021/06/17/boris-johnson-and-britain-are-having-their-own-catholic-crisis/
Seemingly as a baby he was baptised Catholic (because his mother was) but he was pretty much raised as an Anglican and, hey, Church of England, you can keep this one. No, really, no need to thank me.
Deiseach,
Stuff like that really makes me miss your wit over at DSL!
Hi, Plumber, hope life is treating you better!
Tbf I found in myself that reading Hanania is sufficient to balance out my antiwokeness. I guess I must be a true enlightened centrist
Everyone has prejudices - you just don't like his.
I don't have to buy that prejudice amounts to valuable insight.
The most charitable explanation is that he is doing it for attention/clicks/money. But thats a pretty shit reason to go around being a bigot.
It seems to me that his views would be regarded as entirely normal among most Democrats in, say, 1985.
But it's 2022?
Most people in 1985 were huge homophobes (though one party had fewer of them and still does). This is not surprising in the slightest. Most people in 1985 also didn't know someone that they knew was gay and hadn't met an openly gay person in a normal context. Once they did (as more gay people came out), many of them changed their views on gay people over time. It's hard to viscerally hate a group when you know members of the group and they're just normal people like you. This is almost certainly a big part of the reason for the shift in opinions on gay people since 1985, enabling the larger social shift from homophobia being the enforced default to it being un-cool to be openly hateful toward gay people, outside of specific circles.
It's to keep the outrage machine working in his favor (much like apparently all other politics influencers)
My thought as well
I can see the Scott review: "Turkey, Now By Prescription".
I notice that a great many of the common tryptophan-rich foods are not vegetarian and/or not vegan. Anecdotally, there's a lot of overlap locally in a Venn diagram of "people I know who are/have been suicidal" and "people I know who are/have been vegetarian or vegan". Wonder if coincidence. Of course, >suicide and >control for confounders is...challenging, to say the least...
Tryptophan is not rate-limiting above a certain point, you need to supplement 5-HTP (which theoretically lets you get into physiologically dangerous levels of serotonin). It seems like a red herring tbh.
"If God creates time, *when* does God create time?"
When does the Big Bang create time?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-what-existed-before-the-big-bang
"Suppose we ask: where did spacetime itself arise from? Then we can go on turning the clock yet further back, into the truly ancient "Planck epoch" – a period so early in the Universe's history that our best theories of physics break down. This era occurred only one ten-millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. At this point, space and time themselves became subject to quantum fluctuations. Physicists ordinarily work separately with quantum mechanics, which rules the microworld of particles, and with general relativity, which applies on large, cosmic scales. But to truly understand the Planck epoch, we need a complete theory of quantum gravity, merging the two.
...But our focus here is on explanations which remain within the realm of physics. There are three broad options to the deeper question of how the cycles began. It could have no physical explanation at all. Or there could be endlessly repeating cycles, each a universe in its own right, with the initial quantum state of each universe explained by some feature of the universe before. Or there could be one single cycle, and one single repeating universe, with the beginning of that cycle explained by some feature of its own end. The latter two approaches avoid the need for any uncaused events – and this gives them a distinctive appeal. Nothing would be left unexplained by physics. "
" It makes no sense, or at least is very difficult to conceptualize that this timeless cause would create the universe *at a specific point in time*, and then let that universe *evolve* on its own *in time*."
The simple (idiot's) answer to that is that there was no 'time' before the universe began, so it was not until *after* the creation of the universe that we had time, or specific points in time for it to begin at, or to evolve in.
My understanding is that the materialist/non-religious answer to 'what was there before the universe?' is 'this question makes no sense, because there wasn't a 'before' or an 'anything' to exist'. So if the sciences can get away with that, why not religions?
I think one difference between science and religion is that science says, "These equations have accurately predicted every observation we've tried so far. Yet, when we run them backwards past the Planck time, we get a very sophisticated version of division by zero. Therefore, there is some significant aspect of reality we do not yet understand; and we will forbear to speculate on it until we can devise some way to express our guesses in terms of testable predictions. Clearly, there is a lot of work yet to be done". By contrast, religion says, "Certain things, such as the origin of the Universe, are a priori unknowable; and therefore you must take it on faith that one specific deity performed one specific miracle to get the whole thing started. Yes, it just so happens to be the one deity we believe in, lucky us. And no, you don't get to ask any more questions -- which part of 'unknowable' did you not understand ?"
One problem with the religious approach is that they have applied the same kind of reasoning in the past to things like life, consciousness, the motion of the planets, lightning, disease, and pretty much every other phenomenon that we understand extremely well today.
As a Catholic, I understand God to have created continuous time as we understand it, but for causality to have existed prior to that. That is to say, things happened in sequence, maybe as "integer times" where each "action" happens instantaneously, and each being gets as long as it likes to think in between any two actions.
God isn't bound by the same rules as reductionism - under reductionism, anything possible is necessary (sort of), but God can be capable of things without doing them. I don't find the fine-tuned argument convincing, but if I did, the fact God might have created other universes wouldn't convince me that he did. (I'm not convinced by the fine-tuned argument because I don't know why the universal constants took the values they did, so I don't know how easily they could have varied to give us an uninhabitable universe).
Well, maybe God experience time with a p-addic metric while we are sadly limited to the Euclidean distance ?
The important thing in time isn't the metric, it's the order. What order would you choose on the p-adics, and what would the consequences be?
There is no order (that I am aware of) that is compatible with the metric structure on the p-addic, that's the fun part.
I think that most measures of empathy are probably bogus and the fact that you can read the emotions of your close friends well sounds to me like you have empathy, but the fact that you apparently can't imagine what it's like to be someone else is intriguing, though it could be just a misunderstanding of what that means. Have you ever tried the Ideological Turing Test [0]?
[0]: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/ideological-turing-tests
No Official Diagnosis(tm) for me...it's so damn expensive as an adult, and may require shopping around. I only learned a few years ago that basically my whole family and teachers in early school thought I had autism, but chose not to pursue cheap diagnosis in childhood because "does well in school so who cares, lol". #welp
I guess I'd phrase my experience as...finally letting myself not feel bad about treating other humans as NPCs by default. (Good friends become PCs, fellow party members.) There had been lots of second-guessing of whether I "really" "felt" "empathy", and sometimes that made me feel like a soulless cyborg or whatever. So getting permission to think of it as just how I am, and not some easily-fixed defect, let me shrug off a lot of guilt and pain that I'd not really been aware was on my back for years. It actually became much easier to work on interpersonal skills once I ceded that task to System 2, rather than trying to force System 1 to step up in ways that it simply wasn't designed to. (Rationalist writings have helped me fill in a lot of those social-understanding gaps, something I'll forever be grateful to the community for.)
Emotional empathy isn't fully experiencing what it's like to be another person. It's feeling some emotion similar to the emotion you perceive that another person is feeling, although your emotion might be more muted and definitely not exactly the same.
Examples:
1. Experiencing discomfort when you watch a person injure themself
2. Experiencing happiness when you watch a person smile and laugh, especially someone you care about
3. Experiencing "secondhand embarrassment" watching an embarrassing situation
Emotional empathy is definitely influenced by cognitive empathy. For example, if you realize that an injury is not real. Still, to me it feels very crude and potentially inaccurate compared to cognitive empathy. But I may have some sort of ASD myself.
That prose sounds familiar...did you also (attempt to) read the (doorstopper) "Notes on Empathy" LW post back in May? I *think* it got linked to by Scott in a links roundup or open thread or something, but can no longer find the correct pingback. It was a weird read, knowing this is how Typical Minds are Supposed To Feel, Apparently. Humans are very strange.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SMziBSCT9fiz5yG3L/notes-on-empathy
My understanding was that there are two components of empathy, affective empathy and cognitive empathy, and it seems that you seem to have a high cognitive but low affective empathy.
https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/7/6/727/1645655?login=false
This is a super interesting reference. Thanks for sharing it, and Wynnie for the original question.
Yep, it really is.
I really like the three examples Jared gave and would be curious to hear your experiences with them.
To chime in from the more "empathy is a real thing" angle though, I definitely imagine what it's like to be someone (in limited scope), and feel their feelings (as best as I can copy at least) in certain situations.
It's decidedly not an "always on" kind of thing but I know some people for whom it nearly is. The better I know someone and the more I care about them though the easier it is to feel what theyre feeling.
It's typically not, like, an overwhelming emotion. The first shadow of it is pretty weak and involuntary, but I can choose to lean into it or pull out of it. And if I really deliberately try to simulate their situation with careful cognitive effort I can make it way stronger. (Usually for negative emotions more than positive ones sadly).
In normal situations, I can imagine how another person might (or might not) be feeling. For me, it's not all that different from imagining how I might feel if something happened to me. For example, I was once part of a group activity where I didn't mind skipping the last half hour so I could do a different activity, but I had a friend who attended the first activity and skipped the second activity. When I suggested that they skip the first activity, they said they'd feel bad about it. I didn't feel like I understood their reasoning until I imagined myself feeling obligated to attend something, and I imagined/predicted/simulated the sensation of guilt I would feel if I was missing something like that.
Put another way, when I notice that someone is happy or I reason about them being happy, my idea of "happy" contains an emotional "video" of how I would feel if I was happy.
(By the way, is it really unimaginable for you to ask what it would be like to look out the back of your head, or was that just a throwaway remark? That's quite natural to me - if I close my eyes and imagine what's in the room I'm in, I always imagine how it looks from some point of view. Even if it's just a schematic view, I imagine it as a space I'm looking around.)
I was never officially diagnosed, but have it by all accounts, and learned empathy much later in life. There are at least 3 kinds of empathy: Cognitive (understanding another's perspective, even if it is very different from yours), Emotional (feeling the same emotions) and Compassionate (the urge to support and help). You probably understand and feel at least some of those. You can start with the analytical approach you are talking about, but, assuming you yourself are able to feel strong feelings, as most people do, you can learn to map what another person feels on a similar feeling you experienced. Of course, one needs to learn to recognize and name their own feelings first, which is something a person with Asperger's should be able to do, because it is analytical work ("oh, this thing I am feeling is conventionally called anger/fear/jealousy/resentment/grief/...").
There is a danger to this approach though! Once you learn proper empathy it is very hard to modulate it, since you don't have a natural immunity to overdoing it, unlike those who grew up with it. And so you may be prone to being sucked into helping others too much, at the expense of your own health and needs, often without even realizing it.
Tread carefully!
I relate to that. My Grand Theory of Cognitive Empathy ("putting yourself in someone else's shoes") is that cognitive empathy = having a good model of yourself + having a normal enough brain that you can project this on others.
Consider this scenario: imagine you are a person with a fairly typical brain, preferences, and patterns of emotional expression (for your culture/gender/social position/etc.), and you have a pretty good internal model of yourself. When you end up in a situation where you need to anticipate someone else's emotional response, all you need to do is input the scenario into your self-model. Because you're pretty typical, most of the time this will work - things that cause you pain cause other people pain, and things that make you happy make other people happy.
On the other hand, if you're a person with an atypical brain this doesn't work. The things that cause me pain don't actually cause other people pain (fuck vaccuum cleaners), and the things that make me happy don't make other people happy. As a kid I tried modelling other people as agents who work like me, and discovered very quickly that this is a terrible idea and ends up making bad predictions almost all of the time. Instead, I have to maintain a second model for neurotypicals that includes things like "okay with loud noises" and "enjoys being in crowds" and "likes surprises" and "feels sad when people try to engage them in parallel play instead of interacting". Like you, I often feel like I have to apply these corrections per-person, though as I've gotten older I've picked up some more general rules of thumb.
But, notably, there isn't a difference between these two people's ability to "put themselves in someone else's shoes". I don't have any trouble imagining a person who is in a room with a vacuum cleaner and predicting my own response. The problem is that *other people respond to vacuum cleaners wrong*. Because I can't use the shortcut of modelling myself in the scenario, it ends up being more costly for me to predict other people's responses, and I'm more likely to end up being wrong.
One piece of evidence for this view is inter-cultural communication. Neurotypicals are frequently absolutely baffled by situations where they interact with people from other cultures. Norms about personal space, tone of voice, volume, eye contact, physical touch, etc. vary widely around the world. This often leads people to misread signals and accidentally cross boundaries. If cognitive empathy actually worked straight out of the box, this wouldn't be an issue - neurotypicals would be able to recognize discomfort or approval regardless of cultural background. (The solution? Learn a new model for people from another culture, or better yet learn how to model many individuals from that different culture and then notice patterns.)
Other examples include men struggling to understand women and vice versa, gaps in cultural understanding between young and old people, and what's sometimes called the "autistic double empathy problem", where autistic people are often much better at modelling/communicating with other autistic people than with neurotypicals, which suggests that some fraction of "autistic communication issues" are actually "autistic-neurotypical communication issues".
Imho the lacking empathy piece of aspie diagnosis isn't getting at the fact of or the ability to experience empathy and instead is making an observation about how an aspie processes emotions (via verbal analysis) and expresses them verbally. From an aspie perspective, if you make a comment of rich observation with a lot of detail that is accurate and provides knowledge and good feedback, that's expressing empathy (see how much I understand and can relate! see how I'm explaining to you why you feel the way you do!) but to those on the receiving end for whom emotions are experienced via feelings and not words, having their feelings explained feels way too direct, cold and not empathetic at all (almost as if they are being called out and being accused of malingering/faking/playing the victim). In other words, the disconnect is in how aspies communicate and share their empathy with others, not the fact of being able to understand and relate to another's feelings and emotional needs. Even the way I've just expressed this here displays this very tendency.
This at least is how I've experienced it; perhaps it is just one of many ways to see it, but I am convinced that the disconnect is about the how of communicating/identifying feelings and not the fact of feelings/emotional needs themselves. I'm currently working at finding ways to reign in my verbal over processing and identify actual emotions and the physical feelings that go with them in a bid to be more approachable and open, aka to get out of my head and be present. The struggle is real yo!
You are definitely missing something that's a common experience for me; I'm very high in affective empathy, so I experience other people's emotions quite frequently. I'll describe a couple of typical scenarios, to hopefully paint a picture of the thing I experience.
Suppose I have a list of tasks to do to prepare for a family trip, and I miss something on the list by accident. When my wife is running down the checklist and hits the one I missed, her facial expression and body language changes slightly to express disappointment. I don't actually see those changes though; instead, I immediately feel a void of disappointment mirrored from her (and probably amplified from her experience.)
Suppose I'm turning on a kids show on TV for my 2-year old. He's not very verbal, so he can't ask what I'm turning on. He stares hopefully at the TV as I cursor through the apps, and then a big smile slowly grows as I pick 'Netflix' and then even bigger when I pick 'Cocomelon'. I don't really experience this as 'he's smiling'; instead I experience his growing excitement and anticipation myself.
Actually seeing facial expressions and body language changes for me is like actually reading letters when I'm reading a book. I just don't SEE letters usually; I see words, or even skip words directly into meaning sometimes. I can see letters if I slow down and carefully pay attention to them, but it's not part of the normal 'reading experience' (till things get confusing and I have no idea what a word is/what emotion is making someone do what they're doing.)
I think it's important to note that having empathy doesn't make you *good* or *better* than not having it. It has an unjustified positive valence in our culture in my opinion. Affective empathy is a brain tool. It's a superpower for navigating some social situations, and kryptonite in others.
I tend to not think about people around me too much, as a defensive mechanism, because I get too sad about their lives.
How do you feel about Scott's bottomless pit of suffering post?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/27/bottomless-pits-of-suffering/
c.f. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas
I'd think about it in a practical way and as a skill many people have to varying degrees. If you care about and have done well in predicting what makes those around you happy and you have pro-social values and actions over the years, then there is no problem.
The world is full of assholes and uncaring people who don't have any sort of diagnosis. Often differing values and cultural contexts are pathologies needlessly into disorders. But what is disorderly in one culture to challenge other people to duels and kill them is entirely orderly in another culture or in a different historical context of our own culture(s).
So while it can be an interesting intellectual game to imagine yourself in others feelings or other peoples emotional states or thought patterns...it may be less of an existential issue than it appears to be when delivered from the high priest of mental diagnoses...which are themselves categories and boundaries which HAVE changed dramatically over time and have near zero application in other cultures.
What was right or how much empathy existed in PNG cannibals who hunted and ate their enemies and were celebrated as great warriors by their people?
So if this isn't causing a problme for you, then that's fine. Maybe you'd make a poor author and be unable to imagine or write about the inner emotional lives of others, or maybe you'd end up with a strange or avante guard or simply different novel if you wrote one or have written alerady.
But it really falls into the so what category and doesn't seem like something that is likely to change and is a semi-fixed category and/or simply part of who you are. Autism types do well as long as they are not indoctrinated into violent or anti-social cults. If anything I'd guess the crime and murderer rates of austism spectrum types is lower than the general population, but it'd be interesting to know. I also think the outright abusive asshole personality and behavioural types are less common in autistic people since sadism is an emotional drive they lack or are limited in having....in my experience of asberger types and functional autists at least.
I built Read Something Interesting (www.readsomethinginteresting.com) to be a place to find thought-provoking longform writing.
What would make it a site you'd visit regularly? What would your dream media site look like? Where do you usually go to find things to read?
There actually is an email newsletter version that predates the website: Thinking About Things (www.thinking-about-things.com)
I saw you advertise this on an open thread a few months ago and have enjoyed using it so far.
I went there expecting to read something interesting, but I just saw some weird animated text, so I closed the tab.
The same. Websites used to have portal/entrance pages with various animations and other useless content but it is now gone, for a good reason.
Same reaction, and really questioning the design choices including the pointless initial landing page. The first article I saw didn't fit properly in the frame, but I guess one can just click through to the source.
No animation, unless absolutely necessary. Short loading time. Shows content immediately. No JS unless absolutely needed.
(I bounced quickly)
Wow this website is amazing. I will definitely have to spend some more time on it vs on Twitter.
I have tons of blogs saved that I should visit. I tend to listen to podcasts, though I have realized that I listen to too much and sometimes having quiet time to have my own thoughts that aren't related to my content consumption to be peaceful.
I agree, an RSS feed would be good. The site is fairly accessible with javascript turned off. Reading on a phone I prefer not to have to scroll inside of a frame. Curating online articles is hard. I have no good advice on that. Best of luck to you.
This is pretty great. Reminds me a lot of StumbleUpon, which I spent many many hours using in my youth.
Some means to curate what does or doesn't get shown would be helpful. I'd personally love to see tech and psychology content, while others might prefer politics or history themed posts. Either way, great job, hope you keep working on it.
Oh dear, I'm not sure I can get past your name. How am I sure you are not out to infect me with your ideas, which then cause my brain to explode, and your ideas travel on?
Half kidding...
Agree with others. How about four compelling blurbs from 4 options I could go read, with links to those essays? Use some method to generate 4 different blurbs every day.
My experience: click site, see weird text being changed real-time. Whatever. Click ENTER. Wait 15-20s while nothing happens. Close tab.
I've been looking for something like this for some time, without quite being willing to build it myself, so, thanks!
Something that would keep me coming back is playlists (mine and others'). But I think I'll be coming back anyway.
Also, a landing page with five or six titles to choose from.
Also, please don't bury the submission page!
Agree with the compelling blurbs that Philo mentions. See https://www.aldaily.com/ for an example of what not to do (unless increasing general readership is your goal, in which case, probably do what they do).
Agree with most others on removing the landing page.
New suggestion: paired contrasting articles. Help us counter our confirmation bias by making us curious about contrasting points of view.
Related examples:
https://www.pairagraph.com/ actually commissions contrasting submissions (and on less relevant topics, so did the final page of the New York Times magazine - perhaps they still do);
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ lists left and right sources, in alternating order.
Thank you for putting this effort in, so far and going forward.
>What would make it a site you'd visit regularly?
A reason to think that your definition of interesting intersects with mine.
Before clickling the link, I'm going to guess it defines "interesting" as rat-adjacent like AI, crypto, EA, vaguely progressive politics, the happenings of the tech sector, and blue-tinted cultural comentary, etc, and I don't find any of those things to be particuarly intersesting when not written by unique voices like Scott. I'll click now and report back.
It appears to load PutANumOnIt in a hosted frame, and when I reload loads up a bunch of rat-related content. I click on About and am greeted by a history lesson, but no explanation of what your website is about. I have no interest in getting past the history lesson to see if you actually say what the website is actually about.
So, I don't see anything interesting to me here. This is probably a good resource for people who think exactly like you do, but of minimal value to the rest of us.
Also, the UI is just abominable, as others have mentioned.
What's your report? ;)
I used to check longform.org and longreads.com almost daily, and read on average 3-5 linked longform articles a week. Unfortunately longform.org has ended its article recommendation service and is now just a podcast, and longreads.com posts less frequently and has changed its website layout to something messy and complicated. It's hard to tell what an article is about without opening it, and because it might be featured several times in the layout and for several weeks, it's hard to tell if I've already read it.
So - features I would like to see in a longform aggregator:
- Simple layout where new posts appear in chronological order, so I know what I have already seen and what is new
- Works well on mobile: most of my reading time is when I'm away from large screens
- Brief summary of the article (not clickbait or blather) so I can make an informed decision about whether it's worth my time
- If it's behind a paywall, or requires a login, or the linked website is especially egregious on mobile, I would like that to be in the article summary
- Wide range of topics and viewpoints
- Either update really often, or update on a set schedule, so I know I can go there at x time and probably find something new to read.
I just had a look at your site - I like the random article concept a lot, but I would probably be a much more frequent visitor if I could also just find a list of stuff in chronological order, perhaps searchable or categorised by topic. If that's on there, I couldn't find it quickly.
The content is good, and I found a few articles I enjoyed. The landing page is unnecessary, and I kept getting articles that weren't viewable from your website.
I always and forever will knee-jerk away from EA stuff, and I'm not always sure why. I'm sure with the bigger "EA" branded writer-funding; they've already decided on a "best" philosophy and are pretty much just hiring PR people to promote it (i.e., Utilitarian Leftism, afraid of AI, depersonalized giving structures, etc.).
But where I'd like to think that's reasonable, I have a lot less reason to dislike the idea of people like Cowen/Collison promoting various kinds of research/tech and I have the exact same reaction. Why? It's not sour grapes, probably; I don't think Cowen gives much to the few rationalist types he funds for writing, and I wouldn't expect the others to fund that kind of thing at all. It's not that I disapprove of the tech funding - I'm not that familiar with it, and I don't understand most of it.
It's not just me - there's this pretty big and growing anti-EA sentiment going around. What is it that makes it such a turn-off?
> people give charitable donations to the opera or to poor people in their home town, and that's a complete waste of money.
that is quite idiotic presentation and not really effective. And not really true ("complete"). Proper way to introduce it is something like
> people give charitable donations to the opera or to poor people in their home town, which is great but one can make far more good with the same amount of money
See also https://xkcd.com/871/ which seems to demonstrate that it is not an isolated mistake.
My best guess is because it sounds increasingly like a crazy cult.
Could you elaborate on the cult vibe? Is it just the AI-risk folks, or is it more general?
I would say that EA does, by its very nature, have a tendency to take over people's lives. Once you've accepted the premises of EA then you're morally obliged to rearrange your whole life to support it rather than selfishly serving your own interests. If you hang out with other EAs then you'll feel social pressure to get drawn ever more deeply into the cause -- are you only donating 30%? Why not 60%? Do you _really_ need that fancy electric toothbrush?
I'm curious, how did Christianity overcome this, given that the Bible, read literally, demands no less extreme altruism.
Speaking to the most virtious options, and not the worst ones:
- Christianity recognizes a variety of ways that Christ calls people to follow Him - this is explicitly in scripture. Neither the workman, the king, the beggar, the soldier, the vineyard owner nor the vineyard worker are shut out from following God's plan for their life.
- The Church allows for different roles specifically providing different levels of commitment - we have monks & hermits, we have professed laypersons, we have students, husbands and wives all living out a calling in their daily lives. It is part of the discernment to identify a calling to monasticism to identify other possible callings and responsibilities - such as family, debts, etc - that must be addressed in order for a person to take on the role of a religious order (monk/nun).
- In a way possibly not giving enough credit to EA - Christianity specifically steps off the rat-race & materialism treadmill by emphasizing 'time, talent, and treasure', so that chasing more money is not more holy than spending more time in prayer.
- Hope this helps.
But EA also says that you can earn to give through pretty much any occupation, and ostensibly has varying levels of commitment, like the "giving what we can" pledge at 10%. Still, whether you subscribe to utilitarianism, or "loving your neighbor as yourself", it seems straightforward that the more you give, the better you are as a person.
I guess the important difference is that there is the Church as the ultimate authority on interpreting the scripture, which sets the norms that the community actually follows.
The point when Christianity had grasp of real power, the strong demands were lost to selective reading and cognitive dissonance. Some mendicant monks took the passage about eye of the needle seriously, but taking it too seriously was condemned heretical.
No doubt, some will soon "realize" (some already have) that the effective altruism would be more effective if the EA community had more power and influence, if the leaders and decision-makers have more resources and servants, if their high-status people are of high enough status to attend cool parties and mingle with the high-status societal elites (to spread the EA message to rich people effectively, you see).
So it goes. Nothing new under the sun
Ouch. Also: fair.
They already seem to have elements of this - not the servants etc, but the EA people being more powerful as an intermediate (for now) goal of their movement.
The problem is, all of this is true. Effective altruism, like any other community, *would* be more effective if they had more power and influence, if the leaders and decision-makers have more resources and servants, if their high-status people are of high enough status to attend cool parties and mingle with the high-status societal elites. So is there a way out of the trap, or is every idealistic movement doomed to become an excuse to make money and dominate others?
Christianity focuses on personal virtue. Improvement of the world is almost incidental, and follows from the kind of person you're supposed to be.
The simple answer is that the church was never too interested in intellectual consistency/rigor and so it just didn’t present a problem.
"the church was never too interested in intellectual consistency/rigor"
As an atheist/agnostic myself: I think the Jesuits are going to disagree with you on that.
Also, important note: Christianity promises eternal life, and full reconciliation with God, for those who accept Christ's lordship and His forgiveness for sins.
I am not entirely sure what EA promises as a long-term reward for those who follow its guidance well (I do not identify as EA myself), but I imagine it is not *that*.
I suspect because tithing isn't the primary moral virtue in Christianity. Also Christianity has a fair amount of moral infrastructure around humility. It's a fairly complex and evolved religion. EA is explicitly about exactly one thing so it's sorta predictable that people have started status-jockeying by virtue signalling about that one thing.
That being said, I'm not sure it's fair to say Christianity completely avoided it. Various denominations have fairly extreme ideas about personal deprivation. Puritans, monastic orders, etc.
A very limited set of people were able to or allowed to read the christian text through history and they were usually a ruling class who had many of their own interests and were not necessarily fanatical.
The beginning of christian rule was in ancient Rome and they inherited a large amount of the Roman model of rule and their values. Many works show the saint model which isn't mentioned anywhere in their religious text was a syncretic transferal of roman gods and demi-gods into the christian panethon which was the same in many ways, but not formally called a pantheon.
Modern text based fundamentalists deeply misunderstand the context, role, culture, and other factors which went into the formation, continuance, and changes in a given religion over time. Such modern perspectives make little sense and in the context of evangelical christian bible study groups where everyone is literate compared to illiterate peasants being spoken to by priests speaking in a foreign language.
Strict linguistic analysis, often in texts which have passed through 5 languages, empires, and cultures over the past 2,000 years which is done through a purely modern and myopic lens is rather....limited as an approach to understanding.
That said the other comments on EA and its Vegan-like and often actually Vegan methodology to demand much from the people is a big turn off. It isn't just some fun philosophy or idea to think about like 'is this a simulation' or 'will xyz future tech cause problems'. It instead demands a lifestyle and practical changes if you truly believe the ideas. For those not willing to or wanting to make such changes, the ideas associated with that call to action are also a turn off.
EA is and does not want to be some intellectual bauble we put on a shelf in our minds to play with when it happens to come up in discussion. So a cult comparison is far more apt than to interact with it merely as an ideaspace.
My wife, who knows nothing about EA or the people involved, says it's a cult when the founder says he gets to have sex with everyone's wives.
Well that, and even the intro pitch is a bit silly. “People are super hyper rational about their decision making, so they should be super hyper rational about their giving”.
A simple argument, but the first clause is wildly false.
I’m not familiar with this intro pitch and I’m not sure ‘people are super hyper rational’ is a tenet of EA. What’s the context you’ve seen it in?
Seems like that has been the intro pitch I have always heard for it in a couple different contexts. “Think about how much time you spend deciding what car to buy. You should spend just as much time deciding which charities to give to.”
Which is an odd exhortation because I kind of suspect the amount of time is quite similar for most people.
Right, I see. I suppose I have heard that style of pitch, particularly in regard to choosing a career.
I suppose it’s meant to introduce what I think is a core EA idea: that you should decide such things by explicit reasoning, rather than picking charities based on say, how much they mean to you.
As you say, it’s certainly no slam dunk argument, but I’m not sure pointing out that humans aren’t always super rational leaves the EA advocate flummoxed here
They’d probably say, ‘Well, all the more reason to try. The more rational we are about these things the better!’
And a counterpoint would be, why should I spend more time on my altruism than I do other much more personally important decisions?
Which sure then you can collapse EA back to “people should generally be more thoughtful/rational/deliberative”, but what kind of philosophy is that? No one disagrees with that.
I think it's unpleasant to see people getting very large amounts of money. In theory it should be fine when people deserve it and are going to do good things with it, but nobody will always agree on when this is. And Silicon Valley's MO tends to involve giving a lot of briefcases full of more money than most people see in their lives to untested college dropouts, and although this definitely works sometimes it's not going to win the affection of people who have to work sixty hour weeks for years to make a tenth as much.
Also, large carefully-run well-oiled operations that have good PR people are inherently suspicious, and EA has definitely become one of those.
Could you share some pointers that make you think that EA has good PR people/is successful in promoting its image?
If it was just people getting large amounts of money wouldn't there be similar resentment over government grants? Or traditional charitable funding? Or any number of other things? "Gives large amount of money to untested projects" is not unique to EA.
Isn't this the "government waste" critique?
No, I don't think so. The government waste critique is usually focused on the idea it's tax money. It is bound up with an idea that it's money taken from the people or what the proper role of government is. That obviously doesn't apply to EA.
Put another way, if Bezos decides to build a bridge to nowhere is anyone going to care? If it turns out to be a corrupt project to employ his brother would anyone care? No, because it's not public money. Likewise no one really criticizes Branson for his lavish private island but people attacked Ben Carson for his lavish office spending.
Not that I think that's unfair, mind you. But I don't think they're in the same category as far as criticism.
To be fair, nobody (to first approximation) actually attacked Ben Carson's office spending because they _actually_ gave a shit about five-figure amounts being spent on furniture.
Criticizing billionaires for having large piles of cash or lavish private islands is a pretty common pastime on the left these days.
