This is the semimonthly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also:
1. Some people frustrated with the commenting system here are trying out r/slatestarcodex, a subreddit where they can comment on recent SSC articles with all of the upvoting and downvoting their heart desires.
2. Comments of the week are Edward Scizorhands on why banning discrimination based on college degrees might be easier than you think, Larry Kestenbaum on the surprisingly sane employment policies of the US post office, Jaime Astorga on a metaphor for college maybe even better than my tulips one (old, but I missed it the first time), haishan on why driverless cars aren’t legal yet, Pax Dickinson on purges, and Brandon Berg on Tom Swifties.
3. If you’re into effective charity, there may currently be an unusually high-impact opportunity to donate to Giving What We Can.
4. I finally cleared my backlog of reported comments. Fwhgdsd is now banned indefinitely and RCF for one month; check the Register of Bans for more information. Everyone else gets a general amnesty, on statute-of-limitation-type considerations.
Please steer the open thread away from the five toxic topics that mindkill SSC readers: race, gender, doge, one-tailed t-tests, and cuddling.
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So, the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding gay marriage has resulted in a surge in the use of Facebook profiles to indicate tribal alignment via the use of a simple app which replaces one’s profile picture with a generated one filtered via the rainbow banner.
This had led me to several observations. Firstly, from visual evidence it seems I’m even more immersed in the Blue Tribe (Scott’s definition) than I thought.
Secondly, I’m apparently now sufficiently averse to this kind of signalling that even though I’m bisexual and massively in favour of gay marriage, I still had to fight the urge to snark at people about it.
Thirdly, and perhaps more interestingly, a large number of the accounts that swapped yesterday evening reverted within a day, while others have picked up the gauntlet today, leading to an ongoing swathe passing through my friend networks rather than a singularity. I find myself wondering what led that first wave to change back. Workplace pressures? Discomfort at being part of a horde? Sheer hipsterish pique at everyone else having done the same thing?
All these aside, it’s not often you get such a visual depiction of tribal allegiances. I find myself kind of wishing I’d had the presence of mind to create a script to collect data on it while the phenomenon was just beginning.
Oh, that’s easy: 11 hours ago a couple of my extremely unhip midwestern cousins put up those avatars. The fad’s already worn itself out and stopped signalling the proper virtue, which is, of course, trendiness.
Regarding point 2, why?
Is the problem tribal bonding rituals per se, or just that it isn’t your tribe? (Anymore?)
That’s not a simple question, unfortunately.
They’re signalling their membership in a Tribe for which I have some beliefs that are… what nydw would call “elthedish” or something along those lines.
But it’s a tribe with whose general principles I still align.
And they’re signalling using a symbol that, all tribalism aside, fundamentally belongs to me. Most of them are straight. I am not. I was into marriage equality before it was cool, dammit! I’m the guy with the anecdotes about being inspired ancient gay guys who’ve been together since the 50s.
So this new wave of tribal signalling just feels like I’m being colonised. By my own side. In a really grotesque and unsubtle way.
Also I always have had a bit of a contrarian asshole side, which is probably a big part of it. Hanging around the LWsphere community has only sharpened my instinct for annoying cultural signalling games to rebel against.
So it’s pretty much all of that.
Ah, so it’s cultural appropriation 🙂
A few years back I did some investigating into speed bumps for a class. A statement, from the Chairman of the London Ambulance Service, Sigurd Reinton, comes to mind: “For every life saved through traffic calming, more are lost because of ambulance delays.” This seems exactly like SSC-in-depth-post material to me, if such a notion tickles one’s investigative fancy.
Scott would you be willing to comment on a Vitamin D pitch that was made in a very well received LessWrong post? I must admit I’m biased against it since it pattern matches to the “lolz medical professionals are so incompetent, watch me outdo them all with one source” narrative that is annoyingly common.
LiteralHeadCannon/BayesWatch here; I’m the guy who wrote Ginny Weasley and the Sealed Intelligence. 🙂 Have been following SSC for a while and decided to post this here cuz I was looking for a rationalist general thread.
I saw Inside Out today and I really liked it; I immediately came up with an idea for a microfic, and wrote it out. Here it is, although I’ll warn you that it only really makes sense if you’ve seen the movie. I just thought it was clever:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11334905/1/Further-Out
I post it here because it’s semi-rationalist; it deals with futurist stuff (within the scope of a microfic) but it’s much more a character piece. I’m worried it’d get downvoted for irrelevance on /r/rational, but this seems like a nice crowd. 🙂 Tell me what you think, either in this comment thread or in a review.
(Scott, you’re so cool, by the way! 🙂 Big fan.)
So, I have a question for you all. I’ve been reading a few links from the so-called “fat acceptance movement”. I agree with not shaming fat people or anything like that, *but* I’m reading claims that being obese (not merely overweight) has no ill effects on health, and that dieting doesn’t work, that the medical industry is just delusional in telling people to lose weight, that fat people actually live longer(!), etc.
I don’t trust them. My intuition is that there’s cherry-picking and selective readings of studies, or just citing bad studies, going on. Further, while they do cite outside sources, all the source compilations come from within the movement itself. I feel like they are smuggling in bad medical advice with their positive social message.
But maybe not. Is there any good links to resources that give a fair shake to these claims that are independent of the fat acceptance movement? If not, I’d love to see Scott do a post on that one day.
Scott has written two good posts on dieting. Eliezer Yudkowsky does occasionally harp on the subject, too. These posts, combined with my own experiences, have pretty much convinced me that the traditional “it’s all about calories in minus calories out, man; you just gotta eat less (especially less fat, which is calorie-dense) and exercise more and you are guaranteed to lose weight!” narrative is simply wrong.
I am much more skeptical of the rest of the claims made by the fat acceptance movement. In particular, their claims that disgustingly obese women (and it is always women) are somehow beautiful are utterly groan-worthy. Hence why I cringe whenever Eliezer uses the term “metabolic privilege” or its derivatives; the last thing people arguing that diets are ineffective need is to get pattern-matched to those tumblrinas.
Wait, strictly speaking, how can this be wrong ? All that weight has to come from somewhere, and if not from calories, then from where ? Ok, I understand that actually eating less calories, for a prolonged period of time, may be difficult or impossible for many people; and I also understand that the calorie reduction may need to be quite dramatic in order to have an appreciable effect, etc. But that’s different from saying, “eating less calories does not produce weight loss”, which is what you seem to be saying.
In terms of aesthetic preferences, there’s no accounting for taste. I have friends who find supermodel-thin women to be the pinnacle of attractiveness, whereas I personally find them kind of… well, the opposite of that. I don’t think this is necessarily indicative of any kind of deep-seated prejudice on anyone’s part. I mean, I hate the taste of yogurt, too, but I’m not going to go around claiming that it is objectively evil…
I think maybe a better way to put it is: if you are fatter than you’d like to be, then you should start taking in fewer calories and/or burning more calories. Whether you are fatter than other people who take in and burn the same number of calories is neither here nor there, though it can seem unfair. Certainly different bodies process, burn, and store calories differently, and some people may poop out half the nutrients they take in, while others burn them off with nervous energy, and others seem to store everything. That doesn’t change the fact that if *you* are fatter than you would like to be, then *you* should take in fewer calories than you currently are taking in and/or burn more.
Different bodies may react differently to different levels of activity and caloric intake, but I don’t know of anyone who will maintain the weight they have now despite exercising more and eating less than they are eating now.
This is not to say that this is *easy* by any means. Personally, I think the real bugaboo is appetite regulation. I think most people who seem to be naturally thin actually don’t eat as much as they seem to, and it’s because they just don’t have as strong an appetite. Conversely, if your appetite is really strong, it’s super hard to avoid gaining weight, much less lose weight.
Consider tricyclic antidepressants. They make a certain percentage of people who take them gain weight rapidly. I think it’s even listed as a side effect: “weight gain.” It’s not that those people are eating the same number of calories and gaining weight, though. It’s that the antidepressant is making their appetite much stronger. They definitely *are* eating more, but it’s hard to “blame” them for it, because their body chemistry is demanding it. The side effect is really “increased appetite,” but strongly increased appetite leads so inevitably to weight gain that one might as well call it “weight gain.”
There are two obvious mechanism by which eating extra calories does not result in weight gain, even without a corresponding increase in exercise. First, your body can simply let the calories pass through your digestive system unabsorbed. Second, your body can absorb the calories and immediately burn them raising your body temperature (people in polar climates need to eat tremendous amounts of calories to maintain weight, and I personally notice myself sweating whenever I overeat).
Well, models who look like 12-year-old boys are not exactly the Platonic ideal of beauty, either. I’ve actually heard a theory that the reason they look like that is because the fashion industry is dominated by homosexual men, and that models are therefore models are selected based on traits homosexual men find attractive (flat chests, angular faces, etc…) rather than the traits regular men find attractive.
Right, what you’re saying now is, “ingesting more calories will not necessarily lead to weight gain”. This is a good point. Conversely, if you are at the point where your body is (e.g.) already converting the extra calories into heat, reducing the amount of calories you eat won’t result in weight loss.
However, IMO this sounds like a middle ground between your earlier statement (which I took to mean, “eating less will never lead to weight loss”), and the overly broad statement “eating less will always lead to weight loss, eating more will always lead to weight gain (assuming exercise levels are constant)”.
To be fair though, I did explicitly say, “…and I also understand that the calorie reduction may need to be quite dramatic in order to have an appreciable effect…”, partially for the reasons you mentioned.
With regard to haute couture, it’s more that to show off the clothes to best advantage, you need people who look like mannequins: tall, thin, flat as a board. Otherwise you don’t get the same drape and silhouette (and it’s all about the lines and the shape of the garments, not the wearers). What you see on the catwalk is not meant to be worn by actual human beings; it’s the trend of the season, which is then translated into items for non-models to wear in ‘real life’.
Short(er) people with lumps, bumps, curves and sticky-out bits simply ruin the lovely lines of the garments, doncha know! 🙂
Oh, no; that interpretation would be an exaggeration in the opposite direction. There are indeed people and circumstances in which eating less functions more or less like the thermodynamic theory of dieting predicts it should.
There are more scenarios, I think, where reducing the amount of calories you eat will not result in weight loss. By analogy with the weight gain scenario, the two obvious ones are that your body, if feed less calories while already at its set point, will endeavor to absorb more calories from the food that you do eat, and/or will lower your body temperature in order to conserve energy. In the semi-starvation experiments which Mr. Taubes recounts in Good Calories, Bad Calories, the test subjects persistently complained of being cold and unable to warm themselves even when wrapped in numerous layers of clothing.
Another possibility is that your body simply reduces bodily functions in an effort to save calories. Even if this does not stop you from exercising at the previous rate, you might find out that the only effects of your increased caloric deficit are that your brain is suddenly performing as if it had an IQ one standard deviation lower than the one you started with, or else that your rate of healing from sickness and injury has slowed down considerably, all while the fat deposits in your body stubbornly refuse to transform themselves into usable energy.
In conclusion, keep the same diet, but turn the thermostat down to 60 F and engage in self-harm.
Let us hope that this new cold cuts diet proves more effective than the timeless decision theory diet.
The post office bit was disconcerting. It is true that I haven’t experienced other countries postal services, so I won’t speak for them, other than to say I have this vague memory of reading an article about the innovativeness and efficiency of Singapore’s postal system (not a fair comparison perhaps as Singapore is a city state, not really a peer of the US).
That said, I have had one sorry chapter in my life where I lived in multiple locations in the same city (and I believe in different mail carrying routes) where I witnessed the most astoundingly incompetent behavior of any service I’ve seen, on a routine basis. When I would call about the mailman taking mail out of my box (it’s a long story) his manager would lie and try to tell me there is a dog preventing the delivery of the mail (which is a non sequitor but he would refuse to have an actual conversation). When I watched and had many other issues some times I would ask my apartment manager what the deal was (she said everyone has this guy misdeliver their mail), on one or two other times I would call his manager and again the manager would lie about trivially obvious things.
The problem as I see it is zero accountability. Both directly — I had no recourse against the incompetent delivery carriers and incompetent & dishonest managers — and indirectly against the Post Office as they have a legal monopoly on delivering my mail and I can’t pay a little extra to have, say, tax documents sent to my mailbox via Fedex — instead the Post Office was only so happy to lose them for me. The increasing availability of digital documents as a substitute for mail has helped in some but not all cases here.
And for what its worth my bayesian prior is that you’re going to have a very low probability of good service / product, competence, innovation, etc. in any government sanctioned monopoly. You see exceptions, of course, say in elements of the security services — like the SEALS and DARPA– but they are very much exceptions. (In fairness, if you read Harry Markopolos’s account of informing the SEC many times over many years about Madoff, it certainly seems possible that the SEC is more incompetent than the Post Office but that’s a matter for another day.)
If you take evolution and remove selection pressures, you get very different results. I’d hold that termination pressures are perhaps the most important.
You can always sue. That is the citizens main source of legal recourse in America, and speaking from experience, even the threat of a lawsuit causes government employees to get their shit straight real fast.
I was avoiding getting into the weeds on this, but absolutely, there are some spots in the U.S. Postal Service that are appalling.
Chicago is a really big and notorious example, a place where local organizational culture has grown up in a way that has led to despicably bad mail service. First-class letters (the highest priority mail) can take a week or more to be delivered. I once dropped a letter in a mailbox at O’Hare Airport, addressed to a Chicago destination, and missed a submission deadline because it took so long to arrive.
At one point, the Postmaster General personally came to Chicago to apologize for how bad things were, and promise improvement.
On the other hand, consider Detroit, a place that would seem every bit as challenging a place to supervise employees and deliver mail as Chicago. But in Detroit, the post office is just marvelously fast and efficient.
Detroiters are accustomed to quick mail delivery. In my experience, if you drop off a low-priority bulk rate mailing at the Detroit post office in the late afternoon, it will be delivered throughout the metro area the next day.
I believe Detroit is far more typical of American post offices than Chicago. And mail service is constantly being made faster and more efficient. For example, mail carriers now get mail automatically sorted in route order, so they don’t have to spend a couple hours sorting it out themselves.
Ever mail anything to or from Canada? My Canadian friends are embarrassed at how slow their mail is.
Almost every foreign postal service receives a huge ongoing cash subsidy from the government; the USPS does not. Stamps may be cheaper to buy in some countries, but not if you figure in the cost of that subsidy.
Other countries’ postal services are subject to strikes and other lengthy service interruptions. That doesn’t happen in the U.S.
In many countries (Russia in particular), it’s taken for granted that any valuable package sent through the mail will be stolen. Theft from the mail is just about a non-problem here.
In sum, I’d much rather have the USPS than any other country’s postal service.
Not that it’s relevant to your main point…
It used to be that first class meant paying for speed, but that is no longer true. Business love bulk customers, which is why they give them discounts. USPS also gives discounts for making it easy for them, such as sorting by ZIP-9 or printing ZIP-9 as a bar code. Of course such mail will be delivered fast. The best deal is not addressing the junk but just saying: give one to everyone on the route. Another measure of what USPS cares about is the penalties for failure, like losing a vested pension.
When the bulk mail you’re sending has tremendous density, you can take advantage of special rates for carrier route sorting and the like, and that definitely speeds up delivery.
The mailings I was dealing with in Detroit didn’t have that kind of density — more like a dozen or so pieces per zip code. It didn’t qualify for any special treatment. Pretty much all of it had to be individually sorted into carrier routes and such.
What happens nowadays, since I left Detroit, is that as each address is read (whether by human eye or OCR), a bar code sticker is affixed to the piece. The bar code encapsulates the address information and guides it to the specific mail carrier without human intervention. Bulk mail these days comes already bar-coded.
Larry,
I do not have this problem using the Chicago mail service, generally. I work for a major company and send the checks through the mail to be deposited at our bank: I see the checks show up in our account and have a pretty exact view of the flow.
The distribution is bi-modal for sure. 80-90% items are delivered in a day, though 10% of items are not moved for 5-7. Scarcely little falls in between.
Perhaps focused attention has helped the Chicago situation. I don’t have any recent information.
Datapoints: My experience over the last 30 years along the West Coast, has been the smaller the town, the better the Post Office and DMV — all the way up to unbelievably excellent.
Me too.
Less awful, at least. The clerks at the DMV in my (small) hometown still seemed bored to surly, and the building itself was uncomfortable, but they didn’t screw up or take too long and there wasn’t a line. Meanwhile, when I lived in Oakland, I’d drive the forty minutes to Concord whenever I needed something done at the DMV, because that one was merely smelly, unpleasant and tedious rather than nightmarishly Kafkaesque.
The Oakland DMV, when I lived there, had a ticketing system controlling when you were allowed to stand in line. It’s probably gotten worse since then.
I don’t remember the post(s), but Scott mentions the effect where people have a tendency to judge information outside their area of expertise as reliable, but information specific to their expertise as less reliable (or something like that).
I don’t remember the name of the tendency and I’m not a good enough Googler to find it. Can someone please point me in the right direction?
Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, named by Michael Crichton.
Creeping Horror is when you get over the amnesia.
Thanks
A sort of poll of public opinion, to the extent it is reflected on SSC:
Given the following scenario, rate the probability the US federal govmt will employ decisive military force (as in, not just warnings, threats, token shows of force, etc.) to prevent the secession:
Tomorrow, the Texas state legislature votes by an overwhelming majority (say 70%) to secede from the US, and this is backed up by a popular vote, again showing a very strong majority support from the people of Texas. The US threatens to cut off social security, medicare, and other federal dollars coming in, and to make life difficult for citizens of the new state–revoking their passports, etc., but Texas remains firm. The new state of Texas demands that all US military personnel leave the state, pledge loyalty to the state of Texas, or find other jobs. Texas does not invade or attack any other US state, but pledges to fight any efforts by the US govmt to enforce US federal law within its borders. A number of IRS, FBI, EPA, ATF and other federal agents have already been forcefully detained and expelled from the state.
I rate it at 10%
It’s really hard to evaluate the result of a sudden, no-warning, motiveless secession. A plausible secession crisis would have some sort of runup, a cause, a dispute that the Federal government couldn’t/wouldn’t ameliorate and that Texas can’t/won’t live with. The specifics would make a huge difference.
(If it really happened as described, I’d expect Federal troops to be sent in to investigate whether it was mind-control rays or drugs in the water supply that caused Texas to go from not considering secession yesterday to attempting to enact it today, without so much as attempting to negotiate the process.)
Let’s stipulate it’s the year 2020, and, despite the fact that she received very few votes in Texas, Hillary has just been re-elected after successfully passing a bunch of progressive programs during her first term, most of which the people of Texas strongly object to, and many of which can be plausibly construed as conflicting with the Bill of Rights or Constitution to some degree (and therefore violating the “contract” between the state and the fed govmt).
The people of Texas claim to be seceding because the fed govmt has not upheld its part of the contract (to abide by the Constitution), and because they do not feel adequately represented when they can virtually all vote against a candidate and her policies and still have her re-elected.
At least 99%, although everything LHN points out is valid. It’s not entirely clear from the description how many hypothetical Texans actually approve of secession (since many Texans either couldn’t or didn’t vote), but even if only 30% of Texans wish to remain Americans, that’s 8 million people or so. How many of them would become refugees? The federal government also owns nearly three million acres of the new breakaway republic. That’s a relatively trivial fraction of Texas, but it’s 200 times the size of Manhattan. Do we get compensation?
I imagine this as if a large majority of Texans suddenly joined the “sovereign citizen” movement. Our tolerance for those guys ends precisely when they break the law, whereupon we cease to find it amusing and treat them like any other criminal. Texas would be the same: the federal government would look with amusement at the Governor and Legislature declaring themselves independent, but anyone who laid hands on an IRS agent would be wanted by the FBI. Don’t the Enforcement Acts permit the President to order the military to assist domestic law enforcement if state officials refuse to enforce federal law? It’s not clear how much violence would be involved in enforcing federal law in Texas, and perhaps Texan freedom fighters could exhaust the federal government in a multi-year guerrilla war. But if “decisive military force” is something closer to “blowing up the Capitol in Austin,” then I would not put my retirement fund in Texas Treasuries.
But don’t you think there will be little appetite among the population of the rest of the United States for a war on what is basically our former home territory, fought against people who who are culturally pretty similar to us? Remember many people will have relatives and friends in Texas.
We don’t even have the appetite for another Vietnam today, and Vietnam was fought against foreigners a world away.
That last cuts the other way: direct assaults on federal personnel, US territorial integrity, and the constitutional system of government (as many Americans will see it) are a much more powerful impetus to military action than a faraway foreign conflict.
But we’re assuming that the Texans are quite committed to this effort, and so the feds will not be able to put it down without significant loss of American (or former American) life.
Further, let’s say that no one is attacking or killing IRS agents: they are simply preventing them from doing their jobs and/or kicking out of the state with no harm coming to them.
By what means are they preventing Federal personnel from doing their jobs and forcing them to leave their homes in the state, without the use or threat of violence?
How do you kick an IRS agent out without doing any harm to him? Asking for a friend.
Federal employees already living in Texas are offered automatic citizenship in the new country of Texas so long as they don’t continue trying to enforce US federal law. After some transitional period, people who attempt to enforce US laws in Texas would simply be treated as we might treat a Canadian government agent trying to enforce Canadian law or collect Canadian taxes on US soil.
That last translates to the threat and use of violence, just adding some time to think about it first, no?
A lot depends on how the secession is managed; if the incoming government says that the people who don’t want to be citizens of an independent Texas have freedom of movement to the rest-of-the-US, are entirely welcome to transfer money to the rest-of-the-US, and generally have the same relationship to the rest-of-the-US as a Dane has to the rest-of-the-EU, it would be no worse than a Scottish or a Catalonian secession, and I don’t imagine people would mind all that much. Texas is about a quarter of the net-contribution to the Federal budget, so Federal taxes would go up 30%, which would be a bit irritating but no more than that. I think it would be about as damaging as a UK secession from the EU, which, whilst it would be the most stupid political act the UK took since 1914, is something our current Government has vowed to hold a referendum on.
If you start driving people out and confiscating property, it starts to sound a good deal more like an act of war.
In the scenario I was envisioning, the new government of Texas does nothing to prevent its citizens from traveling to or doing business with the remaining US as before, though the US fed govmt may attempt to make these difficult.
“…pledges to fight any efforts by the US govmt to enforce US federal law within its borders. A number of IRS, FBI, EPA, ATF and other federal agents have already been forcefully detained and expelled from the state.”
At which point those who carried out those actions would be guilty of federal crimes. The FBI would investigate and attempt to make counter arrests, provoking a crisis where someone is going to resort to force. That leads to a really nasty spiral.
The military bases would button up and go on a war footing. If the Texas State Guard started interdicting their civilian suppliers, supplies would start being air lifted in. If they started trying to shoot or force those planes down or they started shelling the military bases, there would be swift and decisive action taken against those who did the firing. It would be over quickly but it would not end well for Texas.
So you rate it as what, 99% also?
Remember this isn’t about whether the US federal government could defeat Texas militarily, but whether they would, given public appetite for a war so close to home and fought against people who are just trying to peacefully go their own way.
There is no way that the Federal government could stand by while its officials were molested in pursuit of their official duties. They would start attempting to arrest Texans who engaged in this molestation and those who ordered it. It would get very, very, very tense very fast.
I rate at 99% that we would be on the precipice of hostilities given the scenario you describe. Texas would either have to use force to attempt to prevent the arrest of the officials who engaged in criminal conduct or back down.
I don’t know whether hostilities would commence or not, because that would be entirely on the hypothetical Texas that is in your mind, so I can’t speak for them.
As I said, my hypothetical Texas is not going to give up because of threats of military action. They must be thoroughly militarily defeated, which will involve killing and injuring a not insignificant number of Texans, before they give up.
It’s not enough that they are committed to military resistance. How can your hypothetical Texans credibly signal their commitment to the U.S. Government and the American people? By the time the shooting has started and the Texans’ will to resist has become clear, the war has already begun. At any point before that, Washington can reasonably believe that the Texans will back down when push comes to shove, and escalate accordingly.
They can say so? If the government doesn’t believe them, I don’t see how that is Texas’s fault. And the real question is: once the fed govmt learns that Texas is fully committed to the secession, be it before or after actual shots have been fired, will they continue to try to prevent it militarily? That is, given a Texas which is willing to fight, if not to the last man, then at least as hard as the Confederacy fought during the Civil War, would the fed govmt and American people have the stomach for it now as they did 150 years ago?
“They must be thoroughly militarily defeated”
Once Texas starts shooting at the Federal government, the amount of time it takes for the Texas government to fall is very, very short. Like Panama short. They don’t have a military. Do you think the National Guard is going to take orders from the New Texas putsch?
Unless you are positing that the fluoride in Texans water really is a mind-control device and in the next 5 years the vast bulk of Texas citizenry is going to be willing to come out of their comfortable suburban ranch homes and start shooting at their own troops.
The FBI would come in and either be re-buffed militarily, inciting the shooting war that Texas loses, or simply arrest the entire government of New Texas. It wouldn’t take long, the head would be cut off the snake quickly.
“simply arrest the entire government of New Texas”
How well do you think that would play in the media? In a country which was founded by secession and claims to value liberty and self-determination, no less?
@Onyomi:
After Texas escorts 350,00 (number of federal employees in Texas) people to the border at the barrel of a gun? After Texas starts shackling and/or shooting those who resist? After Texas starts attempting to give orders to the US military?
I think it will play fine in the “upper 48”.
Heck, after Texas cuts off Social Security payments inside their own state, the Feds probably wouldn’t need to do anything. The New Texas government would get taken down by an army of cane wielding grannies on hover-rounds.
To those who rate the probability of decisive military intervention as very high, would you rate it the same if it were California seceding to escape a runaway Jeb Bush presidency and establish a more liberal/progressive polity?
Absolutely! The first attack on a U.S. military base in the rebel territory would be the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, in terms of galvanizing public opinion.
As I wrote above, the attackers would be seen as traitors, and blamed for all casualties.
Sure, although you keep suggesting that Texas (or California) would try to break away “peacefully.” I just don’t understand how secession could possibly occur without committing violence against federal agents who attempt to enforce federal law within the state’s borders.
If California declares independence but no California cop lays a finger on any federal agent, and they are willing to extradite California citizens who commit federal crimes, etc. etc., then in what sense is California actually independent? I agree that the American public likely wouldn’t stand for an invasion of Sacramento to prevent Gov. Brown from making a lot of meaningless speeches that have no practical effect.
To those who rate the probability of decisive military intervention as very high, would you rate it the same if it were California seceding to escape a runaway Jeb Bush presidency and establish a more liberal/progressive polity?
It would be an amusing bind. Would the demographic who favored Southern secession, accept a Left Coast secession? Probably not, even if a Bush-n had put the Confederate flag over the White House by then.
My inner cui bono says in fact the decisions would be quite consistent: don’t let a prosperous region leave your tax base.
But as Nornagest points out, a Texas secession would actually be great for the Democrats in the remaining US, as would a California secession be great for the Republicans. Without Texas’s electoral votes, the Democrats could dominate the federal government (at least until some new coalition equilibrium developed), just as the Republicans could dominate without California.
And this is actually a feature of secession, not a bug: everyone gets government more like what they want.
Eh, more people get the government they want. But by the same token, the government has less need to compromise and can be more tyrannical.
Orwell started to realize the dilemna in this discussing the minorities who lived in Burma. All the collaborators in WWII came from the majority. And the minorities did not want independence because they did not want to be ruled by the Burmese. He noted that there was always a smaller group that wanted out.