People definitely criticized bezos for Blue Origin as a vanity project, and got pretty heated about it.
I would care that Bezos builds a bridge to nowhere. Imagine someone lighting money of fire. That bothers many people (including me). Intentionally destroying or misusing resources is frustrating. Huge wastes of resources on personal whims highlight the fact that the person with the resources only has them because they’re good at accumulating resources, not because they actually know how to use them in ways that benefit society.
Should individuals be able to waste resources? Absolutely. That’s where this differs from public money: there’s a duty to use public money in the public interest that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) exist with private funds.
But building something, even something pointless is in fact hiring people to do work.
In the example of building new technology, Bezos is doing exceedingly great work for humanity overall, Blue Origins provides work for highly talented engineers and technicians. These people are creating new technologies, new materials, solving new problems and advancing human knowledge.
But burning money doesn't destroy any resources. It's actually the opposite, by burning your money you renounce your claim to resources, and redistribute your share of wealth to everybody else. Building a bridge to nowhere is another matter.
The interesting part about lighting money on fire is that money is not a resource, just a medium to exchange for resources. So the only thing you do is make the currency more valuable.
I've seen people very angry about the hyperloop as a waste on money, and also people who are just angry at billionaires being able to make decisions about large sums of money.
Replying to all at once:
1.) I almost brought up the far left idea that billionaires spending money is objectionable. But it seemed like a waste because it's a very fringe belief. Pew shows that something like 75-80% of people have no problem with billionaires spending their own money how they wish while over 80% oppose government waste. So the median position is "government waste bad, neutrality on billionaires wasting their own money." Apparently it's more common among the readership which, I think, speaks to the far left nature of San Fransisco and founder effects.
2.) I think the attacks on Ben Carson, while politically motivated, spoke to a genuine distaste for government officials living it up that doesn't exist for athletes or billionaires.
The poll results are a relief. I've been seeing hatred of rich people building up in sf, and I'm hoping it won't spread far.
"The government waste critique is usually focused on the idea it's tax money. It is bound up with an idea that it's money taken from the people or what the proper role of government is."
That's most of it, but I think there's a bit of what Scott's describing too. For instance, I get the impression that there's a not-insignificant number of Americans who would rather see the federal government burn a giant pile of money or toss it into a shredder than give another dollar to the NEA.
How many of those people would also have a problem with a billionaire giving grants to artists though?
In my experience, 'government waste' is linked to almost everything except funds and grants: the budget for civil servants being to big, MEPs travelling around the world for meetings, ministry X organizing big fancy conferences or spending six/seven-digit-numbers on external advisors, huge infrastructure/cultural projects that cost x-times as much as planned, too much spending on supporting social security, too much spending on supporting business, and overall: why does the government have so much money, and we get so little value.
I don't think I've ever heard somebody complain about funds and grants to research and NGO as waste of government money - rather the contrary. Maybe it's because the recipients are seen as deserving their money. Probably even more, because government grants, especially at federal and EU-level are (comparatively) hard to get, and require an enormous amount of input and bureaucratic work. So it's usually not: why does the goverment waste so much money on those research/NGO projects, but rather: why do those poor organizations have to work so hard (and/or lose so much time in competitive calls they end up losing) to get the money they need for their work. Still criticism of government, but not of the 'huge sums are waste' sort.
As usually, that's a mostly German, somewhat Central European perspective.
Arts grants and social science grants are frequently labelled as wasteful, especially from right-wing pundits with an axe to grind, but the total spending there is really low so honest people - even ones that really hate government spending on basically anything - generally have bigger fish to fry
Fair enough. There are people who hate NGOs or research as such (only social science or generally research or pharma research to name another well-known example hated passionately by certain groups of people). Also, as Aurelien mentioned there is criticism of how money in development cooperation is spent ... and of course there are also those who would like the government to focus only on securing the functioning of the market and keep out of anything else. Obviously in those perspectives, money spent on the specific area of 'distaste' is a 'waste' at best.
I'd still uphold, that overall - including the reason you give above - grants and funds are comparatively low in the 'government waste' hierarchy; outrage is low while positive acknowledgement is comparatively high.
I'd be willing to bet, that if we'd ask 20 random persons across different living areas in my city if the government is wasting money and on what (2 answers possible), funds and grants would be mentioned by max. 2 persons. (I think max. 1 is more likely, but as this is not a representative sample ...). I guess this actually agrees with your view above.
Okay, I might not have heard anybody complain, but now I read of it ... some more details in my answer to Thor's comment.
Besides, my experiences rather supports Scott's point from the earlier comment ... German/EU government grants don't come in 'lot of briefcases full of ... money' ... 'to untested college dropouts'. The acceptance might be high (as far as it is), specifically because they are associated with hard work and lots of expertise on the recipients side.
Two brief points:
- any form of donation requires both a donor and a recipient, and few recipients are entirely passive, waiting to be discovered. The aid industry is a great example: a massive swarm of NGOs and "civil society" groups competing for donations, by developing projects that make donors feel good, and can be publicly defended as progressive. Whether such programmes are useful is, in my view and that of many others who've been involved in them, highly questionable if you are talking about value to the recipients.
- altruism isn't about them it's about you. When Jesus of the Buddha recommended poverty, it was not about making others wealthier, it was about losing your concern for worldly goods. So the only real test is whether you become a better person as a result. My recollection is that St Paul said basically that: if I give all my goods to the poor and have not love etc; etc.
1.) I agree with this. But it's true for EA as well.
2.) This isn't EA philosophy but religious.
People don’t really like government grants, and they tend to be smaller and a lot of them not really very well publicized.
...smaller?
I don't know where you got this idea, to my knowledge the government grant space is hundreds of billions of dollars a year, orders of magnitude larger than the private
But the grants themselves are often quite small.
It might be a 3 billion dollar hurricane recovery program, but ultimately a lot do people are getting $25,000 awards for home repairs.
It's not so much that they are large, well-oiled and have good PR, it's that they appear to be now at the stage of having grown sufficiently that it pays them to take in each other's washing. So now you're getting a job working for an organisation researching EA in order to set up organisations that will research EA and so on and so on. There seems to be an awful lot of "want to apply for a scholarship to our Oxford university programme that will steer you to an internship in an organisation that awards scholarships to our Oxford programme?" type jobs and not so much of the "hi, we need someone to fly out to Burundi and run our net-distribution centre there".
I mean who wants to go to Burundi? I would much rather research how much other people should go to Burundi!
If you're jetting between Oxford and San Francisco to hold conferences to form committees to write papers on "who should go to Burundi and do work on the ground?", I think you've lost sight of "we started off to help the people of Burundi".
Well, that certainly speaks volumes.
It’s a joke.
See also: Greenpeace.
I like the EA crowd, but it attracts very smart and deeply eccentric people and “good PR” notwithstanding I’m not getting a sense that it’s aware that weirdness cuts both ways. Yes, you might find innovative answers to hard problems, but it’s also inherently alienating, as are a lot of the research areas under its umbrella.
I really enjoy hanging out with EA people, but I’ve heard some moral perspectives that diverge wildly from my own. Effectiveness can be shown with data, but I’m unsure how much I agree with any given group within EA about what constitutes altruism. This makes me skeptical of the whole enterprise. I also know I couldn’t sell this movement to anyone in my family or 99% of my hometown, and that probably isn’t a good sign.
I was also a little dismayed to learn that EA was footing the bill for a recent ACX meetup. It was silly of me not to realize whose funds we were using until after the fact, but I’m uncomfortable with ACX and EA merging in this way. I don’t think EA is bad or want it to fail, but I wasn’t interested in joining EA either deliberately or by osmosis. It has been valuable to remove financial barriers for the meetup, but I’d like to find some other way to address this.
EA's promises and claims far outreach its realities and results. It misrepresents itself in flattering ways. It's also had a fair number of problems/scandals and its response to criticism so far has been less than ideal. It's shaping up to be a supremely well funded and self-confident movement with a well oiled PR machine that has shown itself to have a strong immuno-response to criticism. Which is why it appears to some people like Jack as a cult. It's also why things are likely to go terribly, terribly wrong in known failure modes that are being ignored.
(For you specifically, you should see Scott's reply to me about conservative participation in EA for why a conservative should be suspicious of EA.)
> EA's promises and claims far outreach its realities and results.
For example?
What are the scandals?
I propose that an EA organization holds a $5000 essay contest on 'Why was EA awful last year?', every year. Word count: 2000 to 10000.
Several paragraphs of mostly non-specific critical comments on a blog aren't going to familiarize the majority of us with much of anything, scandals or otherwise.
Edit: I should have kept scrolling before assuming there wasn't already such a contest. Below, someone has linked: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8hvmvrgcxJJ2pYR4X/announcing-a-contest-ea-criticism-and-red-teaming
This really just doesn't seem right. With regard to having "shown itself to have a strong immuno-response to criticism," I think EA's handling of criticism and negative data is much better than that of almost any charitable movement. For example, Evidence Action shut down its No Lean Season program after a study found poor results regarding its impact https://blog.givewell.org/2019/06/06/evidence-action-is-shutting-down-no-lean-season/. I think that kind of transparency and action in response to criticism is pretty rare!.
Moreover, I think EA's results in the global health and development space are pretty strong. GiveWell has moved ~$250m to its top charities in its lifetime [edit, I read their page incorrectly here, that was the amount they moved in 2020, not their lifetime https://www.givewell.org/about/impact], and the impact of those top charities has been monitored really rigorously. I honestly know less about impact in the animal welfare cause area, so I can't really speak to that. On global catastrophic risks, it's entirely reasonable to say that early MIRI was kind of a mess and Yudkowsky made some overly grandiose promises. I think more recent efforts on technical AI safety haven't shown good results yet, but I do think EA's involvement has raised the profile of the issue from a random fringe thing to something US senators are talking about, which should count for something https://homelandnewswire.com/stories/627890045-portman-peters-introduce-bipartisan-bill-to-ensure-federal-government-is-prepared-for-catastrophic-risks-to-national-security
Real criticism of something you love shouldn't feel right. It should feel uncomfortable. So the fact your immediate reaction is disbelief is actually a good thing.
> I think EA's handling of criticism and negative data is much better than that of almost any charitable movement. [...] I think that kind of transparency and action in response to criticism is pretty rare!.
You make a comparative claim here but don't actually supply a comparator. No, it's not rare. Judging charities on performance and shutting them down is bog standard even in the bureaucratic morass that is the government. You could perhaps show me that the way EA shuts down projects is better than the alternatives. But when you expect credit for doing it at all that just tells me you don't have broad experience of other ecosystems.
> GiveWell has moved ~$250m to its top charities in its lifetime, and the impact of those top charities has been monitored really rigorously.
So orders of magnitude less than mainstream charitable organizations. As for rigorous monitoring, this has yet to be proven. I can think of a tens of millions of dollars in projects that ultimately turned out to nothing. And then were back-justified with something like "raising awareness." (This is all a bit of a non-sequitur anyway since GiveWell's claim is to outsized impact, not to attract outsized donations. Or is it? Because this is a claim the EA Has A Lying Problem claims.)
Look, I'm not some EA hater who thinks EA has nothing to offer or does nothing good. I think it has its good points and its bad. But there's clearly an overly grandiose vision by people who are either fanboys or whose salaries rely on EA being the greatest thing ever. And I do not think that bubble is good for EA, let alone the people EA claims to serve.
"For example, Evidence Action shut down its No Lean Season program after a study found poor results regarding its impact"
Reading those reports, it sounds exactly like a case of one of the book reviews: well-meaning do-gooders implement policy without sufficient knowledge of facts on the ground.
So there were bribes to officials, probably some skimming off the top as well, people who weren't supposed to get the subsidies to migrate for labour did (under-18s) and people who got the subsidies in the lean period probably didn't migrate but instead used the money to pay for food etc? And this came as a surprise to the organisers back in the USA?
"We give a travel subsidy of $20 to very poor rural laborers so they can send a family member to a nearby city to find a job during the period between planting and harvesting. This is the time in rural areas when there are no jobs, no income, and when families miss meals. This seasonal poverty affects 600 million people around the world."
If this is meant to impress me with how they operate, I'm afraid it doesn't, It's good that they recognised how they screwed up, but it would have been better to figure out local conditions in the first place (e.g. did they ask the rural poor if they would prefer to spend the money on sending someone to get a job in town - which may include paying a slice of that money in kickbacks to people to get you a job - or to use it to buy food for the lean period?) and the fact that it all collapsed due to forged documents, bribes, and people not co-operating with the investigation makes it sound like yet another well-meaning failure.
At least it seems they scrutinised the details of a not terribly costly failure, so maybe they can learn from it.
Costly enough. I don't know how much money they blew on this, but for the poor rural labourers who first got grants of money and are now left high and dry, they're probably worse off than if this project had never happened.
One of the turn offs for me is that EA's don't seem to even be aware that there might be problems with the whole venture. I see it mostly as similar to the worst kind of blunderbuss NGO's utterly convinced that if they throw money at something they see as a problem, it will automatically end up more the way they desire. It's like charity on steroids and the people who benefit are the givers not the receivers. That the givers benefit isn't a problem, but that the receivers suffer most certainly is.
> EA's don't seem to even be aware that there might be problems with the whole venture
We're talking about the (big tent) movement under which someone just announced a contest with $100,000+ in prizes for the best "criticism & red-teaming of EA" submissions? (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8hvmvrgcxJJ2pYR4X/announcing-a-contest-ea-criticism-and-red-teaming)
It'd be great if you were more specific about how EA is "similar to the worst kind of blunderbuss NGO's", and in particular any instances of receivers suffering - maybe take some of that prize money while you're at it! Surely, if it's so obvious that EA is harming the people they're claiming to help, it should be pretty easy?
Yeah, I've read through more of the rules and some of the judge's statements. I've been reinforced that what's likely to win is loyal (ie, Fifty Stalins style) critiques. Even when one of the judges says they're interested in outside critiques they admit insider critiques are most likely to get through.
It might still be worthwhile to do if for no other reason than people might still read it. But I doubt you'll win. Or maybe I'm entirely too cynical and you're right.
Let's bet: I predict that any accurate* criticism demonstrating that an ongoing EA effort is actively causing (net) harm** submitted receives prize money. $100?
* as in, isn't just made-up nonsense, but points to facts in the real world that strongly support its core claims
** by the standards of the effort/intervention, obviously, though if there's a submission convincingly arguing that the _desired_ effect of the intervention are negative rather than positive, I'll take that too, assuming it doesn't receive prize money. This does seem rather a more difficult bar to clear, though.
I'm willing to bet $100 if we can hammer out the actual parameters. As currently suggested this doesn't address my claims. My claim is that EA will not accept systematic critiques or critiques that strike at the core of EA itself. Saying "an EA effort is causing net harm" is a complete non-sequitur to this claim. (Nor would EA be worthy of any particular praise if it lived up to this standard. Mainstream charities do such assessments too.)
That's a much... harder-to-deal-with claim. is the core of EA not "saving 2 people for $x is better than saving 1 person, therefore try to be effective with your altruism"?
Anybody arguing that this is actually not true, in some important way... yeah, I would not bother taking such criticism seriously either.
Criticism that we are accidentally only helping one person when we could help more, or actually hurting people: very very serious
Criticism that the above 'core statement' is somehow false: about as serious as "1 > 2"
"Surely, if it's so obvious that EA is harming the people they're claiming to help, it should be pretty easy?"
Perfect strawman. Nowhere did I suggest it is obvious that EA is harming the people they're claiming to help. It's the non-obviousness that's the problem.
Maybe ask yourself why almost every culture has developed a taboo against unreciprocated gifts. Anybody with an genuine understanding of human beings will refrain from giving stuff to people who have an inability to reciprocate.
Can you describe how this alleged taboo against unreciprocated gifts works? I don’t see any evidence that people in our culture paradigmatically look down on (say) Oprah for giving gifts to the audiences at her show, or on people who help our victims of a disaster, or people who donate to charity.
On the contrary, almost every culture on earth has the concept of charity as a virtuous act.
Judaism even says that one of the highest forms of charity is to give in secret, meaning that you are giving only for the sake of charity rather than with the hope of reciprocation.
The Oxford historian Martin Goodman has written about the instability of Jewish rule in Judaea between the Maccabees and the coming of Rome. He argues that traditional ancient societies functioned through patron/client mutual relationships, but that the Jewish practice of charity without obligation failed to support social bonds and led to factionalization and civil war.
Of all the things that you can criticise the Jewish people for, I don't think "lack of social bonds" is one of them. That period was marked by internal dissension between powerful interest groups: the priestly families/establishment on one hand (the Maccabees and Hasmoneans after them, with later splitting into Sadducees and Pharisees as social/cultural blocs) and the Hellenized, imposed from outside rulers (the Seleucids first, then after they were overthrown and replaced by the Hasmoneans, the eventual Roman rule under the Herodians).
The main problem was the traditional one of all dynasties; internal family rivalry. When two members of the Hasmonean dynasty started duking it out for who would be High Priest/King, that led to the kind of destabilisation and power vacuum that let the Romans insert a wedge (again, when you start making alliances with outsiders to help you in an internal power struggle or civil war, it often happens the outsiders end up as the victors), end up with pro-Roman puppet administration and eventual direct rule.
"Maybe ask yourself why almost every culture has developed a taboo against unreciprocated gifts."
That's... just straight-up false. To an almost absurd degree. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history or anthropology would know that your claim simply isn't true at all.
On one hand, I think there can sometimes be a sort of smug and holier-than-thou self-righteousness from some EA adherents. "I'm doing the best possible thing", they say, "I proved it with math!" And I can certainly understand that if you've donated 80% of your net worth to charity, you certainly feel like you ought to be entitled to feel morally superior to others; but it can certainly be a turn-off to those of us who are being looked down upon.
Combined with this, there's the feeling that a lot of this money is going to very silly places, such as MIRI or wild animal suffering prevention. Individuals have idiosyncratic ideas about what the actual best use of money might be, which leads to a lot of money flowing off in random directions. So the guy who is feeling morally superior to me because he donated all his money to some cause might _actually_ have just been paying for the distribution of Harry Potter fanfiction, or something.
I sometimes think about it in meta-ethical terms. If you pick one particular value system and optimise the heck out of doing the best you can possibly do in that one ethical system, you might well wind up doing something that is either neutral or negative in a lot of other value systems. More traditional charitable giving takes a more meta-ethical approach and sprinkles money over a bunch of things that most ethical systems will agree are good.
How many "animal rescue" organizations are really just pampering my pets whilst evading taxes?
I do want to m ake clear that someone who gives away like 80% of their money is giving away more money than me - it's not nothing, and I don't want to treat it that way. That's part of why it's confusing for me that my reflexes strike so hard against the whole thing.
The way I see it, if you're giving away 80% of your income to some reasonably-worthy charity then you're totally allowed to feel morally superior to me.
I'll even praise you for it, I just won't like you or want to be around you.
Presumably "you are doing charity the wrong way" is irritating for many, even if EA is right (and for some it would be even more irritating if EA would be right!)
I have done very little research on the specifics of the EAs stated philosophy or any specifics of how common is corruption or incompetence in any EA cause. What I am addressing below is what I have understood from EA from a handful of podcasts over the years, and my intuitions of the uncharitable or under current of skepticism that many more people seem to have.
Could EA be seen more broadly as the hyperrationality mindset that does not account for unintended consequences, or looks at unintended consequences like an old wives tale that does not apply to them. Even then, those who attempt to calculate unintended consequences will assume they know all of the variables and just have to balance the equation so it is a net positive. They do not take into consideration that there are other potential variables. I am posing this question because I was thinking about the promotions many companies do when they say, "our company is carbon negative/neutral" or "for every shoe purchased we will donate one to a needy kid in Africa." I know that this is not something most companies actually care about, though there are some that do. However, the intention alone is not good in and of itself.
I am a big fan of that cliché that I associate with Thomas Sowell that "There are always tradeoffs." I think Effective Altruism believes that they can be aware of all tradeoffs ahead of time, or be sure that the net equation results in "helping" those who need it. A common critique of that Sowellian phrase goes something like, "So you therefore think that this -horrible thing here- is ok and you do not want to help?!?"
The most notable example I can think of is the case from TOMS shoes. I assume that the issues that TOMS shoes did not account for have now been solved. Maybe now that issue will no longer come up, or that variable will be accounted for in future ones.
As I am typing I just went full circle here...I assume this would be the EA advocates response which I think is somewhat convincing though I tend to have a more tragic view of humanity than a utopian (again a sophomoric usage of the Sowell's work).
Regarding the knowledge problem. My half baked Steelman of what an EA advocate would say...
Just because there are unintended consequences that we are unaware of, (i.e. TOMS shoes), does not mean, EA is a worthy or even a moral position to take on helping the poorer, less fortunate in our world. Like any new industry or institution there are lots of issues or problems that were not accounted for, but over time we will learn more of them, learn what went wrong and why, and make sure not to do that again. Overtime the EA movement will better learn how to provide for those who are in need, without creating any unintended consequences that would have preferably been avoided.
> The most notable example I can think of is the case from TOMS shoes. I assume that the issues that TOMS shoes did not account for have now been solved.
What you mean here?
Basically it has been found handing out shows to kids didn’t have much positive impact on their lives. They played outside some more, did less homework, or often sold the shoes for cash. In which case it would have been better to just give them cash.
Plus it made them answer slightly more positively to questions relating to expecting/depending on charity. So their are questions of learned dependency.
This feels like a directionally accurate explanation to me. Not regarding the facts (of which I know little) but of the kind of oversight people ascribe to EA's. Basically, too many proposals involving evenly spaced rectangular grids.
I do think that this criticism has at least a spark of truth to it, as (IIUC), EAs deliberately focus on "legible" interventions, which restricts their search space a lot. That clashes very strongly with the aesthetics of traditional religious concepts of charity.
Would you have predicted in advance that Scott's essay on modernism was/would be treated in the EA sphere like new important information, or like heresy?
My own imagination conjures up an image of bay area EA folk reading it and thinking "oh huh, this is a big deal, a lot of my initial kneejerk brainstem reflex is 'make stuff more legible' and this essay suggests that whole concept is horribly flawed in ways that hurt people, this is a really complicated problem, maybe i'd better spend that 10% on hosting an EA forum on the issue of legibility's downsides, and a review of past actions in that light, instead of building yet another grid of right angles in a new domain"
On the other hand, for similar projects in other fields, I would expect an essay attacking something as core as legibility is to EA, to get treated as heresy, and anyone willing to take it seriously is a political enemy
Which essay? Is it the one with the peasants and the grain baskets?
this one: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/
(it mentions evenly-spaced rectangular grids 11 times!)
I'd have predicted the former about actual EAs, but the latter w.r.t. the perception of EAs (i.e., bystanders critiquing EAs based on these ideas, without bothering to check what actual EAs say/do)
I'm going to suggest a slightly non-charitable response: Is it possible that a lot of the anti-EA backlash is motivated by a sort of motivated reasoning? EA involves lots of people who give away lots of money or change their whole careers to try and do the most possible good with their lives. If you're not an EA and not doing those things, the options are sort of (1) the EA people are all wrong and stupid or (2) you're not doing as much good as you could be. I think it's natural to flinch away from (2) and trend toward (1) in order to preserve your positive self-conception.
I definitely don't think this is the whole story, the perception of cultyness and giant piles of money sloshing around are probably important. But I do want to put this out there, because I think it's a real effect in other areas (for example, I think a decent bit of backlash against veganism takes this form).
I'm very much not a fan of EA, but I agree with this. There are plenty of terrible reasons to be anti-EA, but they don't influence the not-terribleness of the others.
Part of it is the impression - and I'm just speaking for myself here - that their view of all other charitable work is "those maroons are doing it wrong", and if you're one of the maroons donating to a favourite charity that may not be on a list of Top Ten Superest Bestest Bangs For Bucks, that is rather insulting. "Hey, dumbass, why are you so stupid as to be giving money based on how you *feel* rather than how smart people like us do it, using Science And Statistics to work out what is the best use of your money!"
That is probably very unfair, but it is an early impression of EA.
Then there's things like 80,000 Hours which completely leave out people who are in ordinary jobs. You work as a supermarket cashier? That's cute, but you're totally useless to making any contribution to our work. We want fashion models who can use their platform to promote nuclear power ("Isabelle Boemeke started out as a fashion model, but after speaking to experts who said nuclear energy was needed to tackle climate change, decided to use her platform to promote it as a neglected solution to climate change") or people who will go into big, high-earning jobs (https://80000hours.org/job-board/). Ordinary people need not apply, you quaint little folk with delusions of being any use at all in the world.
Between that and tossing a fiver into the collection basket at church, which do you think people like me are going to do? Yeah, the church collection may not be efficient, but it doesn't feel like sneering at me.
Then the jobs that *are* for ordinary people are bananas; see this job listing:
"Relevant problem areas: Building effective altruism, AI safety & policy"
Well, that does sound exciting and important! What role do they want to fill?
"We are looking for an excited, curious, cook or chef to join our food program, wherein we make daily, from scratch, delicious, unique and healthy meals from quality ingredients. The sous chef will aid in all aspects of preparing delicious, varied, healthy, meals (lunches with potential for dinners) for an office space in downtown Berkeley. The sous chef will act in partnership with the chef to: Develop and source new daily menus that can meet a diverse collection of food requirements (allergies, keto, paleo, vegetarian, vegan, and more). Prepare/clean and cook the food - Deliver, arrange and label meals. Clean equipment and facilities as needed."
Somebody to work in the staff canteen? Yeah, I mean, that's important, just like the cleaning staff and maintenance workers and so on, but we've now moved away from "earn to give" and into "this has become a thing of its own with more emphasis on filling jobs in the organisations than the aims and goals". That is a thing that happens as you scale up and get bigger and more established, and hence sclerotic but c'mon: this is not a job that really comes under the aegis of "AI safety and policy", this is "we need kitchen staff".
Dath ilan xenohistorians now widely agree that the single point of failure which ended carbon-based life on Earth was competing dietary access needs at the AI resistance organization 80,000 Hours. Critics of the so-called "Everything but the Kitchen Staff" theory point out that sundry other mission-critical roles remained chronically understaffed, such as fashion model x-risk influencers.
...Ever since seeing the 80k, Giving What We Can, etc. banner ads on old SSC, I've wondered if it's worth any Altruism Plaudits at all for ordinary-jobbers to donate to EA etc. (Implied answer: no.) Which hints at the greater sense of, AI is a problem caused by exactly the sorts of Smart Rich Better Than You folks who donate double digit percentages of their income. AI indulgences are for them, not me. Not my favourite branch of the Rationalist Movement, which already had kinda cult-y vibes before getting flushed with Other People's Money. Nowhere else would I see "bednets for malaria" and "Carrick Flynn campaign" in the same thoughtspace.
(Conversely I notice there's been a lot of criticism of doing the "FIRE but for charity" thing, which is one of the only plausible ways an ordinary-jobber like me might become financially worthy enough to reach Minimum Viable Giving. Curious! Almost like it's not actually an all-hands-on-deck emergency...)
An army marches on its stomach, but c'mon lads, if ye are advertising for kitchen staff, this is not AI-risk mitigation, ye have become the same fat and flabby organisation that ye were criticising other charities and organisations for becoming.
It's a natural part of the life-cycle: start off small, lean and hungry with Great Idea; implement it, get a bunch of like-minded people interested; start taking off, start growing; get past the critical point where many Great Idea organisations crash and burn; now you're starting to develop the layers of management etc. that come along with getting big enough to be a recognised and influential name; become as big and bloated and self-referential as the older bodies your Great Idea was improving upon.
Should I be worried about a large, well funded group that works tirelessly to help me when I don't want their help?
I'm not sure! My first question would be whether or not they are actually doing that - Republicans, Democrats, Green party and Communists claim they are doing that very thing, and I suspect most of us are worried about at least one of them.
Recently a fairly large number of EA's decided that the most effective altruism they could do at a particular moment in time was to fund the campaign of a fairly conventional Democrat. I'd be *shocked* if this ended up being dollar for dollar better for people than mosquito nets or whatever, even if we accepted that "Democrat" is the one true truth and clearly the right way for humanity, for instance.
So I think there's several questions here - do they really think they are doing good for you, or is that what they say to get you on board? If they really do think that, do they really think a particular action is the right thing for you? And if they really think that, are they right?
I'm not saying I know the answers there, but those seem to be the questions.
"I'd be *shocked* if this ended up being dollar for dollar better for people than mosquito nets or whatever, even if we accepted that "Democrat" is the one true truth and clearly the right way for humanity, for instance."
I think you're strawmanning the EA perspective on this congressional race. The goal wasn't "get a democrat elected over a republican," it was "given that this seat is likely to lean democratic, we should try and get this particular democrat who has a long track-record of working on EA causes elected." The US congress moves more than a trillion dollars of funding every year, and having someone in congress who cares about using that funding thoughtfully to e.g. prevent pandemics or deploy foreign aid to the most effective causes can do a ton of good with it.
"having someone in congress who cares about using that funding thoughtfully to e.g. prevent pandemics or deploy foreign aid to the most effective causes can do a ton of good with it"
That's great. Meanwhile, I'm a voter in the new district in Oregon, what's in it for me? All very well sending off a guy to Do Good, but that's not going to pay my bills or get me a job or even preserve the local forests and fauna. This is the nuts and bolts stuff of politics, and if you don't learn that at the start, you're going to remain scratching your head about "why don't the people here vote for me to worry about people in China?"
I think that's a much better critique of the Flynn campaign than Resident Contrarian's, but it's still not quite all the way there. If you look at even an early archive version of his campaign's issues page, you'll see that most of the issues look very much like a standard democratic candidate's:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220215050306/https://www.carrickflynnfororegon.com/issues
GROWING THE ECONOMY
CREATING JOBS
FIXING CONGRESS
PREVENTING PANDEMICS
BUILDING A GREEN ECONOMY
PRO-CHOICE
EQUALITY AND NON-DISCRIMINATION
Flynn's pitch to voters was "I have an inspiring life story of growing up in this district, facing hardship, and achieving impressive things. I'm going to go to Washington and make your lives better in [long list of ways that includes preventing future pandemics]." It's not a crazy egghead pitch at all, it's 90% standard stuff with a little bit about existential risk in the middle! EAs naturally read that and say "man this guy's value above the replacement democratic candidate is huge because he'll actually pay attention to some big important issues that most congresspeople ignore." But that wasn't the core of his messaging.
So I don't think funding Flynn was crazy at a surface level: I think he could have done a lot of good if elected, and some basic fundamentals were there in terms of his possibility of getting elected in the primary. I think the things that EA donors got wrong were more about the nuances of the race. First, he hadn't been back in the district for long, so he hadn't done a good job of renewing his local roots and making local connections. I think EA donors overweighted on his having grown up there and underweighted on his having not been back for long. Second, I think EA donors underestimated the negative publicity effects of turning the race into the most expensive house race in the country with EA donations (mostly from SBF). I think it's a totally reasonable critique to say "EA donors really should have spent more time analyzing whether his candidacy was actually viable and analyzing the impact of their donations before pouring millions of dollars into the race." But I think both you and Resident Contrarian were making slightly lazy arguments.