Yeah, I was going to say “unless you’re a Democrat in Texas or a Republican in California”. There are quite a lot of both.
Though probably what would actually happen is that both states would split along their own ideological fault lines, which might end up looking quite different from the Dem/Rep divide. I don’t know enough about Texas politics, but in California I think I’d expect to see a multipolar split between the NorCal coastal cities, the SoCal coastal cities, and the agricultural interior. (The mountains upstate are culturally distinct too, but they don’t have enough population to make a meaningful bloc.)
@Mary
I do not predict the smaller, more radical governments will actually be more tyrannical, because a major limiting factor on tyranny is governmental competition. It’s easier for vast nation-states like the USSR and PRC to be tyrannical because it’s just physically harder to leave them. Unhappy with your life in Andorra? Move down the street.
“there was always a smaller group that wanted out.”
Which is why I’m an anarcho capitalist.
@ onyomi
Without Texas’s electoral votes, the Democrats could dominate the federal government (at least until some new coalition equilibrium developed), just as the Republicans could dominate without California.
Or until a patch could be put into the current Electoral College rules, which would probably have been quietly done long before need. Which side it would favor, might depend on which was in power at the time it was passed.
The Electoral College is pretty hard to patch: its exact form isn’t guaranteed by the Constitution, but the number of votes per state is, and so is the right of the states to choose how electors are appointed. The current system where electors (in most states) are essentially a proxy for a winner-take-all popular vote in their state is a result of the incentives that creates, and you’d need a constitutional amendment to substantially alter it — one that’d be very hard to get through the ratification process.
Even after losing thirty-eight or fifty-five electoral seats, though, I doubt one party’s dominance would last more than a couple of elections. Granted, your average politician doesn’t think past the next election anyway.
If the Texas State Guard started interdicting their civilian suppliers, supplies would start being air lifted in.
Over the objection of the local civilian suppliers — who, early seeing loss of Federal customers as a possibility — would never let this sort of thing develop.
I’m surprised to see that so many here seem to think the US government a great deal more evil than I do. I can picture a few politicians itching for a fight, angry denunciations from the NY Times, and even attempts to provoke and incident, but I don’t think the country as a whole would have the stomach to actually go to war with Texas, especially assuming a peaceful separation.
If anything, I think a lot of red states would want to join TX, and Hillary would have her hands full convincing them to stay. I also think that any overt military action against TX would prompt violent insurgencies throughout the rest of the US. At that point, I would not place my money on the armed forces siding with the blues, and I don’t think the president would, either.
To be clear, I don’t think the federal government would be morally wrong to enforce federal law in Texas, even if local residents largely opposed that law (and even though I happen to oppose some federal laws too!). Law enforcement necessarily entails the threat (and often exercise) of lethal violence against the unwilling.
Cops in any nation routinely use force to enforce the law in areas where most people don’t want them — we call that “the rough part of town.” A secessionary state is just a really, really big “rough part of town.”
“A secessionary state is just a really, really big ‘rough part of town.'”
Though I can imagine politicians trying to portray it that way, I have a very hard time believing the average American would see it that way,
I’d actually expect a Democratic government to be ambivalent about letting Texas go. It’d be a loss for the federal budget (by about a hundred billion on balance) but a big win for the Democratic Party: removing Texas’s 38 electoral seats wouldn’t quite cripple the GOP’s electoral prospects, but it’d make things a lot harder for them until the party lines realigned. Same for its House seats.
Hillary strikes me as authoritarian enough that she’d probably want to hold onto Jesusland, though.
I suspect a Democratic Administration (*especially* one headed by the first female President) would worry about the optics of effectively surrendering in the Second American Civil War without firing a shot. Only Nixon could go to China and all that; if there’s anything that would actually destroy one of the major political parties in the U.S., willingly permitting a state to secede might do it for the Democrats. It’d be the equivalent of the Republicans trying to reinstitute slavery.
After a successful separation, a majority of voters in the ex-states would be happy with her decision, a minority would be angry — but none of them could vote in the US anyway. Many of the remaining US voters would be angry, but I think the Blues could keep the Reds from starting a shooting war.
@houseboatonstyx:
“a minority would be angry — but none of them could vote in the US anyway”
Wow. Either I am really misreading this or the most charitable interpretation I can put on it is that you are being a parody of what blues think of red-tribe.
Please tell me this is tongue-in-cheek and not serious.
@HBC — I’m almost sure the intended reading is “they can’t vote in the US because they’re no longer US citizens, because the states they’re part of seceded”. Of course, citizenship rights might not be worked out that way — under current law I think they wouldn’t, though this is a situation that wasn’t designed to cover — but it’s not implausible by any means.
I’m honestly not sure what conclusion you jumped to, but may I suggest adopting slightly stronger assumptions of good faith?
@ HeelBearCub
I’m sorry I was unclear.
Assuming that each ex-state had held an election on whether to secede, and the “Yes” voters had got the majority of votes, they would be happy; the “No” side, which had got a minority of the votes, might be angry. But if the secession had succeeded none of the ex-state’s people could vote for or against Hillary, because they would no longer be US citizens.
What was tongue-in-cheek and somewhat making fun of both sides, was my line about (in the remaining US states) the Blues keeping the Reds from starting a war over the outcome.
@houseboatonstyx:
My mistake, I parsed that as “the only people who would be angry are those who couldn’t vote anyway” which sounded like a coded reference.
I guess you can put me in the “evil” column, then. One fundamental job of the U.S. federal government, as laid out in the Constitution, is to “suppress insurrections”. This discussion has convinced me that use of force in those circumstances is completely appropriate.
Sure, this use of force can rise to the level of being morally wrong. Putin in Chechnya comes to mind. But not in the USA of 2015, or in any reasonably conceivable USA of 2020.
One critical heuristic underlying the relative peace of the last 50 years (the most peaceful half-century in all of human history) is that force ought not be used to “fix” problems with international borders.
The necessary corollary is that force can be used to defend existing borders, crazy and unfair as they may be.
The threat of force against breakaway regions has surely minimized the number of secessions that are attempted, and hence helped maintain peace.
With peace, many things become possible: trade and prosperity, reduction of ethnic tensions, negotiated settlement of disputes.
Yeah, this means places like Tibet and Northern Ireland and Kurdistan and Chechnya continue to be oppressed (and the U.S. declined to aid revolts against Communist regimes in Eastern Europe). But that’s better than constant wars in all those places, which is the only genuine alternative.
Why is constant war the only genuine alternative? Why couldn’t Tibet simply be allowed to establish an independent state?
I assume you think some secessions are legitimate–the American colonies’ secession from Great Britain, for example. Assuming you think the colonies had the right to secede and that Great Britain was wrong to oppose that secession by force, what’s different about the case of Texas or Tibet?
“Why is constant war the only genuine alternative? ”
Why is acting unilaterally the only alternative?
I didn’t say it was. In reality, negotiating the secession would probably be a better, safer alternative. I’m just positing that they shouldn’t *have* to negotiate to assert their right of independence, just as the US didn’t *have* to negotiate with Great Britain to assert its independence.
Besides, there wouldn’t be much point to the hypothetical if independence weren’t asserted unilaterally. I don’t think anyone is opposed in principle to a negotiated secession on which all sides agree.
Well, the answer to your question of whether “constant” war is the only alternative to remaining a member of a political entity is that it is not. Negotiation is the other alternative.
If you want to act unilaterally, and not negotiate, be prepared for war depending on how damaging your actions are.
And remember, sometimes the damage you are doing is to a Schelling fence.
I think the key here is that, in any scenario where the federal government is behaving such that Texas is seriously considering secession, they will probably have significant support from the rest of the U.S. – your average Texan is not THAT far outside the mainstream, certainly not in a way unique to Texas. The military itself would probably have significant loyalty to the Texan cause, disrupting any planned actions against it (much the same as in the original Civil War).
You’re assuming a Red State secession here, which seems very unlikely to be confined to Texas.
More interesting, and more plausible to my mind, would be parts of the Southwestern states attempting to break off into a Chicano republic (or 51st state) of some kind. That at least is a more regionally distinct culture I could see wanting independence from the U.S.
I’m with Gbdub here. Whichever sort of scenario we have in mind, by the time Texas secedes the real question is gonna be “who’s coming with?”
That’s a very, very tricky question. You stipulated they demand all US military personnel leave or pledge loyalty to Texas. It’s not that simple. They can’t just break their oaths to the U.S. They’d be executed for treason and most of them don’t have permanent residences in Texas. They’d need to be relocated to other military bases, along with several trillion dollars worth of equipment, and something would need to be done with all the land they were using that belongs to the U.S. We have a treaty with The Netherlands that allows them to train their elite aviation units at Fort Hood, so you’re canceling at least one treaty with a sovereign nation other than the U.S. San Antonio is the site of all U.S. military medical training and I doubt any place exists that can just absorb those duties. Fort Bliss and Fort Hood are the second and third largest installations in the country, and home to multiple armored divisions. It takes 30 days to mobilize just a single armored brigade and you’re asking to move crap, I don’t even know, 60 of them? That’s gonna take a while. That’s a lot of trains. You’d be disrupting deployment schedules, breaking treaties with Korea and NATO for joint exercises, places where we’re manning hostile borders with North Korea and Russia with U.S. troops. South Korea and Latvia probably aren’t gonna be happy about that. Plenty of the people you’d be asking to leave are property owners in Texas. Killeen, Temple, Wichita Falls, and major parts of San Antonio and El Paso would cease to exist, not just the military but all the local businesses that rely upon them. You’d create ghosttowns the size of New England states overnight and dump hundreds of billions of dollars of worthless property on the market, and presumably the U.S. would want to compensate all the people you’re displacing. DFW is one of three major midwestern hubs for all American airlines. Can they still use it? The Port of Houston is the second busiest port in the U.S., and much of the volume that passes through it is not destined to or from Texas, and it’s the port used to ship all military equipment overseas from midwestern garrisons. You’re talking about re-routeing 212 million tons of equipment per year. Can the Port of Louisiana handle all that? You’d need a hell of a state income tax to be passed to replace all of the federal funding they’d be losing, from the Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid to all of the federal funding for the universities. You’d destroy TI, Dell, AT&T, all of the major tech and defense companies relying upon U.S. federal contracts. Comerica would basically shut down, since a foreign bank can’t operate branches in the U.S. I don’t know if any other major U.S. banks are headquartered in Texas. There’s a U.S. mint in Fort Worth that I guess is the least of everyone’s problems after all the rest of this. There are 16 federal prisons in Texas. I’m guessing there aren’t room for all those people in the rest of the prison system in others states. Does Texas just crash train a bunch of new prison guards to maintain these or release all these people? Execute all of them?
For what? Because all of the rednecks living out in gerrymandered districts out in the sticks are pissed about the progressive federal social agenda?
I mean, I guess stranger things have happened, but it’s a logistical nightmare and you’re sticking someone or other with a pretty hefty multi-trillion price tag and overnight ruining millions of people, which are exactly the kinds of things wars are started over, with or without literal shot fired.
There would obviously be a lot of logistics to work out, but those hardly have to jump to DEFCON 1 if the participants don’t want them to. Texas doesn’t need to storm the local army bases; they can negotiate an orderly and peaceful withdrawal of the armed forces from there back to US soil, perhaps even paying for some of the property that is left behind. Free trade agreements can be made to keep goods flowing. Sure, many local players would be disrupted, but those matters can be finessed.
And again, if we get to the point where Texas is seceding, they will not be alone; other red states are going to want to join them. In addition to those, a lot of states that don’t want to go with Texas will be sympathetic enough/glad enough to see them go that they don’t want to invade Texas to force them back into the Union. The President will have a massive political mess to deal with which would only compound by starting a shooting war. And I think most US Army men would be very, very, very hesitant to fire on fellow Americans, especially in a case like this where there’s no Great Cause like ending slavery to provide motivation.
How do you envision the President selling “I am now bombing Houston” to the general public?
This violates the terms of the original hypothetical. Of course Texas (or any state) can negotiate all they want. If they can persuade Washington to allow independence peacefully, more power to them. It worked in Czechoslovakia.
But if Texas decides to establish independence by force, they can expect to be met with force.
I’m sorry, I’m really, really getting tired of this. “Great Cause”?
Probably about the same way as President Lincoln sold “I am now burning Atlanta.”
Hundreds of thousands of dead Union soldiers probably had something to do with it.
“Probably about the same way as President Lincoln sold “I am now burning Atlanta.”
Hundreds of thousands of dead Union soldiers probably had something to do with it.”
My point is that Americans today would get fed up long before it reached this point. I don’t even think you could institute a draft anymore.
For lack of a better word, I think Western civilization has gotten a lot “wimpier” in a positive, Steven Pinker kind of way. We don’t care so much about “honor,” and don’t see war as glorious.
This is a response to onyonmi 6/23/2015 @ 4:53
Your claim that
contradicts your earlier claim that
In particular, it seems you are unfairly assuming that Texans have not have been affected by this wimpiness. Whereas, more realistically, for the exact same reasons that the modern US would give up before hundreds of thousands of Union dead, so would Texas.
@Larry,
I wasn’t being saarcastic; I genuinely think ending slavery was a great cause, the kind of thing you could rally people around and get them to kill their brothers over. I don’t see anything analogous here. What would the rallying cry be? “Our budget deficit will look a lot worse if we let them leave!”
Onyomi didn’t specify a reason for the split, but there’s enough unpleasant stereotypes of the South in general and Texas in particular that whatever the explicit motive was, anyone who wanted to come up with nefarious alleged motives would have little trouble.
The first one I can think of would be something along the lines of “racist Dallas fat cats want to take their oil money and run”.
@ Larry Kestenbaum
>>especially in a case like this where there’s no Great Cause like ending slavery to provide motivation.
>I’m sorry, I’m really, really getting tired of this. “Great Cause”?
Aside from WWI and WWII, most recruiting efforts in the US have needed a “Great Cause”.
Working backwards: “Iraqi Freedom”, “War on Terrorism”, Kosovo (which I agreed on), Saving Vietnam, Saving Korea, “The International Communist Conspiracy” — and “Preserving the Union”, “That Democracy Shall Not Perish from the Earth”, and a little later “Ending Slavery”.
But that is not what happened. The North did not go to war to “end slavery”.
I keep pointing this out, but I guess the actual complicated history can’t be allowed to get in the way of whatever simplistic political point is being made.
Mu.
This isn’t a question that can be answered in anything like a realistic way, because the underlying scenario is so very, very, very improbable (to the point that I’d say “impossible” in casual conversation).
Even assuming the impossible…I still don’t think it’s something that can be discussed coherently. Even if we assume ‘Texas is seceding’ as a brute fact…it means quite a few underlying assumptions are broken and we need to revisit those. This isn’t quite a ‘my arm is now a blue tentacle’ event (there’s always a reasonably strong possibility that I am deeply biased/wrong/crazy in a political way), but it’s still the kind of thing that means a deep reworking of beliefs about politics (when those beliefs are exactly the things I’d need to generate predictions like ‘will the government use force’).
I mean…does someone else have a particularly high (ie, greater than a tenth of a percent) estimate of Texas seceding for any reason by 2020?
I think the question can be answered, because it isn’t about the specifics. It’s about gauging the ratio of commitment to anti-secession attitudes versus anti-waging a war on your own people attitudes.
My contention is that the average American today is vaguely anti-secession, but not anti-secession enough to stomach a war to prevent it, as they were in the 1860s.
Lots and lots (and lots!) of 1860s Americans had the exact same view, too. They turned out to be wrong. Sam Houston said it best:
“These men who talk of a united South, know well that it begets a united North. Talk of frightening the North into measures by threats of dissolving the Union! It is child’s play and folly. It is all the Black Republican leaders want. American blood, North nor South, has not yet become so ignoble as to be chilled by threats. Strife begets strife, threat begets threat, and taunt begets taunt, and these disunionists know it. American blood brooks no such restraints as these men would put upon it. I would blush with shame for America, if I could believe that one vast portion of my countrymen had sunk so low that childish threats would intimidate them. Go to the North, and behold the elements of a revolution which its great cities afford. Its thousands of wild and reckless young men, its floating population, ready to enter into any scheme of adventure, are fit material for demagogues to work upon. To such as these, to the great hive of working population, the wily orator comes to speak in overdrawn language of the threats and the words of derision and contempt of Southern men. The angry passions are roused into fury, and regardless of consequences they cling to their sectional leaders. As well might the Abolitionists expect the South to abandon slavery, through fear that the North would go out of the Union and leave it to itself.”
“Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South.”
Nominative determinism in action
I think I might be addicted to your blog. In a literally (but mildly) unhealthy way.
But anyways, thanks for the stuff man. It’s real good. I’ll be back….
Yup. Join the group. Except I’m addicted to surfing blogs in general. They can’t be too technical, but neither can they be too banal and crass. Sometimes this blog makes the list.
I was going to post this in response to one of the above threads on self-driving cars, but I think it deserves its own thread. I’ve recently done some research that has convinced me that self-driving cars and trucks are not going to legally be allowed to drive unmanned on city streets and maybe even highways any time soon, and that for the foreseeable future “self-driving” technologies are only going to be used to create increasingly advanced driver assistance features, similar to the way that autopilot systems are used in modern aircraft.
I already knew that the technology to fully automate planes has existed for decades. But then I learned that the first fully automated train was built in 1961. Which means that we’ve had the technology to create conductorless trains for 54 years. Yet most trains still have conductors, even freight trains that don’t carry any passengers. These are vehicles that move on fixed rails, and at every place that these rails intersect with roads there are barriers, flashing lights, and sirens to warn bystanders when they approach. They’re basically the easiest and safest kind of terrestrial vehicle to automate, but very few people have bothered to do so in more than five decades.
The few trains that are automated suggest the reason why: there are some underground and elevated passenger trains around the world that are fully automated (though they usually have manual override brake buttons that staff can use). That is, these are trains that move on rails that members of the general public aren’t allowed to walk or drive on, meaning that if someone gets hit by one of these trains, it is 100% their fault for ignoring the damn sign.
I think that’s the key here: not so much whether robot vehicles are actually safer than manned vehicles, but who is to blame when an accident does happen. If a human driver makes a mistake and runs someone over, then that guy can be charged with vehicular manslaughter and the buck stops there. But if a self-driving car runs someone over due to a software glitch, then it is the fault of the company that made the car and programmed the software. Even if the company can survive the resulting lawsuit, the inevitable media circus will ensure that their brand will forever be associated with the tragedy. That’s the sort of thing that companies will spend any amount of money to avoid.
Unmanned aircraft also seem to follow this general pattern, as civilian drones are too small to do much damage if they crash into anything and military drones are already expected to regularly cause “collateral damage.”
If people aren’t willing to let a computer drive a train outside of very controlled environments, I don’t see any chance at all of them letting a computer drive a car on roads that it will have to share with drunk human drivers, pedestrians, pedestrians who ignore “Don’t Walk” signs, jaywalkers who don’t even bother with crosswalks, emergency vehicles, construction workers, and kids playing in the street.
Which isn’t to say that self-driving technologies won’t be useful. They’ll probably do a lot to reduce accidents, and might lower the skill requirements, and by extension the pay and cost, of driving jobs once they are good enough that the job description of a taxi or truck driver becomes “watch the computer and override it to pull over if it screws up and/or something unexpected happens.” But I think a lot of the predictions that have been made about them are overblown.
That’s depressing. Millions of people will die because saving lives incurs the possibility of lawsuits.
This already happens (although not in the millions scale) in regards to potential medical research breakthroughs.
More likely, millions of lives will be saved, because their deaths would be of the sort that is particularly likely to invoke lawsuits. Sometimes the system works. Or maybe it doesn’t, because part of the cost is that hundreds of millions of old and/or disabled people will be denied mobility that could have been provided at a cost of mere millions of lives and the revealed preference of our society is that this is a cost we are willing to pay for the enhanced mobility of healthy people.
The scenario NN posits, and it is a very plausible one, is of a society where we have human drivers in control of all cars, with all the best automated assistance our technology can provide. We kind of know what that looks like, because the sky is a simpler operating environment than the roads and we consequently already have a few decades’ head start in the field of aviation.
And in aviation, human pilots in command with the best available automated assistance have given us the safest form of transportation ever developed. Human pilots without automated assistance are less safe to a statistically significant degree, but still do pretty good. Full automation, crashes and burns roughly once per thousand flights under even the best of circumstances.
NN posits that we will, possibly for the worst of reasons, settle on the solution that we have seen provides the highest possible levels of safety, and everyone here seems to bemoan the supposedly inevitable megadeaths? Would it be too much to ask, given that this is supposedly a group of rationalists, for the actual evidence that fully autonomous AI is going to be safer than human-directed AI in the automotive environment?
@John Schilling:
This may be orthogonal to your point, but I like to think how safe ground transportation would be if it followed the same rules that air transport did.
If you had to file a driving plan in advance, stay well away from other vehicles in your pre-approved lane, someone monitored your movement every time you approached a travel hub, and if the vast majority of people-transport-miles was done by professional drivers using the best automation assist software available in mass-transit vehicles, I think the number of ground-transport deaths would be WAY below air deaths per people-mile.
So, to the extent that automation techniques can take us towards that type of system, millions of lives will be saved, regardless of whether I get to go to sleep at the wheel or not.
Those are the rules only for long-distance air transportation. Most airplane flights in the United States are conducted without flight plans, by non-professional pilots, with minimal or no supervision by air traffic control, etc. By essentially the same process as automobile transportation – the person who wants to go someplace, gets in the machine and points it where they want to go using the sophisticated navigation and collision-avoidance technique known as “looking out the window”.
My daily commute is by private plane, and if I start early enough I can reach my destination – about three miles from LAX – without talking to anyone in the air or on the ground, because there is no one to talk to. Though as a courtesy I do give blind calls on the appropriate frequencies just in case there are other early birds in the sky.
So, yes, orthogonal. Day-to-day local transportation beyond the rigid routes of bus and rail service, pretty much has to be self-directed by amateurs in small, private machines, We can talk about how much automation they will use, or whether the machines will be privately owned or rented from a fleet operator, etc, but these don’t fundamentally chance much. Long-distance transportation can be clumped together, professionalized, and more thoroughly automated, whether by bus, train, or airline. There’s probably not much harm in letting people who want, use their private local-transport machinery for occasional long-distance trips, though.
@John Schilling:
Aren’t people-miles dominated by air traffic controlled flights, though? And that is why the safety stats for flight are so good?
I think if as many people left their house every day in private planes as do in private cars, you would see some pretty horrendous total death numbers. Maybe I’m wrong in that assumption, but I would want some data to prove me wrong.
I guess you could simply ask for the same, though.
No no no. Saving lives incurs the possibility of stripping human beings of all agency and meaning in life. We all know that’s what happens when you automate stuff. Didn’t you read the comment-chain above about Ian Banks’ The Culture series being a dystopia? Automated work or AI of any form just are dehumanizing and must be prevented. Always. Because Responsibility and Meaning are both Irreducible Normative Principles and much, much, muuuuch more important than preventing easily-preventable deaths.
No, really. I’m not being at all sarcastic.
Personally, I find non-automated work pretty dehumanizing.
Maybe it depends how much you enjoy your work.
How much of that is voluntarily-pursued liability protection, and how much is regulatory capture by the train conductor’s union?
I think you’re missing a big piece of the picture: the financialization of current human accidents. Current US auto insurance revenue is 170 Billion dollars a year, or about 700 dollars per American adult. If self-driving cars are substantially safer, there’s a ridiculous amount of money to be made there. Require a license/insurance combo to use the auto-driving feature, charge a couple hundred a year for it, then use your ridiculously gigantic war chest to handle the accidents.
This doesn’t happen with trains/planes because there are only cost savings, not real safety gains. If above-ground trains had to let any random passenger drive the train and they couldn’t screen for practically blind old/drunkenness/16 year olds/people who have been awake 10+ hours/random morons I guarantee they’d move to fully automatic.
It’s not just a question of money. Quick, what’s the first thing you think of when you hear “BP”? How about “Exxon”? “Ford Pinto”? Chances are you thought of, respectively, the largest oil spill in history, a somewhat smaller oil spill, and a car catching on fire after a collision.
When a company’s product is responsible for bad things, their brand can be irreparably damaged. How much money do you think BP executives would be willing to spend to retroactively undo that oil spill? And the first time a self-driving car kills someone will absolutely be a newsworthy event on the level of any of the above.
With regards to your second point, a lot of the things that people talk about being fully automated, such as taxis and trucks, do screen drivers. So they are, indeed, in a similar situation to train conductors and airplane pilots, though the standards are somewhat lower.
And I want to make clear here that I am not contrasting self-driving cars with cars that only have manual controls, I’m contrasting self-driving cars that are allowed to operate unmanned on city streets and self-driving cars that require a driver to be present at all times that the vehicle is in motion on public roads. Think of it like a UAV vs. a manned aircraft with autopilot. The latter provides much of the same safety benefits as the former, but potentially makes things even safer by providing redundancy and most importantly provides someone to blame when things do go wrong. When a software glitch does cause problems, if there is a manual override you can always blame the driver for not using that in time.
But it does mean that you won’t be able to do crazy things like create giant fleets of unmanned robo-taxis, eliminate the entire truck driver profession, or have one family car drop the parents off at work then drive back to ferry the kids to and from school. Even allowing people to operate self-driving cars while drunk would be a very hard sell.
The main thing I’m objecting to is the sort of sentiment I see in things like the article that Scott linked a month ago that discussed how Nevada is allowing the testing of a truck that drives itself on the highway but still has a human operator at all times with an option for a manual override, then breathlessly wrote, “The replacement of truckers is inevitable. It is not a matter of ‘if’, it’s only a matter of ‘when.'” I’m arguing that no, the historical examples of trains and airplanes show that it very much is a matter of “if,” and may well be a matter of “never.”
Sorry, I thought we disagreed more than we actually did, I do think monitored self-driving is all that’s likely to happen in the near term. How well that technology works is going to be the biggest factor in what happens after that.
I’m just tired of people harping on the liability issue. In similar situations in other industries, it’s not worth it to take the liability risk because you can’t capture much of the gains in safety yourself, but with the heavily financialized market in automobile liability you actually can. Someone will be willing to be the bad guy for billions of dollars, if real gains in safety can be made.
And the first time a self-driving car kills someone will absolutely be a newsworthy event on the level of any of the above.
But the first fatality killed by a train, the first plane crash, the first car crash, did not mean people went “Yup, knew this was a crazy idea” and everyone went back to horses and carts.
I can’t drive; I’ve never been able to learn, and only a self-driving car (if one comes along before I’m dead) would entice me to get behind the wheel (and given that I’d be unable to drive the vehicle if necessary to switch from autopilot to manual control, this would need to be a genuinely self-driving machine). I don’t think I’m the only person so handicapped (and it is a handicap not being able to drive in modern life). There’s a market out there for those like me: the incapable, the phobic, those dependent on limited public transport (outside of big cities, your public transport choices are ‘once a week on certain routes or nothing’).
Unfortunately we’ve fetishized the value of life to the point where one death (or some small number of deaths) due to a new technology might well result in its abandonment; the old risks are grandfathered in as familiar.
I’ve seen it claimed that if aspirin were newly discovered, the FDA would soundly reject it. There’s good reason to think we were more accepting of risk with new modes of transportation back in the day, too.
Innovation is at odds with safety and certainty. If you work hard to maximize the latter, you will stifle the former. We currently prefer safe, predictable stagnation.
Isn’t the aspirin point related to the fact that we now have safer and equally effective analgesics, so aspirin’s risk-benefit profile no longer qualifies for FDA approval (at least for OTC)?
“This old drug that has since been supplanted by better alternatives would never have gotten approval if the better alternatives were available first” doesn’t suggest to me that we have become a society of cowards. Especially because plenty of far more dangerous drugs get approved to treat sufficiently dangerous ailments. See, e.g., dacarbazine, which you should not handle without eye protection and a face mask, and which is injected directly into a cancer patient’s heart.
I think there’s a significant problem to consider in using trains for calibration of acceptance times. Trains are huge pieces of equipment whose cost dwarfs the cost of paying the conductor. With cars that’s not the case. The labour spent on driving cars is huge, which means there is massive gains to be had through the automation. Of course, carting 80kg humans around in 800kg vehicles is still pretty high on the scale of stupid, so hopefully there will also be opportunities to move to more efficient alternatives in the future too.
Does utilitarianism provide us with utility? Are the principles of libertarianism consistent with liberty?
In both cases, the answer depends on people’s likely attitudes to the systems themselves: if enough people find utilitarianism itself to be repugnant, then the utilitarian system cannot increase utility; if enough people oppose libertarianism, such a system cannot sensibly be said to increase liberty.
Where we attempt to use systems like libertarianism or utilitarianism as foundational ethical principles, we are at best making a statement that is true in the same sense as “this statement is true” (only if people believe it to be), at worst saying something that is actively false.
Personally, I feel that a fundamental law of ethics has to do better than that; it must be tautological.
An example: “Treat others as you wish yourself to be treated.” If you squint, make certain assumptions about consciousness, this is a tautology – We have ethical obligations to those who are conscious, because of the fact of their consciousness. However, we can never have any interaction with a consciousness separate from our own. The consciousness of others only ever exists as a part of us… etc etc. If you truly don’t believe someone (thing) to be conscious (an “other”), you can’t really be said to be acting unethically no matter what you do to it.
The fundamental law is a tautology that by itself tells us nothing about how to act: the details of application depend upon our individual situation and are essentially a matter of taste.
There are brute facts of external reality (sense data), facts of consciousness, but also important questions with ethical implications that have no definitive answer. We get to choose. The way we should choose is to create within our mind the vision of the world that appeals to us the most. In my opinion, the more an ethical system relies upon abstract concepts the less appeal it is likely to have. Utilitarianism is to fundamental ethical principles as a painting is to aesthetics. It may be a bad painting.
“You get to choose the world you live in.” If you could choose, wouldn’t your world include this principle?
This only works if utility and liberty are empty terms which don’t describe any actual characteristic of the world. That may be the case, but you have to demonstrate it first.
Utility, at least in the economic sense, is a useful term which describes real behaviors. And people can often be wrong about it: Stumbling On Happiness is a whole book filled with experiments where people failed to predict the utility that they would experience from future events and even to retrodict the utility of past events. A utilitarian theory with rules like “keep a diary specifically for how much you enjoyed / hated things” or “ask people currently doing something you plan to do how they feel about it” would absolutely increase utility even if people hated the idea of measuring the marigolds that way.
Liberty is harder to define, or at least I don’t know of any good definitions of it, but presumably if it refers to anything then it should operate by similar rules. If people think a (higher / lower) minimum wage will increase the liberty of poor people, only to find them less free due to (unemployment / longer working hours), then you have a case where people’s subjective opinions about liberty differ from objective fact. A libertarian theory which gave good advice on regulation would then easily be able to increase liberty even over people’s objections.
To the extent that “utility” is simply a way of describing preferences, I’m sure it is useful – it is also, to some extent, useful to devise ways to satisfy people’s (local) preferences. If that is what utilitarianism is – people have preferences, there are ways to satisfy them, then I’d say it is fairly uncontroversial.
The problem is when you want to view humans as utility maximizing monsters, or even worse, consider “morally right” to mean maximizing some abstract concept of universal utility.
The specific problem I was talking about above is that I personally don’t consider either of those ideas to be particularly attractive pieces of mental furniture – that is, maximizing my own utility requires me to reject utilitarianism. If enough people feel similarly, then shouldn’t a utilitarian also reject utilitarianism?
Well I won’t argue in favor of utilitarianism, since I’m not a utilitarian myself, but I don’t think you’re giving a strong argument against it either.
As to whether other people not wanting to maximize a global utility function would make utilitarianism self-defeating, unfortunately no consent doesn’t seem to really be a factor in utilitarian thinking. Look up CEV on LW and Elua here on SSC and you’ll see that the main idea among the Rationalist variety of utilitarians is to bypass ‘coordination problems’ by creating a ‘Friendly’ superhuman AI management system. In other words, fixing market failure through central planning.
Of course there’s no reason utilitarianism has to go down that road. After all, the only coherent measurable definition of utility is the economic one and the prescriptions of the standard model don’t look anything like a top-down technocratic state. But it’s an appealing idea when you’re a smart guy that if you were in charge things would be better, I think we all felt like that at some point.
I don’t understand why this isn’t a strong argument.
If a majority of people found utilitarian principles to be repellent, and societies based upon those principles made people miserable, then surely the best way to maximize utility would be to avoid utilitarianism as we know it.
I suppose it would be possible for utilitarianism to then become some other entirely different ethical system, one which would have a broader appeal, but in that case the term “utilitarianism” tells us nothing except: “I’m looking for the ethical system that makes the widest number of people happy.”
Mark, if the majority of people find X repellant, then it doesn’t mean that X is untrue or unsuccessful. It is certainly a lot harder to make society go in a way that X is successful.
But utilitarianism is not a binary success vs failure system, so a utilitarian-thinking person in a position of wealth or power can still create huge nudging effects, e.g. on how much pain there is in the industrial system.
Let’s say that society consists of ninety-nine deontologists and one utilitarian.
The strict utilitarian won’t take any action without considering how his behavior might effect the utility of the others in society. The utilitarian might be prepared to kill one member of the community to save twenty others, but if such an act were in fact considered deeply immoral by the community, and would make them miserable, surely the utilitarian would have to go along with the prescriptions of the community’s ethical system.
As far as ethics are important to us, utilitarianism actually tells us nothing about how to behave.
Obviously, there might be cases where a utilitarian will behave in the same way as people with different ethical systems – but when push comes to shove, other ethical systems must take precedence.
[Unless the utilitarian can somehow keep his actions entirely secret (they don’t exist to others).]
Mark, most people are not moral at all, they give lip service to ethics at best and otherwise do what’s good for them and looks acceptable according to common sense morality, which is inconsistent and shifting with zeitgeist.
You construct unrealistic scenarios; in the real world, utilitarianism is hard and inefficient, but not totally useless. (Though it may well be that endorsing utilitarianism for superficial people is a bad idea.)
I think that there’s an important distinction to make between what I’ll call “point-form” and “vector-form” political beliefs here. The point-form of Utilitarianism consists of presenting a sweeping narrative in which we calculate Utility and The Utility Program is then put in charge of everything. The vector-form of Utilitarianism is that we should do at least one concrete thing that reorganizes society to be at least one step more like the society where The Utility Program with its perfect rational calculations is in charge of everything. In other words, Utilitarianism and More-Utilitarianism.
These are obviously very different beliefs when laid out like that, but we call them by the same name, and we do similar things constantly for pretty much every other belief system. There are probably a lot of reasons for this, but I think two of them dominate:
First, the point-belief acts as a sufficient though unnecessary condition for the vector-belief. All believers in the Kwizat Haderach are believers in the morality and efficacy of genetic engineering, if you think the right number of government regulations is zero you definitely agree we shouldn’t extend copyright terms, etc.
Second, even to people who don’t think Shangri-La is real, Shangri-La is a more acceptable destination than Here Be Dragons or “West.” People don’t respect vector-beliefs the way they do point-beliefs, only people trying to countersignal thoughtfulness attest faith in vector-beliefs.
@Mint
“it may well be that endorsing utilitarianism for superficial people is a bad idea”
I’m not sure that I agree – it is only if we assume that people are entirely superficial – that what makes them happy can be simply modeled – that utilitarianism can tell us anything about how we should act.
If people’s internal life and beliefs play a large role in determining their happiness, then the utilitarian project has to become one of finding the set of beliefs that are most consistent with human (alien) happiness. Once we reach that level, I’m not sure that what we have is actually utilitarianism any more.
Also I’m not sure that the scenario above is all that unrealistic – what percentage of people would define themselves as utilitarians? Granted, most people aren’t thinking about what they are doing most of the time – but when they do, I don’t get the sense that think in a utilitarian fashion.
@Alraune
“even to people who don’t think Shangri-La is real, Shangri-La is a more acceptable destination than Here Be Dragons or “West.” People don’t respect vector-beliefs the way they do point-beliefs, only people trying to countersignal thoughtfulness attest faith in vector-beliefs”
Hmmm… really? I’m almost certainly missing something here, but if someone said to me they were going to the west I’d consider that infinitely more sensible than if they said they were headed to Shangri-La. I imagine that most people feel similarly.
Side note: whatever happened to those people who tried to signal intelligence by being correct?
Can you counter-signal intelligence by being incorrect?
This quotation came to mind:
“The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in everything.”
HeelBearCub is coincidentally making a nice demonstration of what I’m describing upthread, griping that libertarians don’t have a sufficiently well-defined utopia and just want less rules than we have now.
Of course you can. What do you think the highly intelligent people who refuse to dismiss alien visitations out of hand are doing? I expect it’s a substantial component of half the fringe views you find on SSC as well. (And remember, signalling behavior isn’t defined in opposition to sincere actions.)
@Alraune:
Damnit, now I am going to get dragged (kicking and screaming, I’m sure) into another debate? ;-D
I agree, broadly, with the point form vs. vector form analysis. But I do think there is some circular logic that frequently occurs.
Q: Why is vector A appropriate?
A: Because the vector goes toward point B
Q: But here are a bunch of bad things about point B.
A: I’m not saying point B is good in all its aspects, only that vector A is good.
The argument assume the goodness of point B to justify vector A, and then denies this is what is being done. In the end you are left with no justification for vector A.
I tend to think that the vector form is the right way, but you need to analyze the vector in terms of many points. The points are in tension with each other, stray to far from any of them and bad things happen.
Mark, I was referring to the memetic hazard posed by naive utiltiarianism when endorsed to superficial people. For example, from a recent LW discussion thread:
Utilitarianism sometimes supports weird things: killing lone backpackers for their organs, sacrificing all world’s happiness to one utility monster, creating zillions of humans living on near-subsistence level to maximize total utility, or killing all but a bunch of them to maximize average utility.
This is a cartoon strawman version of utilitarianism that works only in thought experiments with narrow, unrealistic conditions. There are a whole bunch of superficial people who will not cover the inferential distances properly and who perhaps should have simpler moral memes instead.
The thought experiments are not strawmen.
— It’s true that they don’t exist in the real world exactly as described, but milder versions of them might–witness Peter Singer’s ideas about charity.
— If a system produces bad results in some non-real-world cases, I am going to suspect that it produces bad results in real world cases as well–generally, flaws in an ethical system don’t manifest *only* as one isolated weird case.
— Proving a statement untrue by using extreme cases is how counterexamples work. If utilitarianism produces even *one* bad result, that disproves the statement “utilitarianism is always good”. And few utilitarians claim that utilitarianism is only usually good.
“Can you counter-signal intelligence by being incorrect?”
Of course. Arguing for wrong things takes a lot more skill and ingenuity than for right things, so it gives you more chances to show off.
“Truth, Sir, is a cow, which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.” Samuel Johnson
Reminds me of Scott’s steelman of Time Cube.
The whole point of a philosophy of ethics is to ground “good” and “bad”. We cannot point to a thought experiment, find that its results are bad by consulting some oracle, and declare that that invalidates the philosophy; the only oracle we have is our ethical intuitions, and we already know that those are unreliable.
(That said, I’m not a utilitarian.)
All these objections are to the different versions of utilitarianism and at least one of them – the utility monster one – is only bad because of connotations of the word “monster”. If the monster is a galactic supercivilisation, and the other is a nonhuman animal, we’re all too happy to sacrifice all its utility to the monster. Well, even if it’s a human animal, actually.
I don’t know if this is the right place to ask, but I’ve just moved to Paris and don’t know any French. Is there any LW/SSC network here? Anything to point me in the right direction would be really helpful!
Can’t help with the network, but in terms of learning language, Duolingo is gorram amazing
Hi Peter, bienvenue a Paris, yes, there are a few SSC readers, I’ve organized most of the LW meetups (including when Scott visited, years ago 🙂 ) and the last ones have been more of LW/SSC meetups, as everybody reads SSC 🙂 )
You can ping me at flamGIANT RABBITmifer at gmail, but without the GIANT RABBIT.
I also strongly second the duolinguo recommendation.
The lateste case of groups/individuals being banned from a certain venue due to political positions. In this case they were going as supporters but aren’t being allowed to go anymore:
Men’s rights group barred from Toronto’s Pride ParadeControversial men’s rights group, the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), has officially been banned from Toronto’s Pride parade, in a decision rendered by Pride Toronto’s Dispute Resolution Process (DRP).
According to a statement from Pride Toronto, the arbitration process was sparked by numerous complaints regarding the controversial group’s application to march in this year’s parade.
Pride Toronto faced intense criticism regarding the prospect of CAFE’s participation, critics of the group decrying a misogynist and anti-feminist agenda.
Though it rejects an anti-feminist label, CAFE has repeatedly been associated with anti-feminist groups, prompting heated protests at its past events.
And while CAFE continues to claim a commitment to “achieving equality for all Canadians”, including those of the LGTBQ community, many critics insist the group’s values are entirely contrary to that of Pride.
DRP Arbitrator Paul Bent described a “balancing of interests” in coming to the decision. “I considered CAFE’s response that inclusion, diversity and equality are values the organization shares with Pride versus the numerous complaints filed against CAFE’s participation arguing that CAFE, as an organization and through its affiliation with men’s rights groups, contravenes Pride Toronto’s vision to, “create a safe space to engage communities in the celebration of their sexuality.”
“I must give the complaints of members of the LGBTTIQQ2SA community precedence when they indicate the participation of CAFE could directly undermine the participation of queer, lesbian and trans women in the Pride Parade,” said Bent.
The decision bars CAFE’s participation at all future parades and events organized by Pride Toronto.
After participating in the 2013 parade, CAFE’s 2014 permit to march was revoked days before the event.
Source
Related Reddit thread
The quoted article seems to think there’s some contradiction between “achieving equality for all Canadians” and “values entirely contrary to that of Pride”, lol.
I bet you think North Korea is a democratic republic of the people, too.
It seems you think CAFE has acted against the interests of an egalitarian society. As far as I know the only things they’ve ever done was promoting the creation of a men’s shelter in Toronto, and speeches and events about male rape and other issues.
Care to expand on why you think they’ve acted against their ideals?
Welp, I forgot that sex/gender is taboo in the comment sections and can neither edit nor delete my posts. I’ll refrain from further discussing this issue.
You’ve misinterpreted me; I don’t think the US is.
Scott: You probably have plenty such offers but just to ward off chance of bystander effect, I’m a software engineer and would be happy to help with any technical issues you’re having with this blog. I don’t have any strong views re commenting system etc — this is just an offer to help out with whatever needs doing.
My Facebook feed is repleat with intelligent people resharing low-signal junk that demonstrates their commitment to the cause du jour. Has anyone here successfully convinced others to not do that? I like knowing when those people have interesting things to say (either intellectually or just descriptive of their lives) but I find the endless performance of liberalism annoying. (Performance of other things would also be annoying this just happens to be what I’m facing)
You might be able to convince one person to break themselves of the signal boost habit, with a lot of effort, but there’s no way you’re going to do it to an entire Facebook friends list.
Better to stop it on your end. I’m a fan of the “Hide all from [clickbait site]” option.
The trouble is, there are so damn many clickbait sites. What FB really needs is a “Hide all external links by [excessively tribalist friend]” option.
You can unfollow people on facebook without unfriending them, although this has the downside of missing their updates about personal stuff as well as “12 reasons why you’re evil for enjoying TV shows instead of constantly copmplaining about them”
There’s also the “Hide post (see fewer posts like this)” option which sounds like it’s used to teach the news feed algorithm. Whether it’s smart enough to learn the concept of “clickbait sites” I don’t know.
This is what I do. I don’t pretend it’s going to shape anyone’s behavior, because I’m not announcing it, but Facebook is actually pretty good about letting you curate your own feed. After a few weeks of just hiding everything that look remotely like viral clickbait or memo-boosting, you get back mostly to people actually saying things, plus weddings photos and hey my kid just said her first words and what not. Plus, you know the worst offenders and can hide everything that comes from a particular person.
Half my active interaction with Facebook these days is clicking the “Hide all posts from [clickbait site].” It does feel like whack-a-mole, but eventually it gets my timeline back to updates about people’s actual lives, or things they actually wrote de novo.
Unnecessary but true and kind, I am very very happy
Well, at least not unkind
I’m reasonably happy that you’re happy. You seem like a very nice person.
I wonder if the subreddit is likely to bring more traffic here, or divert traffic away. I’m thinking probably the former, since there are still a lot of comments here.
Thinking about the “Answer to Job” post from awhile back, it seems that one method to bring on the End Times is to increase the Evil in the universe until it passes the tipping point for the Creator to allow it to exist.
A complicating factor is could the Good in another part of universe off-set the Evil in our part?
Attempts to immanetize the Eschaton never go well; trying to impose your will over the will of God is magic, not religion. We’ve already been told “No-one knows when it will happen”:
Seeing as we’re on religious topics, as predicted I am deriving great amusement from the reaction to the Pope’s encyclical on ecology. I don’t know any of these names (well, I have heard of Fox News) but I think they give a representative flavour (quote collecting not my work, but courtesy of this website):
◾Fox News’ Greg Gutfleld — “The most dangerous person on the planet is someone who is seeking strange new respect from their adversaries, and that is what the pope is doing … He wants to be a modern pope. All he needs is dreadlocks and a dog with a bandana and he could be on Occupy Wall Street”
◾Breitbart: This is the sort of hackneyed language and extremely dubious science you might expect from a 16-year old trotting out the formulaic bilge and accepted faux-wisdom required these days to pass a fairly typical exam paper in Geography or Environmental Sciences.
◾Fox Business’ Stuart Varney: “Will Francis and Barack reshape the world by taxing the rich, taxing fossil fuels, and redistributing the wealth? That’s exactly what they are trying to do.”
◾Michael Savage: “I think it is up to the Catholic people to turn their backs on this Pope before it is too late, before they wake up and find out that they are in chains, this man is a Marxist through-and-through,…[Francis was] picked by the New World Order the way Obama was…He is a wolf in pope’s clothing, he is an eco-wolf in pope’s clothing, he’s a stealth Marxist in religious garb…. [Franics] sounds just like the false prophet in Revelation, an ecumenical spiritual figure directing mankind to worship the Antichrist.”
◾Alan Keyes: “Yet when I look in the mirror of reason at the reflections Pope Francis offers in his encyclical, what I see looks unlike Jesus Christ (who as of now still comes to save and not harshly to penalize humanity)…But if the climate change allegations against humanity are unproven, the whole push for totalitarian government remediation of the allegedly terrible damage we are inflicting on God’s creation is a slander against the human race, a sin against humanity being committed as a pretext for the rape of human life, human conscience and God-endowed human liberty. This looks awfully like a crime against humanity…”
Ever heard the expression “More Catholic than the Pope”? I don’t know Alan Keyes or anything about him, but he certainly fits the bill! 🙂
I am wiping away tears of pride and joy as I read (and I’m a traditional Catholic, not on the progressive wing of the Church by any means). Look, he’s a Jesuit, and a South American Jesuit to boot, what did they expect? 🙂 If anyone cares to know what this latter-day “Communist Manifesto” is all about, it’s the just-released encyclical Laudato Si:
So there’s this blogger called mundabor I read because I have an unhealthy addiction to Catholic weak men (warning: his method of self-expression gratuitously rude and unpleasant, regardless of what you think of the content of his views.) He referred to Francis as Pope SJW in one of his posts and this is my new favourite thing.
Pope SJW! Pope SJW! I just find this ENDLESSLY funny.
https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/laudato-si-meet-pope-social-justice-warrior/
FWIW I actually feel really uncomfortable with this Pope (over and above my general intense discomfort with the entirety of Catholicism.) I can’t tell what he thinks. Pope Benedict XVI seemed to have a coherent, internally consistent vision of the world, albeit one which I disgree with on multiple fundamental levels. (There is no God; there is no telos; there is no heaven and no hell and telling people there is a hell is montrous.) But like… I feel like I could trust him? Like he was saying the things he said because he thought they were true. He was doing the things he did because he thouht they were right. Whereas Francis… Look, I’m really glad his prioritising the environment because it’s important, climate change is a really serious threat and if he encourages the world’s billion Catholics to get serious about fighting it, yay him. But Francis just seems… off. He seems contradictory and dishonest and, well, Jesuitical. Benedict was a precious cinnamon roll even though he condoned outright fucking evil. Benedict was ingroup. Benedict was a Ravenclaw, dammit! Whereas Francis… sometimes I think he’s a Gryffindor. But most of the time I think he’s a Slytherin pretending to be a Hufflepuff, and not doing a very good job of pretending.
But this is probaly just hashtag my issues with catholicism let me show you them. And I am feeling a lot more smpathetic to him since conservatives threw their toys out of the pram over Laudato Si. And I should shut my mouth up like a good little consequentialist and just be grateful he’s getting people to care about the planet instead of whining about consistency and my predictions about an imaginary hat’s freaking opinions.
Revealing my biases all over the place here 🙂
Benedict was my pope in the same way that Paul VI was my pope (even though by the time I was aware there was such a thing as “the pope” and who Paul VI was, he died): I understand/understood their minds and ways of thinking and found them congenial or at least understandable and sympathetic.
John Paul I died too soon for me to have any opinion; John Paul II got the ‘rockstar’ reputation and I am very put off by the adulation a lot of those on the American Right give him for political reasons I’m fairly sure he wouldn’t have shared.
Francis is hard to get a handle on, and I certainly don’t have the same feeling of “He’s my pope” about him; what I can make out of his thinking is not very congenial to me and I wish he’d stop wearing those awful brown vestments every chance he gets regardless of the liturgical season, but he is the pope so there it is – if he wants to wear 70s era vestments, he can and I have to shut up and put up with it 🙂
I think (a) he’s a Jesuit (b) he’s South American; more particularly, an Argentinian who was not alone a priest but Provincial of the Jesuit Order in Argentina during the Dirty War. That has to have had a huge effect on his thinking and patterns of behaviour and engaging with those in power.
I get the impression he’s a lot tougher under the slightly woolly-minded outward persona; possibly presenting himself as harmless if aggravating was a method of navigating between the junta and the various political parties which succeeded them. I don’t know why he keeps shooting his mouth off, so to speak; he should know by now that the media will run with a completely contrary headline to what he actually said, but I do wonder if it’s in reaction to having to be so careful about what he said and how he said it previously. Now he can say what he likes and nobody can tell him otherwise. I think his choice of St Francis as the patron whose name he took for his regnal name is significant. The popular image of St Francis, particularly among the Anglicans (the English like animals better than people, I think) is of the bunny-hugger who loved the little animals and the pretty flowers and was one with Nature – the hippy Francis. Which is not at all the reality of the man who went to Egypt and tried (unsuccessfully) to convert the Sultan during the Fifth Crusade, and who was a stigmatic. I have to wonder does Pope Francis have in mind something of the same contradiction between the popular perception and the theological reality 🙂
I don’t think he has a plan or a scheme in place for what he wants to do with the papacy/the Church; I think he’s genuinely practicing mindfulness, living in the moment, going with the flow 🙂
I do get very amused by the fits of the vapours those on the Right (who theoretically should be my tribe) get about how he’s going to destroy the Church and is a Communist and the Anti-Christ and goodness knows what else. I tend to be mildly annoyed by the progressives/the Left wing of the Church who think he’s going to bring in all the Spirit of Vatican II reforms they’ve been awaiting for the past fifty years. He’s not that way inclined, his religiosity is quite traditional – very strong Marian devotion and a huge emphasis on mercy and the Sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation (Confession).
I have to admit, for all my personal coolness about the man, it’s an interesting papacy (the first time there has been a living ex-pope and a current pope outside of the Avignon and other rival elections!)
Here is something for fun: Malachy’s Prophecy of the Popes says he will be the last pope, who will fuck up the church and world and all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes
The fun part is that for religious conservatives, he really does sound like a disaster.
Before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger was a theology professor and then the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (aka the Inquisition).
He was accustomed to elaborating a coherent doctrine (as far as a doctrine that includes stuff like the Trinity can be) from first principles and explaining it to his theology students or other bishops.
Of course, as a Pope whose words reached billion people in the world, including many who have all the incentives to interpret them as uncharitably as possible, this method of communication worked very poorly.
He said many things that people didn’t want to hear, even if they logically followed from the Catholic doctrine. This made him quite unpopular, especially since the difference with his predecessor Pope John Paul II was striking.
Pope Francis is in many ways similar to John Paul II: a “rockstar” Pope who will say every time what people want to hear with a big heartening smile on his face.
I wouldn’t say that conservatives in general hated Laudato Si. Rod Dreher was a big fan.
Magic is religion that has the common decency to bite the bullet of causality and make predictions.
I don’t know who Michael Savage is, but ‘a wolf in pope’s clothing’ is the best mixed metaphor I’ve seen in a long time.
We would also have accepted “wolf in shepherd’s clothing”. (Or the Latin equivalent, “pastor”.)
He’s by far the most entertaining of the AM talk radio hosts.
I’m looking for a previous SSC post about the experiences of psychiatric hospital patients. A friend of mine recently spent some time committed and I figure I should (re)educate myself. Does anyone remember which post it was?
https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/medicine/
There seems to me to be more than one article that more-or-less meets your description, so I’ll leave the archive digging to you. Also, from Popehat and mentioned here: http://popehat.com/2015/05/21/happy-to-be-here/
Can we get gun politics added to the list of things not to discuss? At this point I think we can say there’s been a lot of heat and almost no light.
I don’t mind that people discuss it here, but I certainly agree there wasn’t much constructive discussion on that topic.
We’ve had reasonably constructive discussions in the past when there wasn’t an extremely recent shooting amping the emotional levels.
Fair enough.
You’d think that would have been a clue, though. We’re not too good at this instrumental rationality thing, are we? At least as regards people being wrong on the Internet.
If this topic blacklisting continues, it might be more practical to just state what can be discussed. That way we wouldn’t need to add unpleasant memes and various people’s pet peeves to the list all the time.
To be fair to Scott, I’m pretty sure the doge ban was a joke. And I’m saying that as someone that dislikes doge almost as much as Scott does.
I have to say, I do feel mildly alarmed that the arguments against gun control seem to boil down to “No you can’t compare America to elsewhere because America is a crazily violent society, because Americans are crazily violent and always have been, and everyone needs to be tooled up with shooting irons in case some crazy person with a gun starts shooting in their vicinity, so the good law-abiding citizens can shoot them dead first”.
And how can we tell the difference between the crazy/criminal person with their legally held gun and the decent law-abiding citizen with their legally held gun? Well, it comes down to if they start shooting up a school or something. I still remember the incredulity I felt when you lot felt incredulity that there had never been an Irish school shooting; that this was regarded as “normal”.
I didn’t think American Exceptionalism meant America was exceptional in that way.
This is not an accurate description of the United States of America, or of American gun owners. And it is not, I think, anything that could come out of a charitable reading of the comments of Americans here.