> So I don't think funding Flynn was crazy at a surface level:
Sure, but the pitch of EA is "the most good you can possibly do with your money", not "Not Crazy at a surface level".
If you want to give money to some politician based on the fact that his website says nice things then go right ahead, but don't pretend it's EA.
You're correct about a version of his campaign website, but I thought that one was *later* rather than an early version; at least, when I was looking up his campaign site, the earlier versions to me were all about "send me to Congress so I can get on a think-tank about pandemics" and it was only the version pretty much at the *end* of the campaign which emphasised the 'jobs, equality, etc.' part.
And *all* the Democrat candidates were doing the "jobs, equality, pro-choice" bit so he didn't stand out there. Flynn may have had a message that appealed to EA outsiders who weren't in Oregon, but the reality was that even if he had been elected, he would be a freshman in the House of Representatives and like many single-issue candidates, whatever support he could garner for his issue (pandemic prevention) would depend on him going along with the broader party line on different policies. The only reason to say "Carrick Flynn can get the attention of party big-wigs" was "because he has billionaire money behind him, and party big-wigs like listening to billionaires in the hopes that they'll donate fat sums to the party coffers". And precisely because his backing *was* "outsider billionaires who don't give a damn about Oregon but he catches their fancy because he shares their views" is why locals didn't vote for him.
If some guy backed by extremely wealthy outsiders was running for election in my own district, I'd want to know "why should I vote for you? why should I believe you will represent my interests and not those of the rich guy who paid for your campaign?" and I don't think Flynn was able to answer that (due to inexperience) and his more seasoned political rivals were able to make hay out of that (I do appreciate the fun in how, for instance, they used accusations of being anti-environment against him; this is the kind of politicking that he just had no idea would even happen, or how to counter it):
https://www.olcv.org/statement-on-carrick-flynn/?fbclid=IwAR2W7_MuVChcPqbg6uJvb2-7vomT911Je6lImXWU-CHFPd9-WcwXufSPNA8
"As organizations who have been fighting for decades to uphold the strong environmental values held by the people of Oregon, we are stunned and deeply saddened to hear Carrick Flynn, a Democratic candidate running for Congress, make comments mocking critical environmental protections, sympathizing with a far-right group that has ties to the January 6th insurrection, and referring to our state’s iconic land use system as “insane.” Flynn’s comments are far out of step from the values of Oregonians, who care deeply about protecting our natural legacy. In making these disturbing comments, Flynn reveals his clear lack of understanding and knowledge of some of Oregon’s most critical environmental protections, perhaps unsurprising given that he has spent almost none of his adult life in the state.
When Flynn says, “It’s an owl, looks like other owls,” he doesn’t grasp how protecting endangered species and old-growth forests is not only about ensuring healthy ecosystems needed for wildlife, but also for people who depend on clean drinking water. Or that our old-growth trees are phenomenal at storing carbon, making them one of our best resources for protecting our climate.
Flynn remarks that Timber Unity is a group “I’m obviously really sympathetic to emotionally,” and completely misses the fact that Timber Unity is anti-environment, anti-democracy, and awash in racism and violence. It would be bad enough that Timber Unity went to the extreme to kill climate action, but it’s inexcusable to sympathize with a group tied to violent extremism. An investigative report “found extensive ties between its leaders and Far Right figures, as well as the use of racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and violent rhetoric by its supporters.” In addition, “The organization already has a history of and association with groups who have either made violent political threats or have supported violent actions.” (Source: Mother Jones)
Flynn even goes after Oregon’s iconic land use system: “I think there’s a lot of what Oregon does with land use that is insane and causes a lot of unnecessary damage and harm to people.” Flynn is wildly off the mark on land use, clearly not understanding that Oregon is the place we all love because we protect thriving farmlands, vibrant forests, and awe-inspiring open spaces. And, that very land use system creates walkable, bikeable, and connected neighborhoods by requiring cities and towns across Oregon to plan for Oregonian’s health and safety, like requiring housing production strategies. Flynn has attacked the very heart of what makes Oregon the state we all love to call home. Living here goes hand-in-hand with caring about the natural environment all around us. If Flynn doesn’t understand that, he shouldn’t be representing us in Congress."
There you go: the EA candidate is a dirty, rotten, right-wing insurrectionist! Beautiful, just beautiful 😁 I believe, though I could be mistaken, that one of the "environmental groups" that protested Flynn's alt-rightness was a logging union, given that the successful victor has strong union ties. This is how it works in the real world, guys, and throwing money at it simply because "this guy is sympathetic to our ideals" is not the best use of funds. And by the bye, did EA donors give permission for funding to be directed towards domestic political campaigns rather than charitable projects?
EDIT: One of the signatories to this letter was "the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (the Northwest Tree-Planters and Farmworkers United)", "one of the largest organizations representing Latinas and Latinos in Oregon". So I beg their pardon, they are not a logging union, they're farm- and forestry workers union, Totally coincidental that the eventual winner of the Democratic primary was a Latina with strong family ties to unions! 😀
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/05/17/oregon-us-house-sixth-congressional-district/
I think the Carrick Flynn campaign was a good example of how EA falls down. They were so enthused about having a guy who shared their values (he worked in think-tanks! he wants to work on pandemic prevention!) that they totally overlooked what the actual voters on the ground might want. And it turns out what the voters on the ground wanted was someone already wired in to local politics, with a solid union backing, who talked about "I'll get you $15 an hour wage rates" rather than a guy who was all "When I head off to Congress I'll work on some egghead stuff that sounds like yet more government regulations to stop you doing things in your ordinary life".
This is, of course, the EA approach: the greatest good for the greatest number, so long as that number is far away (such as overseas in Africa) and not near to home. There's nothiing wrong with that, but when you try switching from charity (and even rednecks in Oregon will be familiar with doing good in Africa from church missions) to politics, then you *do* have to learn that "charity begins at home". The problem was that it was very obvious the EA interest, and the outside money, didn't care a rap for local Oregonians in District 6 but were using them as a stepping-stone to what they *really* cared about - getting a like-minded guy into Congress. If I'm a local logger or viticulture worker, why should I vote for *your* interests, Mr. Billionaire?
> so long as that number is far away (such as overseas in Africa) and not near to home
I think that is not charitable interpretation, it seems rather "also if" or "even if" not "so long as".
And this is quite expected given that USA is really rich.
An argument about "we should help people overseas" is intelligible to people, especially people who are accustomed to hearing such exhortations to charity at church.
An argument about "we should vote this man in to help people overseas" has a lot more work to do to persuade voters. I'm voting for my local representative, not a representative for Africa or China. Are people in Nigeria voting in officials to help the people of Oregon? No. I'm voting for someone to govern on my behalf, which includes governing in my best interests, not to spend my tax money abroad.
Also it’s not remotely clear that the vast majority of people, even rational altruists should care the same for people far away from them. That isn’t the way human psychology works, and human psychology is pretty much the basis for 90% of ethics. The rest of ethics is just pragmatism and that isn’t going to point in that direction either.
"This is, of course, the EA approach: the greatest good for the greatest number, so long as that number is far away (such as overseas in Africa) and not near to home"
I haven't heard on many EAs focused on saving people in Japan or Australia, despite those places being further away than Africa for most of them. Has it occurred to you that perhaps EAs focus on Africa rather than the US not because it's further away, but rather because people in Africa are more likely to need the help?
I could come back at you with "Isn't it rather patronising and White Saviour-ish to think the poor benighted Africans can't solve their own problems, but need young white people to solve them for them?"
But let's not get into trading jabs. I think EA doesn't bother with Japan or Australia because they feel those are wealthy countries that can sort out their own problems. The various African nations are in varying degrees of mess and do need outside help.
The problem is (a) there are people who do need help at home as well; how about if EA decides to take a crack at the homeless problem in SF and Portland, as per the recent book review? Certainly there is room for a new approach to the incorrigible/long-term homeless who suffer from drug addiction and mental illness and lack of ability to look after themselves so that simply dumping them into a room with no supports and leaving them there isn't much better than leaving them on the street and (b) if the reply to (a) is that governments etc. in those cities should be taking care of their citizens, why doesn't that apply to the governments of African nations taking care of their citizens? Which circles right back round to "we know better" and then you run smack-dab into things like the "No Lean Season" which crashed and burned for what seem foreseeable reasons, and the Carrick Flynn campaign, which totally undercuts 'this is not our responsibility to sort out US problems, it's the responsibility of government'.
When you're putting resources into getting a guy elected to the US government, then you are opening yourself up to "okay, so what are you doing about US problems and US needy?"
To me EA is a turn-off because the recent pivot to AI safety and similar areas smells of motivated reasoning, because it just happens that most of the people who would benefit from the funding and talent are in the same small ingroup as the EA people.
Also the pivot away from donations and towards career advice (even when by their own admission these career paths are highly competitive) makes it a much harder sell. You can easily decide to give 5% instead of 10%; you can't easily decide to "go halfway" with a career choice.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm moved positively by "pay attention to the consequences of giving", and severely antagonized by Peter Singer style "be utilitarian to the max or admit you're being sub optimal". I don't think maximizing consequentialism is settled philosophy *at all*. I don't think the drowning child problem is settled philosophy *at all*. There's plenty of room for moral philosophies where a comfortable life doing some good is ideal, and EA acts like these are all ancient racism. BOO.
Singer is frankly a weirdo, and it’s kind of amazing he has got so many people in board.
Human caring drops off wildly with interaction/distance. It is how literally everyone lives their life and makes perfect sense.
If your cousin is freaking out about her upcoming test, and it’s in your field you help her. You don’t say “wait is there anyone else in your class who is even in worse shape than you? because I would rather help them”.
Your cousin's perception that you have betrayed her in favor of a stranger - and the lasting impacts this perceived betrayal has on your family relationships - can be weighted for inclusion in a utilitarian calculation.
That way, in theory at least, utilitarianism isn't limited to things priced in dollars or lives.
Meh that type of thing gets very awkward and silly for utilitarians. Where you try and pretend that people don’t value different people differently.
You get sort of stuck in a dilemma where you either validate most pre-existing decision making, or what they tend to do which is pretend that natural and ethical to care just as much about the happiness of someone in Burundi as it is your neighbor or sister.
This mostly seems to lead utilitarian thinkers into either confirming intuitively obvious moral positions or trying to convince other people of obviously cockamamie moral positions, and since sometimes they succeed at the latter, I'm sorry but it's kind of clearly a net loss as reasoning systems go.
That way, in practice at least, requires math that is intractably complex as you attempt to address a nigh-infinite number of mostly-but-not-entirely-infinitesimal value. Also nigh-immeasurable value, since you've excluded the two standard quantifiable metrics.
Or you just use your intuition to decide which terms to focus on and which terms to ignore, where "intuition" invariably means "I feel bad about betraying my cousin; obviously there must be some math terms that say it's wrong to betray her, I'll focus my analysis on finding those and then my intuition will say I've covered everything important".
Instead you might assign different weights to the utility of helping different people, based on their distance from you in a concentric circle schematic. A very simple one would say that 5 is for close relationships, 4 is for other relationships, 3 are those in your area, 2 are fellow citizens, 1 are foreigners, and violent lawbreakers temporarily get 0, i.e. their welfare can be ignored until captured.
This would account for some of the negative effects of betrayal on one's relationships. Thus if the cousin is a 4 or a 5, and the classmate of hers is a 2, this sort of utilitarian could justify helping the cousin study for the test.
I estimate that, in Western countries, there are far more people who evaluate moral consequences in a concentric circle model than there are either a) relationship-blind utilitarians or b) people who think that morality never extends beyond ingroups. Barring a huge increase or decrease in social trust, I also predict the ratio will stay this way.
My understanding is that the EA movement is overwhelmingly comprised of a), while anti-Enlightenment conservatives are overwhelmingly b).
That complicates the math, rather than simplifying it. You can maybe discard a few terms because they only involve violent lawbreakers, but now every other term has another weighting factor that needs to be evaluated.
Since the math is already too complex for real humans to handle without gross oversimplification, this proposal doesn't help.
"Your cousin's perception that you have betrayed her in favor of a stranger - and the lasting impacts this perceived betrayal has on your family relationships - can be weighted for inclusion in a utilitarian calculation."
Right, and the moment you perform that weighting accurately, you've reinvented conventional morality, completely eradicating utilitarianism's asserted selling point.
Exactly.
Thank you, yes.
I am not a part of any organized movement, but the reason I stopped donating to EA is because they pivoted more closely toward AI safety. I believe that the Singularity is about as likely as a demonic invasion through a dimensional rift on Mars; and thus donating money to any organization that is trying to stop it is less efficient than spending that money on lottery tickets.
This seems insufficiently fine-grained, I think?
Because there's still a large contingent of EA aligned organisations that do non AI safety work, GiveWell or Animal Charity Evaluators haven't stopped doing their thing, and won't for the forseeable future (I assign <1% that they start redirecting money to AI safety), so if one believes those to be aligned with one's own altruistic values, that's still a good donation opportunity.
I have it on good authority that both GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators _will_ transitioning to funding AI Safety, shortly after the first bombs fall in the Great Robot Wars.
In addition to AI safety, Animal Charity Evaluators presumes a whole bunch of messaging about valuing animals in terms of humans, vegetarianism/veganism, and other areas that I consider silly urban-elite topics. I have a very hard time thinking of an organization seriously when it can look at the billions of people worldwide in poverty and think "Let's donate to helping animals in the US!" and not notice the disconnect.
I get that not everyone in EA even cares about animal welfare, let alone makes it a major focus. But between that and AI, I do not get a strong impression that they are nearly as good at "best possible use of charity dollars" as they think/claim.
There has been some[1] thought[2] about[3] moral patienthood in the EA community.
[1]: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/research/2017-report-on-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood/
[2]: https://reducing-suffering.org/#which_beings_are_sentient
[3]: https://rethinkpriorities.org/publications/opinion-estimating-invertebrate-sentience
> stopped donating to EA
Oh, I never donated to EA. But some of their analysis convinced me to donate to for example Against Malaria Foundation.
Their arguments for unconditional money transfer have not convinced me, and donation to AI safety is not going to happen with me (while I consider it as possible, there are many other blockers before it would become reasonable to donate)
I believe I heard Tyler Cowen express the idea recently that EA is "underrated" by the general public and "overrated" by MOST who subscribe to the practice. This leaves me to believe that his general impression is that its a great idea that is not well followed through on most of the time.
" they've already decided on a "best" philosophy"
Yes. And it's a nonsense one at that. Quantitative Utilitarianism is the Perpetual Motion Machine of Real Communism.
I’m an ignorant American, but it seems to me there is a gradient of humor/lightheartedness/satire that runs from west to east in Europe with Brits on one pole and Russians on the other. The Irish are funny but also heavy, perhaps providing the ballast that prevents Western Europe from flying into the sky.
Czechs are perhaps the best balance of funny and deep. On the Russian side, Gogol can be funny, but not without heaviness even when he is just joking around.
Or is that merely how things seem to an English language perceiver? Are there a bunch of great lighthearted Russian and German artists that I don’t know about because the humor doesn’t translate?
I have an English copy of “The Galosh” that’s fairly recent and quite good. There are quite a few collections of his work available in English. I actually went to his house museum as a student.
I made this point above, but I found Russian comedy strikes Americans as naturally funny. I think it speaks to some hidden commonality between our cultures, and I’ve never been able to appreciate French comedy in the same way.
Then again I majored in Russian, so I’m obviously really weird.
I wonder how Emir Kusturica's comedies (e.g. Black Cat, White Cat) come across to the West - not exactly the same kind of humour as in northern/eastern Slavic countries, but it has a lot of similar vibes.
As a Russian-speaking person I can confirm that ~99% of Russian comedy is not translated to English so you wouldn't know about it.
But why isn't it translated? It would be if someone thought there were a market for it, right? Czech comedy is translated. Old French comedy like Molier is.
I don't mean exclusively artists one thinks of as essentially comic. For Czechs we have Hrabel, Hasek, Kafka, Kundera, Havel.... not all of those writers are exclusively comic, but they are extremely comic nonetheless and all somewhat popular in English translations.
For starters, many of the jokes are about culture-specific situations which aren't properly understood if you don't know how these situations work and which part of some straight-faced absurdity is satire and which part is likely reality. Thus jokes from not-that-far (foreign but understood) cultures get translated because they are translatable, and those from more alien cultures are not.
Most in-jokes about the old soviet system don't make sense if you don't know the system - some do, and those were translated (i.e. Reagan made some of them), but others don't, so their translations aren't interesting. Jokes about conscript life don't make much sense unless you know how it works (and no, USA boot camp doesn't count); many jokes about student life don't transfer well (in both directions) because the student life in Russia and USA is fundamentally different in so many key aspects. Etc, etc.
I think there is a general lack of interest in the lighter side of Russian culture which prevents commercial translations. Russia's brand abroad is largely suffering, sadness and stoicism in the face of the above. Why would someone in the West be interested in Soviet-era comedy, when Soviet era is all about putting people in Gulag and stifling dissent? (Life wasn't actually THAT bad in USSR, but there is a risk in saying so - you might end up being labeled Stalin's fanboy!).
As for Russian comedy being hard to understand due to differing realities, I don't believe that to be quite the case. We do have some texts/movies that require a lot of understanding of the local norms (there is a work-in-progress translation that I'm not sure I'll ever finish of a comedy song by Vladimir Vysotsky on my desktop; it includes quite a lot of notes on Soviet TV, psychiatric facilities and events from 70's; then again, I'm not sure I get ALL references in Tom T-Bone Stankus's "Existential Blues", either, and I'm better versed in American culture than an average American in Russian culture). But we also have a lot of comedy that deals with international matters.
The few English-language comments I've read on Soviet comedy movies, for example, seem to be mostly positive - they're not that inaccessible to the western audience - but there is no breakthrough piece of media that would lead to an explosion of interest, so there.
There is also sometimes the matter of language - some authors are REALLY hard to translate due to amount of language-wrangling, puns etc. they do. My favourite is Max Frei, a Russian comedy fantasy writer (actually, a team of two under a common alias), whose books were translated into English and German. I've tried to read the English translation and... I understand the low ratings it receives. The clever ways in each his characters needle each other or make fun of situations simply did not make it across the language barrier. It's a bit like... Imagine Terry Pratchett, but translated so you lose most of the puns, and everybody talk like sensible boring people. Actually, the same applies to the recent adaptation of "Witcher" series into a TV show: on TV, it comes off as almost-serious dark fantasy. In Russian translation (I guess Russian is just closer to Polish than English, so it went better, or we lucked out with a great translator, while English-speaking people didn't), it's much more of a comedy (a dark one, for sure). Even the way a lot of characters speak is funny-ish - they use low style, country bumpkin, old-timey speech patterns, which didn't make it into the show AT ALL. To provide an example, once again, imagine Henry Kuttner's Hogbens talking like modern city people!
Do you think one way to help bridge this gap is to look at Russian productions where Western audiences are already familiar with the source material? I know nothing about Russian comedy traditions but I find the Vinni Pukh cartoons delightful. Russian Eeyore is the Eeyoreist.
https://youtu.be/l3yhBEQlH_Y
Notice how the saddest, most suffering character is the one you remember best ;)
There is a joke going round: "The Russian literature is founded on suffering: either the characters must suffer, or the author, or the reader. If all three suffer, than this is the Great Work of Literature and the Eternal Classic".
Actually, this is a fine idea (about familiar source material). I wonder what the British would make of our version of "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of a Dog)" (they made it into a musical comedy with a romantic sub-plot, so it's considered heretical even by some Russian lovers of Jerome K. Jerome's work, which had a cult status in USSR). Also, there is this great mixed cartoon/live-action version of "Treasure Island": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKRG7PF73UA
There's the 70s Russian version of "The Three Musketeers" which is both very faithful to the book, very Russian, and very funny, especially as they turned it into a musical version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFBf_H3R5O0
There's also the 80s version of Sherlock Holmes, their version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is hilarious, especially the Canadian Sir Henry Baskerville, who is every American cliché they can cram in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdc2DxJnN3U
>(Life wasn't actually THAT bad in USSR, but there is a risk in saying so - you might end up being labeled Stalin's fanboy!).
Life also wasn't that bad during American slavery
Come on, comparing suffering of a permanently indentured underclass to suffering of people who couldn't buy American jeans and had to avoid criticizing their government too loudly is such as stretch it's not even funny.
I'd much rather be born in 60's USSR than a black man in antebellum South. Hell, even 30's USSR is preferable.
Rich and privileged youths missing jeans are of course not at all analogous to black slaves. Russian peasants, only freed from serfdom in 1861, basically reverted to that condition in USSR - until 1974 they had no passports, and travel without passport was a felony. Obviously almost any place in 1960's is preferable to 1850's (surgeons wash their hands, and there's an off chance for antibiotics), but beyond that I feel it's disrespectful to dismiss suffering of unfree population as "hankering after American jeans".
This state of affairs predates USSR in fact. Dostoevsky, the "heaviest" one, is seen in the West as quintessential Russian writer, while in Russia he's just one amongst many, whereas the likes of Pushkin or Chekhov are virtually unheard of abroad.
To be fair, though, Pushkin is generally a lot more upbeat. Also, a lot more lewd. Heh.
Correct on the Witcher books - in original Polish they're... perhaps not lighthearted, but do have a lot of charm (country bumpkin is a nice description, actually). The Netflix adaptation is almost universally hated around here.
Among all the strife and animosity, at least Russians and Poles can agree on one thing. That's a start.
Hey, hang all the war crime people starting with Vlad and we're all good.
Someone whose native language was not European and whose English was less than perfect once recounted to me something he'd read about an ex-pat female Russian spiritual writer who was fondly known by those who read her as "the baroness". She'd married an Irishman, and once the two were having a conversation about whether the Irish or the Russians were more prone to (humorous?) exaggeration and/or outright lying. Her husband (whose name, like hers, history does not relate) advanced as evidence for the Irish superiority the expression "only half-alive" for someone on the point of death. She responded with the following story (presented in rough paraphrase):
A Russian horse-trader comes into a lonely tavern late in the night. it is winter, and the tavern is located on the edge of some frozen waste or other. His clothes are in tatters. He gives a harrowing account of encountering a gigantic pack of (siberian?) wolves (perhaps several packs driven into a conglomeration by weather and starvation?) while leading some high number of very fine horses (perhaps 20). He tells in gruesome detail (here elided) how first the wolves pulled down the rearmost of his horses, then the next, then the next. Yet despite the number of horses the rapacity of the wolves was not sated, and they kept leaping upon whichever horse was rearward until only he and his own horse were left, both in a lather and fleeing for their lives in utter terror. Finally the wolves pull down his exhausted horse and he flees on foot. The wolves pursue him still. The tavern is rapt at his story, and he pauses for dramatic effect. "What happened then?" someone asks. "I was eaten!" he triumphantly concludes.
Can't. Stop. Laughing.
Alas I was not there for this marital spat, as I would have obtended in his defense "The Irish Rover".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGPss0CEmXg
Put up another W for old Éire.
Moliere is translated because he is the Classic of Renaissance Drama, second only to Shakespeare, and gained his fame in the era of French cultural dominance, the era before Anglophone culture became more inward-looking (due to English having become the lingua franca and America having grown so big and dominant.).
Even Moliere's Italian equivalent, Goldoni, who is considered a giant here in Italy, does not seem to have good translations into English for most of his stuff.
The more an author relies on form, the more is lost in translation. I find it just disheartening to read the English translations of Italian poets, or merely of nuanced prose stylists. They’re so, so much worse than the original. (Ask what Dante is famous for. Americans will say: he mapped out Hell. Italians will say: he's such a great wordsmith!)
Humor is the same; it just doesn't translate well. Back in the late 90's I was browsing English language forums for the first time, and I remember the shocked American reactions when I asked: “what is Seinfeld?"
I had never heard of Seinfeld, and with that in mind you can see why I don't expect foreigners to have heard of, or have access to, top Italian comedians like Fiorello, Crozza, Zalone, even though they are incredibly funny. Or Russian ones. British comedy is big in the US because it's in English and needs no translation. Monty Python doesn't remotely have the clout in Italy it has in the US; the same spot in people's hearts is taken by equivalent Italian comedy classics (which foreigners have never heard of).
But this doesn't just apply to comedy and poetry. In most countries domestically successful media of any kind is not necessarily exported, and if it is America is at the bottom of the list of likely importers due to having saturated her own cultural market.
I'm sorry to sound like the typical smug European, because I really like Americans, but Americans have a giant blind spot here. They tend to underestimate how stuff that's successful or available differs from country to country, even within the West. They'll say that something is popular/niche/unheard of/overappreciated/underappreciated/the best/the worst "in the West" or even "in the world" when what they really should say is, not "in the west", not "in the world", but... in America.
I don't disagree with anything you say, yet, while I may not be familiar with top Italian humorists and comedians, somehow the notion that Italians are often hilarious in a lighthearted way has always been my perception. For instance, the 1997 Italian comic film "Life is Beautiful" was very popular in the USA and won multiple Academy Awards. It's director, Roberto Benigni, seems downright silly. The 1962 film "Mafioso" is a comedy classic in the Criterion Collection. Perhaps the most famous Italian American rock star is Frank Zappa, who managed to be a serious musician and silly satirist at the same time. Fellini, probably the Italian filmmaker most familiar to Americans, may not be foremost a humorist, but he seems to show that there is a lot of humor in Italian culture.
For comparison, the most popular Russian filmmaker in the USA is probably Tarkovsky.
Perhaps this is simply a matter of cultural distance, which many people have pointed to as the explanation for my perception that there is a geographical lighthearted-humor gradient. Americans aren't very exposed to Italian culture, but we are a lot more exposed to it than we are to Russian culture, perhaps simply due to geography.
Would you like to test whether Russian humor works on you?
What's quite possibly the funniest Russian movie of the 21st century, "Election Day", is on youtube with English subtitles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hi0etcrqO8
The translation is fairly decent, but a few funny moments did completely disappear in English.
Hopefully, nobody at youtube figures out what the theme song says in Russian. (It's even more awful than in English.)
Thanks! I'll give it a try at some point.
I recently watched Cisaruv Pekar A Pekaruv Cisar (it's available free on youtube with English subtitles). It's amazing that a 70 year old movie made me laugh my ass off several times. It's a great example of Czech humor and I highly recommend it.
Ummm....have you heard of the cold war? The iron curtain has been very real. Scott talks about how there is a whole different set of over the counter drugs an while an american reaches for pepto bismol or xyz for a headache, Russia has other drugs. The scientific and cultural divide cannot be understated with only a handful of james bond villain types being the anglosphere cultural touchstone for Russia.
The USA is also simply far removed from Russia with no long term trade history or exchanges through 'royal' families marrying each other over centuries with limited carry over from England.
So the decades of super super hostile anti-russia ideas of the people who are still in charge of most media companies today has had a big impact. It wasn't so long ago or evven today with a rabid russiagate media or the old anti-red anti-commie setup where you could get blacklisted for even thinking about importing russian comedy and banned from working in media!
So yea...that continues today in less grandiose ways and doesn't fall into a simple economics 101 ideology of supply and demand taught to the neophyte children of the economics religion where culture, history, context, and human life do not matter in the face of someone trying to make money.
As an American who studied Russian, I was delighted to learn that Russian comedy both exists and is *funny*. By this I mean that I instinctively got the jokes and they genuinely made me laugh. Humor doesn’t always work cross-culturally on that level; I’ve drawn blanks at a lot of French or Italian comedy that native speakers assured me was hilarious.
There are plenty of Russian comedy movies on youtube, the older ones not too terribly subtitled. (The auto-generated subtitles on newer videos are pretty bad, though.)
What kind of light-hearted British humour are you referring to? If it's things like Monty Python it's kind of unfair to compare it to Gogol who was a contemporary of Dickens. A comedy like Election Day (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1198196/) would be a better comparison, and it's certainly not heavy.
Chesterton wrote lighthearted humor and "Punch Magazine" existed. Chesterton wrote that it's harder to write a joke for Punch Magazine than a book-length essay, giving evidence to the state of British humor in the 19th century. And the French wrote lighthearted humor much earlier with Diderot ("Jacques the Fatalist") and Rabelais in the 18th century. Not to mention the contributions of Shakespeare and Cervantes a couple centuries earlier to Western European humor.
This is interesting, I only knew Chesterton as a philosopher and the author of Father Brown detective stories.
I think that a lot of Russian authors who wrote satire/humour (Ilf and Petrov, Kozma Prutkov, Sasha Chorny) are indeed not well known outside of Russia.
>it seems to me there is a gradient of humor/lightheartedness/satire that runs from west to east in Europe with Brits on one pole and Russians on the other
And what do those poor Poles have to say about it?
It does sound like a very weird political allegory.
Chekhov wrote a fair amount of comedy, and a lot of Bulgakov’s “Master & Margarita” is hilarious.
The 'Russians are humourless' idea looks like a Cold War holdover to me. Classic Russian literature often has a much lighter and wittier style than you might think.
The Ukrainian show Servant of the People (still on Netflix, with excellent English subtitles) starring the current President, is a good representation of the kind of humor that is popular in Russia (or would be, if Putin allowed it).
You have a point though, that the "just for laughs" style of stand-up is a lot less popular in Russia than in the West. Sadly, a lot of Russian humor is still at the expense of minorities of various kinds, and there is little or no sympathy for them from an average Russian.
If you're near Seattle, there's going to be a summer ACX/LW meetup on Aug 3rd:
https://www.lesswrong.com/events/zPw5WLaJ9f4QEfpyR/lw-acx-seattle-summer-meetup
https://www.facebook.com/events/749612359504536/
Oh my God I miss Seattle- please go breath fresh air and buy a house near a hiking trail for me
We all want to save the rainforests, but then we get hungry and want some pork.
Some solar panel salesman tried to get me to install panels on my roof but the analysis required I cut down trees for more sun exposure. I said forget it. Birds and squirrels live in those trees.
On behalf of the birds and squirrels, thank you for not cutting down those trees.
Let me guess, you're not living in a forest.
Birds and squirrels will settle just about anywhere. Trees will also grow anywhere that's not solid rock or pavement as soon as you stop driving over it or mowing it. Leave a patch of your lawn without mowing for a season and see what happens. (We tried to save money by doing this once and ended up paying extra to get rid of the trees.)
The real challenge is keeping trees off your lawn, birds out of your carport, and squirrels out of your attic.
I started a blog a few months back, and my first post is the one I'm proudest of to date https://firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com/p/the-blacks-of-ireland-the-blacks-of-america
Philosophy, Irish politics, aesthetics from a rat-adjacent perspective. I know it looks a bit light on content at the moment but I'll be posting at least one new post this week.
In the San Fransicko post, Dianne Feinstein High School was mentiomed. Is it usual in the US to name public schools after active politicians? I never heard this happen in my country and it's proably illegal here. In the US, how do public schools get their names, and who decides to name one after an active Senator?
I believe it's a local decision, so in San Francisco it's up to the school district, as SF has an independent school district.
I say this on the basis of the fact that the same school district decided (to considerable public opprobrium) to rename that and several other schools during the pandemic to names considered less "problematic."
(To expand, the school district is controlled by a board of... something. Functionally directors, but maybe they're called supervisors or something. Those positions are elected. Not all school districts are done this way; in other cases they might be appointed by the county or, I don't know, I assume there could be an elected dictator for life of the school if someone decided to set things up that way. Basically, when a city or county forms a school district, it can set up governance of that school district how it likes.)
((Conceivably, superior forms of government (so in this case the state) could put some rules in place about what allowable forms of school district governance cities and counties may enact. I have no idea if they do -- it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that people probably are doing a lot of crazy stuff with. I assume that most places, when they set up their school districts, copied one of a few templates that everyone used.))
There is an old tradition against putting living people's names on public buildings. But it's weakened significantly in the past couple of decades. Especially in Democratic areas. There's certainly no formal rule nor could there be due to Federalism.
In a way, the naming of public schools after active politicians seems like an even worse sign of social decay than the junkies shitting in the street outside them.
It is much less about the politicians wanting it. (Ideally they would realize they'd better to reject such offer.) The problem is their supporters and the rest of the society are brownnosing to propose such things It betrays an assumption that they think their "hero" so perfect it is unimaginable they would do something wrong to tarnish their reputation.
Streets should not be named nor coinage/banknotes portray nor monuments erected for living people, especially ruling politicians. It is not a coincide such things happen in banana republics and dictatorships. British monarchs on banknotes get a pass because they are so powerless and this point represent the state apparatus more than themselves. It would be a bit more worrying if Elizabeth II ruled with same powers as Elizabeth I.
More than that, it's worrying that people either genuinely idolise politicians that much, or else have so much to gain from patronage by sucking up to them that this is worth it.
"The problem is their supporters and the rest of the society are brownnosing to propose such things It betrays an assumption that they think their "hero" so perfect it is unimaginable they would do something wrong to tarnish their reputation."
nit: This isn't limited to living politicians. It is perfectly possible for a scandal to come to light concerning some politician long after they are dead and buried. Also, there have been quite a few cases recently where political winds have shifted and actions or views of a centuries-dead politician which would have been considered perfectly reasonable by their contemporaries have been vilified ex post facto.
Totally agree with that.
If nothing else, you'd think politicians would be wary of putting their name on an institution that for all you know might end up in the news for something terrible that's not at all your fault, but...
Agree.
Is this really a rule? For example, in the US ex-presidents get a library named after them even while still alive and have since at least Herbert Hoover.
That’s a bit different because those are archive/museum type places for stuff connected to their presidency, not an average public library that you’d walk into and check out a book from.
Whatever aversions one might have to naming a building after someone living should apply doubly so to making a museum dedicated to them.
Anyway, I did some googling to see if this norm exists. In fact, in some places like Louisiana it's law! https://law.justia.com/codes/louisiana/2011/rs/title42/rs42-267 But it's also a law that gets regularly broken by the legislature https://www.nola.com/news/politics/article_3825d931-c00a-5221-b59a-56356f13b8b7.html So maybe it's a norm to say that we shouldn't do that but then also a norm to just do it anyway. Sounds like humans.
I also tried to come up with some examples. Of course, it's hard to come up with examples of something not happening, so this will inherently biased towards naming things. The Hoover Dam was referred to as such by congress before it was even finished and was officially given that name well before Hoover died (though it was originally called something else by the Roosevelt administration). The Eiffel tower was named after its engineer but I can't find out when this officially happened: it sounds like people just started calling it that and it quickly stuck? The only other public buildings I can think of named after people are airports. Dulles and O'Hare were both named shortly after their namesakes died. Harry Reid was renamed after the death of its namesake but the previous name was McCarran, which it bore while McCarran was still living. Charlotte Douglas was named after Douglas while he still lived. At that point in the list of largest airports in the US I got bored.
So I think the exceptions to this rule are numerous and not recent.
ttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_library_system
I really don’t see this as being any sort of honor, it’s just the way records/archives are handled.
I think there's a big difference between naming an unrelated building after someone to honor them vs building a library specifically dedicated to the history of a certain presidency, given the norm that every presidency is always going to get such a library.
>Whatever aversions one might have to naming a building after someone living should apply doubly so to making a museum dedicated to them.
I think you're confusing two different definitions of "dedicated" here.
If you name a high school after a famous mayor or senator, you are nominally "dedicating" it to them, but the actual mission of the place is educating(*) adolescents.
If you establish a library or museum to archive works related to [X], then you are literally and actually dedicating the library/museum to [X]. And you're probably going to name it accordingly, if only to avoid confusion.
If [X] is sufficiently important and worthy of study, it gets a library or museum. If [X] is also a living human being, then waiting until they are dead risks losing something important. Presidents, and the sum total of the works of a Presidential Administration for 4-8 years, are really kind of important. It's probably a good thing that we didn't e.g. wait until 1994 and only then say "hey, where did all the stuff from Watergate get off to?"
* Credentialling, warehousing, indoctrinating, whatever.
I guess I picked the wrong example since my others in another reply are more mundane, but I don’t think characterizing these as archives and only archives is valid. They’re museums with an intentionally positive spin on the president from what I can tell from the website alone. I don’t think that’s awful but it’s not just an archive. Why do you think that a museum saying Obama was a good president is more okay than naming, say, a courthouse after him? I’m pretty neutral on both but the museum seems like “the same but more so” so your view seems inconsistent.
I also that think trying to draw conclusions about societal decline (as others were) from these is very suspicious, particularly since the exceptions seem to be as common as the rule. Does the norm against naming after living people exist? Probably but only weakly with everyone making exceptions all the time.
At this point, it is a tradition, restricted to a single library, and the ex-presidents are generally supposed to be retired from high-level day-to-day politics when they get the library.
There are a few different common patterns for naming schools. A lot are just named after the towns or neighborhoods where they're located (some of which are thus named indirectly after people, as many US locales are named after early settlers or developers or notables the founders wanted to honor), while others are named after public figures who have some connection either with the locale or the school itself.
California in particular seems to do a fair amount of (re)naming stuff after living politicians, often but not always connected with their retirements, e.g. San Jose International Airport getting renamed after former San Jose Mayor and outgoing US Secretary of Transportation upon his retirement in 2001.
During a recent visit to San Francisco, I was rather startled to be directed to turn onto "Nancy Pelosi Drive". Definitely the first time I have encountered a street named after a politician who is not only alive but currently sitting.
There are other good answers in the replies. I just wan't to note there are 13,800 school districts in the US. Each one likely has its own rules on this.
When it comes to the US, almost nothing is standard throughout the country.
> And although I condemned Hanania’s admission that he sometimes endorsed putting his personal aesthetics above objective utility, commenters brought up situations that don’t seem so clear-cut: for example, would you destroy a beautiful rainforest so farmers could raise pigs there?
Pull on this thread, and it brings into question the very distinction between "objective utility" and "things (like aesthetics) that people value for other reasons." Who determined that the latter don't also count as utility? Don't the puzzles around "utility monsters" arise precisely because there is no principled way to exclude "things that people value" from utility?
I read that example and immediately thought: This is an incredibly SHALLOW conception of utility. The kind of shallowness I expect from economists defending the trickle down theory and austerity measures, but not the kind of shallowness I had expected from rationalists defending effective altruism. If this is typical, then color me unimpressed with that movement.
For reference, the value of a rain forest does not lie in the tourists🤦 it attracts, but in the scientists that might visit it in the future. A rain forest contains a trove of pristine and unique information, different from the information you would fine in another rain forest. If that information is destroyed to farm pigs, it is gone and can never be recovered. Pigs can always be farmed later or somewhere else.
I've read a lot of things that basically amount to "we should just replace wild spaces with farms or even better cities".
(Sorry, I'm to lazy to look for exact quotes)
When you replace a small wild space with a city, you prevent the replacement of large wild spaces with sprawling suburbs.
> For reference, the value of a rain forest does not lie in the tourists🤦 it attracts, but in the scientists that might visit it in the future.
Also, I would remind everyone, in the countless living things in it who would quite like their entire world not to be destroyed.
But both of these are passing the buck again, though. I think a lot of people still don't think you should destroy the rainforest even if all it does is sit there and look majestic, and even if (for the sake of argument) we abstract away the death and suffering of the animals that would ensue. People value the continued existence of unsettled natural spaces, for their own sake. Not all people, but certainly a lot of people. That's a common human preference and should be fulfilled for its own sake as part of any decent preference utilitarianism.
If you look specifically at animals suffering and dying as a bad thing, that's actually an argument in favor of destroying the rainforest since over any significant timespan more animals suffer and die than would if it were destroyed quickly. Respecting their preferences to exist and the other general value of the forest is more defensible though.
I am a preferentialist, yeah. The animals, as far as we can tell, would rather carry on existing. This should, insofar as it is possible, be respected. (This seems to me analogous to the fact that *I* would prefer that superintelligent aliens let me continue existing as I am, instead of wireheading me, let alone euthanise me to "put me out of my misery", even if they've determined from their higher-dimensional lotus thrones that Earthly life isn't worth living.)
I don't see why their "preferences" should be respected. Their preference is that they aren't killed and eaten by other animals - should be go in an intervene to stop them being killed by predators? Or would this violate the preferences of the predators? What about our preferences?
> I don't see why their "preferences" should be respected.
…Because my moral utility function is in fact about making sure other thinking/feeling beings' preferences are fulfilled as much as possible? Because the Golden Rule yields the same result if I put myself in the place of an animal over whose fate some eldritch aliens are debating? This is too high-level a question to answer better than that, I think.
> Their preference is that they aren't killed and eaten by other animals - should be go in an intervene to stop them being killed by predators? Or would this violate the preferences of the predators?
An all-seeing all-powerful AGI programmed according to my utility function would try to work something out to stop them being killed without harming the predators, yes. However, we humans don't have the means to do that sort of playing-god well, and in the meantime, I feel quite certain that insofar as their brains can process the question, most prey animals would rather have lived and loved and bred and felt the sunshine only to end up in the jaws of a bear, than never lived at all.
I also believe it would be ethically preferable to end human mortality, but that doesn't mean it's unethical to let new children be born mortal. Same question.
> What about our preferences?
Well, *I* have an altruistic preference for the animals' preferences to be fulfilled so long as it doesn't overly harm me or mine, so that's sort of self-resolving in my case. But should we be dealing with humans whose preferences overwhelmingly conflict with the animals', I mean, that's just the general problem of some people's preferences clashing with others'. You deal with it in much the same way you deal with it when it's preference-conflicts within the human population rather than between the human population and another set of feeling creatures.
I don’t find this line of reasoning particularly persuasive; all I need is to be convinced that an animal was _on net_ getting more pleasure than suffering to be fine with rainforests. Just the mere presence of suffering without any reference to counterbalancing pleasure is insufficient as an excuse to terminate a life.
If you could show that actually life in the rainforest is mostly suffering for animals, that would bring this argument back into play.
As with everything, you need to do cost/benefit; you can’t just point to a large numerator and be done with it.
I too was startled by that and felt a disconcerting drop in the utility of reading the blog for both pleasure and mental sharpening.
I sense that a connection to nature is lacking in the very online.
I mean this without judgment. Most of us now live off freeway exits that look interchangeable.
I grew up in a suburban neighborhood that had been carved out recently enough that it was still sort of native-woodsy - and there was a deeper strand of "woods" along the bayou we could (via trespassing) escape to when we chose. I think having this in the background made nature something I yearned for - and insofar as I've steered my life, it has been in that direction. But I can readily see that without this exposure, however attenuated and ignorantly pursued, I might not have done so. Now, four decades later, that area has changed and - combined with kids spending so much less time outdoors (you'll just have to trust older generations when we say we were basically not particuarly welcome inside what were our *mother*'s houses, and played indoors chiefly when it was rainy, but not if the mother had "just mopped") - I expect it no longer produces those "last child in the woods" moments.
It is my suspicion that this sort of thing is more important than the fabulous vacations that may immerse people in nature, in a tour-guided sort of way, and are much more commonplace for families nowadays. And of course plenty of lower socioeconomic urban kids probably never leave the city at all.
I don't believe we're ever coming back from our screens, and that a smart person like Scott said something so mindless, is really demoralizing. It's like the whole environmental movement just went poof, forgotten - which I guess is more or less true, based on the exclusively gray heads one sees at meetings.
The early environmental movement was a good thing. There were real problems, and most of these were eventually resolved. Today I see the environmental movement as a legal extortion racket standing a thwart the road to progress shouting stop, carrying the weight of law behind it.
Coming from a farming background I'd say that proximity to nature certainly didn't endear me with a love of nature as something majestic to be protected at all costs, but instead the impression that it is an adversary who is trying to screw you over constantly (to be more realistic it's more like an elder god who has no animus but will crush you without a thought). Two items that still stick in my brain from that upbringing: Animals generally are not delicate sprites but resilient brutes; and what is natural is not necessarily what is good.
Having moved to a smaller town/suburban lifestyle in adulthood, I appreciate the aesthetics of nature when I engage with it, but I struggle with why someone would care about something they'll never see and why their aesthetic preferences for something that is purely in their imagination should override those of the people who live in the environment. The arguments above regarding a kind of "veil of ignorance" approach to valuing the preferences of the other life forms make sense to me, even if I don't fully embrace them.
It's funny that most of the arguments I heard growing up about regulation were against the city folk forcing their aesthetic preferences on us who live on the front line, and yet here is an argument that these same city folk are so far removed that they don't care at all. I don't know where I'm going with this, apologies.
Exactly
"to be more realistic it's more like an elder god who has no animus but will crush you without a thought"
Strictly speaking it's the other way around. Lovecraft invented those elder gods as a metaphor for how horrified he was by the way nature has no animus but will nevertheless crush you without a thought (another thing which it does not have, in fact).
It's not just that the particular example is weak. It's that the distinction in play can't be made in a principled way. Attempts to do so always smuggle in intuitions from outside of utilitarianism.
"contains a trove of pristine and unique information, different from the information you would fine in another"
Anyone can make same claim about any other biomes..
>The kind of shallowness I expect from economists defending the trickle down theory
There is no "trickle down theory". You're attacking a strawman. If you think there is a theory that could be described as 'trickle down', then call it by what said economists call it - not some bad faith label designed to make your opponents sound evil and/or stupid.
Meh, Reagan's economics people first used the term 'trickle down' in some kind of speech or policy platform explainer, I can't quite remember the details but I do know the term originated from its proponents.
Of course, it was just one phrase, describing a single phenomenon, a single mechanism in some huge multifactor tax bill or ssomething, and the left is a bit disingenuous in seizing on it and making it out to be the whole an entire philosophy of the right on economics...
But it's not *quite* a bad faith label designed by blues to make red economists sound evil and/or stupid
+1
> Don't the puzzles around "utility monsters" arise precisely because there is no principled way to exclude "things that people value" from utility?
Yes.
The distinction isn't so much between aesthetics and utility, but between offering rational persuasion versus "I just don't like it" knee jerking. In particular Hanania has no reason to.associate rational.persuasion with utilitarianism ... that was an idea Scott brought in.
> rational persuasion versus "I just don't like it" knee jerking
Sure, but if that's Scott's main point, it's a rather obvious and trivial one. Of course we prefer rational persuasion to knee-jerking. What I reject are the presumptions:
1) that Hanania's concerns could not be given rational arguments, regardless of whether Hanania himself chose to do so;
2) that such rational arguments ought to take utilitarian form.
Yeah, I also thought that was a bad example. People like camping (and ecotourism in general) and will pay decent money to do it, so it's not obvious that forests being cut down is going to raise overall utility. Also, pigs are inefficient protein factories compared to legumes (and are smarter than dogs, presumably with similar capacity for suffering)
It's not just the particular example is bad. It's that the attempt to partition between reasons that rest on "utility" and those that don't, can't work.
Ah, I didn't get that it was trying to separate the reasons for valuing those things into different categories. The way I interpreted the example was that society would get more utility from the pig farm than the rainforest, but we have a selfish preference to keep the rainforest rather than allow pig farmers to farm pigs. My response being that, actually, society gets utility from rainforests also. But I see what you mean. My utilitarian brain just automatically converted "aesthetic preferences" to "utility from aesthetic things" without me noticing.
Right. One can have an object-level debate about the different utilities of different things, but that's actually the less interesting discussion. The greater meta-level dispute is that Scott is trying to distinguish between "us rational utilitarians" and "the bad thing that Hanania is doing," and I'm saying, no man, that doesn't work. All of Hanania's preferences could be cast in utilitarian terms and given rational arguments. Hanania doesn't bother with that steelman, but that fact is orthogonal to whether utilitarianism per se lets us distinguish between rational and irrational preferences. (Spoiler alert: it doesn't.)
A self-observation I had a while back that others might relate to: I've come to find the predictive processing model helpful to understand why seeing bugs (spiders etc) can worry me so much. There are always bits of movement, dust motes, pieces of fluff etc in the background or sides of one's vision which the brain rounds down to nothing. If I see a spider in my flat the prior probability that some movement is a spider goes up, so for the next while I'll be extra aware of all those things and get the sensation that there are bugs everywhere, making it hard to relax in what's normally a 'safe' space. Same thing when you're lounging outdoors and first notice how many ants there are in the world.
A rainforest is a physical and concrete thing with specific coordinates in space.
I think an anti woke aesthetic could be similar to an argument for preserving regional accents or dialect, but not to a rainforest. The reason this analogy seems to work is that Scott picked something with more immediate emotional resonance (probably, to pro woke people) than social cues / mores. The two aren’t *really* that comparable- there’s uncountable utility on side of the rainforest, and countable utility on the other side. Are we saying that Hanania admits that woke is the pig farmer, achieving “more pigs” utility?
Scott included as an assumption in the premise that the forest "doesn’t get enough tourists or novel-pharmaceutical-product hunters to be as valuable as the pig money", which I think should be extended to "the rainforest is, for the sake of argument, not useful as an instrumental part of getting further utility later; the question is whether we value its existence for its own sake".
Which I say we do. I certainly feel a moral preference for surviving patches of the natural world to continue to exist unharmed and un-tampered-with, quite unrelated to a belief that they can be put to use later. I think this is common, though not universal — watching (or thinking of) trees getting uprooted and forests burning down makes people sad, is the thing, to strip away all the high-faluting moral-philosophy jargon. Preference utilitarianism can and should account for this, and count the continued existence of rainforests as a moral good in and of itself. Not unbounded, but far from nil.
> Are we saying that Hanania admits that woke is the pig farmer, achieving “more pigs” utility?
If I recall correctly, Hanania doesn't admit this, but says that *hypothetically* he would still be anti-woke even if wokeism did indeed lead to a better world, and this is what Scott is taking issue with.
Wait, how is the idea that preserving regional accents or dialect *anti*-woke? That sounds like a whole idea to me.
Ask traditional people of wherever how they feel about drag queens educating their children, I'll wait.
I suppose African countries get a free pass because colonialism but it'll end soon, and African ethno/nationalists will join all the others in being an outgroup.
Huh? What do drag queens have to do with traditional dialects and accents? Wokism asks for preservation of distinct minority cultures, and even (through the problematic “cultural appropriation” idea) tells people that they shouldn’t assimilate to other cultures. It’s true that other strands of woke ideology are at odds with this, by encouraging people to express individual desires and get out from their traditions. But the anti-woke idea is usually about assimilating to mainstream traditions, not preserving local ones.
> Wokism asks for preservation of distinct minority cultures
For the preservation of a shallow caricature of them that conforms to their values, sure.
Traditional dialects and accents are mostly cherished and preserved by the exact kind of people wokists would gladly launch into the Sun - and the sentiment is increasingly mutual.
It really depends on the people group. As a Southerner or Appalachan what the educated class thinks of their accent.
Yes indeed. I often think back to a linguistics professor I had as an undergrad who said she had faced much more discrimination in her life for her Alabama accent than for being a lesbian.
I am not sure I understand the rainforest scenario. Human wellbeing cannot be quantified in GDP and it seems to me that a purely economic definition of utility is lacking. In the rainforest scenario I would be claiming that total utility would be going down even if the pig farmer benefits economically
Yeah, I think I'd be tempted to say something like "even if I never visit, it makes me happy to know that rainforests exist". Then you could challenge that with "well, what if we were going to wipe your memory, so you would never know whether the rainforest was preserved or not, would you still prefer it?" At that point you either need the rainforest to produce a sort of floating utility, unmoored from any particular human enjoying it, or admit the pig farmer is in the right.
But probably my simply going to sleep each night vaguely aware that there is one extra square mile of rainforest in Guyana isn't going to provide more utility to me then having a new lucrative one-square-mile pig farm gives a Guyanan. So you would have to argue that maybe the benefit to millions of people like me combined is worth it. But that's not really how my brain treats this problem - it feels like the rainforest is good and important even if nobody else cares or agrees with me.
This seems broadly equivalent to Hanania's problem. Suppose he likes some specific unwoke thing - let's say traditional gender roles. Maybe he enjoys seeing people who embody traditional gender roles, or maybe he just enjoys knowing that they exist.
I don't really think the two are comparable. The rainforest is endangered -- there's a very limited amount and once it's destroyed you can never get it back.* Traditional gender roles are not endangered. I agree with Rj that preserving a dying language / accent / culture is a much more relevant comparison.
*I like my traditional gender roles like I like the rainforest -- very far away.
"Traditional gender roles are not endangered."
Really? When a supreme court nominee says she can't define what a woman is because she's not a biologist? (and I don't blame her dodging this question, but the fact that this question *can be asked* and *has to be dodged* demonstrates that there is a *big* change in sex/gender understanding).
When "a woman is someone who says they are a woman" is the kind of circular reasoning that is now considered a sufficient answer, and which would be accepted in no other instance when definitions were required, then we are moving into "traditional gender roles are not on firm ground".
I think traditional sex/gender roles will survive, because so much of the current activism is so damn stupid in what it demands of people (obviously male-sexed person with full beard and no attempt at all at presenting in feminine manner is described as a 'woman') to bend the knee for accepting that the backlash will come. And things like FINA denying transgender athletes from competition (on the reasonable biological grounds that if you were entering races as a man last year, you still retain certain physical advantages over cis women competitors) is one such example of common sense.
I think the key point is that the rain forest can't be rebuilt once destroyed (not with anything like the same complexity, at least, unless you're willing to wait a loooong time), while gender roles presumably could change back in a matter of decades if the cultural wind shifts. In fact, since he views traditional gender roles as natural products of human biology, Hanania has reason to expect they'd re-emerge over human timescales even if they were somehow to disappear altogether. Therefore the rain forest is not a good analogy, since part of the reason to be cautious about destroying it is that it can't be replaced. In that sense traditional gender roles are not endangered.
>part of the reason to be cautious about destroying it is that it can't be replaced
I notice that I am confused. Has there not been a modern cottage industry of thinkpieces (even in the MSM! even written by leftists!) documenting the rise of Troubled Young Men caught in the uncanny valley between so-called "toxic" Traditional Masculinity(tm) and progressive Maletopia[1]? Do we not see a rise in membership of groups like MGTOW, Blackpill, incels, etc? Is there not a popular piece of advice telling lonely guys to turn to tradcon-type communities, because at least there the gender rules still apply sanely and they can find acceptance as capital-m Men?
(I'd have argued that modern gender norms heavily favour women, but the apparent recent sharp uptick in gender nonconformity among young women makes me question this Conservation of Gender assumption. Things seem to be troublesome for both genders now...and that's after decades of progressive victories on the gender front. Coincidence?)
It sure seems like traditional gender roles are very difficult to replace once destroyed. Only time will tell if it's truly impossible. The fact that even having a ready-made set of replacement norms on offer doesn't seem to be working is...not terribly reassuring.
[1] One of the better such pieces: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/the-miseducation-of-the-american-boy/603046/
>progressive Maletopia
In which masculinity is to be entirely replaced by femininity, it appears. No wonder that this project isn't going too well.
An important point is that once traditional roles reassert themselves they do so without all the cultural programming that is supposed to mitigate their downsides.
For example, take violence. I grew up in a rather traditional culture. I had a strong implicit norm, from observing my father, that because I am a man, I am a physical danger to others if I don't get myself under control, so I got myself under control. I was shown that people will rely on me to keep my cool and navigate a crisis, an attitude which was immensely helpful in adult life and relationships.
If a boy is raised in a "just be yourself sweetie" vibe by clueless parents, and the boy suddenly becomes a man with surging testosterone, that can be a fast lane to jail or worse.
I don’t think it is remotely clear that a rainforest is harder to reproduce than a cultural pattern.
^^ this. Culture is not the words we use to describe it.
> Traditional gender roles are not endangered
As a counterpoint: there was a movie released, actually quite recently, where a man goes around asking people "what is a woman?"
I have not seen it, but as I understand it, there is a large segment of the population that cannot answer. I further assume this bears some relationship to the segment of population that can elaborate on what a traditional gender role is, both for men and women.
Are you quite certain traditional gender roles are not endangered? Or perhaps is your asterisk'd postscript the answer: you do not see their utility, so for you, their loss is a net positive?
The point is that a simple, straightforward question with an unambiguous and obvious correct answer *shouldn't be* a gotcha question. If people started getting shifty-eyed and evasive when you asked them whether the world is round, or make bizarre prevaricating statements like "you mean the same way a disc is round?", that would *in itself* be a sign of deep rot in our culture and intellectual climate.
That man is Matt Walsh and all of his questions are rhetorical.
Traditional gender roles are dying, but only within the small segment of the population with it's head buried in the metasphere.
When one ventures out into the real world, where people have to do something like real work, gender roles exist. But you have to realize that gender roles exist because there are real differences between the genders. Yes I'll admit that the strongest quartile of women are stronger than the weakest quartile of men, but this is easily resolved by observing that the strongest quartile is the strongest quartile because of weight training. And that the weakest quartile is so due to health problems.
Just as water flows where it does because of geographic and geological reasons, gender roles flow where they do for physiological and psychological reasons.
"When one ventures out into the real world, where people have to do something like real work, gender roles exist. "
What are you counting as "real work"? A _lot_ of jobs, from cashier to programmer, don't require much physical strength, and aren't very specific to one gender. I count them as real work. What is your view?
There certainly _are_ biological differences between the sexes. You are quite right that physical strength is one of them. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17186303/
Violence is another https://www.statista.com/statistics/251886/murder-offenders-in-the-us-by-gender/
But quite a few job roles are fairly androgynous.
I'd claim that even "androgynous" jobs pay a non-negligible premium for STR, and thus tend to self-sort along gender lines anyway. Working in retail, I can't count the number of times I've done a double-take after a new hire has worked for some time, and they turn from a waiflike college student into Actually Pretty Buff. This happens to everyone, male and female...and yet the most physically demanding tasks are still suspiciously masculine-dominated, and vice versa. Even more curious, when feminine folk do take over the male-dominated duties, there's a higher rate of injury and accident, despite them being stronger than the average non-blue-collar man.
It's hard to give voice to this reality at work though. Most instinctively turn their eyes from such "sexist" observations, and double down on insisting that everyone has the same official, equally-valuable job duties. Which is technicaly true, but not an appropriate counterargument to the claim...
(I will note that there's a lot of Conflating Sex And Gender going on in this thread, though. Muddies the arguments significantly; guilty as charged for rhetorical expediency.)
That's fair. I'm not claiming that _all_ jobs are androgynous. I've also read of "higher rate of injury and accident" (specifically in construction jobs where pieces of equipment weighing >50 pounds had to be manually lifted into place).
Table 11 in https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-databook/2020/home.htm gives some nice statistics.
Yes, the population of mechanical engineers is 6.6% female and the population of preschool and kindergarten teachers is 98.7% female, but e.g. the overall category of management, professional and related occupations is 51.8% female.
"Programmer" is not the best choice for a job that doesn't sort for innate gender differences.
It is a reasonable choice. The ratio is:
"Among Software Programmers, 28.7% of them are women compared to 71.3% which are men. "
https://www.zippia.com/software-programmer-jobs/demographics/
I'm not claiming that most jobs are 50:50. I'm claiming that many jobs (including programmers) are not 90:10 in either direction.
The upper quartile of women is a billion people*. At the scale of all humans, “exceptions” are GIANT populations of people even if they don’t exist on the fat part of the bell curve. This is why pigeonholing of most kinds, including gender roles, is bad if your ethics system is anything more mature than gene propagation.
*Depending on what you’re measuring
Thats a case of the sorites paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox.
Maybe that one square mile will be the one that will lead people to feel that the rainforest ist no more.
Or, to put it more realistically, when it comes to the perception of "rainforest exists", there are lots and lots of different thresholds, and and there is a chance that removing a specific square mile will trigger one of them. For example, some travel blogger will get to see that piece of forest and post pictures to his 100.000 followers, or he will get to see a a pig farm instead. Or some cute animal will either get photographed and seen by 50.000 people, or not, because that missing square mile reduced its numbers.
These analyses exhibit a horrible combination of the tyranny of the quantifiable with the idea that man is the measure of all things. Not once has the idea that the rainforest is providing vital services right now that keep all life viable come up. Its only value, apparently, is in aesthetic contemplation or undiscovered pharmaceuticals.
It's difficult, but not impossible, to quantify ecosystem services. Costanza et. al. estimated in 1997 that the aggregate value of ecosystem services was 2x world GNP. If we actually took their value into account, however, we would do very few new projects at all because we're in ecological overshoot and the first rule of holes is to stop digging. As vealham said so well, "then we get hungry and want some pork", so we simply ignore the externalities.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3339477/
Thank you! The rainforest has a lot of ecosystems in it that we know about but don't fully understand. It also has impacts on the climate of the whole earth. It has massive utility, some of which we understand, plenty of which we don't.
The analogy would work a lot better if it were some particular obscure sculpture that has appeal to the reader but not to any particular location's economy.
> well, what if we were going to wipe your memory, so you would never know whether the rainforest was preserved or not, would you still prefer it?
I would. For example if there is some thriving ecosystem in underground oceans of Europe ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)) or in methane lakes of Titan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)#Lakes ) I prefer to preserve it.
Even if I am unaware that it exists and someone is destroying it, that is not changing that my preference is that it would be stay untouched rather than destroyed (other preferences will also apply!).
Even if I am unaware specifically that blue-nosed group of aliens on a far away planet genocides yellow-nosed group, then I am still preferring no genocide.