@Deiseach – …My first instinct was rebuttal, but it seems uncouth to continue debating in a thread expressing displeasure over the debate.
You know how sometimes people talk about Catholics, only they’ve probably never actually met or interacted with a Catholic and have no familiarity with the Church’s practices and history at all, but because they’ve seen a bunch of shows and movies and newspaper articles where Catholics were portrayed as backwards hypocritical superstitious cultist idiots they feel entitled to regurgitate all that crap and pass it off as an informed opinion on the Catholic-adjacent topic of the day? And you hear that, and you know a) exactly which comedian they’re ripping their lines from, b) exactly why that comedian was an asshole for delivering that line in the first place, and c) the complex, nuanced reality behind the whole thing that people are ignoring in favor of a cheap, vulgar laugh?
And then you swallow the first several responses that come to mind, count to ten, and then start putting together a calm, polite reply to set them straight, but you already know the answer is going to be some variation of “you mad, bro?” Because it doesn’t matter to them, it’s not actually part of their world. They’re just making small-talk, and the way they’re exposing their ignorance and casual malice toward an important part of your life is just one of those unconscious cruelties we all inflict on the rest of the world every day. But you make the comment anyway, because it’s that or stew in your own frustration, right?
Gun control is a topic that people have been arguing and studying for fifty years now. No one in the entire thread above has actually brought up a single new idea. All the questions asked have a shit-ton of data available to answer them, laws that have been passed and repealed and their effects analyzed, studies carried out and then replicated over and over again. The problem is, people don’t like the answer that keeps coming out of all this research, and so they pretend that the issue is some goddamn impenetrable mystery because doing otherwise would mean killing the only “solution” they’re willing to accept.
In the off-chance that you are interested in the best answers available to your musings, I’d reiterate that the best concise introduction to the current state of the evidence is here:
http://www.guncite.com/journals/gun_control_katesreal.html
…and an analysis of how the early years of the debate is here:
http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html#fn*
If you or anyone else think these are bad research, I’d love to have better.
…My apologies for my tone. It’s frustrating, you know? Now, having unintentionally recapitulated the arguments of both the Microaggression crowd and the climate change movement, I retreat with neither poise nor dignity.
Since FacelessCraven didn’t quite say it outright, in their analogy, I assume Catholics = gun enthusiasts and everyone else = everyone else.
And as both a (lapsed) Catholic and a gun enthusiast, I couldn’t agree with the analogy more. The degree of ignorance most casual (and even a lot of serious) gun control advocates have regarding guns and the people who own them is remarkable, and remarkably frustrating. To them, banning guns is trivial, because they don’t own guns, don’t really want to, and can’t imagine why anyone else would want to unless they are some kind of nut (sub “superstitious Jesus freak” in the analogy).
The good news is that taking a mild anti-gunner to the range seems to cure the ignorance, and often infect them with the gun bug, pretty quick. In that sense gun nuts have it better, because, apologies to the Pope, but unloading a mag of .45 is much more viscerally satisfying than a Catholic mass.
If those are the “boiled down” arguments you are getting, I must not be writing very well. We tend to answer the arguments made against us, and having easily demolished every other silly false trope, there is a real difference in murder rates between the US and western europe. Here you go, in order:
1: At the practical level: Gun control isn’t well designed and almost never does what people think it does. This may be because the people who hate guns also don’t know much about them. Think the “assault weapon” ban we had. It would be as if people decided drivers speeding was a major problem, and got together and banned spoilers on cars. Nothing to do with the functionality of the weapons, just cosmetic BS. And since that law sunsetted, we know that it had no effect whatsoever on crime or shootings. And I deeply resent the constant claim that we have “unregulated” firearm ownership when there are over seventy thousand gun laws on the books at the moment. If gun control supporters couldn’t solve the violence problem with the first seventy thousand cracks at it, why should we believe that the next proposal will be the one that works?
2: At the legal level: The second Amendment is a real thing, it is a basic civil right in this nation. No matter how much people may wish it didn’t say what it says, it is the supreme law of the land. There is a mechanism for changing it, it can be repealed, but I almost never hear calls for that. If gun control supporters want to get to their end-stage goal of no guns, the constitution has to be changed. Simple as that. And I will resist that.
3: The moral level: I believe in the right of all people to self-defense, and because of this, in the democratization of the means of violence. In the absence of effective, easy to use weapons, violence is the prerogative of those born with the physical capacity for it. Here I argue against my own self-interest, because I am a relatively young, in shape, well trained male. Firearms level the playing field. The old, the female, the sick and the disabled can all pull a trigger. And no one outruns bullets. Without conceding that this is actually the real-world case, I would be willing to trade a certain increase in overall violence to give everyone access to it.
Supreme Court says states can block Confederate flag license plates
This is making the rounds on Facebook now, same day as the #takeitdown hashtag. Not sure how I feel, personally. I don’t generally like restricting how people celebrate their history, even when I think it’s a stupid history, but the state itself issues license plates, so there seems no good reason a state can’t restrict its own speech, which is the court’s reasoning. Is this motivated reasoning? I live in Texas, but my family was here way before it was annexed by the U.S. and I’m no fan of the CSA.
It’s a pretty empty symbolic gesture, but I agree with the court that it’s not meaningfully coercive, and we could use some empty symbolic gestures about now. I’m okay with it.
Not…really?
I’m a civil libertarian recovering from being a for real libertarian.
And essentially, the state must PERMIT beliefs but is not required to PROMOTE them (forbidden, in some circumstances.)
So if I invent the fuckadillyo political party whose flag is an racist caricature of an Indian man saying “Heapum biggum wampumum”- it would be an infringement of my free speech to ban it. It’d be an infringement to keep me from putting their flags up in my house or yard, carrying signs on the street corner, running for political office- in other words, it cannot act AGAINST me.
But it isn’t required that the state pay for my gasoline to drive around handing out Fuckadillyo pamphlets. Nor that they fly my flag, pass out my pamphlets, or put my symbols on their official license plates.
All well and good……..unless the state also flies the flag of every other political party, and pays their gasoline costs (matching funds) and puts GOP and Democrat plates up for sale. Then it is “viewpoint discrimination”.
The state can avoid all this, but usually they don’t.
I think it’s clearly motivated reasoning. The rationale is that the state can prohibit such plates because the state is making the speech. Taking that seriously means that the state is making speech preferring one football team or burger restaurant over another, or opposing abortion.
That’s a good point. It very straightforwardly isn’t the state making speech. I guess it feels okay because a license plate is state-issued, state property, same as a license, so they can put whatever the heck they want on it, but as soon as they allow one thing, it does seem they should allow anything. Didn’t this come up in New York City recently about advertising on city buses?
That’s the sticky thing – to my mind, once you’ve opened up special license plates to any sufficiently large group of people that want one, creating content based restrictions on the plates becomes problematic.
If it had always been “these plates are strictly curated and while we may choose to accept any proposal we particularly like, we reserve the right to deny any proposal that the State of Texas does not endorse”, that seems to make it more clearly Government speech. But it would probably require restricting the plates much further than their current number.
I’ve not normally been a big fan of Justice Alito, but I think he’s got it right on this one. It’s no more government speech than your post here is Scott’s speech.
Sorry for the big quote from his dissent, but he really nailed it…
They shouldn’t have permitted “vanity plates” or customised plates in the first place, but since they couldn’t resist the lure of making money off people vain enough to want something splashier than a bumper sticker, they really can’t start objecting now.
The problem is that there always had to be an element of censorship, else you’ll get some tosser with the equivalent of “Ivor Biggun” on his car. So – is the Confederate Flag hate speech or legitimate American history? Discuss.
(Licence plates are done differently over here; we don’t renew them every year, we pay road tax instead which is signified by a paper tax disc displayed on the inside of the windscreen.)
As a northerner whose Irish ancestors died by the dozen in the civil war, and a history major, I despise the confederacy. The “state’s rights” argument wasn’t relevant to them, the only “right” they were interested in was the owning of human slaves. I recommend the book “The Apostles of Disunion”, a collection of speeches made by those favoring secession to the state legislatures to convince them to join the confederacy. It is quite clear by the arguments they used to convince each other, and the fact that these arguments were successful, what the real and only goal was.
The confederacy was a treasonous plot to split a nation in order to continue enslaving millions of human beings. It has a grand total of zero moral worth and WT Sherman is the greatest American in history.
And I fully support the legal right of fucktards to self-identify by waving its flag. It lets me know who I don’t need to pay any attention to.
Do you also believe that Al Qaeda has zero moral worth? Or Hamas? And that anyone who did to Afghanistan or Gaza what Sherman did to the South would be a similar hero? Or is Hamas exempt because they just want all the Jews dead or paying Jizya instead of enslaved?
It’s okay to say “some people are valueless and doing anything to them is morally right”. Just as long as you understand the implications of that.
I’m sure people would be more accepting of actions taken against HAMAS if they thought there was any possibility of them being in a position to do *anything* to all Jews.
Jiro, I think you read me slightly uncharitably, and Sherman perhaps moreso. If anyone in modern times treated an enemy populace as civilly as Sherman did he’d be fired for incompetence and suspected of collaboration. His treatment of the south was horrible only by the incredibly gentle notions of mid-19th century warfare.
But to answer your question, yes. Al Quaeda as an organization has no worth, and those members who have participated in their atrocities have forfeited any claim to my sympathy or forbearance. I would end them. Gaza is a better comparison, and yes, I have long said Israel should have read their Machiavelli in 1948. We could all be properly disapproving about the horrible crime and never know what hundreds of years of bullshit conflict had been avoided thereby. Sometimes the smart thing is not the moral thing.
As to the moral value of individuals, I maintain that all people have moral worth, modified by their behavior. Some behavior makes you a liability to the human race, and a swift death is the best possible outcome for both that person and the rest of the world.
I sympathise with your troubles about the different paperwork, and that’s one of the problems with the libertarian notion of private systems.
Do away with government, and let every private road-builder build and maintain their stretch of road and charge a toll to the users, and you’ll have a patchwork of systems like the one you describe. I think part of the beef Americans have with government, in a way other countries don’t, is that they’re caught between a system of every two-streets-and-a-horsetrough village being able to raise its own revenue via taxes or things like traffic fines, and the state plus federal government taxes on top of that. Of course it feels like triple or more taxation, it is triple or more taxation!
E.g. we don’t have sales tax over here, we do have VAT. Now, paying VAT (which was originally supposed to be a supplementary ‘luxury goods’ tax) on things like electricity or what have you is a pain in the arse, but I think I would resent it even more mightily did I live in someplace like New York where, on top of the state government charging me tax on my purchases, I then also had to pay a “sales tax” as well. I think it’s the inconsistency as much as anything that’s aggravating – or at least, so it appears to an outsider 🙂
You’re describing a terrible government system and claiming that private industry would be the same way. But did it occur to you that automobile registration is complex because the government is running it, and not because it’s inherently complex?
I’m curious as to whether you can give me an example of a relatively unregulated industry that exhibits these problems you anticipate. Did you notice that Pepsi and Coke both come in 12 oz cans? That you can buy a cell phone and it can work on many different carrier networks, and that you can call people on other carrier networks with no problem? That your Xbox will work with any brand of TV?
Private industry is HUGELY incentivized to come together on common standards and practices because that’s what customers prefer, and private industry actually has to appease customers.
Government has no such incentive. They create a byzantine system of competing regulations and jurisdictions and refuse to make it easy for you because they can. You have no choice but to deal with them. Why should they bother making it easy for you?
Instant messaging is almost totally unregulated and each IM network is a walled garden, incapable of sending messages to any other. There have been a few bridges in the past but nothing like telephones.
Meanwhile, every toll road operator in the Northeast and as far west as Chicago has settled on the EZPass toll-tag standard, despite being mostly government-owned and operated. (The few privately operated toll roads I know of were on EZPass before privatization.) And if anything, state and local governments in the Northeast tend to be even more petty, incompetent, and corrupt than those in the West, so this isn’t a wholehearted defense of governmental action. It’s just overly simplistic to say “government bad, business good” and insist the market will instantly solve any issues that come up.
I feel like EZpass is actually a good example of my point. It’s a private system with many public customers. But because it’s a private system, the customers can come and go at their leisure. The fact that most government agencies use EZpass is a function of EZpass being a good system that people want to use. But if they were taken over by a bunch of corrupt and/or incompetent people, the product would suffer and the customers could freely move to something else.
Contrast this to airport security, a public system with private customers, which HAS been taken over by the corrupt and incompetent. As horrendously terrible as the TSA is, the airports are powerless to do anything about it. They’re stuck with this nonsense. And sure, if they had freedom in this regard, you might end up with a situation where JFK and O’Hare have wildly different security procedures, which could be an annoyance for passengers. But that’s still probably a better system than “everyone is stuck with this terrible service because the government says you have to use it”
In what meaningful sense is EZPass a private system? It’s an intergovernmental cooperative owned by the member toll agencies. (Yes, the transponders are made by a private company. The TSA’s metal detectors are too. That doesn’t make the TSA private.)
I must have misread your post. I’m only vaguely familiar with EZpass as I’ve never really lived anywhere where tolls are common.
I assumed it was a private company doing the operating. If that’s not true, my point still stands though. If EZpass becomes awful, can the various toll roads get out of it and switch to something else?
My OVERALL point here isn’t that governments will never embrace a standard – it’s that there is no evidence to suggest that private companies are somehow more likely to refuse to cooperate and come together on a standard than government is.
@Matt M>You’re describing a terrible government system and claiming that private industry would be the same way. But did it occur to you that automobile registration is complex because the government is running it, and not because it’s inherently complex?
You seem to think that just because a certain project is being done by the government then it means that it’ll go bad but that market forces will somehow compel companies to provide quality services/goods.
If you look at an anedoctal example of a government managed project and sees that it is going bad it means it is into strong evidence and considering it to be so is nothing but confirmation bias. Seeing something your theory claims to predict and claiming it is evidence of your theory whilst ignoring all the other andoctal evidence to the contrary is confirmation bias.
The phone standards you mention, for example, were pioneered by ITU, an UN agency which counts almost 200 nation-states as voting members (plus private orgs that can’t vote). Even the most recent standards, such as 4G, had their technical definitions set up by ITU (and, just as an example, the current 4G standard as implemented doesn’t meet the requirements to be 4G but is inferior to it. Due to sales needs, however, companies have petitioned to market it as being 4G. Now ITU has defined the “4G as definition” as being “True 4G” and companies will surely sell it as being 5G in a few years time).
So as you see, the fact that your phone will work on several different carrier networks has nothing to do with phone companies willingly converging to the same format but everything to do with a central organization solving coordination issues by virtue of its members being able to pass laws and regulations. When governments sell the rights-of-use to a certain EM spectrum (say 2.5Ghz, 1.0Ghz) they don’t just sell them to the companies that pay more, they set certain bands for specific technologies and companies are thus obliged to make use of certain bands for certain technologies. This allows everyday AM and FM radio not to obstruct airplane communications, for example, and allows 3G and 4G networks not to obstruct each other.
Another example: in South Korea there is a single socket standard in use, by virtue of regulation. This means that the public can buy several different phones and they don’t need to come with a charger, reducing costs to the custommer. The custommer can buy chargers from several different companies and they’ll all work on the same sockets. If his phone charger breaks up one can just buy a new one, the cheapest one or the prettiest one or the one with the most features, knowing that it’ll work on his socket back home. Contrast this with some developing nations where there is no set standard, the sockets are multiuse and will allow a variety of different plugs but often there is a need to have two or more different sockets installed in a single room. If one’s charger breaks up he must buy it from a certain company, at overcharged prices, and if the company has stopped producing a certain model and there are no more in stock then the consummer has to either find a used one somewhere or buy an entirelly new equipment to replace the functioning old one that won’t work!
Another example, Brazil has both private and public universities. The public ones are free of charge, there is no tuition and you don’t get in debt over it (at most an admission fee that costs 50~200 BRL and poor people are exempt to pay). The private ones range quite wildly in both price and status, from ~2,500 BRL/year all the way up to ~110,000 BRL/year, with monthly payments. Despite this you can easily check what the best universities in the country are. The top 6 are 100% government funded. Out of the top 10, only 2 are private. Not only they excell within their country, in Latin American ranks, 3 out of the top 5 are public. 7 out of the top 10 are public, irrespective of country.
Denying that governments can, yes, provide quality services is denying, for example, Finland which has public, free education from pre-kindergaten all the way up to Masters and PhDs at a budget of just € 11.1 billion. Compare that to the endowement of, say, Harvard University, US$ 35 billion, or the Ivy League, US$ 100 billion. It also excels in universal, quality healthcare with over 88% satisfaction rate at costs usually between € 15~30. The private healthcare sector has a share smaller than 5%.
I’m not using these facts, however, to “prove” that government works and is great, but if your measure is anedoctal evidence then we can get it for both sides if we’re willing to not ignore the side we don’t like. Sure, private companies have been able to do things that governments haven’t been able to, but the contrary is also true and just because something is being done by the government doesn’t mean it won’t work.
This seems to kind of be missing the point. The state isn’t exactly endorsing golfing, but it’s saying that it has no particular issue with golfing. So it has to stick to inoffensive things; I double Alito would see nothing wrong with a plate with a swastika or a golliwogg on it. (Pro-life plates have been the subject of lawsuits going either way in different regions.) Or, I suppose, to make it more personal, something poignantly anti-Catholic.
What I wish they had done in SC after the shooting would be not to have taken down the Confederate flag, but to have flown it at half mast, along with the others. If you take it down when you fly other flags at half mast, then that is a tacit admission that the flag is a symbol of anti-black racism. Otherwise, why take that flag down specifically when a tragedy befalls black people? If the flag is a symbol of anti-black racism then it should not be flown at all.
But we know not flying the flag at all probably isn’t going to “fly” in SC, and, I think, with good reason. There are reasons to be proud of the Confederacy: fighting for self-determination, state’s rights, Southern culture, the founding principles of the US (which Lincoln trampled–no state joining the union thought they’d be attacked militarily if they ever tried to leave), etc. The Confederacy was very wrong on slavery, but they were right about the right of self determination. What would we have thought if Scotland had voted for independence and Great Britain had attacked them?
And guess what, my family includes Irish immigrants and people who died and fought for the South, and none of them were slave owners. They thought they were fighting for freedom, just like the Revolutionary War fighters. And yes, I find it incredibly offensive to say their sacrifice had “zero moral worth,” or to call a butcher like Sherman “the greatest American in history.”
Of course there is one very big reason to be ashamed of the confederacy: that many of its leaders, if not its rank and file, were only fighting for the liberty to oppress people further down the totem pole. As a pro-self determination Southerner, I am ashamed of that aspect of the confederacy, but not everything they fought for. Therefore, ideally, I’d like to see that flag “detoxified.” And one way to do that would be to fly it at half mast when a tragedy befalls black people. To do so would be to say “this isn’t a white people flag, it’s a Southern people flag.”
And what would piss off real racists more? Taking down the flag for a week, or flying it at half mast for black people? I think it’s the latter, because that’s weakening their symbol. If you take it down, even permanently, you won’t take it out of the public consciousness; it will only become more and more toxic and more and more beloved of extreme racists. Conversely, imagine how annoyed the real racists would be if black southerners started sticking it on their cars! And then you could tell apart those who really like the flag as a symbol of heritage, and those who like it as a covert symbol of racism. If seeing black Southerners fly the flag pisses you off, you belong in category 2!
Or maybe it’s already too toxic to be saved and must be consigned to the realm of the swastika, etc. I don’t think so, but maybe it is. But in that case just take it down for good, not temporarily.
And what does that mean?
Exactly what it says.
“We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect.”
And Southerners are the “traitors” for trying to leave a nation whose generals considered their civilians “a hostile people”?
I don’t intend to make light of the extensive property damage Sherman caused (estimated by himself at $100 million in 1865 dollars, or about $1.5 billion today), but traditionally “butcher” is used for someone who kills excessively. Your quote doesn’t really speak to that.
Uh, it’s not just about property damage, it’s about waging total war on a people who are supposedly part of your own country.
I am still not clear on the wordchoice with “butcher”. Do we disagree that it implies unnecessary killing of some kind, or have you made that allegation and I just haven’t seen it?
I think the term is often applied generally to any very brutal military commander. Maybe a bit hyperbolic, as in, not Pol Pot, but so too is it hyperbolic to call him the greatest American in history, even if you like him. In that spirit, I will backtrack and offer Sherman this award:
https://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/worst2.jpg
Maybe not THE literal worst but he’s probably at least in the Top 5, right?
I mean you don’t raze an entire state without quite a few people dying from it.
So who would the worst be, then? Truman for dropping the bomb seems like an easy winner, but after that I’m not sure who to go with…
What do you mean by “brutal”?
The “butcher” imagery is killing easy targets: civilians, surrendering soldiers, etc. I thought you were interested in language.
If you think that the war was unjust, condemn all the generals equally. It seems to me that you single out Sherman because of his competence. But it appears to me that that very competence saved maybe 50,000 lives, compared to the alternative.
Added: wiktionary gives “relentless” as a definition of “brutal.” That certainly applies to Sherman, but I don’t think anyone would use it that way in a military context.
I don’t believe that “following orders” or “doing one’s job” shifts or eliminates moral culpability. When it comes to doing bad things, incompetence is better than competence.
The idea that he “saved” lives smacks of the argument I always hear in favor of A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: “well, we *saved* lives, you see, because we didn’t have to invade the Japanese mainland.” I’m sure that’s very reassuring to the Japanese. From their perspective, of course, what America “should” have done is to not attack at all.
Without commenting on the justice of the specific case of defeating the Japanese empire, I don’t like the style of argumentation which proceeds from an assumption that the initial cause is just. It’s like “given that the Lannisters cannot lose or concede power, killing a bunch of people at a wedding is the nicest thing to do because it saves all these lives which would have been lost in war.” That first assumption effectively forecloses a third option: take a hit to your own power and prestige for the sake of the little guy.
If you don’t like being in a job which requires you either be incompetent or commit unjust acts, find another job.
I feel that the people who praise Sherman for being ruthless and effective are engaging in the opposite of isolated demands for rigor. Let’s call it isolated standard for laxity. If, in fact, you approve of the atomic bombings of Japan (plenty of evildoing by World War II Japan, enough that WWII Japan’s evil deeds compare to US slavery), would support Israel razing the Gaza Strip to the ground, and wouldn’t mind seeing Afghanistan become a sheet of radioactive glass, then you can admire Sherman for his effectiveness.
On the other hand, if you say “wait a minute, the babies killed in the atom bomb blasts had nothing to do with the Nanking Massacre”, then you’ve disqualified yourself from consistently being able to praise Sherman.
It is my experience that the people who praise Sherman this way are the least likely people to praise these other things.
Onyomi, I strongly disagree. I hold you morally responsible for your falsehoods, regardless of whether you are malicious or stupid.
Jiro, I think it’s a little disingenuous to claim Sherman’s supporters must, to remain consistent, endorse massive civilian death in the service of any war. This is most specifically because there are no hard figures to attribute an atypical number of civilian deaths to Sherman. What was atypical about Sherman’s march to the sea was the scale of property destruction and confiscation. And this was of course only atypical in the context of the American Civil War. Many wars prior and since outstrip this conduct considerably.
It is hard to see how, for instance, glassing Afghanistan is comparable in the slightest because it involves killing almost everyone in Afghanistan.
As for the atomic bombings, many people who disapprove of them do so because they believe they were unnecessary to coerce surrender, not because they were “too effective”.
I will agree that there are a surprising number of Sherman sympathizers who would normally never think of endorsing a military figure.
Well, I suppose that could be taken to be agreement. But Onyomi is equivocating between deontological evil and consequentialist evil. If competence makes evil worse, he must be talking about consequences. But I find it hard to imagine a definition of evil consequences under which a competent Sherman produces more evil than an incompetent Sherman.
Jiro, I think you are factually mistaken about Sherman. But leaving aside that example, there is a big difference between the real example you gave and the hypothetical examples. The atom bombs neither razed Japan to the ground, nor turned it to glass.
Oh! I figured it out! I figured out how competent evil is necessarily more evil! Because competent people are praised by future generations.
“Onyomi, I strongly disagree. I hold you morally responsible for your falsehoods, regardless of whether you are malicious or stupid.”
I just want to say that I am very disappointed to encounter blatant ad hominem on SSC.
Sherman wasn’t the greatest American in history, but he damn well was the greatest general of the civil war, and one of the people before and during the war who did the most to try and prevent it, by trying to convince the damn fool planters in the South that they had no goddamn chance of winning their fool war, ever. He ended the war, and burning plantations across Georgia is a damn sight better way to do it than murdering three quarters of a million Americans to defend your right to live off the work of slaves.
The south fired the first and second shots of the war.
Would you care to substantiate your claims of atrocities against Sherman?
You can be offended all you like. Your ancestors fought to keep black people slaves. I’d be offended by that too. Doesn’t much change historical facts. Their sacrifice was in the service of a vile and reprehensible cause. Doesn’t mean they weren’t decent folks, but it does mean that their decency cannot sanctify a morally bankrupt endeavor. One may display great intelligence in planning a murder, doesn’t make it morally acceptable.
The flag has changed symbolism over the years, to where it now is little more than a cultural totem. I know that. Doesn’t change what it meant and still means to those who were on the other side.
In case people aren’t aware of the history of this, the various state of the former Confederacy have not always had the Confederate flag as an element of their state flags. They started using it in 1954 and subsequent years in response to Brown v. Board. Claims that it is a generic southern “heritage” thing are a motivated appeal to historical amnesia ; the use of the Confederate flag was very much an act of protest against desegregation and in favor of state-sponsored racism.
Well, as a Northerner, we’ll be happy to see you go. We’ve always resented how your nationalist insurgency is supposed to be taken seriously as the controlling force of federal politics.
Seriously, if the majority party of the federal government wasn’t a Southern nationalist insurgency attempting to cripple the ability of the North to use the federal government as a coordination mechanism, we’d have a lot fewer problems with you guys.
@Eli – “Seriously, if the majority party of the federal government wasn’t a Southern nationalist insurgency attempting to cripple the ability of the North to use the federal government as a coordination mechanism, we’d have a lot fewer problems with you guys.”
Doesn’t it seem pretty easy for one man’s “coordinaton mechanism” to be another man’s “you’re going to do things our way or else”? I mean, yeah, everyone wishes that their political views could carry the field utterly unopposed. But you realize there’s a little more nuance to it than that, right?
I’m not talking about my views carrying the field unopposed. That wouldn’t happen, even if the South didn’t exist: not enough Northerners are socialists for that.
But, what I can validly want at a meta-level without your having a right to complain is: I want the majority to get to enact its will on matters that don’t infringe on an agreed-upon code of human rights, and when we do have to consider a somewhat more dubious issue, the normal 2/3 supermajority rule should come into effect. Tyranny of the 2/3 supermajority is strictly superior to tyranny of the 12% minority (the portion of the USA’s population who vote for enough Senators to mount a procedural filibuster and block literally anything).
Instead we have a system in which the South, and its nationalist insurgency the Republican Party, use every underhanded means at their disposal to ensure that only they are ever allowed to govern at all, whether or not they, the Democrats, the Greens, the Libertarians, or anyone else have majority support. One party government is really bad, including when it’s a de facto one-party government pretending to be a two-party government.
And that doesn’t even mean I want the Republican Party banned or something nasty like that. I just want a genuinely multi-party majoritarian democratic republic, in which governance is conditional on winning elections and election outcomes are high-entropy random variables that correlate closely with voters’ ideologies and policy preferences.