> one extra square mile of rainforest in Guyana isn't going to provide more utility to me then having a new lucrative one-square-mile pig farm gives a Guyanan.
The problem is that turning all rainforest into pig farms is likely to produce problems, both for us and Guyanans. See lake and filters example.
Are we just forgetting that animals exist here? Or are we just assuming that being a wild animal in the rainforest kind of sucks, so destroying the rainforest probably isn't net-negative for them?
> so destroying the rainforest probably isn't net-negative for them?
I am not buying this argument.
> Are we just forgetting that animals exist here?
For me it is bundled with "I prefer not destroying all that", personally I do not give animals high importance (for example, I have no problem with eating meat, though I am limiting it a bit)
I put a lot of importance on animals (I don't think 1 animal = 1 human, but there are lots of animals and I do think that more complex animals very likely are conscious and can feel pain/pleasure). At this point, I find myself very uncertain as to whether life in the wild is net positive or net negative for the average animal. It seems pretty tough - a very large fraction of animals are killed at a young age, and lots of animals suffer from hunger, disease, and injury. I don't know how it balances it out, and I definitely wouldn't advocate bulldozing rainforests over it right now, but I think it's a legitimate possibility. See Brian Tomasik's writing if you want more info https://longtermrisk.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/
Well, does being a wild animal in the rainforest kind of suck?
An animal should be well-adjusted to its environment, with a neutral "happiness" corresponding to its average situation. I'd assume it views the ups and downs of its forest life more or less the same as humans view theirs.
If you haven't already, you should read Brian Tomasik's essay: https://longtermrisk.org/the-importance-of-wild-animal-suffering/
I have, and I disagree based on my intuitions about neural calibration as described above.
I also think focusing on insects is a mistake - you can easily go lower, as far down as C. elegans before you start running into any sort of boundary based on information processing. And C. elegans is not that far from an organism without a nervous system at all, and you're soon left wondering if bacteria are conscious...
EDIT: actually, the author makes my point for me:
> it seems unlikely that species would gain an adaptive advantage by feeling constant hardship, since stress does entail a metabolic cost
Stress is a signal that something is _wrong_ and there's a plausible path to fixing it. It is the sprint mode, not the marathon mode. I'd expect a deer that's eating grass in a field with its young, vigilant but not currently confronting a predator, to feel about as good as a human on a Sunday walk with their family.
Okay that's all fair! As I said in my other comment chain, I think the "wild animal lives are on net negative" position is plausible but I'm very uncertain about it. I just wanted to make sure you weren't dismissing it without engaging.
I would add that applying the same "well-adjusted to their environment" argument, we should expect that the average modern human is less happy than the average hunter-gatherer, despite being infinitely better off materially. Which is consistent with the anecdota that whites that were absorbed in native american community rarely went back
What I suspect is happening here:
You're assuming "economics" to refer to a study of practical utility. Arbitrario is assuming it to be something like the actually existing academic discipline and/or economic system.
Hence, you're assuming the point to be about some sort of not measurable, subjective aesthetic pleasure the rainforest provides people, outside of objective utility. The actual point is that a rainforest obviously provides more utility than a pig farm, and the only way you could assume otherwise is if you view the world through some narrow lens of economism where things which aren't commodities, which can't be exchanged on the market and monetized, literally have no value.
---
"Would you destroy the Sun so farmers could raise pigs there? (assume the farmers get some money from it, which raises their utility..."
"I am not sure I understand. The total utility would be going down even if the pig farmer benefits economically."
Thank you, I couldn't have explained it better
Western people hold outsized value on biomes which are depicted in specific emotionally narrated television specials. These biomes tend to be visualized in an atomic manner, existing of its own accord, instead of existing as the sum of the terrain, atmosphere, geology and climate.
You can distill the scenario down to even simpler terms: that pig farm will allow N peasants to survive with adequate nutrition. How many peasant lives is your aesthetic enjoyment worth ?
How much does it cost to offer all the peasants cheap and effective birth control, and say "if you decide to produce more new peasants than the presently-arable land can support, that's on you"?
You can't, in practice, say that in present society, though. Simple proof: a few states of India are currently desertifying themselves by draining their water tables for agricultural purposes, which will lead to mass starvation and death down the road, entirely aside from the ecological devastation. Try telling an average liberal that this is fine because it's their own fault for producing more Indians than the environment can bear, and we should do nothing about it except let the Gods of the Copybook Headings do their inevitable work against hubris. That's completely outside the Overton Window.
This does seem to rely on humans being the only meaningful loci of utility in all of existence. This is culturally a strange notion and the natural world has been valued by native people's for its own sake for tens of thousands of years. While short term slash and burn approaches are a quick way to ruin your environment on a long term basis.
Native people's cultures evolved over time and the somewhat technologically static periods allowed for a deep deep harmonisation with longer term consequences of various approaches. The 7th generation planning of native peoples and deep connection to the land are in stark contrast to the extractive and selfish short term goals of our current system.
While native peoples were successful in living in the same area for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, we have managed to put the entire planet in jeopardy in less than 150 years with our current model.
It seems the dumb ideas and destructive patterns of shitting where you eat are killing us and as a society there is a strong and real chance that our very short term experience into grand global civilisation will fail. But the same cannot be said for native ways of living which are time tested and known to work.
You speak as if pre-Columbian peoples didn't also convert the land for their own use. Some of the pre-Columbian cities held 1.6M inhabitants. They cut down rain forests, quarried stone, disturbed the land, built reservoirs and canals, built and irrigated truly impressive farms. Not long after abandonment, these works were quickly gobbled up by the rain forest, and some are only recently rediscovered by use of foliage penetrating radar.
You seem to neglect that your very online presence requires consuming vast amounts of natural resources, minerals mined, synthetics extracted from fossil fuels, fossil fuels power our entire lives ... contrary to what solar & wind lobbyists would have you believe.
An acre, or even a mile of land converted to some intensive animal husbandry scheme will be quickly reforested when abandoned.
See Gimli's description of the Glittering Caves:
"Then I will wish you this fortune for your comfort, Gimli" said the elf, "that you may come safe from war and return to see them again. But do not tell all your kindred! There seems little left for them to do, from your account. Maybe the men of this land are wise to say little: one family of busy Dwarves with hammer and chisel might mar more than they made."
"No, you don't understand," said Gimli, "No Dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap - a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day - so we could work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in Khazad-Dûm; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let the night return."
Actually, I'd say that human well-being can be quantified in GDP. For the same reason that money may not make you happy, but when you can't afford the heating bills, you're going to be really unhappy.
Unless you already live in a warm climate and don't need to pay for heating.
I mean, on one hand, you can still use GDP as a yardstick to measure things it doesn't measure directly (see: Michael Feltes above). On the other, it does not in fact measure them, in itself.
Some of the current discourse in America is based around the idea that the Republicans want 'Christian-style morality' based on 'Biblical principles' and the Democrats don't want that. Why would the Republicans want this? Why don't the Democrats agree to this and start setting up institutions to make it happen? That is, objectively separation of church and state seems like a good thing to me. But from the point of view of the Republican and Democrat party, combining them seems like a near-certain way to move further from the median Republican platform and closer towards the median Democrat platform.
I can sort of understand that - if you squint extremely hard at it - the Bible might just about be seen as recommending exclusively heterosexual relationships and prohibiting abortion (although I think you could argue the toss about both). However the Bible repeatedly and unambiguously demands that you treat all people the same, are kind to criminals and immigrants, give up all your money as tax / charity. I see these latter points as being closer to a Democrat wishlist than a Republican wishlist.
One possible explanation is that the Democrats are just fundamentally more principled than the Republicans and so refuse to take this obviously-good-for-them step because it would be bad for America as a whole. Without wanting to start an argument, that doesn't model the Democrat's normal behaviour amazingly well, so I don't see why it would here. Another possibility is that the Bible contains something that I've overlooked which is fundamental to the Republican platform and antithetical to the Democrat platform. Candidates for this might be slavery or women's rights (although obviously the Republicans are against slavery and pro-women, the Democrats have more of their base in black and female communities, so might legitimately be more worried about this). But I don't think this is a great explanation either - Republicans already justify some of their policy platform on the basis of 'Biblical morality' and haven't started calling for the re-instatement of slavery, so there's no very good reason to think they would begin if the Democrats started calling for radical redistribution on the basis of Biblical principles.
Is there something going on here that isn't obvious from a UK perspective?
I agree. Also I ctrl-f'd for "from each" (as in "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs") to see if anyone had made the argument that socialism is from the acts of the apostles. I won't make it here, but thought I would throw down a marker for it.
This is really interesting, thank you. You're absolutely right I'm mostly getting the sense that these decisions are religiously motivated from left-leaning American news sources telling me that they are religiously motivated. In hindsight I maybe should have been a bit more critical about where I was getting my information!
Yes, a large chunk of the Republican base is Christians from Evangelical Protestant denominations. Evangelical Christians claim that their ideology is the ideology of the Bible but of course that is debatable, as you point out. Anyway, when people talk about 'Christian-style morality' and 'Biblical principles' in a US political context they actually mean 'Evangelical Protestant-style mortality' and 'Evangelical Protestant principles'. (Or even, frequently, 'the morality and principles of people who self-identify as Evangelical Protestants, even if not actually consistent with Evangelical Protestant doctrine'.) What's actually in the Bible has nothing to do with it.
"Jesus says "give all your money to the poor", checkmate evangelicals" is a pretty distasteful argument IMO, especially when it comes from internet atheist with a surface level understanding of both the bible and of evangelicals. The argument assumes that evangelicals doesn't understand their own religion (the more likely position is of course that the person making the argument doesn't understand evangelicalism.)
First of all: the ideology is not the movement: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/the-ideology-is-not-the-movement/
Second, you're making an interpretation of what the bible repeatedly and unambiguously demands. This is your interpretation. Other people make other interpretations. There's the entire field of hermeneutics dedicated to this. Your confidence in your interpretation does not match the glaring holes it has: the biggest is how it takes things that the bible (arguably) demands from *individuals* and applies them to the *state*. Calling for "radical redistribution on the basis of Biblical principles" is fine, many Christians do that, but (most) evangelicals do not. This is not because they are stupid or lack understanding of the bible: it's because their interpretations and understandings are different.
Your first point is well taken - thank you for the link and that is probably getting close to resolving my confusion. I suppose I'm still confused why the Democrats don't make Biblical arguments just on a tactical level, but maybe "That's not the sort of thing we do" is a powerful enough force to prevent it from happening
On your second point I'm afraid I don't understand at all. There is surely no reasonable interpretation of the Bible which claims that Jeremiah 1:5 (“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you") is more explicitly anti-abortion than Matthew 19:21 is explicitly anti-rich (“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”). I wouldn't be surprised if *no* party used the Bible to motivate their morality - the Bible is a complex document and it is sometimes difficult to understand its relevance to modern moral dilemmas. I wouldn't be surprised if *both* parties used the Bible to motivate their morality - the Bible has great weight of authority, particularly in an American context. But I am really surprised that the Republicans are the *only* party using the Bible to motivate their morality, when their interpretations of the Bible are - charitably - less obvious than interpretations which support (certain planks of) the current mainstream Democrat consensus.
I really appreciate that you've given a specific example of where I might have gone wrong. I have a fairly good understanding of the Bible (I wouldn't consider myself an 'internet atheist' and I think you're characterising my position a bit unfairly), but the point about the difference between states and individuals is new to me. But while I think this supports your position that the Dems *should not* be trying to use the Bible to justify radical redistribution, it doesn't resolve my confusion about why the Republicans *do* use the Bible for that. The Bible only ever demands things from individuals (Governments are only mentioned once or twice in the Bible, and only in vague terms that don't imply anything about how governments should act), so the Republicans should be equally unable to translate "Abortion / homosexuality is disapproved of in the Bible, so we should legislate to ensure no abortion / homosexuality".
Here's a reasonable interpretation of the Matthew 19:21 that is not anti-rich: Jesus is talking to a single person who has uphold all commandments and still feels lacking. This person has great (implied unhealthy) attachment to their wealth. Jesus tells him to give his wealth away to be *perfect* (note that Jesus says that this person has already achieved eternal life). Thus there's nothing wrong with rich people, but you should get rid of your unhealthy attachment to wealth. I did this interpretation myself in two minutes and I'm not even christian. Just read the relevant verses yourself, this interpretation is pretty obvious.
White southerns evangelicals are a big voting block in the US. The republicans have aligned themselves to this block, and thus use their rhetoric. There's no matching big block of christian voters that the democrats are aligned with, so they don't need to use christian rhetoric.
If democrats would try to use the bible to justify their positions, it would read to evangelicals like an obvious insincere fakery. Kind of like how left-wing types react when libertarians try to use Marx to justify liberal gun laws: it's obvious that these persons lacks a deep understanding of the material they are using to opportunistically promote their political viewpoints. (But note that there are progressive christians who believe that the bible justifies more redistributive taxation etc.)
Hmm... this doesn't seem like an obvious interpretation to me, considering the follow-up verse is the famous "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (talking about rich people in general). But fine - happy to accept your interpretation for the sake of argument.
My point is that verses often used to justify preferred Republican policies are amenable for the same kind of non-obvious exegesis. For example it is perfectly obvious God knew me in the womb - He is omniscient, so he knew everything about me before I was in the womb too. Consequently this passage tells us nothing about the Biblical morality of abortion. If we are merely weighing up which 'side' has the most and more obvious interpretations of what is written in the Bible, it really does seem to me like it is closer to the Democrat platform. My confusion is that the Democrats don't behave as if this is true. Am I wrong or are they?
Agree about your point about fakery, if they started doing it tomorrow it would clearly be a sham. I guess I should have been a bit more sophisticated in my first question, and asked eg why the Dems don't fund think-tanks for progressive evangelicals so they could do this sort of thing legitimately.
The follow up verse is a poetic way of saying that man cannot be saved without god. But with god, all things are possible (including rich people entering heaven). Once again, this is a perfectly reasonable interpretation, I'm surprised you don't see it yourself.
There are a bunch of white southerns evangelicals. They are an important voting block. They have a long and rich history of interpreting the bible in their way. (They know that there are other interpretations of course, but they considered those interpretations wrong.) You can interpret the bible in a progressive way (and there's plenty of progressive Christians who do that), but that rhetoric does not appeal to a big important voter block so it's not very useful politically to do that.
I largely agree with this comment, but I’m going to nitpick one claim:
“There’s no matching big block of Christian voters that the Democrats are aligned with…”
It’s not as large, but Black Christian Democrats are an important large political block. See also Latino Christian Democrats.
Remember, the USA has had *huge* fights over "the separation of Church and State" that European countries have not had, or not in the same way. Public prayer in schools, even the most anodyne expressions of watered-down religious expression got challenged. The big case here for everyone is the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, about the teaching of evolution in schools. Where this got sorted out in Europe with little fuss (especially in Catholic countries, ironically enough - I went to a convent school and the Reverend Mother was the one teaching my secondary school biology classes and there was no problem with learning about Darwin etc.), there was a big to-do in the USA - and even more ironically, *both* sides played it up for their own reasons; the pro-evolution side to establish this in science classes, and the rest of the town as 'if we have a big show trial, it will attract visitors and reinvigorate our dying little town' so the Town Fathers were willing to act the part of religious red-neck rubes denying evolution all for the sake of attracting money.
These kinds of fights are still going on about "no establishment of religion", which means that Democrat politicians can just about get away with vague invocations of Civic Religion (e.g. "God bless America!") but anything stronger than that will unfailingly draw the face-aches in their own party who will start complaining about "this is establishing Christianity as the state religion!". Republican politicians have more leeway to be explicitly religious, and since America is majority Christian, this means explicitly Christian.
This goes rather beyond the US case, to any society in which some people believe their religion is literally true and others don't. For believers (and we have this problem with some Muslim radicals in Europe) religion is just true, and you cannot ignore it, any more than you can ignore gravity: it's the basic explanation for the world. So if you are a believer in any of the world's major religions, you believe that human beings have a soul, that that soul enters the body sometime after conception, and after that the foetus is a living human being. This makes abortion say, complicated, but it's a purely logical deduction from religious belief. The problem arises from the centuries-long movement by Christian Churches (not yet the Muslims) to downplaying the religious side of religion, and treating it as a set of humanistic ethics like any other, finding support for current ethical orthodoxies in the Scriptures, which of course all ages have been able to do for all purposes.
I really like this framing for why religious beliefs continue to be important in a modern era, but I don't understand why this automatically means the Dems cannot possibly use the Bible to motivate their policy platform, even if only on a tactical level.
For example there are plenty of fairly unambiguous demands in the Bible which both Republicans and Democrats treat as merely metaphorical (or literally irrelevant) - for example passages about slavery, or menstrual hygiene. I think this is what you're talking about when you talk about 'humanistic ethics'? But then there are also some fairly unambiguous demands which the Dems would like to be a literally true description of reality, like gravity (which is a really informative analogy by the way - thanks!). For example if it was literally true that everyone would be better off if they gave all their money to the poor then the Dems could institute a 99% marginal top rate of tax, justify it as being a fundamental law of the universe and then redistribute all that money. Why isn't this done? Why aren't the Republicans worried about the Dems doing that?
> I don't understand why this automatically means the Dems cannot possibly use the Bible to motivate their policy platform, even if only on a tactical level.
The Dem coalition includes a lot more Muslims, atheists, Jews, etc, than the R coalition, and this would alienate them. Its Christian contingent also includes proportionately more "Chreasters" (referring to people who only show up to Church twice a year, i.e. cultural Christians who aren't terribly influenced by their religion), who wouldn't particularly care about the moralizing. As such, the math works out in favor of not doing this.
So one answer to this, on the theology side, is that Jesus was once specifically asked about tax policy, and very specifically said "Listen, there's government things, and there's God things; they are separate things, and you have different responsibilities to each". Mark 12, if you were to look it up.
I write about David French a bit, and he *frequently* implies that you can't be a good Christian unless you are anti-trump, or pro-reparations (or something like reparations), pro-welfare, pro-legalized-demand-side-abortion, etc.: I argue the opposite, that the bible usually doesn't have clear demands on how someone should vote. Basically to the extent it mentions government in a way relevant to us at all, it says "pray that leaders will give you the space to be Christians" and "Obey laws", mostly.
Theology stuff aside, it's actually pretty easy for you to see why what you are saying doesn't work on a practical sense - it's that by-and-large the people who are trying to do what you are saying aren't Christians, don't respect them, and often hate them.
So when they come in and say "Hey, I spent five whole minutes on your religion, and know you should vote democrat" the Christian usually can accurately parse that these people only care about religion to the extent they think it can promote their own positions, and where they don't think they can manipulate it in their favor will oppose it with whatever they have available to do so.
If I came to you and said "Hey, you know that viewpoint you hold? It's stupid and fake. But I care about it just enough to have learned a tiny bit about it entirely for the purpose of trying to get me to do what I want - here's what I think about it" you'd probably go "He's probably wrong, but in any case he's not the guy I'd listen to; I'd be better served finding a guy who *doesn't* hate me to inform my opinions, really."
Agree with your first point (plus a bunch of stuff in Romans about how government is legitimated by being installed by God) - but that's exactly my confusion; the Republicans *do* think God's things should be government things, and hence work to eg make it harder to be gay, harder to get an abortion etc. So what theological secret sauce have they discovered that lets the Republicans make Biblical policies while the Democrats have to always make secular arguments, even if the religious argument is a sitter?
Another commenter suggested that the Republicans actually *don't* think that - they want to make it harder to be gay / harder to get an abortion for reasons completely unrelated to the Bible and it is the Democrats who are characterising this as just being Bible-thumping from the Republicans, which would explain my confusion.
Agree completely with your second point, except to note that I think that's downstream of the effect I'm describing - I don't think the Democrats would be so anti-religion if there was massive religious-driven voter pressure to enact Dem-supporting policies. But happy to be told I'm wrong about that, I obviously don't understand American politics as well as actual Americans do.
Two-parter, first handling why democrats "have to make secular arguments"
It's not a "theological secret sauce" - the Republicans are willing to do what the Christian people are asking for. The Christians say "I'd like this, please, and I will vote for you if you do that" in the normal way voting works, and the Republicans at least somewhat do that thing they asked for, and it works out. So Christians end up voting for the party that, say, would be reliably expected to side with them when the Dems side against them on any number of issues.
The dems don't *have* to side against Christian interests, they've just shown they are consistently *going to* do that on basically ever issue - they have absolutely nothing but contempt for religion. The case in point is that your framing was "What if the democrats could use the Christian's own scriptures against them to bend them to the will of the DNC?", rather than the Republican framing of "Christians are asking for a thing - let's see if we can't get it for them, to secure their votes".
To put that into a practical example: Say someone came into a hypothetical place of business I worked at and said:
"Hi, I am a militantly political member of your outgroup, and I find your religious views intolerable. I would like to force you to do things I know go against those religious views, or else put you permanently out of business - I will brook no disagreement. Religious rights are only valid so long as they don't bother me at all; they are subordinate to every other kind of right."
In pretty much every case, Democrats are going to say "Yup, sounds right - let's fuck those Christians over" as a party. And they will then talk about scripture and suddenly care about it, *but only as a method to try to get Christians to do what they want, or to do things against their own interests, but for no other reason or purpose*. Meanwhile the Republicans will at the very least superficially go to bat for us, and often substantially go to bat for us.
There's basically no place this isn't true. Republicans will defend the Hyde Amendment, Democrats will try to loosen it or get rid of it. Republicans will vote for things like backpack funding (which makes it much easier to raise your kid religious) and Democrats will try to smack it down. Hobby Lobby/Catholic organizations will be forced to pay for birth control by the democrats - republicans will fight that. And so on and so forth, with religion only being of interest to democrats in that it's a hurdle they think is obviously stupid to get around.
So where you say "the democrats aren't so anti-religious so long as there's massive religious-voter pressure to give them exactly what they want, anyway, without making a single concession to the religious - i.e. the democrats are fine with religion so long as that religion is liberalism", the republicans say "Oh, you want X, religious folks? We'll get right on that".
So that previous post handled, basically, why the democrats "must" make secular arguments, or "can't" make religious ones - they are interested in making the former, and completely uninterested in the latter except as it allows them to pursue secular goals without having to do what religious voters want.
Then there's that "religious voters want" piece.
So I first don't want to pretend that there aren't religious voters who say "The bible says this is the moral law for Christians, and thus it must be that way for everyone; I must impose Christian values on everyone". They certainly exist.
But then you get into a sort of complex morass that's different depending on what angle you look at it from. So, consider these two domains:
God's: Be nice to your neighbor. Care for orphans and widows. Support the greater goals of the kingdom of God in regards to evangelism.
Caesars: Pay taxes so we can expand the glorious roman empire at the tip of a gladius.
In this case, it's a pretty clear dichotemy between areas - there's little superficial overlap. You pay your taxes, you follow laws, and this gives you space to do the God-stuff.
Now consider this alternate ceasar:
Caesar: Determine for yourself what you want the government to do. Then argue that to your fellow citizens. Then you and the citizens vote for people who say they will do those things.
Very different system, right? Now you have a government you can influence in real significant ways, where a big part of your obligation "to Caesar" is to *tell him what you want so he can do it*.
That makes shit more complex, because previously Caesar was deciding what he thought was right and telling you, and the big decision you were making was just "have a rebellion or don't".
So now look at something like, say, a trans bathroom bill. The Democrats are going to say something like this:
"The trans people in our party say it would make them very uncomfortable and unhappy to have to use bathrooms that coorespond to their birth gender. We think everyone should either believe or be forced to pretend to believe that their assumed gender is the "real" one, and thus we are stating our want that anyone be allowed to use whatever bathroom they say is most appropriate for them".
And everyone goes, OK, cool, no worries. You have a moral system (that you assumed for whatever reason) and it tells you to want something, and you tell the government. Check and check - that's good enough.
Then the religious republican says:
"I think that the birth gender is the good one, and that bathrooms should be segregated by gender. So I am expressing my want to the government - bathrooms should be segregated by birth gender as they've been since forever."
And then and only then people say "But wait - now it's very, very important to me that you explain your entire moral system to me - preferences aren't enough anymore". So where the system is built around people disagreeing about what's right - even within a context where most people were Christian-ish at least - and resolving that by seeing who had more people on each side, now there's another level of abstraction that (broadly) doesn't apply to anyone else in american politics.
When I run into that on a personal level, I usually present something like this:
"I don't think the bible requires that I vote for anything in particular - like it never says "vote this way" or "vote that way". But it does say to give to the government what I owe to the government, and what the government wants, in part, is that I tell it what I want. And what I want shaped in part by what I think God wants.
Now, when the secular person says "I don't believe in absolute morality, that 'right and wrong' are real concepts that exist abstractly, so I decide on what I think is moral for myself, for any reason I see fit'. He then turns around and tells me that my reasons for deciding what's moral (and mine alone, out of all reasons) are not good enough, and thus I shouldn't be able to express my wants. But if he can choose his morality based on preference and what seems right to him, I should at minimum be able to do the same."
This is *insanely* jumbled, but extreme TLDR of both posts:
1. Republicans often try to do what religious people (for religious reasons or otherwise) ask them to do.
2. Democrats often oppose what religious people want, almost universally so. To the extent they care about religion at all, it's to use religion to *make sure the religious DON'T get what they want".
3. Religious people react accordingly to this and often vote Republican.
1. Christianity says that God is owed certain things, and the government is owed certain things, and that you give them those things separately.
2. Our government's big ask is "Vote for what you want".
3. When secular people vote for what they want, that's considered enough, full stop.
4. When secular people are asked what morality underlies their votes, they say "I have decided this is right (in a world where abstract right does not exist) based on what seems right to me, based on things I've considered. To the extent anyone even asks for this, this is accepted.
5. When the religious person says "I voted for what I wanted based on what seems right to me based on things I've consided, as the government demands of me" then and only in that case is "I wanted this due to the moral system I like" considered inadequate.
6. The religious person, after seeing this isolated demand for rigor, should probably just try to win on numbers and defeat his enemies.
"So what theological secret sauce have they discovered that lets the Republicans make Biblical policies while the Democrats have to always make secular arguments, even if the religious argument is a sitter?"
From an outside view, and speaking about the Catholic members of the Democrats, a heck of a lot of them - when it came to abortion - were all "personally opposed but...". Now, part of that was a hangover from John F. Kennedy when the opposition did try the good old "he'll be ruled from the Vatican", and Kennedy had to make it clear that he would be bound by American law. This set the mould for Catholics in Democrat party politics.
Part of it was being liberal on sexual matters because of the Zeitgeist, and part of it was "what the voters will swallow". If the voters want legalised abortion, then you had better nail your colours to "although my religion - of which I am a member in good standing - says abortion is murder, while I may be personally opposed to abortion, I will follow the law of the land, which says it is legal". Pro-life Democrats do exist, but for a while they were literally being run off party platforms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrats_for_Life_of_America
"At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, anti-abortion Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania was allegedly "barred from addressing the Convention because of his antiabortion views". The official reason given by the Convention organizers was that Casey was not allowed to speak because he did not support the Democratic ticket. Kathy Taylor, a pro-abortion rights activist from Pennsylvania, instead addressed the convention. Taylor was a Republican who had worked for Casey's opponent in the previous gubernatorial election."
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/17/a-closer-look-at-republicans-who-favor-legal-abortion-and-democrats-who-oppose-it/
"That raises the question: Who are the Republicans who support legal abortion and the Democrats who oppose it, and how else do they differ from their fellow partisans? One major difference involves religion. Republicans who favor legal abortion are far less religious than abortion opponents in the GOP, while Democrats who say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases are much more religious than Democrats who say it should be legal."
The 'religious' vote in the Democratic Party tends to be the black vote, and they are solid enough to rely upon that the dissension between the party's official stance on, for example, gay rights and the historically more socially conservative black churches doesn't split them off.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/27/5-facts-about-black-democrats/
According to a 2019 survey, most Americans have a positive view of religion in society but want it kept out of politics:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/11/15/americans-have-positive-views-about-religions-role-in-society-but-want-it-out-of-politics/
What I noticed, back in the whole Anglican Wars over LGBT issues, was that the same liberal Christians who were very happy to regurgitate the 'gotchas' about the Bible to conservative Christians (e.g. "do you eat shellfish? do you wear mixed fibre clothing? when are you going to stone witches?" and if you do any of these, then you're breaking Biblical prohibitions and are hypocrites about the prohibitions on homosexuality) were equally eager to quote the parts about the stranger and the alien, charity, and so on. I saw The Shellfish Argument quoted so often, I started calling it that to myself.
The irony being that for all the mockery of Leviticus and Numbers, the lines about "welcome the stranger" were often in the same paragraph as the ones about witches or shellfish. And nobody (yet) has argued that if we don't keep the rule about shellfish, then it's okay to break the rules about incest. (If you read Leviticus 18 there are a *ton* of "these are all the female relatives you can't fuck" rules while there is only one line about "and no fucking men").
Leviticus 19 has the rule about "You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material", which gets mockingly quoted for the whole "so if you wear polycotton clothes, you're breaking the rules of the Bible!" when it comes to "the Bible is clear on homosexual sex", but it *also* has the parts about "And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God" which get quoted by liberal denominations. "You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God" is *very* popular when talking about illegal immigration and how such people should be treated.
So who is cherry-picking the parts they like and ignoring the rest? At a minimum, both sides.
>but I don't understand why this automatically means the Dems cannot possibly use the Bible to motivate their policy platform, even if only on a tactical level.
Because "things that Evangelical Christians believe" and "things that are in the Bible", are two different things with only coincidental overlap. Evangelical Christians believe what they learned growing up, from the teachings of their pastors and coreligionists. Who believe what they learned growing up, ad infinitum, and historically a fair bit of the Bible leaked into that process. But not all of it, and not entirely accurately. They mostly read only a subset of the Bible, the parts that their pastors etc pointed to and said "this is the good stuff", and they interpret it in their own particular way.
This is not unique to Evangelical Christians; most members of most religions do this. I'd argue that Evangelical Christians do a bit less of it than most other religions. But they still do an *awful* lot of it.
Which means that if you point to some words in a Bible and say "these words are telling you to believe something different", they don't believe you and they don't believe your interpretation of the Bible; they continue to believe what they learned from their pastors and their coreligionists when they were growing up, and they add to that the belief that you are a damned serpent twisting scripture to your own ends. With sufficient confidence that they'll feel justified ignoring you rather than examining your arguments or crafting a rebuttal.
And if "the Dems" institute a 99% marginal tax rate, they'll be voted out of office by the ~100% of Democrats who don't think they are obligated to put up with that because the Bible says so *and* the ~100% of Republicans who don't think they are obligated to put up with that because some Democrat says the Bible says so. They'll get the socialist and communist vote, but that won't be enough.