That would contrast dramatically with the current system, under which Southern Republicans govern when Republicans win elections, and when Democrats win elections, Southern Republicans govern.
@ Eli :
The two-party system is baked into the U.S. Constitution. Control of the entire federal executive branch hangs on a single high-stakes election, so there’s an irresistible incentive to build a 51% coalition to take the big prize. The only stable configuration is to have exactly two major parties.
You can’t have a stable multiparty democracy with the single elected president. You would need a parliamentary system.
@Larry Kestenbaum:
Preferential systems should get you to two major parties and a balance-of-power third party at the least (that configuration has been pretty stable in Australian politics for a long time, with several parties moving around). And it makes it easier for those swaps to happen, because you can vote for your true preference without endangering the major party that’s closest to your position.
Larry, France has a coalitional parliament and a directly elected president, so there is no conflict between those two. It does have presidential run-offs, though.
Were you expecting us to like the idea of giving more and more power to a government run by our traditional enemies? Do you think we want y’all to be able to coordinate strongly against us?
@onyomi:
Do you deny that the ultimate reason the Civil War was fought was that those in control in the South wanted to continue keeping slaves? Regardless of the justifications individuals used for themselves engaging in the war, would the war have been fought if the South gave up slavery?
Lincoln (the man who decided to actually start the war in the first place) was VERY clear that the war had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with “preserving the union” (i.e. making sure the south still paid their tariffs)
” If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. ”
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
To a first approximation, it can accurately be said that the South seceded to preserve slavery and the North opposed the secession to preserve the Union. (Which is pretty much borne out by what was being said at the beginning of the war by each side.)
Since the South’s actions are the ones that began the war (unilaterally seceding, making no attempt to negotiate a withdrawal from the Union, firing the first shots), it’s fair to say that the former is the reason the war was fought.
The act of secession, unilateral or otherwise, in no way requires a war to be fought. Half the confederacy didn’t secede at all UNTIL it became apparent that Lincoln was going to start a war over it, which was something they could not abide.
The “first shots” argument is long and complicated. But needless to say, whether or not Fort Sumter legitimately belonged to the north or should have reverted to the control of South Carolina was a point of contention without an obviously correct answer one way or the other.
Points of contention like which of two theories of ownership cover disputed military installations need to be settled somehow. One option might have been to try to establish a right to secede, and state ownership of bases in its territory, by bringing suit in the Supreme Court (since whether the Constitution carried over the “perpetual union” of the Articles of Confederation or not is, ultimately, a legal question). Another might have been to bring up the issue in Congress. Or to call a convention of the states.
(In principle, calling in an outside country or countries as a broker is also possible, though given the geopolitics of the time it’s hard to see either side going for that.)
Another, time honored, is of course to fight it out. The seceding states set the terms of the dispute, and were the ones with the initiative (necessarily, since inaction on both sides favored the status quo). They determined on war as a first resort, rather than a last after exhausting other alternatives.
The north could quite easily have allowed the south to secede and allowed any federal land in the geographic area of the departed states to remain under southern control.
Had they done this, no war would have ever been fought.
There were multiple states (including Virginia) and large portions of the Northern populace (including many of Lincoln’s top advisers) who expected this to be the policy and greatly favored this action. The notion that seceding should of necessity lead to armed conflict was hardly a given…
Any dispute between position A and position B could easily be avoided by both sides agreeing to adopt position B. But that’s as much to say that any dispute can be avoided if there isn’t really a dispute.
If there is a dispute, then the parties are going to have to figure out a way to resolve it. That can be violently (as with the Scotland/UK-18thCen, 13 colonies/UK and the secessionists/US) or not (as with Quebec/Canada, Scotland/UK-21stCen, Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Divorce). But it generally can’t be assumed away by suggesting one side abandon its theory and adopt its opponent’s.
You are taking it for granted that it was the position of “the north” in some sort of uniform block that the south should not be allowed to secede. My point is that this position was hardly uniform and was very contentious. There were several states, many administration officials, and a large portion of the populace throughout the north, that believed simply allowing the south to leave would be just and proper.
I would accuse you of making the “if they just did what the other person wanted, everything would be fine” argument in the sense that yes, if the south just stayed in the union, there would have been no war. But it’s also true that if the north just let them leave, there would have been no war.
The question is, is secession a legitimate right or not? Funny that the residents of New England seemed to think it was when THEY did it from King George, but all of a sudden, when the shoe is on the other foot and they are considered to be the distant oppressor, all of a sudden, they see things a different way…
@Matt M:
The question is not “Did they have the right to secede”, The question is “Why did they secede?”
Suppose I see you viciously beating someone crying for mercy. I walk onto your property and tell you to stop and that I am calling the cops. You then shoot me because I am threatening your lawful right to beat your slave. I don’t think it much matters that I was on your property.
What’s this supposed to be an analogy for?
The colonies made it pretty clear in the Declaration of Independence that they weren’t sanctioning any proposed secession for any possible reason. The whole thrust of the document is that it’s something that should only be done in extremis, after multiple petitions for redress, in the face of extreme tyranny, after issuing a detailed explanation to the world why nothing less will suffice.
And then they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, because they knew that by committing to violent rebellion, the only way to establish that their position was the one that would prevail was to actually win the war. Which, after all, is the same condition under which the Confederacy’s position would have been recognized as controlling– if they’d been able to manage it.
(Alternatively, they might e.g., have left places like Sumter unmolested and tried to wage a campaign in the press and in Congress– possibly including a declaration making their case– for the US to recognize their sovereignty and voluntarily withdraw. Would it have worked? I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine southern Cavalier culture endorsing a strategy so lacking in visible honor. Lincoln might have escalated provocations, or eventually just attacked. Win or lose, it could hardly have come out worse for them than the actual events.)
But whatever dispute resolution option is chosen– violence if either side insists on it, or political, judicial, or diplomatic determination otherwise– a dispute can only end when both sides can be made to accept the determination.
(And sometimes they can’t, and you get decades or centuries-long inconclusive, running-sore disputes.)
@ Matt M
The “first shots” argument is long and complicated. But needless to say, whether or not Fort Sumter legitimately belonged to the north or should have reverted to the control of South Carolina was a point of contention without an obviously correct answer one way or the other.
I wonder to what extent “fired the first shot” is synecdoche as well as literal fact. I always imagined one of the Southern young hotheads from GONE WITH THE WIND as, perhaps drunk, patrolling the boundary, jumping up and firing the actual first shot all by himself, being joined by a few others — provoking instant reaction from the Yankee soldier patrolling their boundary, who had literally dodged the literal first bullet.
Or was it a deliberate decision, over weeks of discussion among the brass (and from higher up) that a first strike would be the best tactic. And carried out under orders by a reasonable sized group, with the intent to do serious damage (having already prepared their side for further action).
If it was the first, a squabble by young hotheads in both camps, then we should be looking at the responsible officers on each side, at least one of whom chose not to stifle it but to escalate it.
@houseboatonstyx:
It was a very deliberate and considered bombardment after 5 month siege.
I don’t think the South would have had a strong enough impetus to secede but for the slavery issue, nor the North a strong enough impetus to try to stop them if not for the desire to keep the new, Western states free (for poor whites to have jobs, not because they were so worried about the plights of slaves), and for Lincoln to maintain his status as president of a burgeoning global superpower, rather than as leader of a balkanized regional industrial power.
But let’s not oversimplify this as a battle of moral good against moral evil, not only because Lincoln’s primary concern wasn’t to end slavery, but because the reality is that it was a clash of cultures, ways of life, civilizations. The North was a more capitalistic, industrialist, urban, egalitarian, entrepreneurial culture and the South a more agrarian, land-based, aristocratic culture. Slavery was seen (imo, incorrectly) as a necessary part of this latter sort of culture, while it was correctly seen as a threat to the former sort of culture.
As a very pro-capitalism kind of person, I see all kinds of problems with the old Southern way of life in addition to the glaring evil of slavery, though I think there were some aspects of it worthy of admiration as well. But regardless, let’s see this “civil war” (actually a war to prevent secession, since a “civil war” would imply that the South was fighting to control the North) for what it was: not a battle of moral people fighting immoral people, but a struggle to determine whether or not the South would be allowed to maintain its unique culture, given that they were stuck in a democracy which could unilaterally outvote them on any issue, and which was already abusing that power to levy heavy tariffs which benefited the manufacturing-focused North at the expense of the export-focused South.
If the North had explicitly said from the start that they were fighting to end slavery, and that the fighting would stop and the South be allowed to secede so long as slavery were ended, then I’d say the North occupied the moral highground. But that’s not what happened. As Matt M points out, Lincoln would have accepted slavery had it prevented secession. What he and his generals realized during the course of the war, however, was that they had to wage a total war, not just against the Southern armies, but against its civilians and its way of life, if they wanted to win. Slavery was seen as a linchpin of that way of life and that’s why they fought to destroy it, not because they cared about the slaves.
And it’s because it *was* a war to destroy a culture and cow a whole people, not just a war to free slaves, that many Southerners, myself included, still get angry when people make flippant remarks about the evil Confederacy. And if it seems like it’s just the Southerners who are still bitter, then why is my Facebook feed currently full of New Englanders posting pictures of white flags with pee on them, alongside snide remarks about how the Confederacy was all a bunch of cowardly traitors? There is still a very low-burning culture war in the United States, and, though it has shifted more to Red vs Blue (which, let’s face it, is still a rough proxy for Confederacy v Union to this day, despite the swapping places of Democrats and Republicans), there is still a lot of bias against Southerners (I am frequently told “oh, you don’t have an accent!” as if it were a great compliment when people find out I’m from the South).
So here’s a slightly different hypothetical: what if everything else had been the same, but the Confederacy had declared its intent to free the slaves under their new regime, and that they were only seceding because of the tariff issue? In that case, would Lincoln have let the South secede peacefully? I tend to think not. And in that case, would Lincoln and the North been totally in the wrong? I think so.
In the movie Gettysburg, one of the confederate generals (probably Longstreet but I can’t remember) makes a comment something to that effect: “We should have freed the slaves, THEN seceded.”
Of course I have no idea how historically accurate or commonplace that sort of sentiment might have been.
@onyomi:
Is their ANY document of secession that does not, in big, bold strokes, name the keeping of slavery and the inherent superiority of white over black as the reason for seceding?
Your hypothetical asks me to assume that those who controlled the Southern states and positioned them to secede did so for some other reason than their explicitly named intent. I don’t know why I should need assume that. The South would have had no reason to secede if they didn’t want slavery to continue as an institution.
The South seceded. They fired the first shot. They named slavery as their reason for seceding. Why don’t you take them at their word?
Yes, they feared that the North and the West would outpace their slave based economy. Which is why they wanted all new states in the west to be slave states. This was unacceptable to the North, the Republican Party, and Lincoln.
Lincoln was trying to end slavery and ran on that issue. He initially proposed no territorial expansion of slavery and compensated emancipation. To act as if Lincoln had no problem with slavery and did not intend to bring about its end is folderol. What he did not want to do was bring about its end via war, which is why he made those comments.
@Matt M:
The Morrill Tariff of 1861 passed AFTER the Southern states started seceding, before Lincoln took office, and would have been blocked from passage if only the Southern states did not secede.
No. Lincoln, and others described at the time as “anti-slavery”, believed that if slavery were confined to the then slave states, it would eventually die. Before the war, he did not have any interest in directly intervening to end slavery.
Almost no one in any position of authority advocated for immediate abolition of slavery in the South before 1861. That was a radical fringe view.
What happened in the run-up to the Civil War was growing disapproval of slavery in the North (stoked by Uncle Tom’s Cabin and other books), and corresponding defensiveness on the issue in the South.
@Matt M:
“We should have freed the slaves, THEN seceded.”
Go read the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
It makes no sense to think they would have gone to war if they were intending on freeing the slaves.
@Larry Kestenbaum:
Lincoln was considered a moderate in his party. There were many who favored emancipation, but they did not control the Republican party. They were minority, but I don’t think they were only a radical fringe.
You are ignoring that he specifically advocated for compensated emancipation. He very much wanted to end slavery, but he wanted to do it without having a constitutional crisis. Slavery was embedded in the original Constitution and Lincoln recognized that explicitly.
No, a civil war is defined as a war among citizens or factions of one country, and does not exclude wars prompted by secession, e.g., the Nigerian civil war.
No, that “abuse” hadn’t happened yet. Rather, the slave South was facing for the first time the possibility of losing control of the federal government.
It was NEVER “a war to free slaves,” except retrospectively.
The Southern culture was destroyed because that’s what it took to win. Military superiority turned out not to be enough to persuade Confederates to give up their cause. Probably they understood that reunion would mean the end of the Southern way of life, with or without war’s destruction.
It is a very common misconception to conflate “anti-slavery” (opposition to the political power of slaveowners) with “abolitionist” (support for immediately ending slavery nationwide).
Before the Civil War, abolitionism was never more than about 1% or 2% of opinion in the North. (One source for 2%; other histories of abolitionism say it was never more than 1%.)
Absolutely, many Northerners detested slavery, but there was great respect for property rights — even when humans were the property.
If he did, he was being disingenuous. The cost of compensating slaveowners would have been so enormous that it was never taken seriously by Lincoln or any other political leaders.
@HeelBearCub
“I don’t know why I should need assume that. The South would have had no reason to secede if they didn’t want slavery to continue as an institution.”
They did have other reasons to secede, such as the aforementioned unfair tariffs. And even if they didn’t, the purpose of the hypothetical was to tease out the question of the legitimacy of secession from the question of slavery.
So: hypothetically, if slavery had already been abolished, and the South had been trying to secede for purely economic reasons, but everything else (Fort Sumter, etc.) had been the same, would that secession have been legitimate, and would Lincoln’s use of military force to stop it have been ethical or reasonable?
My contention is that secession is prima facie legitimate, but that that principle has been poisoned in the US because of secession’s association with slavery. But one can also secede for good reasons. Some Northern abolitionists supported Southern secession on the theory of “no union with slavers.” And I assume you would have supported it had some smaller unit within the Confederacy, like a city or county, seceded from the Confederacy itself for the purposes of abolition and racial equality.
Had the Southern secession been all about preserving slavery (which it wasn’t, though I concede that was a big part of it), then perhaps we could say that *this particular* secession was morally illegitimate because it was secession for a bad reason.
But the idea of secession’s legitimacy being contingent on the morality of the reasons for secession seems a very dangerous precedent to accept. Because who gets to decide the morality of the reasons for secession? The majority from which the minority are attempting to secede? The problem with that should be obvious.
Better instead to assume that secession *at all levels* is prima facie legitimate, and therefore to support both the South’s secession from the North *and also* any subsequent attempt by abolitionists to secede from or undermine the legitimacy of the slave-holding polity. Had all the efforts of Union generals been devoted to underground railroad-type activities then I’d have nothing but praise for them.
And even if we concede that maybe there are some reasons for secession *so obviously bad* that it may be justified to arrest that secession with military force, that would only mean that there are some extreme cases in which secession is illegitimate. But that is not what most Americans believe today. Most Americans today believe that the case of the Civil War proves that secession is prima facie illegitimate.
There’s a saying that, when Alabama seceded from the Union, Winston County seceded from Alabama.
Well, it didn’t really happen that way, but this bit of folklore is mentioned in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Not that it bears on your argument, but very few governments anywhere in the world would concede that.
@Larry Kestenbaum
“Not that it bears on your argument, but very few governments anywhere in the world would concede that.”
I agree, which, I think, is one, perhaps subconscious, reason why the US political elite of both parties like to frame the Civil War in terms of having resolved the question of secession, rather than just the question of slavery, even though all the Civil War proved about secession was that, if you are willing to wage total war against your own people, you can prevent a secession.
But to admit that a secession at any level is legitimate (which anyone who supports the American Revolution must, on some level, endorse) raises the question: if a group of states can secede from the nation, then why can’t an individual state secede from a group, or a county from a state, or a city from a county, or a neighborhood from a city… In other words, it leads to Nozickian anarchy, which I support, but which most states do not, for obvious reasons.
@onyomi:
If you are willing to go to war to secede, then your cause should be good enough that the innocent blood that is shed is justified.
The case can be made for The Revolutionary War. Although, I’m perfectly willing to concede that the case for that war certainly looks rosier because the victor writes the history books. Still, representative democracy over rule by aristocracy is a pretty good place to plant ones flag.
Are you willing to state that the grievances the South stood on were good enough to rise to the level that made the war justifiable? Was there even a decent Schelling fence that was crossed?
Or the did the South lose their first election and try and take by force what that had lost at the ballot box?
@HeelBearCub
“If you are willing to go to war to secede, then your cause should be good enough that the innocent blood that is shed is justified.”
But that assumes a war must be fought to secede, which is begging the question, because it assumes that secession is prima facie disallowed, and will therefore usually be violently opposed.
If I escaped from the DPRK with the result that a number of border guards were executed for failing to catch me, would their deaths be my fault?
More importantly “would you be willing to fight a bloody war to claim this right” seems a pretty poor standard for deciding whether or not something *is* right. I wouldn’t fight a bloody war (assuming I had the resources to do so) to prevent you stealing my car. That doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to steal my car.
@Larry:
Yes, Lincoln did not advocate for the immediate end of slavery.
But he did support the end of slavery. He thought it a moral wrong that was monstrous. He said the the Declaration of Independence applied to blacks as well as whites. Douglas used this to level the charge of abolitionism at him, which Lincoln rebuffed.
Lincoln did support compensated emancipation, going so far as to draft legislation that was introduced in Delaware in 1861 after the start of the war, which failed. Similar federal legislation passed for DC.
If you look at Lincoln’s position in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1868, you also see him being concerned foremost about the spread of slavery out of the South via the ending of the Missouri Compromise and the Dredd Scott decision. As such, he is fighting a defensive battle foremost.
You seem to be equivocating between support for immediate emancipation and the ending of slavery somewhere down the road. Lincoln clearly did not argue for the former, but I don’t see how one would conclude he did not support the latter.
I’m not equivocating. Rather, in Northern politics leading up to the Civil War, that was a rather huge difference.
Ending slavery “somewhere down the road,” e.g., by not letting it expand into the territories, was a mainstream position, espoused by national political figures.
Immediate nationwide emancipation was a radical view, advocated only by a few. Most people, even those who detested slavery, rejected this position, because it disregarded property rights.
Or to put it another way: secessionists who assert independence can expect to be opposed by total war. This is the prevailing reality throughout the world.
Did the people of Scotland expect to be opposed by total war, a few months back?
@John Schilling:
The UK government offered that vote to Scotland as a concession. Nations can dissolve peacefully. See the the dissolution of Czech and Slovakia for one that went swimmingly.
But those are negotiated, bilateral dissolutions, not unilateral ones.
@onyomi:
Unless the founding document of a political entity provides conditions for a pre-arranged dissolution of the entity, then you do not unilaterally have the right to declare the contract between the members of the entity null and void.
In the US, this aspect of our constitution was decided definitively by the US Supreme Court in Texas v. White, not by the civil war itself (though if the war had gone differently, I’ve no doubt the case would have been different.) The ruling was that this was not a right of the states under the US Constitution, and therefore Texas never left the US during the war.
If a state wanted to negotiate secession, they would be welcome to try. Some of the protectorates could probably leave this way if they wanted to. But you don’t get to unilaterally break a contract and expect penalties not to follow, including the possibility that the contract will remain in force, and that the force of the state may enforce the contract.
@ Larry Kestenbaum
>> And it’s because it *was* a war to destroy a culture and cow a whole people, not just a war to free slaves
>It was NEVER “a war to free slaves,” except retrospectively.
>The Southern culture was destroyed because that’s what it took to win.
The taxes and tariffs were proposed because the South before the war had income that the North wanted. Some military expense might have paid off for the North – but a destroyed South with no income, would be little prize. So why did the North press the war so deeply?
My cynicism reads both “to preserve the Union” and “to free slaves [into a starving system]” as emotional slogans, which Lincoln and other powerful men could scarcely have accepted themselves. Sfaik, there was no serious danger of the Confederate armies successfully invading the North. So – what was the North’s motive — for, say, overkill — at that point?
Btw, I’m not interested in digging for object level dates and figures and quotes; I’m interested in the somewhat larger motives of powerful Northern individuals. Cui bono?
@Heelbearcub
Firstly, I object to being bound by a “contract” signed by a few guys who happened to live in part of the continent I was born in a few hundred years ago, and I think people 150 years ago could have rightly objected as well.
No nation I can think of has yet had the foresight to include conditions of its own dissolution in its founding documents. I guess it would be like a prenup. But like a prenup, no one wants to admit they need it.
The Constitution was sold to the state legislatures as a kind of loose federation to facilitate trade and mutual defense. There was never a sense that it would be binding for all eternity.
Regarding contracts, even assuming the Constitution functioned like a regular, voluntary contract among individuals, it is permissible to break a contract when the other party has egregiously failed to live up to the terms. The degree to which the Federal government has not abided by the Constitution, especially the 10th amendment, is egregious.
And the reason why is the Supreme Court you mention. How would you feel about a contract with me that lasts forever, applies to your children, grandchildren, and great granchildren, and if you or they ever want to get out of it, or disagree with my interpretation of it, however outlandish, I get my siblings and best friends to adjudicate the disagreement?
Don’t think it’s analogous? Supreme Court justices are all appointed by presidents. Presidents are the chief executives of the federal government. So in any case of dispute between the states and the federal government, people appointed by the chief executive of the federal government stand in judgment. To be remotely fair, some of the justices would need to be appointed by the states.
Re. taking by force what was lost at the ballot box, again, the South was not fighting for control of the whole country, just for the right to be left alone. Shouldn’t people have the right not to be forced to participate in a political unity they don’t want to participate in? China claims that Taiwan is part of China because historically, it had been part of the Chinese empire at various times and most of the people there are culturally Chinese. But the Taiwanese just don’t want to be part of China politically. Are they wrong? Would China be right to force them to join militarily (which I admit they only don’t do right now because of the US)?
@onyomi:
Are you willing to extend the right of self-determination you are espousing to everyone?
Re. Scotland, even if the UK hadn’t “conceded” the right for Scotland to secede, I maintain they would have had it anyway.
More importantly, I don’t think anyone would have had the stomach for a military intervention to stop them. Which shows that we are more civilized than 150 years ago, and have, at least implicitly, recognized that a war to prevent a secession is wrong.
Imagine Texas unilaterally seceding today. I’m sure there would be a lot of threats, dire predictions, and handwringing, but I seriously doubt the federal government would actually take any military action to stop it if Texas “stuck to their guns” (metaphorically). People nowadays just wouldn’t have the stomach for it–because it would be wrong.
@Heelbearcub
“Are you willing to extend the right of self-determination you are espousing to everyone?”
Yes, as I said, I support Nozick-style anarchy: a state can secede from a country, a city from a state, a neighborhood from a city, and even an individual from a neighborhood.
This is not to say that I think people have no practical obligations to one another, or don’t need to uphold actual contracts they themselves have entered into, only that no one should be forced to participate in a political union they never signed up for themselves and which they no longer desire.
@onyomi:
Well, how about the slaves? Why aren’t you concerned at all about their right to self-determination?
@Onyomi:
Surely under a (moral) libertarian system breach of contract is initiation of force, because otherwise contracts can’t be enforced. You seem to be arguing that there’s a moral right to secede, not that it’s practically better, so I think tying you to moral-libertarian arguments is fair.
If you want to start limiting what kinds of contracts are fair or insisting on a particular interpretation you’re going to need arbitration or protection agencies. In this case, two protection agencies disagreed rather strongly about what the contract’s provisions were, fought it out until one won, and then after the fact an arbitration agency declared that the winner was in the right. From that point of view, everything seems to be in order. This sort of thing would happen in AnCap world. It did, after all, happen in AnCap world.
The Union kept fighting because the Confederates were still fighting, and the Confederate government was still a going concern. When the Confederates surrendered, the fighting stopped.
And again, the idea that the North was “fighting to free the slaves” is retrospective romantic nonsense. I don’t understand why you keep repeating it.
No. The South had been accustomed to a federal government that was controlled by or strongly supportive of slaveowners, and e.g. supported the return of fugitive slaves.
One of the grievances of the South was the non-return of fugitive slaves from Northern territory. Had the South become permanently independent, they would have needed to fortify the border to keep slaves from escaping.
And Glasgow has the right to secede from Scotland? And each neighborhood has the right to secede from Glasgow? Sorry, but that way lies madness.
I don’t believe there is any such consensus. Indeed, I don’t think I believe this myself.
I think you are wildly mistaken about this. If Texas were to unilaterally secede from the U.S., the federal government would immediately exercise force to stop it.
The balance of military power between Texas and the U.S. is so skewed that I doubt “independence” would get very far. The more serious the Texans were about breaking away, the more of them would die.
My comment is unrelated to anyone “reframing” anything, or “undoing” previous history. The simple reality is that unilaterally declaring independence from an existing country is likely to be very dangerous.
@Larry:
It was a war that the South started to keep the slaves, even though they were in no immediate danger of losing them, except one by one.
The North did not fight to free the slaves at beginning, but the political campaign leading up to Lincoln’s election was dominated by the issue of slavery. The Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 for the Illinois US senate seat were, by and large, about the issue of slavery. The first Southern states seceded as soon as Lincoln won the election citing the non-support of the North for slavery.
If the South had laid down arms in 1861, would slavery have ended in the South at that time? No. But, would the South have seceded if they were not slave states? No. They had no issue other than slavery that motivated their animus towards the North.
Lincoln started the process of freeing slaves in 1861, essentially at the beginning of his office, through compensated emancipation, as I have already said and you have not acknowledged.
This was not some picayune concern that became elevated to feud, that then became a war, where the central question of the immediate motivations was non-essential. Slavery was at the heart of it.
@Mark Atwood:
Talk about re-framing. The Southern states did secede. Even they agree they seceded from an already extant nation. Your argument is a complete non-starter.
@Larry
“And Glasgow has the right to secede from Scotland? And each neighborhood has the right to secede from Glasgow? Sorry, but that way lies madness.”
No, that way lies freedom and anarcho capitalism of the sort described by David Friedman, the Tannehills, Michael Huemer, and others. Far from madness, such descriptions strike me as eminently plausible.
And even if they don’t seem plausible to you, it doesn’t have to be a slippery slope. Even if there is a minimum level of political organization below which madness ensues, why shouldn’t secession be legitimate up to that point? Since there are already a few successful city states in the world and many throughout history, let’s say it’s the city. Singapore is pretty much the opposite of madness. Why, then, is it madness to think Glasgow could secede from Scotland, even if a neighborhood can’t secede from Glasgow?
Re. Texas, I think you misread the public sentiment, but I could be wrong. I’ll start a poll below and see if anybody responds.
@Heelbearcub
“Well, how about the slaves? Why aren’t you concerned at all about their right to self-determination?”
As stated above, I would have supported any effort by slaves and/or abolitionists to secede from the Confederacy and establish a non-slave, racially egalitarian state within it.
I would even have supported the right of individual slaves to “secede” from the Union and/or the Confederacy, though practically speaking, the best an individual could hope for would be to escape. Defecting or escaping a polity which doesn’t want to let you go is sort of like an individual secession, only one is immediately subject to the rules of another jurisdiction unless he wants to live in the middle of the ocean.
@onyomi:
You have descended into incoherence.
The chief complaint of the states who seceded before Ft. Sumter was that the North was not returning their escaped slaves. How then can you uphold their claims against the North?
Let me link that for you again.
The greatest violence ever done to the right of self-determination in the history of our United States was the continuation and perpetuation of chattel slavery. If you are concerned about the right of self-determination in the pre-Civil War South, the right of of those states to secede from the Union should be a far, far distant concern, so far away as to be a point on the horizon.
No argument with that.
Again, there was a BIG difference at the time between being “anti-slavery” (criticizing slavery and the political power of slaveowners, and opposing the spread of slavery to new areas) and being an “abolitionist”. Lincoln would never have been a viable candidate if he had espoused abolitionism.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but imagine someone who is a critic of the oil or tobacco companies, opposing them politically, versus someone who advocates that those companies be immediately destroyed outright, root and branch, warehouse and pipeline, without any thought of compensating anyone. The latter would surely be seen as a radical view.
I completely agree that slavery was the critical war issue for the South.
I did look at the links you provided. That impractical scheme of “compensated emancipation” did not involve government expenditure to buy slaves from their owners (as Thomas Jefferson discussed doing), but the use of the slave’s own labor as “compensation”.
Of course, status quo ante was that the slaveowner owned ALL of the slave’s labor, and owed the slave nothing in wages. In other words, this proposal “compensated” the slaveowner by depriving him of value, and kept the slave at work for the owner for some specified number of years.
Unsurprisingly, the idea was a non-starter. The fact that it was proposed (this and the “colonization” of slaves back to Africa) shows how much people wished there was a third way between tolerating slavery and abolition.
The South went to war to keep slavery, and the North went to war to keep the South. During the war, for the North, freeing the slaves became an instrument of winning the war, not an end in itself.
There was widespread disapproval of slavery in the North, but there was very little appetite for nationwide legal abolition until the South’s defeat made it possible.
Consider that we’re not speaking of a negotiated divorce like Czechoslovakia’s, but an outright, pugnacious declaration of independence.
Right away, there would be the Fort Sumter problem: what happens to all the federal facilities in Texas? Organized attacks on U.S. military bases would be repelled by force, and the attackers would immediately be seen as traitors. All casualties would be blamed on the Texans.
The U.S. Constitution (enacted in the wake of Shay’s Rebellion) specifically provides for the power to “suppress insurrections.” I can’t imagine a President or Congress hesitating to act under these circumstances.
@Larry:
I’m not sure you read the whole link.
“This law prohibited slavery in the District, forcing its 900-odd slaveholders to free their slaves, with the government paying owners an average of about $300 for each”
Here is another link, laying out the terms of the Delaware proposal.
“The bill, if it had been enacted, would have had the U.S. government compensate Delaware, essentially trading federal bonds in installments for the gradual emancipation of the state’s slaves over a five-year period.”
Lincoln was attempting to end slavery within the loyal border states early in his presidency, before the outcome of the war is in any way apparent.
Lincoln was trying to triangulate, eliminate as much slavery as possible. When he ran for office he didn’t view general abolition as workable, and definitely not electable. He correctly read that proposals to free all of the slaves would not be accepted. One of his foremost concerns was first preventing the spread of slavery, which was very much in the wind. I don’t think he foresaw ending slavery during his presidency. I do think he intended to move as far away from the expansion of slavery and as far towards the end of slavery as he could without generating backlash that would have been ultimately counter-productive.
Maybe we are talking past each other, but my reading is that you are saying Lincoln did particularly desire the end of slavery and never had any intention of advancing its ending. I think the reaction of the South to his election is the largest piece of evidence available to show that this reading is incorrect.
@ Larry Kestenbaum
And again, the idea that the North was “fighting to free the slaves” is retrospective romantic nonsense.
That’s my opinion also. I take it even further than “retroactive romantic nonsense.” I’d say it was romantic nonsense at the time.
(FYI – I wrote the first paragraph you quoted here, but none of the others.)
My apologies for my attribution error.
@onyomi:
Yeah, because that was totally a feasible option. The slaveowners would totally have said “welp, you found a loophole and outwitted us, congrats, you win,” and gone along with that.
No. Just no. There is no definition of “self-determination” that a slaveholding society can honestly claim to fight for.
@Sylocat
“Yeah, because that was totally a feasible option. The slaveowners would totally have said “welp, you found a loophole and outwitted us, congrats, you win,” and gone along with that.”
I specifically stated that escape to a non-slave holding state was the only realistic option for the individual slave.
I was talking about in a hypothetical successful Confederacy, there might have been enclaves where the population of slaves and/or abolitionists was so high that they could have successfully seceded from the Confederacy itself. In many parts of the South black people outnumbered white people by a significant margin (and still do), so this doesn’t seem so implausible to me.
And even if it isn’t plausible, I was answering a question about principle: in principle, the slaves have the right not to participate in a political union they don’t want to participate in, just like everybody else. But in a racist 19th century US society which wouldn’t recognize the right of free white people to that level of self-determination, what hope was there for black slaves?
You might say “but free white people shouldn’t be free to oppress black people.” Fair enough, and, again, if the war were all about freeing slaves and not preventing secession, I would have been in support of it. And regardless, even if this is a case where the reason for secession was so bad as to render it illegitimate, that doesn’t affect the contention that secession and self-determination are prima facie legitimate.
@onyomi:
“But in a racist 19th century US society which wouldn’t recognize the right of free white people to that level of self-determination, what hope was there for black slaves?”
Please, I beg of you, engage with the fact that the prime complaints the Southern states had was that the North was not returning their escaped slaves, but rather allowing them to live as free men in the North.
You can’t continue to ignore that fact, not and have a prayer of making anything like a coherent argument.
@Heelbearcub
“…engage with the fact that the prime complaints the Southern states had was that the North was not returning their escaped slaves, but rather allowing them to live as free men in the North.”
I don’t think this is really true: the prime complaint was that they were being outvoted by non-slave states and figured it would only get worse as the population expanded west.
And even if the above were the prime complaint, I don’t really see how it bears upon the validity of my more general argument in favor of the prima facie validity of secession. Even if the true goal of the Confederacy was to get back fugitive slaves or prevent slaves gaining free status when they traveled to western territories, I don’t see how that would reflect on the question of secession. If anything, seceding would seem to make that harder, as the Northern states would have less reason to cooperate in returning fugitive slaves to a separate country.
I’m certainly not defending fugitive slave laws, and I’ve already conceded that even if the Confederacy’s particular reason for seceding in this particular case was so evil as to somehow invalidate its citizens’ right to self-determination, it would not eliminate the prima facie right of secession in other cases.
Really, I’m taking the most radical anti-slavery position possible: I don’t want anyone to be enslaved to anyone to any degree: not to one master, and not to a million masters. If you don’t think groups of people, i. e. states can truly enslave people, well, I’d rather be a slave in the antebellum South than a Ukrainian in the 1930s USSR, a Jew in 1940s Germany, or even a member of the undesirable classes in the DPRK today. Unjust and abusive authority come in many flavors and permutations.
@onyomi:
“I don’t think this is really true: the prime complaint was that they were being outvoted by non-slave states”
Here are South Carolina’s own words from the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
Please read the whole thing. All of the complaints are about the hostility of the North to the institution of slavery. But if you want, here is their very first complaint (that which appears before this being an attempt to argue for the right of secession).
“In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.”
So, just at the outset, I am not particularly expert in any of the fields I’m about to opine on, so I welcome corrections, but, here’s my understanding of what exactly was understood to be at stake in the Civil War, and why people at the time felt justified in opposing Southern secession, even though the United States was founded by revolution:
Essentially, one of the key differences is that the United States in 1861 was a democracy, and Britain in 1776 was not. The actual event that sparked the secession crisis was simply the election of a rival party to the presidency. To argue that anytime your opponent wins an election, you can just walk out, is fatal to a democracy–the “correct” approach in such a case is to try and win the next election. My understanding is that Lincoln recognized a natural right to revolution against a tyranny, but no constitutional right to secession precisely because it would fatally undermine any democracy. The argument would go that, since Lincoln’s election could hardly be held to constitute tyranny, and since the South had the real possibility of electing a candidate they preferred, they couldn’t invoke the natural right of revolution, and thus were in a different position from the founders in 1776.
Just to draw a little more on the idea of secession undermining democracy, it’s also worth paying attention to the context: the Civil War started not so long after Louis Napoleon’s coup, and the autocratic reactions to the other 1848 democratic movements–conservatives and monarchists in Europe had long believed that democracy must either eventually reform into a proper monarchy, or collapse into anarchy. The Second French Empire and the other failed 1848 uprisings were an example of the first failure mode, and many French and English observers gleefully predicted that America 1861 was about to showcase the second failure mode. That such ideas were on Lincoln’s mind can be seen in his speeches:
A last fun fact related to all of this is that Canada, which confederated two years after the end of the Civil War, deliberately adopted a more centralized model for our federation, precisely to avoid “states’ rights” issues of our own.
EDIT
Two instances of “1789” have been changed to “1776”, due to me being a goofus.
@Eugene — Thanks. That sheds some light on the “preservation of the Union” motive, which was clearly of great importance at the time (in the American West, for example, there’s a lot of towns founded in Civil War times and called Unionville or something along those lines) but doesn’t receive much attention in many history books.
@Heelbearcub,
You’re still entirely missing my point and strawmaning me. I never argued that the continuation of slavery wasn’t a major motivation for the secession. In fact, I conceded that at the outset.
@Nornagest:
No problem 🙂
Yeah, as a Canadian, I’ve had even less formal exposure to this stuff than y’all (hence my caveat at the beginning, and my screwing up the year of the revolution), but it really does make a lot of things fall into place when you see it from this perspective. For example, I’m pretty sure that these sorts of ideas are behind the famous line from the Gettysburg Address that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, which probably seems a bit over-dramatic without the context.
It also explains why patriotic fervour could run so high in a north that, as others have pointed out, was still pretty racist, and hardly abolitionist.
The New York Times ran a series called Disunion from 2010 to just this past April, covering events of the Civil War 150 years later, and they had some nice examples of this stuff as well; for example, the Republic of San Marino, one of the few functioning republics at the time of the Civil War, wrote an endearingly earnest letter of support to Lincoln.
@onyomi:
I don’t know what your point is, yes. I am missing it.
That anyone should have the right to secede at anytime from anything without regards to any previous commitments?
Why you would you try and make this argument with the slave-holding states as your primary example of a wronged party?
@ Eugene Dawn
It forces us to ask: “Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?” –Lincoln
Did any other nations confederating take the opposite approach to danger of wars of secession — ie including a process for allowed secession. I’d see this as similar to our process for amending the US Constitution: several rather demanding procedures spread out over several years and several administrations, thus giving time for settling issues by bargaining.
Or, the horse may learn to sing. Suppose, while the South was going through all that, Britain and their other customers had succeeded in restricting import of “Slave Cotton”. The British mill owners had an interest in keeping the supply of cotton running smoothly, so they might have come up with a phase-out plan that the South would accept.
The war was only about slavery and Al Capone was only imprisoned for tax evasion.
“And I assume you would have supported it had some smaller unit within the Confederacy, like a city or county, seceded from the Confederacy itself for the purposes of abolition and racial equality.”
This is pretty much how we got West Virginia, IIRC.
@Houseboatonstyx
(btw, as a new commenter here, is there any better way to respond in those long threads than to search all the way up for the parent again?)
Like I said, I’m talking out of my league here–I haven’t heard of any such secession mechanism built in to a constitution, but that doesn’t mean much.
On the other hand, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on the question of whether Quebec separating would be legal. I’ll summarize Wiki, and remind you again that I’m not by any means an expert:
Essentially, the Court was asked whether Quebec had a constitutional right to secede; whether it had a right under international law to secede; and if those two conflicted, which should hold?
The answer was, Quebec had no right to unilateral secession, but if a referendum returned a clear desire of Quebeckers to secede, negotiations between Canada and Quebec should take place.
International law has no general provisions for members of sovereign states to secede; essentially if you are part of a representative democracy and secession would threaten the territorial integrity of the country of which you’re part, then you should proceed via internal mechanisms.
They didn’t answer the third question since they saw no conflict between international and Canadian law.
I presume the recent referendum in Scotland was legal for similar reasons, but someone in the UK should correct me.
@Eugene:
I tend to have two tabs open. One at the beginning of the thread, the other so I can see what I am replying to. But everyone recognizes this is not the best comment system that could ever exist at SSC, I can think of the most perfect one in my mind, and, … poof …
Hey is it just me, or is this comment system better now?
@Eugene:
I also should say that I appreciate the information you are giving here. It seems true, necessary and kind. Beautiful.
To answer your question about the recent Scottish referendum, it was negotiated with the UK before hand.
“The Scottish Independence Referendum Bill, setting out the arrangements for this referendum, was passed by the Scottish Parliament in November 2013, following an agreement between the Scottish and the United Kingdom governments, and was enacted as the Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013.”
Later in that same article:
“The two governments signed the Edinburgh Agreement, which allowed for the temporary transfer of legal authority. In accordance with the Edinburgh Agreement, the UK government drafted an Order in Council granting the Scottish Parliament the necessary powers to hold, on or before 31 December 2014, an independence referendum.”
I think though that the referendum would not have actually been the thing that divorced Scotland from the UK, or at least that would have been a matter for later dispute.
Scotland said in 2010 that they were proposing an “advisory referendum on extending the powers of the Scottish Parliament”, whose result would “have no legal effect on the Union”.
I’m not sure whether the Edinburgh agreement changed that calculus or not.
A young man, recently dropped out of high school, is working two minimum-wage jobs in the faint hope that he can provide for his new wife and daughter without her also having to drop out of high school. Do you deny that the ultimate reason for this labor is pure and simple lust? It began in the back seat of a car after a high school football game, just over nine months ago…
The birth of a nation, like the birth of a child, is an absolutely transformative event. Everything before you pee on the stick, is about satisfying teenage lust. Everything afterwards is about parenthood, and that drive will be satisfied by any means necessary even as opportunities for lust fade into memory.
The original six states of the CSA, undoubtedly seceded over the cause of slavery. That, I believe, was the last significant act in US history that was motivated primarily by pro- or anti-slavery sentiments. Not the war that began some months later, or the secession of the remainder of the southern states.
@John Schilling:
Well, once you are fighting, everything else becomes secondary, sure.
If your buddy throws the first punch at another guy, you are going to square off with the other guys friend so your friend doesn’t get jumped. Sure.
But, your side started the fight. And your side started the the fight because your buddy is a jerk. And maybe since the fight was about how he beats his wife, who happens to be the other guys sister, you should have stayed out of it. But of course, you think beating your wife is perfectly fine, too.
You didn’t really want to fight about it, your buddy started it, but you also wouldn’t be fighting at all if you had stopped being his friend because, you know, he beats his wife to a bloody pulp every other night.
Tennessee may have been inflamed by the fact that the North actually took the attack on Fort Sumter seriously. But they were on the side of The Confederacy because they had no problem with slavery.
(None of this is meant to imply anything about John Schilling and wife beating, but I am not sure how to phrase the analogy to prevent the need for this sentence.)
Hey, everyone, we’ve got a real live Lost Causer here! Older brother of the “Clean Wehrmacht” and all that.
I’m sure they thought they were doing the right thing. Most people do. And it’s somewhat likely that they didn’t own slaves; in the South, only a quarter of families did. And no one wants to hear that their honored ancestors fought bravely and died valiantly in defense of the “right of property in man”, that they might have been on the wrong side, no matter how true it may be.
What I wish they had done in SC after the shooting would be not to have taken down the Confederate flag, but to have flown it at half mast, along with the others.
Maybe they were worried about people shooting at it, or fire-bombing it, or someone trying to take it down leading to a fight … etc.
Supreme Court opinions are ALWAYS motivated reasoning. Their entire job is to make policy decisions and disguise them as the results of some kind of empirical inquiry (as if “what the law means” were some kind of fact in the territory).
Symptom versus disease. How many of the current social controversies and memes are, in essence, merely symptoms that overlay a root disease.
A lot of effort is being expended in an attempt at remedy for the never-ending string of symptomatic crises that flood across the internet every day. Symptoms are always easier to fix and consequently they tend to get the most focus.
However, if you ignore (or are oblivious to) the disease, you misinterpret “feel good” for cure.
I’m afraid you’re being too, er, postmodernist for me to understand. What are you talking about?
Teach people to be rational? Adopt a new meta-type-paradigm to politics? Fix/improve education? Fix the way media covers political debate/disagreement?
The impish part of me thinks Scott should host a contest for the most mind killing post headline, most cleverly combining the 5 mind killers.
I think the SSC community could handle it lightheartedly while also expressing some high level creativity.
Philip Dick said that two of is novels, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said and The Man in the High Castle, were not works of fiction, but actually his memories of American society from his experiences in alternate timelines.
So, yeah, LSD is a helluva drug. However, I’m wondering if there is any current or past religion which holds similar views?
I used to not experience sexual jealousy; now I do, and both me and my partner find this annoying. But I also find it perplexing. Is this something that’s known to happen?
Is anything different about your relationship than it was when you didn’t experience the jealousy?
I can imagine, for example (and don’t take it personally if this is inapplicable), someone growing more jealous if they met a partner whom they felt on some level to be “out of their league,” or, at least, more attractive than previous partners. Might lead to insecurity.
Have you considered the possibility that you have simply fallen in love?
Big Warning: Opinions follow!
Jealousy is insecurity. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but it indicates that a part of you thinks that losing your partner is a real possibility. This could be for any number of reasons, self doubt, partner behavior or that you’ve finally landed a partner just slightly out of your league.
It is also anticipated loss. Some of my more man-whore friends talked about how they never experienced jealousy until they settled down, because there was never a future to lose before.
So buck up, it may not be that bad! But if it is producing counterproductive behavior or serious distress, I’d examine very closely your relationship and try to find out what exactly is setting it off. Counseling could be in order, even if just a trip to Granddad.
Newest theory on why everyone’s fat: vitamin-enriched foods
http://freetheanimal.com/2015/06/enrichment-theory-everything.html
Haven’t read this carefully enough to know how crackpot-ish it might be, and I’m sure it’s not the only factor at work, but as someone who has had very bad experiences with artificial vitamin supplements (B12 supplement paradoxcially gave me symptoms of B12 deficiency, magnesium supplement makes my heart feel like it’s going to explode, etc.), it rings true to me.
In particular, what strikes me as potentially truthy is that I feel like we spent the early part of the 20th century “fixing” our food to prevent 3rd world concerns–beri beri, rickets, failure to thrive, goiter, etc. And it strikes me as understandable back then–when you look at pictures older than 50 years old, everyone looks tiny and sort of undernourished. They look like people who couldn’t get fat even if they tried. They aren’t always amazing physical specimens–sometimes they are kind of flabby or have a bit of a pot belly, but they still just seem very “small.”
Conversely, we are now all taller and just plain bigger. We don’t just “thrive” we frankly are way overnourished in every way. Some people say we have too many calories, not enough nutrients; I’m proposing maybe we have too much of both, especially artificial nutrients added to flour, vitamin d milk, etc.
I just still can’t get over the sense that we are somehow fundamentally different in our appetite level and propensity to put on weight than our ancestors of just 100 years ago. I don’t think people used to have more will power, and while many did exercise more than us, not all (far fewer people actually went to a gym to “work out,” for example, though most probably walked more). I think convenience foods, prepackaged foods, etc. have something to do with it, but you also used to have stay-at-home moms baking 5 pies with lard and white sugar every day. It seems plausible to me that somehow our appetites and growth ability are being set into overdrive in childhood, possibly due to messing up our gut flora, affecting our metabolism, etc.
I think it would probably be a good idea to get rid of all these “enriched” products, at least in the first world. We are nowhere close to being malnourished. We already have a waaay more varied diet than most historical peoples, even those who eat what we could call a very “bad” diet of all processed foods, fast food, etc.
Iodised salt and folate in bread are probably among the more successful public health interventions of all time, under vaccination and fluoridation. Maybe keep those?
I don’t know enough to know which are net useful and which aren’t. This particular article seems to blame supplementary iron a lot. I am generally suspicious of the need to add anything to food, so long as one can eat a reasonably varied diet, though in the case of iodine it might be that the seafood-type products high in iodine are too expensive to be generally affordable. And if, indeed, inland people are prone to goiter without supplementary iodine, I wonder if that supports the “aquatic ape” hypothesis?
Re. folate, I think most people can probably afford to just eat some more greens… I personally don’t want vitamins added to my flour.
Looking up the history of fluoridation, it does seem like it was a big success, though conspiracy theory types often complain about it, probably without good reason. I have to say, teeth seem to be one part of the body that seem nearly impossible to keep healthy through “natural” means, considering how much work they take even after fluoridation. I guess a lot of that is the diet too (maybe don’t need to floss so much if you’re eating a bunch of fibrous vegetables, tough meat, and no sugar etc.).
Here’s another interesting correlation, probably related to gut health, again:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/11/maps-antibiotics-prescriptions-obesity-states
I have 10 weeks to finish a dissertation. I find it helpful to actually schedule times to work and have someone else working in the same room with me. Does anyone else in DC have a project and want a work/writing buddy?
Alternatively you could use the Less Wrong Study Hall : http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Study_Hall
Interesting. I will check this out. Thank you.
Here’s a question: What is the most effective intervention against teen pregnancy?
I’ve got a niece who hits a lot of the big indicators for teen pregnancy: broken home, sexually abused by a step-father, many years living in poverty. (She lives with her single biological dad now, probably the one thing in her favor, since she won’t be looking for a replacement father figure.)
I figure (perhaps incorrectly) that the most likely way for her to screw up her life is to get pregnant. Me and my wife could probably throw several thousand dollars at an intervention, but I’d like evidence that it actually works. This is a hot-button moral issue so I’m reluctant to trust intuition, my own or other people’s.
Religious and secular options are both on the table, short of shipping her off to a nunnery to a boarding school.
Long-term birth control. Get her an IUD. If her health insurance covers it, you may not even need to pay anything, just help her through the process.
^Bingo.
That and strong parental figures.
Or meeting some nice lesbian girls.
While you’re at it, don’t forget the HPV vaccine. Reducing her cancer risk with a simple prick is probably a pretty good add-on intervention.
It seems to me that teen pregnancy risk is strongly correlated with low knowledge/access to birth control, which is in turn seems strongly correlated with low knowledge/access to other sexual health topics like the HPV vaccine.
I would wonder if encouraging her to get that vaccine signals “I believe you’re a slut” and the loss of trust involved could hurt more than the vaccine could help. The OP doesn’t state that she actually is having sex with anyone, let alone indiscriminately or without precautions.
If you had a poor black friend living in the slums, you would not start giving that black friend tips about why robbing people ruins his future on the grounds that being poor, black, and living in the slums is correlated with committing robbery. You would need evidence that he personally is likely to commit a crime, evidence that does not just consist of correlation with his personal circumstances.
It’s often inappropriate to act as though someone has personal failings based on the fact that those personal failings correlate with external failings.
Well I’m certainly not black and never had very strong criminal tendencies, but my Dad actually did sit me down more than once and explain in great detail why crime generally didn’t pay off very well and that no matter how smart you are the odds will eventually catch up to any career criminal. Also that you should never talk to the police if you can avoid it and be polite when you can’t.
He had grown up in one of the worst neighborhoods in Manhattan, so even though he raised me to be thoroughly middle-class he still thought it was an important lesson and I agree. I was a bit confused that he thought I needed the advice at the time but now I can’t imagine raising a son without having a similar conversation.
Everyone should get “insulting” advice when the consequences of not listening to it can be pregnancy imprisonment or rape. Bruised pride heals quickly compared to real injuries.
In order to be maximally effective, you need to get the vaccine before become sexually active. Vaccines don’t do a lick of good if you have already contracted the disease, and HPV is by far the most prevelent STD. IIRC, estimates of infection rates run into the 90% range. Unfortunately, the vast majority of infections are sub-clinical (i.e., don’t show symptoms… until precancerous lesions develop) so there is a extremely low general awareness.
But HPV causes over 5% of all cancer worldwide. Just putting it out there.
I think 14 is actually the age it is recommended at.
It has nothing to do with being “slutty” or having unprotected sex. It is entirely about “ever plan on having sex with another human being.”
EAA:
Then:
1) You should suggest the vaccine to everyone.
2) The vaccine isn’t an answer to the question, because the question was about what things should be specifically done for her based on her particular circumstances, not on what should be done for her because she is a human being.
Furthermore, the consequence of a black person not listening to your advice about not robbing could also be imprisonment. But you wouldn’t tell someone not to rob just because they are black and being black is correlated with robbery.
If the offer is considered insulting enough, she would be much less receptive to any further advice. That further advice could also have saved her life.
Don;t act like a stereotypical geek and ignore the fact that human beings will act like human beings.
Jiro, I think you are missing the point. For one, EEA is recommending that everyone receive certain advice even if it might be (mis)construed as insulting.
The reason I mentioned the vaccine isn’t because she is at increased risk of contracting HPV, per se, but because she is at increased risk of not knowing about (or having access to) it. The same way she is not at increased “risk” of having sex, but that she is at increased risk of not knowing about (or having access to) effective contraceptives. All the same contributing factors apply.
At the end of the day, poor people are much less likely to receive preventative medicine. Hypothetically, if she has never had a routine doctors appointment (not unheard of under the circumstances described), she certainly hasn’t had her gynecologist recommend that she receive the vaccine. Lord knows the school district can’t be trusted to mention anything even remotely beneficial in sex ed.
I don’t see that the vaccine has such a wide public awareness around it that she (or her parents) would otherwise know about it or understand the importance of receiving it, without her doctor or school bringing it up.
It was approved by the FDA less than ten years ago, after all. Her parents wouldn’t have received the vaccine while they were teens.
The CDC is very clear in their advice that all girls (and preferably boys) receive the vaccine before they become sexually active. Even if they are sexually active before administration, they should still complete it. (I think for girls the earliest possible is 9, and the latest is 26.)
So yes, she might misconstrue a recommendation that she receive the vaccine (or an IUD, for crying out loud, but nobody is arguing against that advice) as an accusation of being “slutty.” But it is based on an entirely false picture of the situation. It may take a little bit of finesse to deliver the advice, but “this is the standard advice, and I don’t know if you have received it” might be a place to start.
Whowould: It is true that “I think you are uninformed” is not an accusation of a personal failing. However, if you tell her to take the vaccine, she’ll do a Bayseian inference and think “believing I’m a slut, or believing I’m uninformed, would both lead him to tell me that. There is some probability of each one of these beliefs. Given that he told me that, I will do a Bayseian update that increases my estimate for both of those cases”. She now, rationally, has increased her estimate of the probability of “WW thinks I’m a slut”. (Even if you don’t think that.)
(Of course, most people not in the LW-sphere won’t explicitly do a Bayseian inference, but that’s what her thought processes will amount to.)
If you tell your black friend that he should avoid robbing people, on the grounds that not understanding how bad it is to rob is common among black people, I can guarantee it won’t go over well, even though every human being should understand how bad it is to rob.
The question was for something to specifically do about her. If the advice applies to all people, it didn’t answer the question.
What I find most interesting about this whole conversation is that–in the context of “if you are already going to have the hard conversation about sex and risk necessary to get her an IUD, you may as well throw in the addition needed to make sure she completes her HPV vaccine”–you object to the vaccine on “sluttyness”grounds but not the IUD.
Does disease prevention carry some sort of super-extra implication of sluttyness above-and-beyond that of long term contraceptive use that I am unaware of?
OP here.
I have no knowledge that she’s sexually active, although she claims on Facebook that’s she’s bi. My wife and I roll our eyes at that as a teenage phase for attention, but who knows.
We got the HPV vaccine for our teenage son (who we are pretty sure isn’t sexually active because it’s hard to socialize with girls while suffering from depression, but again he could have secrets) so we wouldn’t worry about any signaling from that.