That's really interesting. So you think a typical Republican-voting evangelical Christian could be shown words in the Bible which explicitly say to do X and respond that their view is that Y (what their pastor believes) is 'truly' what is written there? Do you have any insight into what is motivating that?
I remember reading an SSC article a while ago (I think it was SSC) about how the author just literally doesn't believe any interpretation of history that isn't totally 100% mainstream and above board regardless of the evidence presented to them, because they were self-aware enough to know that bad actors' ability to generate plausible evidence for untrue / motivated historical hypotheses was greater than his ability to critical appraise those claims. Is that a plausible model of what is happening here? "I know I don't understand the Bible as well as my pastor *or* this suspiciously Democrat-looking guy telling me about giving up all my money, so I'll defer to my pastor who I trust for unrelated reasons"?
Really fascinating comment, thank you!
A big part of it is laziness and loss aversion - nobody likes to change their mind and admit they were wrong. They don't have to; they always have the option of saying that you haven't earned enough of their respect for them to devote any of their time seriously considering your argument, so that's what they'll do.
But for Christianity, it gets more complicated because the New Testament is rather short on *explicitly* saying X for any value of X that's still politically relevant. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar", fine, the Bible says that, but we don't have Caesars any more and we don't put living politicians' faces on coins any more so the *explicit* command is moot. Much is *implied* by the language, which was clearly intended to be a broad parable rather than a narrowly specific command to Roman taxpayers, but implications are fuzzy and negotiable. Is the 98th percentile of my income *really* Caesar's just because he demands it, or was Jesus just suggesting we should pay taxes within some generally accepted legitimate range? No explicit guidance in the Bible for that, but their pastor told them that communism is bad and we don't have to pay 99% marginal tax rates.
The Old Testament has lots of explicit stuff, like when it's OK to rape POWs and how it's never OK to eat lobster. But one of the things the New Testament is close to explicit about, is that Christians don't have to obey the explicit commands of the Old Testament any more, only the fuzzy implicit ones of the New.
Jews, who don't have the New Testament, have several millennia's worth of Rabbis very creatively interpreting the commandments of (approximately) the Old Testament. So you still can't eat lobster, unless maybe your life depends on it because they can find a clause for that elsewhere. And you can maybe theoretically rape POWs except the conditions are now so narrowly defined as to be impossible in practice. If you tell a Jew, "no, you're wrong, the Torah plainly says X", he'll tell you to take it up with his Rabbi. If you tell a Rabbi "no, you're wrong, the Torah plainly says X", oh, Lord no you oughtn't have done that :-)
It would (rightly) seen as cynical, in an era where most of the Democratic coalition seems pretty down on religion. Or at least down on Christianity.
Yeah, there are ardent black Christians, but they are a captured voting block, and the Democratic party has become accustomed to ignoring the religious side of their preferences.
And there are some Catholics, but they have the same problem as most mainline protestant liberals - they don't really care about religion that much when it comes to politics.
Overall it just won't be convincing. it will clearly just be a 'try to make Republicans look bad' stunt.
There have been specific efforts by the Republican Party over the years to claim Christianity as their own territory. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority movement in the 1990s are one (Republican Christians encouraging other Christians in particular denominations to become politically active Republicans, often over panic-type issues such as abortion or porn.) Before that, the Southern Strategy of Nixon et al in the 1970s, exploiting southern white racism to peel southern white Christians off the Democratic Party. Then “Reagan Democrats” a similar thing.
Prior to this it went back to the 1960s- “stable” Christian traditional social order versus upheaval and activism; 1950s “stable” Protestant capitalism versus “godless” or non-Christian socialism/communism. Google says it goes back to the late 1800s.
Many leaders in the mid-1900s Civil Rights movement were Christian religious leaders first, due to churches as organizing institution in Black American cultural life. This continues (ie Rev. Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign.)
Different Christian denominations have now had decades (for some, centuries) to position themselves vis-a-vis mainstream American political power and trends. So we have (historical) Quakers and Shakers as anti-war, conscientious-objecting pro-redistribution live-your-conscience folks at one end and traditional Southern Baptist and some Catholics as pro-rule-following, pro-government (this has meant pro-war), pro-conservative morality (anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, pro traditional gender roles). The conservative end also staked out a position of specifically not becoming aware of or responsive to experiences and concerns of non-white and/or non-christian Americans, and positioned these concerns as anti-American (hence Happy Holidays as anti-American because it isn’t Merry Christmas, etc). Religious groups and social groups with Christianity-inflicted historical trauma then faced a tall barrier in terms of finding a home as Republicans.
So Democrats’ political machinery in response to this accumulated every interest or identity group that wasn’t Republican-controlled. The polarization increasing in the 1990s meant that socially there was very little middle ground. Saying “I’m Christian” meant everything from “I hate non-Christians, LGBT people, career women, the arts, and everyone except for rural white people” to “I am pro-war, pro-leadership, anti-communist, pro-Army and pro-Confederate revival.” This coincided with the screwing of labor by neoliberalism; suburban middle class democrats May have thought they were making progress on DEI, internationalism and the environment, while rural people, those in industry, social conservatives decided they were being abandoned, used or in a culture war.
Hence the origin of people who in the 1970s were pro-union blue collar Democrats, now Republicans and then Trump voters.
For the Democrats’ political machinery to specifically court Christians on biblical grounds would be seen as a betrayal at the very least by many D, and as a specific insult by many others. Black Christian groups can do it because of the historical trauma of US Black communities and the role of the church in fighting it. Unitarians do it and some other denominations are carving out progressive niches on those grounds (sheltering undocumented people against ICE for example, I think UCC does this.) Quakers do it because they’ve always done it. Ordination of LGBT clergy and whether they would perform LGBT marriage ceremonies was another test.
The idea of America as inextricably Protestant goes back hundreds of years and has been exploited for various purposes.
I think the consolidation of Christianity as a Republican and socially conservative territory in the 1990s accelerated the abandonment of the institutional church by many center-left Americans. It became something one had to explain to one’s friends and receive pushback for (but the Spanish Inquisition, they attack LGBT people, etc).
So yes you’re not wrong, a biblical Christian approach to poverty alleviation might match well with the idea of Democrats as a left party. But there’s a lot of sociocultural stuff that cuts against that.
There’s another wrinkle to this - where the individual positions “care for the interests of others” against “care for the interests of myself/my community (however one defines that.)” D has taken “care for the interests of others” to an art form, with most of those interests being economic-adjacent, or the consequences of disregard for those interests manifesting mainly in the economic realm, hence the proliferation of income gap and wealth gap statistics. Money is the canvas on which social inequalities are made visible. So if one is interested in doubling down to protect one’s own interests, or thinks that money can reveal inequalities that are not social in origin or conclusion, one discovers “conservative” sympathies.
Hence one side sees homelessness as addressed better by grant-making bureaucracy, while the other side suspects it’s an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual degeneracy, solvable best by the application of religious precepts of worship and labor.
If you’d like to solve it with money but don’t like bureaucracy, you have to be hyper local and well-funded. I think this is some of the roots of EA.
The U.K. has an official religion based on the bible. Does that cause it to do better on those bases than the US? What about other nations with state religions?
I mean, the obvious thing you're missing is that while non-Christians make up a minority of the population as a whole, they make up approximately half (see https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-2020-electorate-looks-like-by-party-race-and-ethnicity-age-education-and-religion/) of democratic voters.
As recently as the 1970s, the US had strong movements on both the religious right and the religious left. The first evangelical president was Jimmy Carter. One of the most important Civil Rights organizations was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King. Since then, the Right has continued to make religious appeals, while the Left has largely turned to atheism.
PEW's survey of religion found that between 2007 and 2014, the number of evangelical Protestants increased from 59.8 million to 62.2 m (but fell slightly as a percent), the number of historically black Protestants stayed steady from 15.7 m to 15.9 m, the number of Catholics fell from 54.3 m to 50.9 m, and the number of mainline Protestants fell from 41.1 m to 36.0 m. The recent shift away from Christianity in the US occurred mostly in white, liberal churches. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
I would expect that this decline would be most prominent among the elite, but the PEW survey indicates that there were similar declines among college educated and not college educated Americans. I do still think that the intellectual leaders of the Left are significantly less religious than the rest of the country.
The number of Christians in the Democratic Party has fallen dramatically, so there are a lot fewer people to make these appeals to. Of the Christians that remain, most of them are racial minority groups, who are appealed to with promises on racial issues. There are just a lot fewer people for the Left to motivate with religious language than there were.
It appears liberals like to think of themselves as above religion. What really upset them about the Dobbs ruling is that Roe v Wade was their 'validation', their moral affirmation of birth control. For some unchurched liberals, Roe v Wade was a secular imprimatur of abortion. It let them off the hook for making a personal conscientious decision. Conservatives want to engage and exercise personal moral choices, and vigorously object to the state removing an opportunity for them to make personal moral choices. In an inversion of post-war 1950s society, liberals have become conformist squares and conservatives have become the radicals.
I'm sorry, how on earth do you interpret bans on abortion as "an opportunity for you to make personal moral choices"? That's the opposite of a choice - the government has decided that abortion is immoral and will enforce that decision at gunpoint if necessary.
Read the decision. It says there is no mention of abortion in the constitution. Roe v Wade was not constitutional, and it is not the court's job to tell people what to do with their bodies. Legislators make laws, and you vote for legislators. Vote for legislators who will write laws that leave such choices to the woman, if not the couple. The jurists are on the right track. They're not in the validation business.
Huh?
"It says there is no mention of abortion in the constitution."
True, both as a description of the decision, and of the Constitution.
"Roe v Wade was not constitutional"
Reasonable. I think SCOTUS overreached in Roe v. Wade, though I liked the resulting policy.
"it is not the court's job to tell people what to do with their bodies."
Actually, by _upholding_ the Mississippi statute, that is indeed what Alito _did_. Roe v. Wade did not compel any person to get or not get an abortion. It compelled States to cease enforcing laws limiting individuals' options.
"They're not in the validation business." How did validation get into this??? SCOTUS issues decisions, typically on whether laws are constitutional or not, sometimes on which of two constitutional rights takes precedence. Roe and Dobbs decisions differ on whether certain state laws about abortion are constitutional. As nearly as I can tell, neither one has anything to do with whether a woman who has an abortion considers her decision "valid".
The court's point is it is not within its mandate to approve or disapprove abortion. Abortion is not a constitutional issue. If people want to pass laws approving or disapproving abortion, they need to do it at a local level.
Fuzzy thinkers insist it's all about contraception. It's about jurisdiction.
It's unproductive to attack the Republicans for not being Christian - the ways their policies are not Christian are a subset of the ways their policies are bad. Convincing someone that a Republican policy is bad is almost always easier than convincing them it's not Christian. In contrast, many Democratic policies are intended not to be Christian. Politicians are attacked very (overly) harshly for hypocrisy, and it would be politically difficult to argue for some policies on Christian grounds while holding admittedly non-Christian policies.
<quote>That is, objectively separation of church and state seems like a good thing to me. But from the point of view of the Republican and Democrat party, combining them seems like a near-certain way to move further</quote>
The first problem here is that this is not just a policy difference, but something in the constitution. Changing the constitution is a very big hurdle.
I see it as a proxy issue for a cultural divide. "Biblical morality" is an applause-light phrase for the white southerners who form a substantial part of the Republican base (as conspicuous Christian piety is seen as laudatory within that subculture), while simultaneously being a boo-light phrase for the coastal/urban professional class which forms a substantial part of the Democratic base (as atheism/agnosticism are fashionable in that subculture).
Thus, for Republican politicians to talk approving about Christian values and Biblical morality is a signal to their base that "I'm one of you, and I'll stand up for your interests against urban liberals". Likewise, for Democratic politicians to attack Rebublicans as Christian fundamentalists is a similar signal to their own bases.
There's also a secondary "effect around the signal where many of the targeted people also care about the rhetoric on the object level, not just as a signal of cultural affinity. Many evangelical protestants see their own morality as being grounded in and guided by their faith, so a rejection of faith may be read as an overall rejection of morality. Conversely, many cultural liberals see traditional Christian morality as flawed and outmoded at best and dangerously oppressive at worst, so Rebublicans talking about "biblical morality" are read as a dangerous menace which must be opposed in order to preserve personal freedom.
To throw in my two cents and raise a few points in no particular order. I’m basing my views off of what I’ve learned from my (southern evangelical) church. I am agnostic tho, so I could be wrong on a point or two.
1) First off, US parties are (as far as I understand) far less coherent than a UK party. We only have two, so they have a big mess of policies, many of which I expect evangelicals would disagree with in either party. So, not every Republican platform represents the evangelical beliefs.
2) Let’s talk interpretation. I think a snarky evangelical might say “obvious does not mean correct.” A less snarky one would say that you need to interpret scripture with scripture. Take your “give all your money to the poor and follow me” story you mentioned in another comment. Jesus is canonically perfect. But, he also seems to have had some possessions (clothes for example). So, this seems contradictory to “you should give everything to the poor.” How you resolve this apparent contradiction is going to depend on your denomination.
3) I think many of the Republican monetary policies are largely unrelated to evangelical christianity beyond that most evangelicals would probably rather give their money to the church than to the government.
4) In terms of the more “morality” policies, let’s just use abortion as our point for the conversation. First off, if one believes the bible says that babies are people and abortion is murder, I think it’s clear why it would be opposed, since most people oppose murder. But there’s also a second thing going on, which is that, to paraphrase as best I can, “sin affects those around you.” There are plenty of old testament stories where a king/warrior/etc does bad things, and all of the Jewish people get hurt until the sin is dealt with. If you accept this, there’s clear reasons why you might not be okay with more private sins like gay sex, that might appear not to be hurting any innocents.
What you're missing, is that Republicans are the party of Lincoln and the original home of the abolition movement.
Democrats were the party of slavery, the klan, and fought the equal rights amendment.
Black people were 100% Republicans until about 1900, when their union bosses convinced them to become democrats. Because the democrats sided with big labor.
The last of the democrat's klansmen (Robert Byrd died off a few years ago). As we recently saw with the last Supreme Court kerfuffle, many democrats still retained the N-word for use on Republican nominated Justice Clarence Thomas.
Huh? Everything he said is pretty uncontroversial. Are you still under the "the parties just, like, switched" understanding of history?
Based on other comments Michael has left, I suspect he does not think clearly unfortunately.
>Some of the current discourse in America is based around the idea that the Republicans want 'Christian-style morality' based on 'Biblical principles' and the Democrats don't want that.
I agree with you that this what some of the current discourse is like, but I only hear it from my Blue Tribe friends. None of my Red Tribe friends talk about that outside of my snake-handling inlaws who have zero political power or participation in discourse (they still call my wife to get the photos off their phone, for example)
Everyone has political power if they vote, and there are enough religious voters that people who believe in this sort of thing can get elected to Congress.
Reps Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are the most frequent sources of this stuff - here's Boebert a week ago saying "the church is supposed to direct the government": https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3540071-boebert-says-she-is-tired-of-separation-between-church-and-state-the-church-is-supposed-to-direct-the-government/
It's Independence Day in the USA. Anyone else in the situation of no longer being able to authentially enjoy fireworks after learning how environmentally devastating they are? Is this one of those "hard-to-decarbonize" sectors that lacks an efficient green solution?
Cut out the middleman. I like to go out with a core and a screwdriver to enjoy the carbon-neutral glow of cherenkov radiation.
(anyway what's up with fireworks so near to midsummer? The Brits, South Asians and Chinese have chosen much more sensible times of year)
New Year's Eve is the other major fireworks holiday in the US, often with revelry substantially more intense than on Independence Day.
"with a core and a screwdriver"
Is that a reference to Slotin "tickling the dragon's tail"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core#Second_incident
I wrote a more detailed explanatory reply to a different commentor in thread[1] (tl;dr: brainwashed by hairshirt environmentalists as kid, feeling deeply silly now, mea culpa) - but, yes, I do vote pro-nuclear whenever given the chance. I'm sad about Diablo Canyon being on the chopping block; at least the San Andreas fault is a "plausible" failure mode rather than some bullshit like freak tsunamis. Don't think anyone will ever build a nuclear plant in San Francisco County*, but I'd be on board to canvass for such a proposal.
(I'd consider lobbying if I wasn't being represented by Arch-Neoliberal Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who seems hellbent on serving for life. Maybe it'd be more fruitful to move to Darrell Issa's jurisdiction, idk.)
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-231/comment/7546695
[2] Unless it doubled as affordable Housing First for the homeless. Talk about energy justice!
I figure the once-or-twice-a-year tradition has such a minimal impact compared to constant things, and makes such an aesthetic difference to me, that I'm willing to sacrifice some environmental quality for fireworks. But it'd be great if we found greener options.
Hmm. Now I'm wondering what Richard Hanania would think about anti-fireworksism. Worse than genocide? And does this imply Scott would condemn a fireworksist as a "bad person"?
This is basically my exact take but with regard to the noise issues. I totally get the complaints and most of the year they are valid, but one (technically two I guess but I've never been much into New Years fireworks) day per year there are going to be fireworks.
> after learning how environmentally devastating they are
Just how significant is that damage?
I haven’t actually heard any accounting of the environmental issues with fireworks.
Does a fireworks show emit more or less carbon than the vehicles of the people who drive to see it? Is it orders of magnitude more or less? I actually don’t have a sense at all.
Or is it different environmental devastation? Do bits of wrappers and fuses get scattered into local wild spaces afterwards? Or do the colored powders need the extraction of difficult materials? (These seem less likely to be significant to me.)
I had thought the main reason to deplore fireworks is the noise they cause, which clearly causes huge amounts of distress to most of the dogs in every city, but likely also to many sensitive people, and perhaps wild animals as well.
>which clearly causes huge amounts of distress to most of the dogs in every city
Do you have a cite for that? *Some* dogs definitely get distressed at the sound of fireworks, but "most" sounds way too strong and doesn't line up with my experience at all.
Good point. I do know some dogs that aren’t scared of fireworks (in fact, both of the dogs I spend time with most often these days aren’t). It looks like about half is right?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016815911200367X?via%3Dihub
I wonder to what extent the half that's scared by fireworks overlaps with the half that is neurotic, annoying, poorly-trained, and precisely the kind of animal that makes some wish that the Fourth of July lasted all year.
I *think* that public fireworks probably pass a cost-benefit pretty easily? Greenmatters.com, which is not going to be biased in favor of the fireworks, says "fireworks in the U.S. emit about 60,340 metric tons of CO2 every year. To put that in perspective, that's a bit more than what 12,000 gas-powered cars emit in a year." https://www.greenmatters.com/p/fireworks-environmental-impact. If 200000000 people enjoy fireworks at some point in the year, then the CO2 impact per person is like driving a car a mile or so. That feels like it clearly passes a cost-benefit. I'd need more data to evaluate the non-CO2 pollutants.
I think that drone shows can replicate some of the experience of fireworks without the pollutants, but they're not quite the same. Hybrid drone-fireworks shows might give you an equal or better experience with less carbon
That's interesting and helps update my priors significantly. Looks like I got taught some wrong things in school (shocking!). Lemme tell a story.
A few years ago, Scott wrote an obscure piece that really spoke to my personal experiences: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/
I grew up in a seaside town reknowned for its picturesqe views, wildlife, beaches, nature trails, etc. The environmentalist movement surrounded everything; we had a sorta-infamous case of the town being unable to build a new middle school for decades, all because it would negatively impact the local endangered Red-Legged Frog. Another time, a prominent VC millionaire bought private beachside property that just happened to contain the only serviceable access road to a popular local beach. He closed it at some point cause the traffic annoyed him, and - the government threw an absolute tantrum. Tried to sue, it made headlines all the way to national-level papers like WaPo, etc.
Yet despite being a fairly conservative town, incidents like these were considered completely ordinary and perfectly logical outcomes. Generations of kids were raised on the importance of marine biology, there's still an active fishing and farming industry, and it was just hard to find anyone making good-faith arguments that the needs of humans might possibly outweigh those of some random animals. So that's the local culture I was steeped in since childhood.
We'd get a lot of extracurricular presentations in school about how Oceans Are Neat and We Must Protect Them. When I was 8 or so, it was about how horrible, awful, no good, absolutely bad plastic water bottles end up in the ocean. I was literally traumatized for life, and have never willingly taken a drink from a disposable plastic water bottle ever since, even when actually dehydrated. (Ridiculous, but still a hard habit to break decades later.)
More relevantly for this thread, at some point the factoid got lodged in my head that Fireworks Kill Sea Turtles. Weirdly specific, but I was perfectly primed to react with horror, and ever after that have found my enjoyment of fireworks much diminished. At best it'd be a guilty pleasure. It's hard to overemphasize how even a dubious claim like this could really fuck up kids from my town. Even the smart ones like me, who'd normally respond with a healthy [Citation Needed].
And...now at age [REDACTED], it finally occurs to me from getting an unexpected number of non-joke ACX responses that This Has To Be Bullshit, Shut Up And Multiply. That I've spent decades not enjoying something I used to enjoy, all because of a loosely thrown around shoddy claim that I never bothered to look into empirically. That's honestly pretty sad! And it makes me wonder how many other Bullshit-grade things 90s Environmentalism drilled into my head, causing meaningless suffering for no profit. Like the holy rituals of Proper Recycling.
It sure was an idealistic dream to inherit, though. I very much wanted to believe in it...map accuracy be damned. "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be."
I admire your self-reflection
no, I don't think I have ever been able to authentically enjoy them... I mean, in my youth I enjoyed being on the beach with friends, and I don't think fireworks added to that enjoyment.
If the GHG released by fireworks causes you this much unhappiness, I can't see how you aren't opposed to nearly everything all the time.
E.g. immigration results in orders of magnitutde more emissions (moving people from low carbon footprint lives to higher carbon footprint lives) than fireworks ever could, so I would hope that you're fanataically anti-immigration, but I'm sure you're got some reason why helping a small number of brown people be wealthier is suddenly more important than the supposedly catastrophic enviornmental impact of climate change.
If not, this is just special pleading.
That...sure is a strongly worded wrong assumption about my beliefs, which in any case I've now decided to update by removing [Category: Sacred Cow] protection, and do feel appropriately sheepish about[1]. (So thank you, indirectly.) But I'm familiar with your posting style and won't take it personally. I hope you'll allow me the courtesy to respond similarly (tone-wise) though - with perhaps one standard deviation less kindness than usual?
For the sake of argument, let's assume I continued to be really upset about firework GHGs, to the point where it neutered my enjoyment of fireworks. I feel like you're too eager to pattern-match this as "oh, God, another Greta Thunberg cultist, time to disabuse a naive progressive (oxymoron!) environmentalist (oxymoron!) with Facts And Logic". (Is that excessively uncharitable? I apologize if so, hyperbole is difficult to calibrate properly.) It's certainly one possible explanation, and I agree there's more fun to be had trying to box your rhetorical opponent into defending a type of incoherent Repugnant Conclusion, thereby conclusively winning both the argument and a minor victory against Outgroup.
However, I'd like to advance an alternate hypothesis which better fits the evidence - perhaps my prior level of fireworks-enjoyment wasn't particularly high to begin with, so the utilons gained from fireworks shows were indeed outweighed by concerns over GHG emissions and other negative externalities. At minimum, I think we'd agree there's also some light and noise pollution. In such case, any honest cost-benefit analysis on my part would come out against fireworks. Equally valid causal chain of reasoning; much harder to turn into a Gotcha.
Note also that even in this hypothetical, I'd never call for imposing my mere aesthetic preferences as some sort of Official Anti-Fireworks Policy. I couldn't call myself a libertarian if I made Special Pleas just for things I dislike...as the Marxists say, no one is free until everyone is free. One can be "opposed" to many things, yet limit that opposition to simply choosing not to support or enjoy said things rather than trying to ban them.
I will freely grant that I was being hypocritical in my previous views, since I conveniently classified Chinese New Year firecrackers as "not fireworks" and had no trouble endorsing those celebrations. It's now easy for me to see that that same sort of cultural-relevancy argument works for everyone else and regular fireworks, so I should be consistent one way or the other. Fireworks For Me, And None For Thee simply won't do.
As to immigration: I'm pro-skilled immigration. Talent shouldn't be wasted in unsupportive environments, and people should recoup the full value of their worth to humanity. Outside that narrow band of immigration policy? Big Shrug. I often find Bryan Caplan compelling, but get really uncomfortable whenever he goes on the Immigration Pays For Itself (It's Self-Evidently Obvious) rants. Even more reasonable takes on unskilled immigration hit close to home. Hard to abstractly intellectualize the issue away when living in California...
...and because, as a 3rd generation immigrant, I kinda wouldn't exist at all if not for unskilled immigration. My grandparents fled a miserable subsistence-agriculture village in Communist China for a better life in the Land of Opportunity, America. It was a difficult uphill battle, against rank discrimination, constant poverty, and major world shocks like the Great Depression and WWII. And even though great sacrifices were made - not a few of my relatives endured child labour to make ends meet - by God, we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps to reach the vaunted Middle Class. Of *course* I'm naturally inclined to be sympathetic to "helping a small number of brown people be wealthier" - I'm one of them!
At the same time, it's plainly obvious that not all stories end successfuly like my family's. Many Such Cases! Even strictly on economic terms, whether the median immigrant is a societal profit or loss overall continues to be vigorously debated. Culturally, there's been a strong backwards pendulum swing against "assimilation" and the "melting pot" narrative, which I view as a sort of shitty Balkanization of the public into self-assortative ghettos (ideologically if not always geographically). I spent my whole youth wanting to be accepted as an American like all the other native kids, only to reach adulthood and suddenly find that was, like, "internalized racism" and "defending White supremacy". If the whole idea is to only be Asian even while actually living in America, then potential immigrants may as well be Asian while staying in Asia proper. At least that's honest.
(In carbon terms specifically, I hold more or less the same views as Scott[2] - that the potential for human flourishing and, yes, making a difference on climate change is a compelling counterweight to the GHG impact. It's not a negative externality I handwave away, I just think it's worth taking a Pascalian Wager on more humans rather than less humans to solve our human-made problems[3]. Even if immigration is worse carbon budget-wise than native natalism.)
Thanks for debating. I've honestly been looking forward to scrapping with the heavy-hitting critics here. Hope it wasn't a disappointing showing for a community noob.
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-231/comment/7546695
[2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/please-dont-give-up-on-having-kids
[3] https://www.slowboring.com/p/energy-abundance
No, because I haven't learned how "environmentally devastating" fireworks are. And I'm quite skeptical that they are anything I would recognize as "devastating", just on a matter of scale. Earth is huge, fireworks are puny.
At the moment some quantity of my neighbours are making loud noises, and terrifying my dog. They started this on Friday, and if past experience is any guide, won't run out of fireworks for several days after the fourth.
Hopefully none of these bangs are in fact firearm discharges rather than fireworks. (I can't tell them apart, and at least one mass shooter has already taken advantage of the 4th of July this year to exercise his hobby, with people in the targeted area slightly slower to react than they would be if they hadn't first mis-recognized the sound as fireworks.)
For added joy, I believe (without checking) that these street level, non-professional fireworks are locally illegal, due to the dangers involved - all the obvious, plus the extra risk of fire thanks to drought.
None of this has anything to do with environmental devastation other than potential wildfire.
I have been known to enjoy large professional displays, particularly when I'm too far away to smell them. I would be interested in information on the environmental costs of e.g. an annual big display per city, particularly compared to any other common activity of similar scale cities. Also compared e.g. to the particulate pollution from our now annual, multi-month fire season.
The local ban against the retail, on the street stuff should be enforced. And I'd be just as happy to see it everywhere, not just local to me.
OTOH, I'd like to find room in an environmental budget for the occasional major display.
I mean, the more obvious ethical issue is that you're scaring dogs in your neighborhood. Carbon emissions from fireworks are a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
Does anyone know of good writings on how organizations decline? What happens culturally within a company with a trend of negative profits and declining market shares? How does a political party change when it loses voters each election? How does the leaders of a religion react when membership is falling?
My gut instinct is that this kind of decline is really bad: organizations starts finding scapegoats to blame and messianic figures to reverse the trend and save the organization. Talented people exit, leaving psychopaths and careerists to fight over the scraps while the idealists become more and more cut off from reality. But instinct is often wrong. Is there a good book or blog post or something on the topic?
A classical text on this problem is "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" by Hirschman. [It describes corporations](https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Exit-strategies) and how people within it, or people buying its services, have basically three options when faced with a perceived problem: they leave (exit), they argue against (voice), they stay and weather the storm (loyalty). Hirschman's text has become used in other contexts too, like in government, where especially the exit option is much tougher (to emigrate is a bigger issue than resign), and academia, where there is much fewer uncoordinated options.
Something a bit more sociological in nature is [the Peter principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle). This is often summarized as: "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence". If true, this principle means that a non-growing firm will converge towards a state of incompetent managers at all levels. This is a pessimistic account, but rather than your dire suggestion of psychopaths and careerists, it paints a picture of stalemate, risk-avoidance and unaware incompetence. As far as companies go, this is more like what I have experienced.
A lot more structural is what Geoffrey West has said and written. [He studies scale in different systems](https://www.edge.org/conversation/geoffrey_west-why-cities-keep-growing-corporations-and-people-always-die-and-life-gets), and he notes that some systems (cities) tend to grow more, invent more, as they grow, while other systems (corporations) tend to plateau and then by competitive pressure decline as they scale. In his theory this comes down to "dimensionality" of the system, that if greater size creates more growth surface, it scales, while more one-dimensional and focused, greater size makes growth less likely. This doesn't get into the sociology you ask about, arguably in this theory it does not matter to ultimate outcomes.
Robin Hanson has [shared his case](https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1421212798881722368) for the decline of Silicon Valley, that when tech became high-earning, high-status, "top school kids" took over and forced out the "nerds".
Your use of scapegoats and messianic figures sounds a lot like René Girard or some interpretation thereof. I know too little about that, though.
I suppose I don't have a definitive source to read because I doubt there really is a single unifying theory. It may very well be that the better question is why some things do not decline, that's the deviation from baseline in need of explanation.
Thanks for the links, I've touched on some of them before but some where new.
I'm not looking for an unifying theory as much as just observations of the phenomena. I think a book on the subject would be interesting even if it was just some case studies and some conclusions and open questions.
It would be nice to have an unbiased sample of people inside flawed organizations. Tricky thing is that even people who have left are disincentivized to speak candidly, since to have the reputation as a complainer isn’t good (I know). The reviews on Glassdoor are most likely very skewed. So strategic behaviour blurs the data. And the many “leaving google” blog posts are often self-promotional. The closest I found to insightful was Peter Warden from the hardware group who described his departure to academia as caused by the hurdle to launch products due to reputational risk for Google, a form of large organization dysfunction, but of a different nature than what you asked about.
I want to know this also.