Although I do worry about what signaling an IUD would cause. Which may very well be my own particular sexual hangups, I readily admit.
Of course the implication that she’s a slut applies to getting an IUD too, for the same reasons.
This may concern Scott and anyone interested in clinical psychiatric practice: Norah Vincent, mentioned on SSC in Links 1/2015 due to her best-selling book “Self-Made Man” (on what living as a man feels like for a woman, and what she learned about gender relations)… then wrote another book about what being a patient at three different psychiatric clinics feels like, and what she learned about psychiatry.
She’s a phenomenal observer (especially of her fellow patients), painfully honest, and a professional writer who balances out visceral impressions with careful reflection. From her very unusual, deeply subjective perspective, she sees issues many don’t, and is driven by a deeply-felt need to reduce forms of suffering that society commonly does not adress.
The title is “Voluntary Madness”. Many of her conclusions would have been new to me if hadn’t seen them on SSC before. Others we have not even discussed here.
Is there any reputable information on drugs like suboxone and outbursts of agression? I’ve seen crazy sites like InfoWars mention this in relation to shooters. Trying to judge whether or not a drug has an influence in shooters is probably impossible to know since the sample size is so small.
My mother has health anxiety and I tried telling her bayes theorem to show how if you take any given little ache or groan as a medical ‘test’, the probability of it indicating something like an oncoming blood clot is low. She listened, and promptly pointed out something that I hadn’t taken into account and didn’t know how to answer:
How can you get prior probabilities to work with, or really even *any* probabilities to worth with for Bayes if you don’t know how often this sort of thing kills people in her demographic anyway?
I told her you could look at medical papers, but she made the common sense observation that theoretically she could but in practice she can’t because it would be too time consuming and it would fuel her health anxiety even further. Plus I’m not sure medical papers would have the sort of data you need in the first place.
Is there a good source for medical data you can use to be reasonably sure that your heartburn doesn’t signal an immediate oncoming heart attack?
For nearly all people/nearly all contexts, it’s just not practical to be looking for or at data. What you want to do is find a source that’s already done the data work. For instance, when I was pregnant, I found economist Emily Oster’s book on pregnancy extremely useful. If that kind of thing doesn’t exist – and mostly it doesn’t – my go-to is reading whatever the Mayo Clinic says about a topic. (Also, if you think your heartburn might signal an immediate heart attack, definitely don’t read anything! Get some medical attention!)
Here’s a good looking overview-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515422/#b21
Generally, total embolism deaths are about 100K year. Risk increases in the elderly. So you should be able gin up a rough guess from that.
Add in risk factors- bed rest? Prior history of DVT?
I’m wondering what the earliest reference is to something we might consider a scientific experiment.
Herodotus (writing in the mid to late 5th century BCE) mentions a spectacularly unethical experiment carried out by the Egyptian Pharaoh Psammetichus I (reigned 664-610 BCE) in which he had children raised without anyone speaking to them in order to determine which language they spontaneously developed.
Does anyone know of anything earlier?
There’s the mythical Chinese emperor Shennong who is supposed to have discovered the properties of medicinal herbs by experimenting on himself, but I don’t know how far back mentions of him go (he is supposed to have lived around 2400 BCE).
I think the biggest problem here is one of definition more than anything else.
For example, my own discipline in large part grew out of European alchemy. The European alchemists were themselves building off of Arabic alchemy, which was itself based on Greek chemia, which purportedly originated in ancient Egypt. So at what point in the Hermetic tradition between Zosimos and Boyle did it start being proper science?
People have been experimenting and building mathematical models of observable phenomena for at least as far back as we have records. It doesn’t make sense to seperate out any one and say that’s the first real scientific experiment.
In the pharma space, the common founding mythology of the concept of controlled clinical trials dates back to Babylon when Nebuchadnezzar wanted all of his soldiers to adopt a strict meat diet, but many vegetarians objected, so he allowed a group of them to eat nothing but vegetables for a period of time, then compared the fitness of the two groups, found that the vegetarians were just fine, and then dropped his policy and said “eat whatever you want.”
No clue how historically accurate that is but I’ve seen it referenced in a wide variety of mainstream media articles.
iirc, that’s one of the Bible stories from the Babylonian exile. Though obviously less well-known than the time they got thrown into the furnace.
Daniel 1:5-15, although the implication is that this was due more to God’s favor than any particular superiority of vegetarianism.
Gideon performs an experiment of sorts much earlier on to make sure it’s God that is talking to him.
1 Kings 18 22-40 involves Elijah performing an experiment to determine whether Baal or God is real.
Lot conducted several experiments to determine the number of righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah. The results were >10 with a truly excellent P value.
Arguably….eve and the apple? Adam served as the control.
I have two medieval examples of experiments, but they are later than your Egyptian one.
1. Ibn Battuta, 14th c. north African world traveler, in a mosque dedicated to Ali. It was supposed to be a miracle of that mosque that if you went into one of the minarets and called out on Ali, the minaret would tremble. After observing the miracle, Ibn Battuta repeated the process, calling out on Abu Bakr. The minaret trembled.
2. Jomviking saga has an ingenious if somewhat costly experiment to determine whether consciousness is located in the head or the body. The experimental subject holds a small knife, point down. Someone cuts his head off with a sharp sword. If he can, he then turns the knife point up. If he succeeds, his consciousness was in his body, if he fails, in his head. The experiment was suggested by the experimental subject, who was about to be executed anyway and pointed out that this was the perfect opportunity to settle a long standing question.
Probably written in the 13th or 14th c., but the event, if true, occurred in the 10th century.
As far as Jomsviking Saga goes: a translation of it is available online at http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Saga%20of%20the%20Jomsvikings.pdf and the mass execution (which interestingly resembles a mass grave: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/14768 ) begins on pg111 of the PDF (pg40), almost at the end o the saga. A different translation is quoted in http://www.strangehistory.net/2011/02/21/viking-decapitations-and-the-knife-experiment/
Empedocles of the fifth century BC gave the bucket experiment. He hung a bucket by a rope and spun it about the axis of the rope. Centripetal force pushed the water up the walls of the bucket. This strongly suggests that rotation is not a purely relative phenomenon, and thus that it is theoretically possible to distinguish the hypotheses that the Earth is motionless or rotates on its axis. (At least, that’s what Aristotle said. The very question of the motion of the Earth is usually dated a bit later than Empedocles.)
The Hellenistics (300-150BC) got into serious science and probably did lots of experiments. Philo of Byzantium wrote a whole book of pneumatic experiments which survives, although probably corrupted in translation. For example, he showed that combustion creates a vacuum. He used a thermoscope to demonstrate air expands when heated.
Lucio Russo claims that Ctesibius built pneumatic machines specifically to contradict Aristotelian claims, such as the impossibility of vacuum. I’m not sure how he justifies this claim, since Ctesibius’s work is lost. Maybe from Hero’s description of it (50AD)? Or Hero makes the argument and Russo assumes he’s copying Ctesibius? He also speculates that Ctesibius’s machines condemned as toys were experimental apparatuses.
Herophilus vivisected condemned men to differentiate sensory from motor neurons.
Hipparchus created a star catalog for the express purpose (according to Pliny) of a generational experiment of seeing if they moved and looking for novae. Indeed, almost 2000 years later, Halley observed that several stars were out of place with respect to Ptolemy’s catalog (which is probably just a copy of Hipparchus’s, which we know because if he’d actually measured the stars and participated in the experiment, he would have corrected Hipparchus’s measurement of precession of the equinoxes).
I like to credit Augustine for an early use of twin studies to discredit astrology, but I don’t think it is actually original to him:
Uh, any reference on cuddling as mindkiller? I seem to have missed that one.
Maybe check out the NYC meet-up comments; I’m guessing the discussion that happened there is the reason.
Can anyone help suggest a cause or cure for my mystery tiredness? (Or point me at somewhere more appropriate for that kind of question?)
It’s chronic (~10 years) and intermittent (some days I’m fine; other days I want to sleep all day, can’t get basic chores done like cooking and washing up, find it very hard to look after the kids as I’m lying on the sofa with my eyes shut going urgh. Sometimes it changes dramatically within a single day.) I’m a full-time parent of two small children, who are quite tiring, but they’re not the cause, as I’ve been tired since before I had them, and I seem to be more tired than most other parents.
I’ve had blood tests to rule out obvious things like anaemia, diabetes, thyroid, etc. I sleep quite long (8-10 hours) and the sleep clinic didn’t find any sleep disorders. I don’t have any joint pain so probably not fibromyalgia/ME/CFS. Some doctors have suggested depression, but I don’t feel depressed, just frustrated about not being able to do all the things I want to do. I don’t have any other symptoms apart from excessive thirst and hunger (but they’ve ruled out diabetes several times, and also diabetes insipidus, which has similar symptoms). My BMI is at the bottom end of normal.
My diet could stand to be improved, but it’s not awful. I eat food cooked from scratch about half the time and processed food the other half; I’d eat more homecooked if I had more energy. I do eat a lot of sweet things, but I don’t think that’s the cause; I tried giving up sugar and sweet things for 6 weeks and that didn’t help.
I tried modafinil and it didn’t seem to have any effect.
Exercise-wise, I walk and cycle a bit, and I’m doing beginner-level weight training once a week (would like to do it more often but lack of time).
I don’t know if it generalizes but I alleviated my chronic tiredness by eating truly enormous amounts of vegetables and whole carbs, and by consciously maximizing my calorie intake. To help take in more calories (mostly whole carbs) I take a number of steps, such as minimizing protein intake, since there seems to be a rule that the more protein you eat, the less calories you eat at the end of the day. I also cook things in certain ways to help maximize eating. Since you say you are chronically hungry maybe such methods might help you too. If you are interested we can talk about this more.
The problem is that most dietary advice is designed to reduce your caloric intake, not increase it, and I suspect it might be counterproductive for someone with your problem (hunger and tiredness and lowish BMI – I tend to have the same problems). Some of the things I discovered work for me are polar opposite of the typical caloriephobic dietary advice.
Thanks, that sounds relevant. There does seem to be a correlation, but not a perfect one, between how much I eat and my energy levels.
I’m curious about the “truly enormous amounts of vegetables” part – I thought vegetables filled you up with bulk without giving you many calories (and are favoured by low-calorie dieters because of this), so wouldn’t it be difficult to eat enormous amounts of them and still have room for a normal or above-average calorie intake?
I would be interested to hear more.
I’m very happy that you are interested. I have thought about it more and I strongly suspect that your problem is similar to the one I used to have.
I would write more, including answering your question about vegetables, but it’s difficult for me to be brief about this. I would like to say a lot of things and I need a moment or three of relaxation and idleness to write them, all the more so since English is not my native language and I’m slow to write in it. I promise I’m coming back, maybe later today or tomorrow, when I actually have time to write. Please don’t forget about this thread.
OK, thank you.
Or you could email me – my address is rachael dot churchill at cantab dot net.
The following is all probably-unhelpful, scraping-barrel-bottom advice, I’m afraid, but it sounds like you’ve already investigated everything sensible.
Do you have any chronic sinus congestion, history of snoring, or other warning signs (you already ruled out weight…) of sleep apnea? It’s unlikely that a sleep clinic would have missed this, I admit…
If you’ve tried giving up sugar, is it safe to assume you’ve also avoided caffeine and alcohol?
Have you tried vitamin supplements, and/or more regular exposure to sunlight? Do you take any medications regularly? Do you have any allergies?
If you’re typically home all day, have you checked out your building’s air quality?
Thanks for your suggestions.
I think my sinuses are normal and I snore only occasionally.
I don’t drink coffee or tea, so only get caffeine in Coke, about once a week, and so gave that up as part of my 6-week sugar-fast experiment (I think I did have one diet Coke over the period, but I hate the stuff.) I drink alcohol very rarely, a few times a year, I think the most recent was a party in February.
I’ve tried a generic multivitamin and a B12 supplement. I’m not on any medication apart from the contraceptive pill (and hay fever medication just this month or so). No allergies apart from hay fever and a mild allergy to mushrooms.
Interesting suggestion about air quality. Fairly unlikely, since I’ve been tired since before I stopped going out to work full-time, and before we moved to this house.
Since you are asking, here is my shot in the dark, based on personal experience:
Look into the depression angle. You might have some form of highly atypical bipolar disorder,cyclothymia or whatever from this highly confusing and unprecise field. Wherein your “sleepy” days are depressed, and your normal state is the (hypo)mania.
Relevant quotes from wiki, Bipolar II Disorder
> Because the symptoms of hypomania are often mistaken for high functioning or attributed to personality, patients are typically not aware of their hypomanic symptoms.
>Depressive episodes: symptoms may be subsyndromal.
>BP-II patients may have a tendency to oversleep and overeat.
Before I had my first truly manic episode I was just diagnosed with depression; you might as well never swing up to mania/never go down to depression.
I have read a bit about depression, and atypical depression, and dysthymia.
I hadn’t considered bipolar II or cyclothymia, so thanks for that.
I really don’t think I feel depressed, though, just tired. I don’t have suicidal ideation, and I do enjoy things and look forward to things.
And I don’t recognise the description of hypomania as my good days. I don’t think I’ve ever had only 3 hours sleep in any 24-hour period (even the nights when my kids were born, I only got about an hour’s sleep overnight but slept some more the next day), and I don’t do the risk-taking behaviours. I think I’m a fairly lazy person by temperament, so even on my (relatively) high-energy days I’m probably getting less done than the average person, not running round being super-productive.
Also, I said I have some days when I’m fine and some when I’m very tired, which is accurate, but may have falsely implied a switch between two binary states; whereas actually it’s more of a spectrum, from OK to a bit tired to very tired.
Re: Jaime Astorga’s comment. It’s a very clever idea, but have we done a fully consequentialist analysis of whether it’d be a good idea to pull the rug out from under the university system? It’s true that it seems locally very suboptimal but let’s not compartmentalize. Here are a few considerations:
* Lots of research is done by universities. Basic research is a public good–private companies don’t operate on a sufficiently long time horizon to fund blue sky stuff. (At least that’s what I read somewhere.) In a libertarian, university-free society, the only entities left to fund research would be corporations and foundations. Corporate research is likely to have conflicts of interest and be unreliable. On the other hand, if all research was funded by foundations and the foundations had an EA philosophy, that might result in good outcomes like differential technological development.
* Universities certify smart people as high status. These smart people go on to occupy top positions in government. If we replaced universities with some other credentialing system, that would be fine for employers, but it might not have the necessary cachet to make them look attractive for public office, or give them credibility as public intellectuals. Political candidates advertise themselves as “Harvard Law grads”, not “someone with an IQ of 162”. Both of these are very strong filters and employers might eventually learn that they’re more or less equivalent. But in the view of the general population, the person who tells others their IQ is 162 is someone to be laughed at. Left with no reputable way to certify their intelligence, smart people might be tempted to just say smart stuff… but that takes longer and it might be hard for less intelligent folks to differentiate actually smart stuff from smart sounding stuff.
* Brian Tomasik thinks it’s valuable for people to study liberal arts in order to have a better chance of shaping positive long-term outcomes. I agree–I think it’s a real shame that the way to signal being smart is to study some obscure, useless pure math thing instead of something higher value like the neuroscience of rationality or whatever. Our university system currently educates many people to a moderate degree in liberal arts, and a smaller number of people (humanities/social science graduate students) spend years thinking about them full time. This is subsidized by all the university stuff anti-university people love to hate–overpriced tuition, extreme endowments, etc.
* Generalized Chesterton’s Fence considerations. It seems like prestigious universities are a huge asset for the USA for instance, if only because they are the Schelling point for all of the world’s top scholars.
I think many of these positive effects could be accomplished better by alternative institutions, but I would like to see those alternative institutions come in to existence and seriously prove themselves before we work to dismantle the existing system. (Maybe some of the new institutions will come out of the EA movement.) I’m also not super worried about diminishing the power of universities a moderate amount on the margin, as Jaime suggests… but I think the above points should be considered for this move anyhow.
I can’t express how much I wish more high IQ people went into the social sciences. I actually think addressing blights like warfare, crime and poverty, apart from being hugely benefical in its own right, is the best single way to improve the progress of technology. Massive amounts of resources is lost to these things when it could be invested in the future of humanity (research, space exploration etc). It’s also worth considering what would happen if today’s weapons were given to the minds of the 12th century, and then imagining a parallel of what would happen if tomorrow’s weapons were given to us without any social improvement.
Also, once you start thinking deeply about the mechanisms of human society all sorts of mundane stuff takes on a new fascinating character – it’s hard to describe but its awesome.
It’s important that STEM people make themselves aware of the fields main ideas before they start projecting STEM concepts onto the functions of society though. To be sure, the social sciences have been quite polluted by quite a lot of wishy washy new age rubbish, but if you ground yourself in the classics of the field with a truth-seeking attitude you can learn to avoid or filter most of the motivated reasoning quite easily.
I can’t express how much I wish more high IQ people went into the social sciences. I actually think addressing blights like warfare, crime and poverty, apart from being hugely benefical in its own right, is the best single way to improve the progress of technology.
I’d love to see this too, but for a different reason; the way theory would come crashing down when a high IQ social theorist had to come face-to-face with one of our social housing clients who insisted that they had rights to X, Y and Z; never co-operated; made unreasonable demands; went running to local councillors, radio stations, citizens’ advice bureaux and the likes to put pressure on us; were cohabiting and having multiple children but lied to us about being in touch with the father(s) and/or partners; constantly demanded their “rights” but had no iota of recognition that they in turn had responsibilities or duties to their own children, their neighbours, and society; and more than that.
Squaring the circle of dealing with such people in the concrete, rather than grand theories of “Everyone is entitled to – !” would be highly amusing to me and the other faceless bureaucrats who get hammered as government drones entangled in red tape who are too blind to see The One Weird Trick that would solve all the problems 🙂
It’s also worth considering what would happen if today’s weapons were given to the minds of the 12th century, and then imagining a parallel of what would happen if tomorrow’s weapons were given to us without any social improvement.
Also, do you really think I can let that temporal chauvinism pass? Considering that “the minds of the 12th century” included Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis patron of architecture and the arts, the translators of Greek, Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts into Latin thus making wider areas of knowledge available to the West, the founders and faculties of the great universities and a flowering of what was not alone an important predecessor to the later Renaissance but a vital moment in our history on its own merits, I think I’d bet on the benighted mediaevals handling things better than us enlightened moderns.
Honestly, mildly insult the 12th century in front of me and expect not to get a slap? What were you thinking? 🙂
Frankly, they sound unable to control their own actions and risk to themselves or others.
That is, legally incompetent and in need of an insane asylum.
If we put everyone in an asylum who’s incompetent to manage their affairs, by e.g. displaying extremely irrational levels of future discounting, we’d need an asylum on every corner.
Worth noting that the US is already trying something very much like this, only using prisons instead of asylums, and with habitual drug use as the main proxy for incompetence.
As Scott has told us, you can’t just lock up people for their own good, even if they are crazy 🙂
Actually, the out-and-out crazy people are often the least trouble. You know when they’re yelling down the phone at you it’s their paranoid schizophrenia off the meds talking, not because they’re rotten malicious little scumbags.
A lot of people have a sense of entitlement; some of it is due merely to prosperity raising living standards, e.g. the expectation on the part of people applying for social housing that each child will have their own room versus the experience of some of us working in the section, who are old enough to have lived in Poor Backwards Ireland where not only did siblings share a room, they shared beds. Per the regulations, up to the age of 10 siblings may share a room; after 10, same-gender siblings can share. The only way you’ll get a three bedroom house for you and two kids is if one is a boy and one is a girl and one of the kids is over the age of 10.
A proportion are smart cookies who know all about gaming the system. They know how, by using the language of rights, they can get money and/or support from various state agencies and local government. These are the ones who lob in complaints to the bosses about staff, who get councillors to make representations on their behalf (of course, they never tell the full story, just their side), are the tearful subjects of local radio station reports, and have social workers agitating on their behalf. If all that fails, then the legal option is deployed and we get letters from lawyers about “Why is my client X years on the housing list and when are you going to give them a house?” (There are a couple of lawyers in the town who do very nicely out of free legal aid cases, thank you very much).
Then there are the minority who are criminals/troublemakers; or have mental problems; or are just perennially dissatisfied. In the words of my supervisor, “They wouldn’t be pleased with Hell, Heaven or New York”.
That’s why I’d love for the social theorists to have to deal with the awkward squad; so that rather than shove all the blame on inefficient slothful bureaucrats who cling to the system, they have to work with “I don’t want to live there even though it’s the only available house. I want this size of a house fitted out to my specifications in this area and if I don’t like it there I want a transfer in three months time and if I don’t get what I want I’ll be on to the councillors and members of parliament about it and I don’t care if I’m holding up everyone else on the list from getting housed because I am making demands”. And then see that the solution of “Well, give them a four bedroom house in the area they want!” won’t work because we don’t have the money, land, or planning permission to build there; that if we do it for one we’ll have to do it for all; that the residents in the area will and do complain about social housing tenants in private estates; and that the government won’t increase our budget because they’re a business-friendly, light touch regulation, low-tax administration and they’re cutting the budget re: social services because they’re appealing to middle-class voters.
And no, we don’t have the option of “To hell with them, let them live on the side of the road if they can’t or won’t pay for private rented accommodation” because hello, giant scandal story on local and even national media about “Petty red tape and heartless pen pushers mean mother of four young children, with health issues of her own, and one child is special needs, was callously left homeless when evicted. Crisis in social housing! Mean old public servants not flexible enough to respond to genuine need! Cut government bureaucracy!”
A couple of weeks on the front line in the public or civil service dealing with the public, the system, and the consequences of socially liberal demands (how dare you tell me to get a contraceptive implant to stop having kids! My body is my own! Nobody except myself has the right to make decisions about my reproductive rights! Or Drugs should be legal! What business is it of yours if I prefer to use recreational substances even if I render myself incapable of looking after my children and my house, or I get so wasted I don’t know who that guy I slept with was now that I’m pregnant, or that I have kids by three different women and no prospect of supporting any of them!), not swanning around as special advisors to government officials with expense accounts and ‘blue sky’ thinking, would be no harm at all.
🙂
I know I sound horribly conservative. I probably am horribly conservative. But unless we go back to Victorian values and the workhouse and ‘ruined women’ throwing themselves into the river, somebody gets the end of the stick about dealing with the problem, and it’s not the theorists.
Sexual liberation is a great idea in theory. In practice? Women getting pregnant. Okay, get the father to pay support. No, I don’t want the father to have contact with the child or I don’t know the father or He’s not living here anymore and I don’t know where he is or He can’t pay more than (say) ten euro a week maintenance because he’s not working.
Tell people to stop having sex outside of marriage? What kind of crazy fundamentalist religious bigot are you? I suppose you want to bring back witch-burning as well?
Okay, contraception! That will solve the problems of unwanted pregnancy! (Yeah, I’m old enough to remember the campaigns to legalise contraception in Ireland, and even at 15 I was going “I don’t think so…”) Well, we’ve got contraception and removed the stigma of cohabitation and unwed parenthood and now where do we go? Abortion?
Unless you are going to introduce mandatory Chinese-style sterilisation* and/or abortion “Okay, you’ve already had two children outside of marriage, the father(s) are not contributing to their support, you have to have your tubes tied and an abortion now you’re pregnant a third time”, what’s the solution? Because, um, isn’t that impinging on the whole “reproductive rights” idea in the first place, that women have bodily autonomy and can’t be forced or coerced by legal or social mores to have/not have children?
*We’ve had some lawsuits over surgeons performing sterilisations on women without their consent or knowledge because the doctor judged he knew best. Do you want to go there? I’ll listen to arguments, but if it boils down to “I’m nice middle-class college person, I can have sex freely because I’m responsible but those underclass types need to be spayed like feral cats and dogs because they can’t be trusted with sexual freedom”, then I think your progressive credentials are a bit tarnished.
According to Scott, we go to contraception so effective that you can’t risk-compensate around it. The use of contraception seems to still mitigate against unwanted pregnancy (I did the math somewhere, but can’t find it; using contraception cuts your relative risk of pregnancy by a factor of about seven, and using LARC by a further, much larger factor).
You’re writing as though we’re all going to hell in a rapidly accelerating handbasket. We’re not, really. Unplanned pregnancy used to be considerably worse than it is, and there’s good reason to believe it’ll be much better with LARC widely available, especially to people who can’t afford the up-front cost.
“the way theory would come crashing down when a high IQ social theorist had to come face-to-face with one of our social housing clients who insisted that they had rights to X, Y and Z”
Arguing whether the people you mention are in the right or wrong is not the job of social science. I think your objections highlight a problem that we desperately need smart people in social sciences to overcome – the core of social science is not to make normative claims about people’s rights, but to factually describe people and society using empirical investigation and careful unbiased reasoning.
Sadly, the left has abused social science by turning it into a political tool to suit their agenda, the right has used this as a flimsy excuse to discard it and replace it with whatever baseless assertions about human nature suit their cause. Both sides care nothing for the truth and are stifling an important field. In my opinion, if you can’t separate out normative (political) opinion from empirical investigation and careful induction+deduction, you don’t belong in social science. Sadly only a handful of people agree with me.
“Also, do you really think I can let that temporal chauvinism pass?”
I won’t deny the 12th century had many great minds to which we owe a debt, as every historical age has, but sadly saints and philosophers do not determine the temper of an age. To equate then to the internally peaceful civilization we in West enjoy now is false imo. Dueling over minor insults, death penalties for aposty, open practice of serfdom – in civilized parts of the world we have thankfully expunged such things.
“expect not to get a slap”
I received no slap, is it on its way in the mail? 🙂
Dueling over minor insults, death penalties for aposty, open practice of serfdom
(a) Duellling over minor insults – disrespect killings
(b) Death penalties for apostasy – no, perhaps not. But certainly there are social and career penalties for heresy on matters such as gay rights (whether for or against); there are plenty of death and rape threats thrown about in online quarrels, and we can argue about whether capital punishment fits in this broad category.
(c) Open practice of serfdom – do we want to get into a squabble over minimum wage laws? 🙂
My broader point is when talking about the 12th versus the 21st century, were you intending the mass of the people as being smarter, more pacific, better able to handle the impact of strange new technology?
I’m sure an average soldier or citizen in the 12th century might well have thought of 21st century weaponry as some kind of marvellous superweapon that would crush all enemies and enable their realm to be the most powerful, wealthiest, and most peaceful. I’m sure the average person nowadays given 30th century weaponry might think the same. If that’s the comparison you were making, I agree.
But if you meant “Our rulers and thinkers are so much wiser and smarter than the ignorantly superstitious churchmen and warring power-hungry kings of back then” – not so much 🙂
I guess it depends where you go in the world. Probably this would be a long conversation if we pursued it. Probably I’m just saying when you combine poor social structures meet tech, you get Daesh. So try to understand good social structures. Or something.
“But if you meant “Our rulers and thinkers are so much wiser and smarter than the ignorantly superstitious churchmen and warring power-hungry kings of back then” – not so much”
I’m basically thinking of aggregate human physical aggression in decision making, which I think has decreased. I’m thinking people are more likely to use non-violent means to get what they want now, and that if we can manage to continue that trend we can minimise the harms of new and more deadly human weapon tech.
Generally it sounds like we only disagree in very minor ways. Hopefully my original social science plea makes more sense now at least.
I think we need more low IQ people in social sciences:
Karl Pilkington – Satisfied Fool
Social science is already too abstract. It needs to be more grounded in the reality of social interactions – best way to achieve that isn’t importing more mathematicians.