I've read these things, about how charismatic bad actors capture organizations:
https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/psychopathcode/content/chapter5.html
https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yEjaj7PWacno5EvWa/every-cause-wants-to-be-a-cult
I think that a lot of the time, you don't notice how deeply the rot has set in until the last of the seedcorn has been eaten.
Shorter than I think you'd like, but relevant:
https://modeledbehavior.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/burning-the-corporate-commons/
For a book-length discussion with three case studies in countries defeated in war, there's Wolfgang Schivelbusch's "The Culture of Defeat".
I've heard good things about William H. Whyte's "The Organization Man", despite being 50+ years old, if you wanted a classic ethnography-style text "from the inside".
Some topical ratsphere writings off the top of my head, Good But Long:
1) Venkatesh Rao's "The Gervais Principle" ebook, builds on the Peter Principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
2) Scott's review of same: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-gervais-principle
3) Zvi Mowshowitz's "Immoral Mazes" post sequence: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/category/immoral-mazes-sequence/
4) Freddie deBoer's post on the decline of traditional media organizations: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-all-just-displacement
5) Matt Yglesias's post on the Progressive Pipeline Problem (paywalled, synecdoche of his Worth Paying For content though): https://www.slowboring.com/p/why-progressive-organizations-have
tl;dr institutions fundamentally exist to perpetuate their own impersonal existence; when this fails to happen, it's often because some sociopath found a loophole to cash out a life insurance policy on that institution. Other times it's just stochastic systemic failure, hard to causally explain as anything but general metastasizing of coordination problems. Good organizations are simply hard to come by and require Constant Vigilance.
To all the thousands waiting for "Meditations on Moloch" in Yiddish: It is now complete. https://joshuafox.com/yiddish/%D7%94%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%94%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D%20%D7%90%D7%B1%D7%A3%20%D7%9E%D6%B9%D7%9C%D6%B6%D7%9A/
This is excellent. Thanks.
As I'm sure some of you know, Yann LeCun has published a longish paper in which he describes his game plan for the next decade or so. Section 8.3.1 is entitled "Scaling is not enough." He gives two reasons: "First, current models operate on “tokenized” data and are generative. Every input modality must be turned into a sequence (or a collection) of “tokens” encoded as vectors. While this works well for text, which is already a sequence of discrete tokens, it is less suitable for continuous, high dimensional signals such as video." And then: "Second, current models are only capable of very limited forms of reasoning. The absence of abstract latent variables in these models precludes the exploration of multiple interpre- tations of a percept and the search for optimal courses of action to achieve a goal. In fact, dynamically specifying a goal in such models is essentially impossible."
Here's the paper: Yann LeCun, A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligence, Version 0.9.2, 2022-06-27, https://openreview.net/forum?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf
It has elicited some discussion, through registering at the site involves giving up more than just a name and an email address.
I have posted the following comment to the discussion:
Why are symbols important? Because they index cognitive space.
I want to address the issue that your raise at the very end of your paper: Do We Need Symbols for Reasoning? I think we do. Why? 1) Symbols form an index over cognitive space that, 2) facilitates flexible (aka ‘random’) access to that space during complex reasoning.
Let me quote a passage from the paper you recently published with Jacob Browning:
"For the empiricist tradition, symbols and symbolic reasoning is a useful invention for communication purposes, which arose from general learning abilities and our complex social world. This treats the internal calculations and inner monologue — the symbolic stuff happening in our heads — as derived from the external practices of mathematics and language use."[1]
I agree with the second sentence. Symbols are not primitive to the nervous system, they are derived. Initially, from linguistic communication, but then, as culture evolves, from mathematics as well.
The first sentence is true, but not entirely adequate for understanding language (where I consider arithmetic, for example, to be a very specialized form of language). Back in the 1930s the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, gave an account of language acquisition that moves through three phases: 1) adults (and others) use language to direct the very young child’s attention and actions, 2) gradually the child learns to use speech to direct their own attention and action, and finally 3) the process becomes completely internalized, e.g. inner monologues. I spell this out in more detail in a wide-ranging working paper I’ve recently posted to the web [2].
Now, what is the nature of cognitive space? That’s a complicated question, but much of it is defined directly over physical objects, events, and processes and that is, I believe, differentiable in the way you desire. Here I believe the geometric semantics developed by Peter Gärdenfors [3] may prove useful in seeing how cognition is linked to symbols and I utilize it in my working paper.
Still, let me mention one complication. Here’s an example that was much discussed in the Old Symbolic Days: What’s a chair? Chairs are obviously physical objects, but when you consider the range of objects that are recruited to serve as chairs, it becomes difficult to imagine a single physical description that characterizes all of them, even a fairly abstract description. Perhaps chairs are best characterized by their function, that is, by the role they play in a simple action. The concept of “poison” presents a similar problem. There’s no doubt that poisons are physical substances, but they don’t have a common physical appearance. Nor, for that matter, do fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables play certain roles in cuisines and poisons are most generally characterized known by their effects. And so forth. It’s a complicated problem, but a secondary one at the moment.
Will your proposed H-JEPA architecture support such symbols? I find the following passage suggestive [p. 7]:
"The world model may predict natural evolutions of the world, or may predict future world states resulting from a sequence of actions proposed by the actor module. The world model may predict multiple plausible world states, parameterized by latent variables that represent the uncertainty about the world state. The world model is a kind of “simulator” of the relevant aspects of world. What aspects of the world state is relevant depends on the task at hand."
That sounds a bit like natural language parsers, where partial parses will be developed and maintained until enough information is obtained to decide on one of them. I tentatively conclude that, yes, your architecture can accommodate symbols, though you will have to deal with the discrete nature of the symbols themselves.
I really should say something about how symbols, but well, that’s tricky. Let me offer up a fake example that points in the direction I’m thinking. Imagine that you’ve arrived at a local maximum in your progression toward some goal but you’ve not yet reached the goal. How do you get unstuck? The problem is, of course, well known and extensively studied. Imagine that your local maximum has a name1, and that name1 is close to name2 of some other location in the space you are searching. That other location may or may not get you closer to the goal; you won’t know until you try. But it is easy to get to name2 and then see where where that puts you in the search space. If you’re not better off, well, go back to name1 and try name3. And so forth. Symbol space indexes cognitive space and provides you with an ordering over cognitive space that is different from and somewhat independent of the gradients within cognitive space. It’s another way to move around. More than that, however, it provides you with ways of constructing abstract concepts, and that’s a vast, but poorly studied subject [4].
[1] Yann LeCun and Jacob Browning, What AI Can Tell Us About Intelligence, Noema, June 16, 2022, https://www.noemamag.com/what-ai-can-tell-us-about-intelligence/
[2] William Benzon, Relational Nets Over Attractors, A Primer: Part 1, Design for a Mind, June 20, 2022, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4141479
[3] Peter Gärdenfors, Conceptual Spaces, MIT 2000, The Geometry of Meaning, MIT 2014. For a quick introduction see Peter Gärdenfors, An Epigenetic Approach to Semantic Categories, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (Volume: 12, Issue: 2, June 2020) 139 – 147. DOI: 10.1109/TCDS.2018.2833387
[4] For some thoughts on various mechanisms for constructing abstract concepts, see William Benzon and David Hays, The Evolution of Cognition, Journal of Social and Biological Structures. 13(4): 297-320, 1990, https://doi.org/10.1016/0140-1750(90)90490-W
I don't know enough about US politics to offer much of a reply, but I think that it would be allowable to point out tactically that, if you are going to take your rules of life from a supernatural deity's revelations, you have to take account of all of them, not just the ones that support your prejudices. But of course Christianity, not to mention Buddhism and Islam, have been wracked for millennia by controversies of precisely this kind, without a solution. I fear, though, that it's the secular Left itself which would be the problem: anyone who used this kind of argument would be accused of traumatising behaviour by referencing mumble mumble patrimony mumble mumble misogony etc. There 's a strain of political thinking, well represented in todays secular Left, unfortunately, which puts ideological purity above actually, you know, getting stuff done.
I agree with this, but anyone with that attitude is significantly weakening any of their claims along the lines of "political position X is really important because my belief system says so".
Right. But for me, the implication goes the other way. I hope you have a better reason for your proposed policy than your beliefs.
It's impossible to have a reason other than your beliefs. I suspect you implied separate categories of accurate and inaccurate beliefs, but nobody voluntarily holds a belief they consider to be inaccurate, so you're not going to convince anyone by this line of argument.
I'm not sure how your conclusion follows from the premise. You do realise that social justice isn't actually a religion with a supernatural diety who can reveal truths, right? It has some elements resembling religions, its ability to weoponise the righteous fury of the followers, for instance, but you strated from the one that is definetely not fitting.
"would you destroy a beautiful rainforest so farmers could raise pigs there? (assume the farmers ..."
If it were the only place the pigs could be raised (unlikely) and there were no other way those farmers could support themselves (unlikely) and those pigs were ESSENTIAL to the common good (unlikely). Those who would destroy irreplaceable resources for unnecessary, temporary gain deserve neither.
sean s.
It's quite possible to raise pigs in a rainforest anyway.
I wrote a short response to Edward Teach's "Sadly, Porn", on the types of desires that people may have.
https://cozilikethinking.wordpress.com/2022/07/04/types-of-desires/
“ Tertiary desires– These are desires that do not compel any action. Examples include “I want the situation to evolve in such a way that my present skills and capabilities are sufficient for making me rich, successful, etc”
I have desires for those sorts of things all the time. I want to be able to be as popular as Bruce Springsteen. I want all women to find me attractive. I want to play chess better than Kasparov.
But I don’t think of that as narcism. I just know I don’t have that particular talent or amazing good looks.
You still thinking you are a narcissist? You really don’t seem like one. At least in the way I understand narcissism.
Maybe like so many of, you just worry too much.
Look at https://www.bushcenter.org/ which says:
“Learn about the Bush Family’s respected tradition of public service, famous Presidential places and symbols, and fun facts about popular First Pets Barney and Miss Beazley.”
That’s kinda hagiographic.
Richard Hanania's article and your response gt me thinking... why are some preferences so strongly valued by society and others not?
Person with male genitals (presumably trans) want to use the women's change rooms at my wife's gym. My wife should just look away if she doesn't want to see male genitalia right? She doesnt want to be a transphobe, even if it makes her uncomfortable.
But why would asking the person with male gentalia to use the male change rooms be wrong? Because they're more comfortable in the women's room and comfort trumps all? Why is one person's comfort so much more valued than that of another?
Is it all just aesthetic preferences and some people think one is just better?
Hey there. You seem to be this comment section's hated-but-tolerated rightwinger. I hope that's not a mischaracterization. In the interests of good argumentation, I'd like to acquaint you with the stronger form of your point.
> why is one persons's comfort so much more valued?
"It's not. There isn't even any evidence that the trans experience comfort in this situation, and if they do it is surplus to the system's requirements. The purpose is demoralization. They've taken a page from the old Soviet playbook, and force you to mouth obvious and laughable untruths to degrade your sense of your own courage and your sense of your own integrity. You prove yourself a coward every time you pretend a mutilated or hormonally-poisoned man is a woman, and become less capable of fighting a system that wants you poor, exploited, divided, and cowardly." (Bonus points for anyone who can identify whose argument this is -- it's not mine.)
The stronger counter-argument goes like this:
> why is one person's comfort so much more valued?
"It's not. The good that the discomfort of the others is serving is not the comfort of the one, but the message of hope for all of us: no matter how broken, how wounded, how unfortunate we may find ourselves to be today, yet even now there is hope of transformation and acceptance. No matter how wretched, how alone, how despised we may think we are, the greater community of humankind is here to tell us that we matter, that our beliefs about ourselves matter, and that there will always be a place for us even if we make others uncomfortable with our wretchedness."
1) I'm perfect aware that isn't what you're getting at. I didn't say "oh excuse me did you actually mean to say [...]?" now did I? Someone else reading this may understand why Dalrymple's conceptualization of the problem is more insightful and interesting than what you said.
2) You might be careful using the phrase "word salad" on a psychiatrist's blog, as it has actual meaning. The topic under discussion, however, is discomfort -- specifically how much discomfort we can expect others to endure on our behalf. It is entirely possible that nothing about you, your physique, or your personality causes discomfort to anyone else, and you move through society requiring no acceptance from others. I congratulate you if so.
It's certainly true that there are cases where people appear to want to revenge themselves on real or perceived mistreatment by making others as uncomfortable as the law will condone, but I would hope these are exceptions that prove the rule. Most people who cause discomfort to be around appear to be keenly aware of it and hate it about themselves. Mostly they appear to try to solve this problem by avoiding locker rooms entirely, and perhaps one day architectural changes will have eliminated the locker room in favor of more private spaces.
Anecdata of n=1, but...personally, I'm much more comfortable with "rightwingers" and their open disagreement/hostility, compared to lefty "allies" who mumble mealy-mouthed acceptance even if internally they don't actually conceptualize of me as a woman. (Dating prospects tend to make this painfully obvious.) Maybe it's just due to autism, I dunno, but the latter feels much more like a cruel lie, and therefore despicable, than the former's so-called "hate" or "bigotry". I just really like knowing where I stand with people, clearly and firmly! Clarity of communication is good!
And I think it's more valuable to play on the "free market of gender" anyway, to compete in the Skeptical Leagues. It's fairly easy to pass in San Francisco, because everyone and their mother will bend over backwards to coddle your nascent fragile female identity, and if they don't then Authority will often make them. Even if one absolutely doesn't pass, society will generally pretend that you do, to no one's net benefit. Elsewhere, one must actually put in the effort to produce a Minimum Viable Presentation. I think this inculcates good habits, and helps meet the median American where they are, aesthetics-wise. What right do I have to force others to accept me, if I don't even try to make a good impression?
There are multiple factors taken into account. Most of the time the math works out, as far as I'm conсerned.
In your actual example, there are the questions of the strength of the preferences, how easily they can be compromised and other consequences. The ability to recontextualize nakedness is known to be much easier than explain oneself out of gender dysphoria. Even when trans person with a penis is in the same locker room, it's expected that you won't see this penis often unless you will deliberately try to. So it's quite easy to satisfy both preferences most of the time if trans person is in female locker room. Also male locker rooms are known to be much less safe for trans women than female locker rooms with a trans woman for cis women.
Notice that in cases where these assumptions are not satisfied, our intuitions changes as well. Suppose that the person in question is actively making everybody uncomfortable by showing of their genetalia. Or is actually dangerous for other women. Or isn't actually a trans person and just wants to be in a women locker room for less justifiable reasons. In such situations society tend not to allow them in the women locker room.
Post-op trans women have been using women's locker rooms since sexual reassignment surgery became a thing back in the 50s. And even for trans women who still had male genitalia, there were some places that would accommodate them as long as they were passable, had undergone some degree of physical transition, and made some effort to avoid showing their private parts. It wasn't a universal rule by any means, but nor was it an exceptional rarity. Saying "society would not have allowed them in the women's locker room, period" is definitely overstating your case.
>The number of self-identified left-handed people was microscopic until we applied brutal levels of social and even legal pressure to stop parents and teachers from beating left-handedness out of children.
Is that so ? Is there any evidence to support that being left-handed was something to hide or be ashamed of and that that was only reversed after widespread "left-handedness acceptance"?
Anyway, that kind of progressive fallacy always annoyed the living shit out of me. Somebody says "X was unheard of before X-ism, X is just a trend", and so, presumably to own them, a progressive replies "Oh yeah ? well, that other thing Y was unheard of before Y-ism as well. But Y isn't just a trend is it? gotcha".
But... but... the first person never asserted "everything which was unheard of before then was suddenly everywhere after a movement campaigning for it is just a trend"?, they're simply asserting that X is 1 particular case of that happening, which must be true for at least some of the things mustn't it ? Boney M fans were not a thing before Boney M, and then there were suddenly tons of them after the band got popular.
In order to demonstrate that transgendrism is more like left-handedness and not like Boney M, you have to (a) identify which traits make Boney M a trend and whose absence or negation make left-handedness not a trend (b) Prove or argue plausibly that transgendrism is on the same side as left-handedness is of those traits.
>nobody gets disowned, severely bullied, targeted with spite laws, raped or beaten to death for being left-handed nowadays.
Well to be fair, left-handedness is something you are born with, doesn't involve cutting off healthy parts of your body, doesn't involve breaking millennia-long world-wide social norms of sex seperation in certain critical areas, is objectively verifiable with an extemly simple test requiring no more complex tools than a paper and pen, doesn't have a disproportionate number of its members or defenders screaming obnoxiously at the top of their keyboards online and being favored unfairly by mega tech corps, doesn't result in suspiciously high profits for certain giant medical sectors,etc....
Also, the "raped or beaten to death" bit is throughly debunked, transgenderism is no better than random chance at predicting this when you control for other much more relevant factors. Your socio-economic status (e.g. a poor guy/gal living in a crime-infested city) and profession (e.g. a drug dealer or a prostitute in said city) predict this most reliably. As for "targeted with spite laws", I guess every law is a spite law when you can't understand why its supporters feel its necessary, you might as well ask a billionaire what's his or her opinion on taxes.
Well said!
Good points and I appreciate you taking my musings seriously.
But then I have to ask... is the gym accommodating one persons preferences by interfering with many other peoples? Is the male change room less dangerous because of the fewer xy individuals there, so spreading them into the female room doesn't seem to be a fair solution.
And then you've got people like Richard Hanania who seems to have the preference with the strength of a thousand suns.
I think a large part of the problem is that there appear to be a lot* of sex abusers who suddenly seem to discover they're trans women when it comes to which prison they should be put in. While this is a rational choice on their part (they're much more likely to have the shit kicked out of them if they are put in a male prison), it doesn't make life better for the cis women who will end up as their cell-mates or serving time in the same prison as them.
If X has been sentenced and convicted because X raped women, does it make sense to send X to a women's prison? Even if X claims to be a woman? Even if X has (perhaps) started hormonal transition? Because in some cases, all that is needed is for X to declare that they self-identify as transgender, nothing else.
Swedish study on transgender offenders (all crimes):
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/
"It is crucial to emphasise that this study looks only at those who have undergone hormonal and surgical transition, which is a much tighter group than individuals who self- identify as transgender.
MtF transitioners were over 6 times more likely to be convicted of an offence than female comparators and 18 times more likely to be convicted of a violent offence. The group had no statistically significant differences from other natal males, for convictions in general or for violent offending. The group examined were those who committed to surgery, and so were more tightly defined than a population based solely on self-declaration."
Piece in "The Spectator" which tries to take a balanced look at the situation in the UK:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/are-sex-offenders-exploiting-trans-rights-policies-behind-bars-
I broadly agree with the conclusion; there has to be some way to differentiate between those who are transgender and those who are exploiting that status to avoid criminal punishment or for other reasons. The trouble is that at present, we're stuck in a polarised situation where you either have to 100% accept "trans is if they say they're trans, and a woman is someone who feels they are a woman" with no doubts or caveats, *or* you are a transphobe TERF who is engaging in genocide.
There is no room for "maybe this person does identify as a different gender, but their biological sex is male and they are not safe people to have around biological females" or "I don't agree that trans women are women simpliciter, but I am willing to accede to such things as using their preferred pronouns in public". You have to be on one side or the other. And the really terminally online activist types are pushing for more and more extreme positions, so that if you're at all uncomfortable with what is being asked of you to accept without question, you don't really have anywhere to go other than full-on opposition.
*Not intended to mean any particular number, just "crikey this is more than once I've seen this one"
As an aside, what kind of gyms have locker rooms that are "unsafe" for anyone, what the hell. It's a paid venue with security on-call, not a prison.
Some people take people's feelings or emotions as of utmost importance. "Feeling unsafe" is as, or more important, than "safe." I'm not one of them, but I do think that argument in society is gaining steam (or its proponents are ascending to higher positions, not sure).
I think there's a lot of complex situations which make this difficult. My own view would be:
(1) Person with male genitalia in female-only space like changing rooms, who otherwise passes close enough for female, and behaves modestly (e.g. wrapping a towel around their waist so nobody sees what is under it) - yeah, okay, let's not get too bent out of shape here
(2) Person with male genitalia who engages in behaviour as alleged at the Wii Spa (and if ever there was 'one person said/another person said' situation, here we go) or as alleged in other instances, e.g. walking around with it all hanging out and replying to requests to cover up with accusations of being harassed, of transphobia, and "maybe teach your six year old not to look at other people's junk" - boot their over-entitled backside out and let them change in the car park or wherever
The problem seems to be that all the cases we hear about are the type (2) cases, where's it's very difficult *not* to think "Maybe Blanchard's typology isn't that far off the mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard%27s_transsexualism_typology#Autogynephilia", are the cases that we hear about and that get into the media, so those form the impression of "this is the typical transgender person".
There's also the extreme cases where government bodies lean over backwards to make themselves look ridiculous in accommodating people, and while they are probably constrained by law so they have to do this, it again makes the entire topic look absurd: if this is an example of "this is a woman, don't believe your lying eyes", then there really is no point trying to be willing to compromise on "are trans women real women" or not:
https://www.cp24.com/news/woman-charged-after-allegedly-sexually-assaulting-boy-6-in-toronto-park-1.5507641?cache=.
https://www.tps.ca/media-centre/news-releases/missing-woman-ryerson-avenue-and-bathurst-street/
The right of the staff to tell someone to fuck off (and make them, if needed) seems underrated and underused.
Yes, if you're trans and still have the genitalia corresponding to your natal sex, you shouldn't go around waving your genitalia at people. More broadly, "don't expose your genitals to people" is a pretty good rule in general, and I fully support punishing those who violate it, trans or otherwise. But it's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking "Group X bad" if all you hear is cherry-picked news stories about people from Group X doing bad things, regardless of how disproportionate those instances are. After all, none of the 99,999 other times where trans women used women's locker rooms without any issue (and in many cases weren't even recognized as trans) made it onto the news!
As for your links: I'll admit, I can't get behind the idea that someone's public gender identity should be determined *solely* by how they choose to self-identify and nothing else. Honestly, I think it borders on incoherence. But I don't see that as an inevitable result of trans identities existing. In fact, I think it actually contradicts trans identities by making them functionally meaningless - by the logic of self-identification, there's no need for anyone to transition and no real (i.e. non-arbitrary) difference between trans and cis people.
It's all about status gradients. Privilege is the metric by which progressives weigh competing interests. Those with more social privilege are expected to acquiesce to the preferences of the less privileged. It's the idea behind "don't punch down", but taken to absurd levels.
It's one of the metrics, yes. But the statement that it's the only thing that's going on is a strawman. I'm not even sure that it's more prominent amoung progressives than the opposite sentiment is among conservatives. We just pay it more attention because it contradicts the more familiar order of things where it's the less priviledged who are supposed to sacrifice their preferences.
I think from utilitarian perspective progressive aproach makes more sense. Logarithmic nature of utility functions means that extra preference satisfaction for already priviledged person gives less total utility than extra preference satisfaction from opressed one.
If one wants to make it a utilitarian argument...would it be incorrect to classify the "hard to accommodate" trans women as utility monsters? Ignoring the whole other valid line of argument about self-selecting into oppression, since at the end of the day, transgenderism fundamentally comes down to beliefs rather than biomarkers.
I mean, if you stretch the definition hard enough - sure you can call people with strong preferences utility monsters. Why would that be a good idea, though? Also as far as I know, trans women are generally not that hard to accomodate.
As a thought experiment, imagine meeting alien creatures who have twice as strong preferences as we do. Is it correct to discount these preferences in expected utility calculations? I'm not sure. Unless, these aliens' preferences or their strength were changed specifically to manipulate us, - this is where, I think, the intuition not to satisfy utility monsters comes from.
I'm not sure how self-selecting into oppression is a valid line of reasoning. Also I don't think one can separate beliefs from biomarkers in a meaningful way so that transgenderism became a fact about beliefs, instead of biomarkers. It's pretty clear, that being a transgender is qualitatively different from being a Christian, for example.
Epistemic status: gosh, personally-relevant culture war stuff irrationally upsets me, I think I'll bow out after this. Arguing from emotion rather than empiricism.
The way I mean to use the term is that - trans person wants to walk around in public like everyone else? Doesn't want to get fired from job, denied housing, etc. other situations where gender should be irrelevant*? Request (not demand!) basic courtesy like a preferred name? That kind of stuff seems mostly uncontroversial, even moreso as "passing privilege" accrues.
But that's just the motte. The bailey actually seems to be, based on modern activist agitation, to force complete equity across the board such that trans people (women usually) are treated exactly the same as cis people, even in situations where natal sex, genitalia, etc. should matter quite a lot. And such advocacy includes public pillorying of opponents as Hateful Bigots, ending careers over minor failures of orthodoxy, casting non-True Believers out of the contracting Leftist tent, censoring dissenting views (e.g. de-transitioners, unhappy parents of trans folks), etc, etc.
That's why I regard it as becoming a utility monster - ratcheting up the strength of preferences way beyond what most average people might consider reasonable accommodations. And then having the gall to insist that People Will Die if <x> policy isn't implemented, <y> norm isn't changed, <z> dissenter isn't deplatformed. (Did the movement forget trans people have existed for millennia without being "legal"?) Plus the gaslighting of any possible negative externalities, and handwaving away the suffering of people felled in the name of Progress as valueless deplorables anyway, i.e. their preferences don't matter. "Stop killing us", "you don't have the right to debate my existence". It's just too much.
(Aliens are a good thought experiment, since I'm pretty sure that's how a lot of conservatives view trans people. Maybe even the median person, though they might mouth along to tolerance after doing a cost-benefit analysis. They read the news, they know what happens when you speak up. I've come to realize that even so-called progressive "Allies" tend to have no real clue what it's actually like to be trans. Strawmen and -women abound, on both sides.)
Self-selecting into oppression: a somewhat uncharitable interpretation of transgenderism being defined by belief, and therefore, one could simply choose not to be oppressed by not believing one is trans. In this way it's similar to Christianity - one could stop being religiously oppressed by simply giving up faith. I'm skeptical of the evidence produced thus far about biomarkers, brain structures, etc. being causative of transgenderism rather than the reverse, and/or merely correlative; even Christianity is "heritable" to a degree. And if the social contagion theory has any meat - which I think it does, anecdotally anyway - then Confounders Abound.
(Yes, I'm fully aware many trans people don't view it as a "choice", and would experience immense suffering if required to forego their preferred identity. I'll readily concede this is a conspicuous weakness of my claims, since I'm not one of the choiceless trans and have trouble with that particular version of Typical Mind-ing.)
*Some jobs do have gendered/sexed requirements, and I think those are probably gonna be the most intractable cases. Like it seems reasonable if a strip club wouldn't want to employ a pre-op trans woman, if that's not the "product" they sell. It did upset me some years ago when Victoria's Secret got canceled because they didn't wanna feature trans models. That's dumb, VS has informally had an in-community reputation for years as one of the most friendly places for trans women to buy lingerie. Precisely because it's designed for uber-conventionally-attractive natal women, the ideal many trans women aspire to embodying!
> That kind of stuff seems mostly uncontroversial, even moreso as "passing privilege" accrues.
I don't think it's uncontroversial. There are lots of people for whom even this is too much. I could say that conservative motte/bailey is claiming that biological sex is a real thing/treating trans people without basic dignity, but I really dislike the motte-bailey framing, it can make a completely honest and valid preference revelation look like manipulation and fallacy.
What is actually going on, I think, is that there are people with quite different preferences toward trans acceptance, splitted into two opposing factions. Both factions are not monolith, there are more or less radical views in them held by different people. In general people with preferences for more trans acceptance are in pro-trans faction and vice-versa, but, due to the nature of polarisation, it's not very surprising when you meet a person with basically the same preferences but in the opposing faction. And of course, preferences of even one person is a spectrum. There is minimal acceptable for me level, median and the one after which I'd say that the society went too far. My personal Overton window. And while from the outside it may look like motte-bailey type of goalpost shifting, it's a completely valid way for desires to work.
Trans-activists are horrified by people whose Overton window includes constant misgendering of trans people considering them degenerates and so on. They see lots of them in their opposition. And thus the claims not to debate their existence is completely valid, and doesn't have to be some bad faith attempt to silence their opponents. Similarly for conservatives who judge progressives on the actions of the most crazy of them. Their concerns are valid in a sense that such people exist. It's still wrong to assume that all the other faction is like that. Suffice to say, that the memetic climate is extremely messed up and finding out the actual crux of disagreement between two factions is pretty hard.
I think that even amoung the most radical pro-trans activists it's a generally understood fact that biological sex is a real thing. Even more, I believe they could agree with the statement that in situations where natal sex or genetalia actually matters trans people shouldn't be treated the same way as cis. The objective disagreement, however would be in what are these situations. For them an example of such situation would be a transman visiting a gynecologist. For a conservative a transwoman with a penis being in a women bathroom.
> it's similar to Christianity - one could stop being religiously oppressed by simply giving up faith.
The important difference is that you can change your religion by the act of your will. You can't change your gender identity like that. There are transgenders who would like to just be okay with their assigned gender but they can't. In this sense having a gender identity is more like a belief in the color of the sky. It's not just a matter of faith, this belief is actually corelated with reality, and you can't change the belief without changing the reality.
> I'm skeptical of the evidence produced thus far about biomarkers, brain structures, etc. being causative of transgenderism rather than the reverse, and/or merely correlative
I'm much more skeptical about social contagion theory. Its unsuccessful attempts to explain sexual orientation and failures of conversion therapy do not give it much credit, its evidence are anecdotal and the theoretical mechanism doesn't make much sense.
With heretability of Christianity it's clear that the reason why children of Christians become Christian themselves is very dependent on nurture. We can also talk about some genetical factors favouring religious belief in general or more specific class of Christianity-like memplexes. But we know that Christianity itself wasn't in our ancestral environment thus we know that causality works like that: specific though patterns were evolved because they increased reproductive fitness->memetic selections finds a memplex fitting these patterns->Christianity spreads among people->Parents are passing their religion to their children mostly on memetic level.
But sex, sexual orientation gender identity, the feeling of ones body - these things existed in ancestral and were quite likely very important for the inclusive genetic fitness. Thus we expect that biological evolution actually created a specific patterns in the brain related to them and causality works differently than with Christianity.
"transgenderism fundamentally comes down to beliefs rather than biomarkers"
There seem to be some biomarkers
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgender-brain-what-you-should-know/
Start quote:
“The male and female brain have structural differences,” he [Dr. Altinay] says. Men and women tend to have different volumes in certain areas of the brain.
“When we look at the transgender brain, we see that the brain resembles the gender that the person identifies as,” Dr. Altinay says. For example, a person who is born with a penis but ends up identifying as a female often actually has some of the structural characteristics of a “female” brain.
To my knowledge, most of the "brain differences" data we have is similar to with stuff like Alzheimer's...it predominantly comes from dead people. Which is cool, it just doesn't do much good for questions among the living of "can we find a better standard for assessing transgenderism than mere statement of belief?" There's stuff using, like, MRI scans and whatever, but...well, Scott's written over and over on how neuroscience is great at finding statistical artifacts and building massive edifices around them, only to fall apart years later when they don't pan out in practical reality. Colour me skeptical. We did this dance before with gays and lesbians and that largely went nowhere. Who could forget "born this way"? It was a great slogan!
Besides which, transgender advocates probably wouldn't stand for "gatekeeping" like requiring a brain scan before being prescribed hormones. I feel confident that the current implicit consensus is for access absolutism, no matter how much they appeal to the Official WPATH Guidelines(tm) or whatever. Having actually been through the Official Process myself - no, I can state pretty clearly that it's easy to game, especially in a more-friendly locale like the Bay Area. It's exactly the sort of "Guess the Teacher's Password" thing, where if you wanna be transgender and aren't a total idiot, it's clear which sorts of answers you're supposed to give, which sorts of life experience you're supposed to emphasize.
(Why would an accurate empirical test be useful? Because the most potent and convincing conservative critiques of gender ideology rely heavily on the "self-diagnosis of disorder" bit. And conversely, progressives couldn't use trans folks as a wedge to shift gender norms for everyone if it turns out they actually are biologically predetermined to be variant. Then it'd just turn back into a medical disease with medical solutions.)
Many Thanks!
"only to fall apart years later when they don't pan out in practical reality. Colour me skeptical. We did this dance before with gays and lesbians and that largely went nowhere."
Ouch!
"Then it'd just turn back into a medical disease with medical solutions." Yeah, that was the direction I was hoping for.
"I think from utilitarian perspective progressive aproach makes more sense. Logarithmic nature of utility functions means that extra preference satisfaction for already priviledged person gives less total utility than extra preference satisfaction from opressed one."
"Privilege" rarely is used by Leftists to refer to individual differences like some people having more money than others. It's more usually "I deserve the job and you don't because someone else who looks like you has an even better job."
This sounds as an obvious strawman. As if you haven't actually tried talking to many leftists to understand their views.
The Left considers privilege a systemic advantage which benefits one group of people and not the other. It's not about individual differences per se, but can approximate them very good in most of real life situations. Like it's not about one person just randomly being more wealthy than the other, but about all the ways how some people systemically tend to be more wealthy in our society and how being more wealthy in principle creates more opportunities to satisfy ones preferences.
Which of my two sentences provide an inaccurate view of what Leftist's believe and advocate?
Both? Priviledge is often used by leftist while talking about individual differences, they just do it, considering how systemical issues create individual outcomes and vice versa. And in my experience its talked about more often than specifically affirmative actions at work.
Your description of affirmative action is taken out of context, at best. It's not because "someone else who looks like you has an even better job" but something like "because of a historically unfair system that tends to give better jobs to some sungroup of people".
You may be able to find a leftist who said something very resembling your version of the statement due to not having time to explain or not knowing better. That would still not make it a fair description of leftist position. An analogy that comes to mind is explainig capitalism as "thousands of people dying of hunger so that one could have a very big yaht". Like yeah, sure, technically this thing may be happening, but that's just a bad side effect and doesn't actually have to be true for every capitalistic system. And of course it doesn't really give an understanding of what capitalism is.
There's one enormous flaw with these sorts of arguments: People are going to be really uncomfortable if a passable trans person uses the bathroom meant for their birth gender. A male-to-female trans person with visible female breasts going into a men's room is going to make the men there deeply uncomfortable. A female-to-male trans person with facial hair and a totally flat chest going into a woman's room is going to make the women there deeply uncomfortable.
In fact, I'd argue that making trans people use the bathroom of their natal sex is actually *more* uncomfortable for most people (not just the trans person) than the alternative. In a bathroom, you shouldn't be seeing other people's genitals at all unless you're peeking in a stall. In a locker room, the situation is a little different since people are naked in front of each other, but it's still easy enough to avoid seeing other people's genitals and prevent them from seeing yours by going to a corner and facing away. If you're really adamant about not being seen, you can just change in a toilet or shower stall and then bringing your clothes to your locker in a bag. (I've been going to gyms and spas and public pools for years, including some in relatively conservative areas, without any issue.) But seeing someone's gender presentation - their clothes, their breasts, their facial and body hair or lack thereof - is pretty much unavoidable from the moment they step into the bathroom/locker room. What's more likely to freak people out, a slim chance that a woman might briefly glimpse a penis if she happens to glance in the direction of an MTF at the wrong time, or the certainty of every woman in the room seeing a burly, bearded FTM (who they'd likely perceive to be a natal male, since they'd have no way of knowing he was born with a vagina) coming in to change?
A few years back, a Facebook friend of mine trolled a conservative group by posting a picture of FTM porn star Buck Angel - a buff dude with a shaved head, no boobs, and lots of facial and body hair - with the caption "should this trans person use the women's room?" and got exactly the responses you would expect. Some variant of "I would beat his ass to a bloody pulp if he set foot in the same bathroom as my wife/daughter" was a common answer. Now, I'll fully admit that this was a bad-faith Gotcha question that deliberately misled people into thinking Buck was MTF, explicitly for the purpose of making conservatives look stupid and cruel, but there's still an important point there. The very bathroom rules that these people support would ensure that Buck, with this XX chromosomes and vagina, would be *forced* to use the same bathroom as their wives and daughters. Do you really think that's something that most people would be okay with, even if they knew that Buck was born a woman? I don't think a lot of people would be cool with me using the men's room either, for similar reasons - including a good number of people who'd argue that trans women shouldn't be allowed to use the women's room.
Reframed in that light, the issue isn't "trans people's comfort vs. everyone else's comfort," it's "trans people's comfort and most other people's comfort vs. the insistence of people who hold chromosomes and genitalia to be the only things that matter." Now which side comes across as Utility Monsters? (Is that a particularly uncharitable framing? Sure. But no more uncharitable than acting as though every MTF is a pervy dude in a dress who clearly shouldn't be around women, and every FTM is an attention-seeking tomboy in a suit who obviously doesn't fit in with men.)
Your post takes for granted that trans means only post-op trans I think?
No, Buck Angel isn't post-op. He was born with a vagina and still has it. He just looks and sounds like a man in every single other regard. He's had surgery to remove his breasts, and possibly some cosmetic surgeries (though maybe not, testosterone can cause a lot of changes all by itself), but the term "post-op" usually refers to people who've had genital surgery and that's not the case for him.
I'm not post-op myself either, though I've had some fairly minor facial surgery, along with laser hair removal and electrolysis. Even my breasts aren't the result of surgery, just years on estrogen and progesterone.
If you mean that I'm "taking for granted" that most trans people have actually *transitioned* in some way, and that most trans women don't look like the people in Deiseach's links below, then sure. But I've known a lot of trans women, and the vast majority that I've seen really don't look like that.
Many Thanks for the detailed explanation!
My belief in the efficacy of *psychology* (I originally misremembered and thought psychiatry, but no) was eviscerated by this One Crazy Stat: Apparently, psychologists make up 3.4% of health professionals but account for 4.9% of suicides.
Sauce: https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/uqxyrb/psychologists_accounted_for_almost_5_of_suicides/i8tz2k8/
I know that One Crazy Stat analysis is super-fraught and perilous and dangerous and risky so I invite the super-smart commenters on this board (srsly, y'all impress me) to give me all the reasons why my mind shouldn't be completely blown...before I embarrass myself at some cocktail party.
(Who am I kidding, I'm too shy to talk to my cat)
I think there’s three things to keep in mind here.
Firstly, I’m not sure what their definition of “healthcare professional” is. However, since social workers and psychologists are apparently on that list, I’m guessing it’s a pretty broad definition. My guess is that psychologists (who need PhDs) are probably among the highest educated people on that list. Graduate students have 6x the normal rate of depression, so I think it’s a decent guess that the education is selecting for something mentally unhealthy.
Secondly, I think a lot of people go into a field after they have some positive experience with a member of that field. The way that happens for a psychologist is to go into therapy, which probably once again sorts you into a higher risk category.
Third, psychologists work in a fairly high stress environment. They’re hearing some pretty rough stuff, and will occasionally lose their patients to suicide.
If you look at the other positions with even higher suicide rates, notice that social workers, nurses, and physicians are all also even higher representation, I suspect for various combinations of the above reasons. Does that make you lost faith in the field of social work for example?
Hmm. I agree that this certainly doesn't look great for psychology, but I think there are at least 2 decent defenses of psychology that can be made here:
(1) The selection effect rules everything around us. It is well-known that different medical specialties have VERY different personality types, and so the fact that people who opt into a decade of training for the purposes of talking to mentally ill people all day are themselves below-average in mental health (compared to OTHER highly trained medical professionals, mind you, did the study give the rate of suicide compared to the population as a whole and/or non-medical professionals with similar IQs?) isn't the most surprising.
(2) Mental health almost certainly has a component that is socially mediated, possibly even socially transmissible. This means that talking to mentally ill people all day (& especially talking to them with the intent to understand them) would be expected to worsen someone's own mental health, all other things being equal. Thus, the suicide rate being 50% higher can in some ways be viewed as "only" 50% higher.
Again, these are possible defenses not definitive defenses. To ground them, you'd need access to more data, and that more data might or might not exist. For example, to ground (2), you'd want a natural experiment (controlling for genetics and economic factors) to see how much a person being exposed to someone who was extremely mentally unhealthy increased their suicide risk, and then from that try to bootstrap those numbers up to allow for a comparison with the elevated suicide risk of psychologists due to constant exposure to extremely mentally unhealthy people.
Similarly to ground (1) you'd need access to a pool of people who intended to go into a different specialty but somehow got randomly assigned into psychology (and all stuck with it so there wasn't a selection effect based on who dropped out).
In my undergrad days, it was common knowledge that you shouldn't date psychology students because they're all crazy. (Sure enough, I dated a psychology student and it turned out she was crazy.)
Psychology as a field attracts a lot of people who have a personal interest in mental illness. It's not that surprising to see them overrepresented in the suicide statistics.
I also got the impression that every medical specialty was populated by people with that affliction. Except that we don't allow kids to be pediatricians of course.
Radiologists?
Can never be tuned to your local station no matter how much you move their arms.
Transparent fauds.
Agree. Still I'll try to soften that a little:
If "crazy" means something like "weird and dysfunctional", the demands of finishing medical school and internship or, for psychologists, university education and some kind of practical postgraduate training should filter out the crazier people, leaving something like the slightly silly party, high-functioning weirdos, to professionally work in mental health care. A good psychotherapeutic curriculum provides means of stabilizing one's own mental health a bit, too. But being weird and functional can still slip into " crazy" or "suicidal", especially under chronic stress.
There's a British documentary called "The Doctor Who Hears Voices" about a schizophrenic doctor being treated by another schizophrenic doctor on how to conceal her condition to maintain her position.
https://youtu.be/oKTr2tq9o-o?t=29
One thing I’ve heard a few times is that “it isn’t worth the time to vote” from an economic/utilitarian perspective. Could anyone give me the numbers on this? How many times more “potent” would your vote need to be to hit the break-even point from this perspective?
https://reason.com/2012/10/03/your-vote-doesnt-count/
The key quote: "Georgetown University philosopher Jason Brennan (no relation to Geoffrey Brennan) applied the Lomasky/Brennan method to a hypothetical scenario in which the victory of one candidate would produce additional GDP growth of 0.25 percent in one year. Assuming a very close election where that candidate is leading in the polls only slightly and a random voter has a 50.5 percent chance of casting a ballot for her, the expected value of a vote for that candidate is $4.77 x 10 to the -2,650th power. That's 2,648 orders of magnitude less than a penny."
I see. Thanks for providing the reference
I didn't read the article, but the math here seems to be completely off. Anything in 2,650th power is not remotely comparable to 'number of people on earth', 'total amount of money' or even 'number of atoms in the universe'
The article doesn't give details. This sort of number can be calculated if one assumes something like a gaussian distribution of vote totals, and you get a probability of being the critical vote which is something like e^-(fractional lead * total number of votes).
What's wrong with this analysis is that there are always some unknown systematic biases in measuring that 50.5%-to-49.5% lead. Even if there is only a part-per-million chance of a bias which can only change the lead in a +-1% range, the probability that the race is _really_ a near-tie totally dominates the probability of casting the decisive vote.
Basically, in the real world, you _never_ know the true lead with a confidence comparable to what a gaussian model with a perfectly specified lead tells you is the probability of casting the decisive vote.
Yeah. If you look at the real data and real observed behavior, people are often surprised about the election results. They usually are off from polling by magnitude of several tens of thousands of votes.
Good point!
Scott argues that voting can be worth it, see the first part of https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/
Outside of the unlikely chance of actually changing the result of the election, voting as three benefits which made it worth it. By increasing order of importance and meta-ness
1) Even if it does not change the result, a 40/60 win is very different from a 48/52 win. Even in cases where the result of the election is a done deal, voting helps giving momentum to the politicians and ideas you support.
As an example, even if Mélenchon lost the first round of the French presidential elections, his surprisingly good score helped him build a coalition which went on to get a great result in the legislative elections (denying Macron an absolute majority in the assembly).
If your candidate wins, winning more helps him build political capital to actually achieve his campaign goals.
2) More votes = more democratic legitimacy. This is really important right now, given the threats on democracy from both internal and external sources.
3) Voting is a truth-seeking exercise. The person or party for which you vote reveals your actual political preferences which may differ from your advertised preferences. Knowing this is useful. Being forced to make a choice between equally distasteful options is also a great way to get a little introspection and a good motivation to actually inform yourself about politics.
"Why are all the parties effectively the same party with different names?"
Hmm... Similar to the old claim: "If voting could change anything, it would be illegal."
You have a point, but I think it is overstated. In 2016, I don't think that the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made _no_ difference.
( Albeit I was surprised at how little it changed. The GOP held Presidency, Senate, and House, and they _still_ were unable to repeal the ACA or to complete building one wall. )
Many Thanks!
"The primary purpose of elections is to mislead as many people as possible into believing this process can legitimize the parasitic rule. It cannot."
You have a point.
Politically, I'd prefer to see the median citizen have as much freedom as possible. Live options, which aren't punished by federal government, state government, employer, landlord, or twitter mobs. Regrettably (from my point of view), this isn't the usa as it is today, which is an extraordinarily punitive place, amongst other metrics a world leader in incarceration.
( This isn't quite the same as libertarianism. I don't think that letting e.g. Bezos use his full market and bargaining power with no limits except on force and fraud is going to maximize the freedom of the median person. )
>2) More votes = more democratic legitimacy. This is really important right now, given the threats on democracy from both internal and external sources.
No, it doesn't lol. If Republicans win an election with record high turnout, nobody on the left (i.e. the people who talk about stuff like 'democratic legitimacy') will be saying how great this is for America's democratic legitimacy. They'll go back to their usual routine of declaring that Republicans are a 'threat to Democracy' and how some policy that has nothing to with voting or elections (e.g. restriction of abortion rights) is an "attack on democracy" or "attack on democratic principles". Democracy is delegitimized when the left use ever more expansive definitions of 'democracy' that increasingly mean 'supports left-wing principles' broadly.
Regarding 1- and 2-, and outside of very small elections, your vote won't turn a 40/60 into a 48/52. It won't even change it into a 41/59, or a 40.1/59.9. I still vote, but I know my vote has near-0 value.
The real reason I vote is closer to 3-: it makes the whole experience of elections more relevant rather than simply spectate it.
Of course, but what I meant is that you can not count only the expected chance of changing the outcome of the election, there are additional benefits even when who gets elected does not change.
Are you a mistake theorist or a conflict theorist?
If you're a mistake theorist, the tricky part seems to be how to account for the possibility that you're wrong. On the slim offchance that your vote is the deciding one, there's an approximately equal chance that you've voted the wrong way as the right.
If you're a conflict theorist then you can at least have a higher chance of picking the party that enriches your team at the expense of the other.
This sentiment has always confused me, at least in real life (vs online), because the people who'd espouse it were ones whom I knew very well to not value their time highly at all. And voting seemed like a Trivial Inconvenience at best, at least if one didn't want to research much.
However, I do think there'd be a strong correlation with ease of access to voting. Growing up in the Bay Area, I assumed postage-paid early-access mail-in ballots were just how things worked for everyone everywhere all the time. Genuinely had no idea until adulthood that most people vote by...physically going to an arbitrary location on an arbitrary day and time, designed for the State's convenience rather than theirs. Even if they have the opportunity to mail vote. That's way more of a time commitment than I ever faced, so perhaps the median calculus is very different. Typical Mind fallacy strikes again!
I've always enjoyed voting, even when I've had to wait in line (which hasn't been often). Something very satisfying about the process.
"One thing I’ve heard a few times is that “it isn’t worth the time to vote” from an economic/utilitarian perspective."
This only makes sense if you assume that people are already using every minute of their time in a 100% optimal way or close to it, with voting as the sole exception. But that assumption is unlikely to be true for the vast majority of people, to put it lightly. If you're a renowned neurosurgeon and you have the choice between doing an additional life-saving surgery on Election Day or going to the polls, then by all means, please do the surgery instead. But most people aren't going to do that. They're just going to spend that hour playing video games or watching Netflix instead.
In my opinion, governments should clearly pay you to vote, or make voting mandatory. We don't need to tie ourselves into intellectual knots over how useful an individual vote is - we can recognize that voting, as a social practice, has extremely positive externalities, and we can ask the government to subsidize it.
Not making (at minimum) Election Day a federal holiday continues to baffle me. Is there simply no lobbying group for it? I wasn't even aware Juneteenth was A Thing until this year, and that's far less important in practical terms than minimizing entirely preventable barriers to voting.
It'd be good for the economy too. Think of the special sales and limited-time rebates! American shoppers love holidays!
Since...
1) at time of writing it's the 4th of July, and
2) like a proper, overeducated coastal elitist I'm in Boston, "The Cradle of Liberty"...
... I feel it's time to share my proper, overeducated coastal elitist 4TH OF JULY MUSIC PLAYLIST!!! (Sidenote: Feel free to imagine Kermit the Frog doing his nigh-epileptic-seizure "Yayyyyy!" thing with which he introduces the next act, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlJM4UhbQ7A )
Actually, only 5 songs come to mind at the moment (as well as yield to the filter "has an excellent, readily accessible YouTube version that I can find within 5 seconds"):
AREA 1 --- Hypervirtuosic Piano Transcriptions of Patriotic Music by Great Pianists of the 20th Century (as "score-videos" with the sheet music to boot!)
A) John Stafford Smith, "The Star-Spangled Banner," arranged for piano solo by Leopold Godowsky, performed by Laurent Wagschal (SIDENOTE: Does anyone know if there's any recording of Godowsky himself playing it?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIDEPnZfG-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIDEPnZfG-w
B) John Philip Sousa, "The Stars and Stripes Forever", arranged for piano solo by Vladimir Horowitz, performed by Vladimir Horowitz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3i1mVkqI34 (SIDENOTE: Bump resolution up to 720p to see the sheet music clearly Like all of Horowitz's hypervirtuosic arrangements that he played as encores in his mid-20th Century hypervirtuosic heydey, there's no official version of the score. All the scores in circulation have been transcribed-by-ear(-maybe-with-software-help-especially-in-regard-to-pitch-maintaining-slowing-down) by megafans with the requisite skills. As such, every comment thread for such pieces will have a few comments --- generally informed! --- about errors in the transcription at hand.)
AREA 2 - Female Singer/Songwriters Located in either in Mainstream Music (but with a reputation for being much "smarter" than the main of the mainstream) and Indy Music (and with a similar reputation for being much "smarter" than the bulk of indy music)
(Note: Both of these are semi-tragic vignettes set to music that happen to occur on the 4th of July, not patriotic songs per se.)
C) Aimee Mann - "4th of July" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msHkQKzCwZk
D) Martina McBride - "Independence Day" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuNUjy1VC3Q (content warning: husband-on-wife domestic violence and the wife's act of revenge for it... though expressed just elliptically enough it could receive mainstream radio play)
AREA 3 / E) John Stafford Smith, "The Star-Spangled Banner," arranged for orchestra by John L. Clayton (with Rickey Minor contributing some vocal arrangement), performed by Whitney Houston with the Florida Orchestra under Jahja Ling in 1991 at Super Bowl XXV (it gets a whole area unto itself): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_lCmBvYMRs
[Bonus content: As wayyyyy too much of my time these days is spent with various "music theory" Youtubes, here's an explainer of the arrangement itself by Charles Cornell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCBiTdFLuh8 . And if you need to go further down YouTube rabbit holes, here's Adam Neely's compare-and-contrast of Demi Levato's 2020 Super Bowl rendtion and Whitney's 1991: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_I8JMwAJuc ]
Happy 4th of July, y'all. :)
If I may add Chet's version of The Stars and Stripes Forever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs2y1N2nGhE
Any thoughts on the best place to go to watch the Boston fireworks? I have about 4 hours to decide . . .
I'm not the right person to ask. I'm a homebody. The only times I ever --- as an adult, at least --- watched the fireworks from anywhere close the Esplanade was when I not only was doing my PhD at MIT, but living right on the riverside on the corner of Mass Ave and Memorial Drive in the original Ashdown House grad dorm (now Maseeh Hall, in honor of Fariborz Maseeh who funded its renovation -- yay! -- though the grad students got kicked out it and it's now an undergrad dorm --- boo!).
sorry I didn't see this in time, but remember this for next year. I watched the fireworks from that corner of Mass Ave and Memorial Drive last night and it was awesome.
Re: the SPLC feminist poll, at this stage I automatically assume the SPLC are wrong about everything. Their list of hate groups is pretty much "somebody told us this was a hate group so we included it". Whatever they used to be, right now they've degenerated into a fund-raising scam that relies on terrifying people that anti-Semitic groups are lurking in the bushes to drag their donors off and lynch them, were it not for the work of the SPLC, so send us another cheque please!
"MLK was fighting racism with the SCLC, which is really close to the SPLC if you think about it." - someone in marketing at the SPLC, probably
Agreed.
I find it disconcerting that in general, some specific highly romanticized biomes are generally valued as having higher worth than other less sexy biomes.
Kudzu is an invasive species, and Georgia is full of pines because they're the first trees to grow on abandoned farmland. A lot of the pine forests have already transitioned into hardwood.
I don't think everyone hates pine trees as much as you do (aesthetically I mean, obviously plenty of people don't care for the pollen).
>"Here's a pretty one, best case scenario and a nice looking tree: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/484770347375925906/
They never look like that. Typical example:
https://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5439818"
I see pines like the first one every day, I wouldn't say they are that rare. Raleigh, NC for reference not some rural area somewhere.
>"It's worse in a group:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcrjsr?uselang=en-gb#/media/File:Duke_Forest_seed_pines_after_timbering.jpg"
1) This looks like pretty new/young growth. Give it time to fill in/out.
2) I think that and the one before it are perfectly nice scenes, I would be happy to be there (reserve the right to retract this if there's a giant paper mill just off camera or something).
Maybe another way to put it is that for me (and I suspect some others), nature is just aesthetic by...nature (ugh).
Some people say pandas are evolutionarily unfit because of how deeply their continued existence relies on human aid. I say appealing to the dominant species capable of reshaping biomes is an excellent fitness trait.
A good book about this - The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.
I have read claims that there are tangible reasons to prioritize rainforest conservation in particular for reasons of:
-maintaining carbon sinks, which are believed to reduce climate change (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tropical-forests-cool-earth/#);
-discovering new medicines, thanks to the higher total number of lifeforms per unit of search (https://theconversation.com/dwindling-tropical-rainforests-mean-lost-medicines-yet-to-be-discovered-in-their-plants-126578); and
-avoiding zoonotic disease spillover from e.g. bats (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02341-1).
The reasons for popular appreciation of this habitat, though probably quite different, don't seem relevant.
Why is this in any way remotely 'disconcerting'? Do you think virtually all preferences humans have are 'disconcerting'?
Most people think rainforests are beautiful. People value beauty. The end. Unless you think that all preferences for beauty are troublesome, then this is just special pleading.
I find preferences disconcerting because often, preferences spring from aesthetics, not logic. I find lack of logical decision making disconcerting.
You can't decide through logic alone that something is more preferable than other. Preferences ultimately have to be grounded in your values, i.e. ethics and aesthetics.
"Preferences ultimately have to be grounded in your values, i.e. ethics and aesthetics."
or simply in what one wants and likes. I have preferences for particular ice cream flavors over others, and those are purely sensual likes, neither ethical nor what I would call aesthetic. De gustibus non est disputandum.
"neither ethical nor what I would call aesthetic"
Well, you're just wrong then. Sensual likes are exactly what constitute aesthetics, whether it's the visual sense telling you a slim girl is more attractive than a fat one or the sense of taste telling you that strawberry is a better ice cream flavor than chocolate.
I take aesthetics to be more nearly, as one of the definitions puts it: "the philosophical theory or set of principles governing the idea of beauty at a given time and place" I think you are extending the term to a broader set of senses than it is usually applied to.
Flavor preferences are orthogonal to beauty.
Hi Xpym!
When you wrote of aesthetics in your comment above, how broad or narrow did you intend it to be interpreted? I considered flavor preferences to be outside the usual scope of the term. Anon considers flavor preferences to be within the scope. What did _you_ intend?
I meant to include it, definitely. Wikipedia seems to agree, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics#Aesthetic_judgment
...but apparenly Kant disagrees. Anyways, I don't think that it's possible to make a principled distinction, and it mostly looks like the case of aesthetics is only supposed to include lofty stuff that it's high-status to philosophize about.
Many Thanks!
Logical decision making is about the fulfillment of preferences. Or values or goals or utility functions, but those are all basically the same thing. Without preferences, logic gets you nowhere - even such a simple decision as "should I point a loaded gun at my head and pull the trigger", has no logical answer unless you admit a preference for staying alive.
I suspect what you find disconcerting is that other people have preferences different from your own. If that weren't the case, you could consider "preferences" to be some sort of universal absolute (e.g. being alive >>> being dead), pick a word more in line with a universal absolute ("utility function" works well there) and go about logically optimizing for the universal absolute utility function. But that doesn't work - even if there were a utility function that everybody agreed on, it would just be the formalization of arbitrary preferences that didn't come from logic. And since people in fact don't all agree on what the utility function should be, you have to deal with that disconcerting reality explicitly and always.
So there's no such thing as logic?
The logical thing, is we create and follow safety protocols. such as we don't point firearms at things we don't want to destroy ... whether that thing is myself, another, or some physical property. Furthermore, killing your self is illegal, so logically, we don't break the law.
We also have codified in US law—The Reasonable Person—people of sound mind would preserve their body. Thus, an EMT may not treat a person refusing treatment. However if a person refusing treatment loses consciousness, the EMT has implied consent, as a conscious person who discovers they're in failing health will logically consent to treatment which they previously refused thinking their situation was not deteriorating.
But as to preferences, yes that is where politics comes in to balance out competing preferences seeking to find a common ground.
There is such a thing as logic. It is a tool we use to achieve understanding satisfy preferences, it is downstream of preference, and it cannot ever tell you what your fundamental (as opposed to instrumental) preferences are.
We don't point firearms at things we don't want to destroy, yes. That is logic. Whether or not we want to destroy a thing, is preference. Maybe an instrumental preference logically deduced from some other fundamental preference, e.g. I like eating unmelted ice cream, my refrigerator keeps my ice cream unmelted, therefore logically I should prefer not to destroy my refrigerator and should not point a gun at it. Perfectly logical.
Perfectly useless, without that fundamental preference. Logic can't tell you whether or not you prefer eating ice cream, or even if you prefer being alive, so logic alone tells you nothing at all about where to point a gun.
A couple of weeks back, I saw a caterpillar crawling around in my room just before I went to sleep. For around 5-6 days after that, I was unable to sleep well in my room. I would wake up at around 2-3 am, and not be able to get back to sleep at all.
Exhausted and running on low, I began to sleep on the couch in the hall, but that didn't work very well either. I finally managed to sleep well in my room again after I visualized killing and crushing that caterpillar. I could sense waves of relief wash over me as I thought of pretty gruesome ways of killing the insect.
I wonder if anyone else has had similar experiences.
Well, a caterpillar is technically not an insect in the larval stage. It is a future insect though. Sorry for being entomologically pedantic. :)
I once lived in an apartment that was infested with cockroaches. I was napping in the living room when I saw one on the couch. I didn’t sleep on that couch for a long time. Not sure why those things gave me the heeby jeebies, but they always did.
>Well, a caterpillar is technically not an insect in the larval stage. It is a future insect though. Sorry for being entomologically pedantic. :)
This can't be true, can it?
I dunno. I was joking around. Not an authority but I thought insects are supposed to have 6 legs.
I guess they do have 6 legs in the larval stage but they have bunch of creepy pseudo legs.
I googled this for myself.
https://lmgtfy.app/?q=is+a+caterpillar+an+insect
I'm pondering this now. To me, it just seemed _obvious_ that even if an insect doesn't have six legs, it's still an insect.
(If you pull the legs off an insect, does it stop being an insect? If a mutant insect with only five legs is born, is it not an insect? Suppose scientists discover a species of insect that lost one pair of legs, but DNA tests determine it is still descended from another insect species.)
To you, apparently it seemed obvious that if an insect doesn't have six legs, it's not an insect.
Psychologically, what's going on here? Also, what do you think about transgender people?
As I mentioned earlier I was more or less going for a laugh. I googled it. Caterpillars are insects. They do have 6 legs and a bunch of creepy pseudo legs. As someone who overthinks things too much, I’m going to go out a limb and say you may be overthinking this.
It's almost impossible for me to sleep if there's a large-enough fly in my room, or a mosquito of any size. I end up staying awake for as long as needed to attempt a deathblow or trap/exclude the meddlesome devil. It's sort of like that Breaking Bad episode, "The Fly". But I gotta actually see the body...the mere thought of "I missed, it's gonna buzz/bite me as soon as I get comfortable!" keeps true sleep at bay.
Spiders do the same, except I generally refrain from killing them cause I rationalize they're net beneficial. (Or so the claim goes.) Arachnophobia is a serious thing though...
"Spiders do the same, except I generally refrain from killing them cause I rationalize they're net beneficial. (Or so the claim goes.) Arachnophobia is a serious thing though..."
I'm ambivalent about spiders. I'm happy to have them around to eat insects, and the webs some of them spin are beautiful. In this area, though, black widow spiders are common, and a typical spider in the house is not usually positioned so that I can see if it has a red hourglass marking or not, so it is difficult to tell if I can safely ignore one or not.
Yeah, I've gotten a number of really nasty permanent-scar spider bites over the years. "Daddy longlegs" types I find completely unobjectionable, they're kinda silly and harmless really. Anything else is...blah. I try to leave them alone as long as they stay out of "my space". But sometimes they insist on trying to paratrooper onto my bed or whatever, and then We Have Problems. Nothing quite like making a Reflex save as a spider's coming right at you...
Yup! That situation is ... uncomfortable