Karl: “intelligent people… they argue alot… and you’re like oh stop arguing, just one of you say you might be right and go home” Do you know what I mean? You see them on newsnight or whatever and none of them are going to back down … and you think ‘what’s been sorted out?'”
Germaine Greer: “Things are not meant to be sorted out”
Karl:”Well, whats the point in chatting about it?”
I agree maths is not the problem. However, truth-orientated people with high logic/reasoning skills are desperately required. Currently a significant part of the field is occupied by medium IQ people who want to advocate for people rather than study how humans work. I think that’s well intentioned, but I think it’s ruining the field.
However one misconception about social science, even the politicised version, is that it isn’t empirical. The field does **huge** amounts of social research that most people are totally unaware of and even undergrads are exposed to quite a bit of it. The problem is not a detachment of theory from empirical work, its the fact almost no-one cares about separating normative and descriptive theory.
The major problem I see with that is that studying technology, engineering, and science can lead to being able to build useful things privately. Studying social science doesn’t leave you with the ability to build a better society. That’s up to decision-makers who are selected for the ability to raise money and not get caught in scandals, not to social scientists. Bureaucratic agency managers and what not can be, but their power is necessarily limited in that they don’t make policy. They only implement what elected officials and political appointees tell them to.
Yes I think you’re right. Decision makers are less and less inclined to listen to neutral factual experts. Instead they just balance between the views of various lobbyists, interests etc. Hence the most obvious social science job of policy advice and research has become a lot rarer. This hasn’t been helped by the tendancy of the social sciences to become highly politicised. Still social science jobs are still around if you apply yourself and distinguish yourself as competent. You probably won’t be rich, but they’re often more pleasant workplaces with less backstabbing you find in many workplaces.
Universities can keep doing research if you take away the students. Do you mean that tuition subsidizes research? The budgets of universities are quite opaque, but as far as I can tell, no. Biology research is done by professors paid by NIH who don’t teach.
And if tuition were subsidizing research, is that fair? Most research universities are public. If the state thinks research is a public good that should be subsidized, why not do it explicitly with a broad-based tax?
AFAIK in Australia research is *massively* subsidised by teaching, which is where unis earn the overwhelming majority of their money.
I agree that research should be independently funded. The professors I’ve talked to in a number of fields express the frustration with talented researchers having to spend so much time on teaching. The difficultly is measuring and funding quality in non-applied areas. The current solutions are a bureaucratic failure and either have trouble dealing with laziness or perversely incentivise quantity and sensationalism over quality.
This varies from university to university, but in the majority of cases research is subsidized either by teaching or by alumni donations (which among the Ivies are a much bigger windfall than tuition).
Property can only ever be a means to an ethical end – the fundamental ethical principle is that we should treat others with kindness (or some variation of this) – the ethical way for people to interact with inanimate objects is determined by how people *feel* about those objects – not some fundamental property of the object itself.
One of the roles of government and law is to find the best possible compromise between these conflicting attitudes/emotions with regard to inanimate objects.
This is where libertarianism is wrong, and Marx is right. You can’t get rid of government because private property takes precedence over it – you get rid of government when property exists in such abundance as to no longer be relevant to people.
“One of the roles of government and law is to find the best possible compromise between these conflicting attitudes/emotions with regard to inanimate objects.”
Is that a normative or a positive statement? Are you saying that that is how you would like governments to behave or how actual governments do behave? If the latter, what is your evidence?
“You can’t get rid of government because private property takes precedence over it – you get rid of government when property exists in such abundance as to no longer be relevant to people.”
I don’t follow that at all. The standard arguments for government don’t depend on property being scarce but on the existence of conflicts of interest among individuals—which would still be the case in a society where property was abundant. Indeed, it still is the case in modern societies where, by the standards of virtually all past societies, property is abundant. How do you think people more than a century or two in the past would regard a society where obesity was regarded as a serious problem not only among the rich but among the poor?
And the argument against government hinges on the claim that such conflicts are better dealt with by other sorts of institutions.
“Is that a normative or a positive statement?”
Normative, but I’d like to make a positive statement too:
Historically, governments have established and maintained rules relating to property in order to decide between competing claims – I imagine that these rules would, of necessity, normally represent a compromise, though a compromise based upon the power of the parties involved.
In my opinion, an ethical government would have at least some consideration for the feelings of people when establishing its rules, regardless of their power.
“the argument against government hinges on the claim that such conflicts are better dealt with by other sorts of institutions”
Assumptions:
1) The more contentious the rule (law), the more power (violence or potential for violence) needed to establish it.
2) It isn’t the fact of violence (or threat thereof) that makes an institution a “government”, it is its scale.
To me, libertarianism seems to be the position that if we were to recognize certain fundamental relationships between people and property (that a person has a right to do as they please with the fruits of their labor), government would become unnecessary or impossible – that government exists as a means of controlling people: through force the individual’s production is put to a use other than that which they desire.
If everyone were to accept this, then we certainly could do without a government (institutions would need much less power), but the extent to which people disagree is exactly the extent to which we must use power to establish rules. If people don’t agree with libertarianism, at best, we’ll just have a load of renamed institutions.
In this sense, the Marxist (I believe) position that in order to get rid of powerful institutions you must first achieve widespread agreement, and that abundance means less room for disagreement, is correct. “People need to eat” is an idea with a universality lacking in more abstract conceptions of how people should relate to inanimate objects.
(Obviously Communists were wrong to think they could do away entirely with private property: the attempts at achieving this required terrible violence. People like private property.)
“Indeed, it still is the case in modern societies where, by the standards of virtually all past societies, property is abundant.”
I would say that with respect to food we have a condition of abundance – in the society where I live, I can receive food for free, if I were to take food from a shop I am very unlikely to be punished for it, and if I were, they would still feed me for free in prison. Abundance of food has meant that the rules and institutions related to consumption of food have been weakened.
I’ll be interested to see what happens as we achieve an ever greater abundance of capital – obviously disagreement won’t completely disappear, but it is certainly possible that it will diminish to such an extent that the institutions required by society are sufficiently weak to no longer be considered to be “governments”.
Looking for an abnormal psychology textbook recommendation.
There is an excellent joke to be made here, but one which I am not quite familiar enough with psychology literature to pull off…
I recommend Little House on the Prairie. I considered recommending a psychology textbook instead, but that would make it a normal psychology textbook recommendation and the OP doesn’t want that.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008AU33PG/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1434992377&sr=8-1&pi=AC_QL40&keywords=oltmans+abnormal+psychology&dpPl=1&dpID=31ZMH819s9L&ref=plSrch
Abnormal Psychology (7th, 12) by Oltmanns, Thomas F – Emery, Robert E
I’m reading this at the moment. It’s well written and comprehensive insofar as I am able to judge either based on having read my way through most of a psychology degree’s textbooks. I haven’t seen any error, stupidity, woo or axe grinding so far either which is more than can be said for an unfortunate number of the books I’ve read during this project. The only complaint I have so far is that the summaries at the end of the chapters are very bare. It makes making flashcards for anki much more laborious than I would prefer.
Thanks!
I made a visualisation/diagram of one of my social/technology theories. Feedback hugely appreciated. And feedback for how to improve my blog generally. And does anyone have good ideas on how to promote a quasi-intellectual blog like mine?
Scott, was wondering if you had considered how you’d like discussion to be split between SSC and the subreddit? I want to suggest that a sub policy of not discussing SSC posts on the sub until they are at least two (?) weeks old might protect the discussion from getting split. That way we can easily discuss older stuff that’s effectively dead on SSC, but we don’t have to check multiple places for to see the discussion of the latest stuff.
The word “pedophile” has (recently?) split off “ephebophile” in an attempt to outrun the dysphemism treadmill. (Maybe I have that backward? Eh, it’s not the point.) This hasn’t helped their cause at all; now people read “ephebophile” as “pretentious pedophile from Reddit”.
They would do better to take a page from the transgender community, or from quack doctors. It’s not “trans and normal”, it’s “trans and cis”, it’s not “quacks and real doctors”, it’s “naturopaths and allopaths”. The key here would be to back-form something; Wiktionary says the Greek for “adult” is ενήλικας (enílikas), so it would be “enilikaphile”. (Current use of the word seems restricted to a one-off blog post and some silliness on archived 4chan threads.)
Am I worried about somehow empowering a yecchy community? A little, but if we can’t be clever about awful yet interesting things here, where can we be? Vladimir Nabokov practically invented most of the subculture’s tropes, and he still gets to be an icon of literary history and all that.
My understanding was that ephebeophile, etc. was an attempt to genuinely classify various attractions to those under the age of majority/adulthood.
If “classical*” paedophilia is attraction to children as young as four or six, then I see no benefit in creating a couplet of “paedophile/enilikiphile”, since presumably unless you’re a hard-core “Yes, I think three year olds are sexual beings perfectly capable of initiating sexual contact with thirty year old adults and of giving uncoerced consent” activist campaigner, then it only muddies the water. As it stands, the use of “minor” in sexual abuse/statutory rape cases means that in the popular view, there’s no difference between “had sex with seventeen year old” and “had sex with twelve year old”.
As for Nabokov, how anyone can read “Lolita” and come away thinking this is a genuine argument that grown men should have sex with young girls, I have no idea. Humbert Humbert reveals himself through his own words and descriptions of his actions to be a nasty, manipulative, controlling, rapist who deliberately undermined Lolita’s attempts as she grew older to get away from him as she tried to develop outside interests and self-confidence, and only let her go when she got too old for his preferences.
*”classical” as in “understanding up to now in medical/criminal usage”, not “Classical” as in “Greek and Roman paederasty”.
Some people apparently have trouble with the idea of an unreliable narrator, viz., Robertson Davies (“not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child”).
Did these people even read the same book? There’s a scene where Dolores literally cries herself to sleep in Humbert’s hotel room, and it’s implied to have happened regularly.
not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child
When Lolita wants permission to act in a school play, and Humbert who is acting as her guardian blackmails her with “have sex with me and I’ll sign the permission slip”, then reneges on the bargain?
Humbert is a pig. Lolita isn’t a sweet little snowdrop, sure, but she’s a young girl who has been over-sexualized by society and is playing with fire that she doesn’t understand. A responsible adult would turn her away; Humbert is a predator who takes advantage of her then, like many abusers, twists the blame onto her.
“I’m just like Humbert except that I like to tie ’em up,” Tom said mistrustfully.
Luckily this isn’t a case of self-serving euphemism but actually a technical term.
Basically, what is colloquially called pedophilia is actually three paraphilias lumped together. Actual pedophilia which targets prepubescent children, hebephilia which targets pubescent children, and ephebephilia which targets postpubescent children.
Obviously they all share the central characteristic of a repugnant sexual interest in children but they are distinct.
Being attracted to teenagers is now a repugnant sexual interest in children? Lets stop trying to pathologize something that is completely normal. There is nothing mentally wrong with someone who is sexually attracted to a teenager. The idea of “ephebophilia” as a disease is completely ridiculous.
I used to post on a forum where it was common practice for someone to post a photo of what appeared to be a fully developed adult woman, wait for people to comment on how attractive she was, then say something like “SHE’S ACTUALLY 14 YOU DISGUSTING PEDOPHILES!!!”
As if pedophilia is entirely about the technical age of the person you are attracted to and not about how they appear to be developed. Always annoyed me.
It’s about both. Of course, the revealing of the age of someone you are attracted to doesn’t change the morality of it. On the other hand, it is wrong to act in any way on attraction towards a 14 year old, regardless of how physically developed they are.
” it is wrong to act in any way on attraction towards a 14 year old, regardless of how physically developed they are.”
It’s wrong because a 14 year old is quite possibly (although you don’t know for sure as everyone is different) not mentally and emotionally developed enough to give meaningful consent.
But it isn’t somehow sick or deranged or perverted to be physically attracted to someone who appears to be an adult but technically isn’t.
Of course, it works both ways too. Actual pedophiles are sometimes capable of suspending disbelief for of-age women who appear to be underage. A fact that has been taken under close consideration by certain pornographers…
Psychiatrists aren’t quite as stupid or morslistic as you give them credit for.
My understanding from outside the profession is that this is talking about young postpubescent girls, like 14 or 15 year olds, not someone a month from their 18th birthday.
A teenager is anyone between the ages of thirteen and nineteen.
There’s a big difference between thirteen and nineteen, but I think broadly that while a (say) forty year old person having a sexual relationship with a nineteen year old might be considered cradle snatching/woo, go for it! (depending on attitude), most opinion would be that a forty year old and a thirteen year old is not acceptable, no matter how physically and mentally mature the thirteen year old is or appears to be.
And I’m including all genders in this; I know there’s a tendency to think older woman/young boy is a porn fantasy come true rather than statutory rape, but it’s just as bad.
I don’t know. Obviously you have social desirability bias firmly on your side, so winning this as a debate should be shooting fish in a barrel for you.
But looking back personally… I would very much have had sex with real women at 12 or 13, initiated by the woman. I mean, obviously it would have to have been discreet and not lead to pregnacies or AIDS, and perhaps 40 is a bit unattractive. But to try it out with a reasonably attractive 25-30 year old? Sure.
There is a failure mode in boys like me to wait forever, be shy, romanticize one unattainable girl after another and not really get any experimentation. To me that was way more harmful.
Lets talk about the recent Charleston shooting and race. Wait…
Lets talk about the recent Charleston shooting and gun control. I have a pretty libertarian attitude on most things but I’m starting to feel like enough is enough. So fellow libertarians, try to convince me that gun control is a bad idea because all of the arguments against it seem to be either too abstract to be relevant right now(we need guns in case there is a civil war!) or just simply wrong(more guns cause less crime).
The link between availability of guns and mass killings seems pretty strong. Is there any evidence to suggest otherwise?
In that case, honest question: how many countries are you willing to burn to the ground to reduce the incidence of mass-murders in America from nearly-zero to zero? The war to reduce the number of terror attacks from nearly-zero to zero has wrecked about five. The war to reduce the number of… I’m honestly not sure what rare tragedy we were originally trying to reduce with the drug war, but it’s destroyed another eight. What makes you think the war on guns would be any more effective or any more bloodless?
There’s also Scott’s old argument against snap-reactions on these things: http://squid314.livejournal.com/347454.html
This isn’t a snap reaction. I’ve been thinking about this ever since the Virginia tech shootings back in 2007. I was sure not to have a snap reaction during the Fort Hood shooting. And then again during the Connecticut shooting. And then the one in Aurora. But now I have to say enough. Mass shootings should simply be unacceptable. If taking away some freedom in order to prevent that from happening is effective, then I would easily accept that trade off. And I think it would be effective because countries like Japan can reduce the number of gun deaths to eleven in a given year. I’m sure there are other factors involved but the United States has far more gun violence than pretty much every other rich country in the world. It’s not a coincidence that we also have far more guns.
Do you also believe in taking away some freedom to prevent Islamic terrorism?
It depends. What kinds of freedom are we talking about?
The freedom to be Muslim seems like it might be analogous.
FacelessCraven – What? I thought “stupid Americans worship guns” was a ludicrous straw man, but comparing freedom to own a gun, with freedom to worship a certain God seems to suggest it isn’t.
@Sweeneyrod – “What? I thought “stupid Americans worship guns” was a ludicrous straw man, but comparing freedom to own a gun, with freedom to worship a certain God seems to suggest it isn’t.”
Is it your standard policy to conclude that people whose values differ from yours are stupid? I humbly submit that it is not a method likely to result in productive discussion.
If you were not aware that pro-gun Americans value guns very, very highly, I think it is possible that you do not understand America in general or pro-gun Americans in particular very well. The second amendment is placed directly alongside freedom of speech and religion, and there are quite a few of us who find that entirely appropriate.
@FacelessCraven
Sorry, I should have worded that better. I didn’t intend offence by saying “stupid Americans”, I was just trying to word it in the fashion someone attacking extreme gun fetishism as a straw man might do.
However, I still think the analogy between freedom of religion and gun rights is flawed – I suspect most of the ~65% of gunfree households don’t feel as strongly about gun rights as you do, whereas ~100% of Muslims (or indeed religious people in general) would feel very strongly about someone removing their right to worship.
@Sweeneyrod – it’s all good, sir.
“However, I still think the analogy between freedom of religion and gun rights is flawed – I suspect most of the ~65% of gunfree households don’t feel as strongly about gun rights as you do…”
…Just like whatever percentage of the population isn’t Islamic doesn’t feel strongly about Islam?
Muslims want freedom to follow their customs and practice their religion in peace. Gun owners want freedom to defend themselves and enjoy their culture in peace. The opinions of non-Muslims and non-gun-owners are not the issue. Why would they be?
@WrongSpecies – “And I think it would be effective because countries like Japan can reduce the number of gun deaths to eleven in a given year.”
First off, “gun deaths” is bullshit. If you want to talk about deaths, talk about deaths. If you want to talk about violence, talk about violence. If guns make deaths or violence worse, that should show up in the overall death and violence rates. “Gun Deaths” is statistical bad faith, a gerrymandered category designed explicitly to beg the question. It shant be stood for.
Second, Japan has not “reduced” their violence to eleven gun deaths a year. To my understanding, Japan has been a preternaturally peaceful and orderly nation, from a lawful violence standpoint, for the last several hundred years at least. Japan does not have low murder rates because it lacks guns, it has low murder rates *because it is Japan*. Banning guns will not turn the US into Japan. We do not have their history, their ethnic makeup, their social customs, their traditions, their ethical systems, their government, educational or business systems. Similar issues arise with comparing America to European countries. Do some digging into the criminology research, see what they think about comparing crime rates in different countries.
America is a violent country. We’ve been that way since the cutting-edge weapons technology was the matchlock. That being said, the murder rate continues to decline precipitously. If the problem is only getting better with time, why is your (presumed) massive and incredibly divisive social change necessary?
As for spree shootings themselves, they end either 1) when the perp decides he’s done shooting, or 2) when the perp encounters someone who can shoot back. If you think spree killing is the menace of our times, broader support for concealed carry seems like a better solution.
If you’re able to separate gun deaths, you are in a position where it is at least possible to establish factually what difference guns make, rather than handwaving about mystical essences of nationhood.
Also worth mentioning that the Japanese justice system is this bizarre eldritch construct that makes their crime statistics pretty well incomparable with those of the rest of the developed world. More comparable for murder than other things –despite their best efforts, the Japanese haven’t managed to construct a fundamentally different method of counting bodies– but even there, it tries its hardest to make criminologists cry.
@TheAncientGreek – “If you’re able to separate gun deaths, you are in a position where it is at least possible to establish factually what difference guns make…”
If the question is “does the presence of more guns mean the number of people killed by guns goes up”, the answer is unquestionably yes, and that answer is also completely useless.
The useful question is, “does the presence of more guns mean there are more people killed?” If guns encourage and enable violence, the answer should be yes. Citing “gun deaths” is an attempt to confuse the former with the latter.
If you can explain why 1,000 people killed with guns is a worse outcome than the same 1,000 people killed with machettes and baseball bats, please do so.
“…rather than handwaving about mystical essences of nationhood.”
Might I ask that you take a minute or two, examine my statement again, and try to understand what I am saying? I apologize if I expressed myself poorly, but my point was that the amalgamation we call Society has an influence on the behavior of the individual, and different societies encourage different behaviors. I do not think this is a radical position to take.
In japan’s case specifically, two points: First, if you think we can get their murder rate by banning guns, what cultural artifact of theirs needs to be banned to get down to our suicide rate? Second, their society has, shall we say, radically different attitudes toward race, ethnicity, and immigration than we do. Should we adopt those policies and attitudes as well, in the name of safety? If not, why not?
I think most people are aware that Japan has a historical tradition of honorable suicide. It only applied under limited circumstances, of course, but I can easily see how having popular culture permeated with references to it could make suicide marginally less unlikely
@Jiro – “I think most people are aware that Japan has a historical tradition of honorable suicide.”
And we glorify bank robbers, gangsters, and rebellion of every kind. Should it be surprising that a culture that demands conformity and treats suicide as honorable has a low crime rate but lots of suicide, while a culture that glorifies crime and rebellion and treats suicide as a tragedy has more crime and less suicide?
The Japanese homicide rate was significantly higher than that for Western Europe and slightly higher than that of the United States at the beginning of the Twentieth Century – however, it continued to decline throughout the century while the crime rate for the West increased.
Japan only managed to achieve a lower homicide rate than England in 1990.
@FC
The US won’t disarm unless it wants to disarm, and it won’t want to unless it sees US violence an anomalous and fixable, and the US won’t see its violence as anomalous and fixable without thinking of gun deaths and spree shootings as separate categories.
Your formula for maintaining the status quo about gun ownership will also maintain the status quo about violence.
@TheAncientGeek – “The US won’t disarm unless it wants to disarm, and it won’t want to unless it sees US violence an anomalous and fixable, and the US won’t see its violence as anomalous and fixable without thinking of gun deaths and spree shootings as separate categories.”
Indeed. Now all you need to do is demonstrate with solid evidence that US violence is anomalous, and fixable by removing US gun culture.
You can’t do that by talking about gun deaths, because you need to prove that guns lead to more overall violence, not just more gun violence. The overall violent crime rate is what matters, not the rate employing a specific type of weapon. If guns make violence significantly worse, then a country with both guns and knives should have significantly worse violence than a similar country with just the knives.
The similar country is the problem. At a minimum, you need a country with a deeply rooted gun culture and similar rates of violent crime. Then you need an intervention that removes that gun culture, and a finding that rates of violence subsequently decline significantly without obvious dramatic confounders.
You can’t do that with japan because they’ve never had a gun culture or similar rates of violence (though someone in this thread mentioned that they used to be more violent than England.) England DID have a gun culture, but their murder rate was way lower than ours, and after the intervention their crime rates got worse, not better. Switzerland has a similar gun culture, but nothing approaching our crime profile.
The point is, to point to England or Japan as models for the results of disarming the US is simply dishonest. Combine that with a history of blatant, chronic falsehood on the part of the anti-gun crowd, and our mood becomes uncharitable.
Handguns were going to kill us all unless we banned them. Everyone knew there was no reason to own one unless you were a criminal or crazy. The public disagreed, people switched to handguns as the primary defensive tool, and the murder rate just kept dropping.
“Assault weapons” were supposed to make the streets run red. If we don’t stop the assault weapons bans from expiring, our streets will turn into Mogadishu! The ban expired, and there are now more than 1.6 million ar15s in private hands in the US, not to mention the AKs, SKSs, FALs, H&Ks, m14s, and down the alphabet we go. The murder rate continues to drop.
Concealed carry is horrifyingly irresponsible! It’s an excuse for a bunch of would-be Dirty Harrys to swagger around, escalating every minor social disagreement into a lethal gunfight! Every state in the union now has a concealed carry statute, the majority of them are Shall-Issue, and the murder rate just keeps dropping.
http://tinyurl.com/nz6tb9u
There’s the data. The start of that last drop is roughly around the point that the standard civilian longarm changed from a 30-30 deer rifle to a semi-auto “assault weapon” with a 30-round detachable magazine and a bayonet lug, we started letting anyone who could pass a criminal background check conceal high-capacity semi-auto handguns loaded with hollowpoints on their person, and the democratic party more or less abandoned the gun control agenda at the federal level. What you need to do is to point out where, on that graph, we entered a crisis bad enough to consider removing what many consider one of our most important Constitutional Amendments.
I understand that you probably don’t like guns. You probably consider them objectionable on an instinctual level. Unfortunately, the evidence is not on your side. The “Status Quo about violence” is that it is declining precipitously.
@FC
If you forbid gun deaths as a separate category, they will not figure in the statistics because you have banned them. That isnt rationally proving a point.
Ye, the anti gun side need to prove their point, and so does the pro side. However you argument against gun deaths as a separate statistical category presupposes, unreasonably, that the pro side has made their case.
Gun deaths do feature in some of the statistics, eg the UK and Japan, where there are few guns, fewer gun deaths, and fewer homicides overall. You seem to be aware of these statistics, since you have brought in the argument about cultural differences to negate them. Nothing could count as an anti gun statistic to you. That is another way in which, whilst demanding that the anti gun side make their case, you have set things up so that they never could. Excluding all possibility of refutation is not rational argument.
@TheAncientGeek – “If you forbid gun deaths as a separate category, they will not figure in the statistics because you have banned them.”
I am not banning them. Murders that involve a gun are part of the overall murder statistic, together with those done with knives and fists. Suicides that involve a gun are part of the overall suicide statistics, together with suicides using pills or hanging.
You appear to hold the position that widespread gun ownership results in a more violent society. That means the overall rates of violence are what you have to show, not simply the rates of firearms violence. Japan has much lower suicide by gun than the US, but much higher suicide overall, which would make it a poor example for arguing that gun prohibition drastically reduces suicide.
The more I’ve read, the less I think comparing crime rates between countries is a useful thing to do. If we’re going to do it, though, we should at least be comparing overall rates for each category, and we should be doing it per capita. This is all I have been saying from the very first post. Does it still seem unreasonable to you?
“However you argument against gun deaths as a separate statistical category presupposes, unreasonably, that the pro side has made their case.”
My case is that the murder rate has been dropping since the early 90s, even though firearms have grown both more numerous, more lethal, and more integrated into daily life continuously over that period. Further, research for the last twenty years has uniformly showed that guns are effective as a means of lawful self defense, that they are used in this manner frequently, and the social good of their lawful use outweighs the danger they pose in misuse and crime. We’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit from gun control laws, further laws are likely to be ineffective, and prohibition is not a remotely practical option.
Here are my sources for that overview:
http://www.guncite.com/journals/gun_control_katesreal.html
Why research over the last twenty years? Excellent question! Read more here:
http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html
Again, here’s the overall murder rate for the US for the last several decades: http://tinyurl.com/nz6tb9u
If you prefer to hear it from Wikipedia, I can roll like that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use
If you have contrary evidence, please present it. I would very much like to see it.
“Excluding all possibility of refutation is not rational argument.”
I explicitly outlined the steps needed to provide a good national-comparison argument for gun control. You need a country similar to ours, with crime rates similar to ours, and a gun culture similar to ours. You then remove the gun culture, and demonstrate that violence drops significantly after the removal. All of those steps are there for a reason.
I could argue that instituting mandatory ownership of machine guns would eliminate almost all crime in the US, and prove it by pointing to Switzerland and Israel. But that would be bullshit, because Switzerland and Israel are fundamentally unlike the US in many of the same ways that England and Japan are fundamentally unlike the US. This question isn’t as simple as pointing to countries with convenient stats and ignoring the inconvenient ones.
I leave you with a parting quote: “…how do those who attribute U.S. gun murders to greater gun availability explain the far higher U.S. rate of stranglings and of victims being kicked to death? Do they think that Americans “have more hands and feet than” Britons? …the analyst attributes grossly higher American violence rates “not to the availability of any particular class of weapon” but to socio-cultural and institutional factors that dictate
that American criminals are more willing to use extreme violence; [quoting a report of the British Office of Health Economics]: “One reason often given for the high numbers of murders and manslaughters in the United States is the easy availability of firearms … But the strong correlation with racial and linked socio-economic variables suggests that the underlying determinants of the homicide rate relate to particular cultural factors.'”
/jeffgoldblum.gif
There are a lot of things that should simply be unacceptable. You just have to accept it.
You didn’t answer my question, Wrong Species. How many destroyed countries are in a “simply unacceptable”?
Probably because it’s a loaded question not relevant to the discussion. I’m not talking about invading other countries. I’m simply talking about a few more restrictive gun laws. So I guess zero if you really wanted an answer.
I’ll answer it for you then: between three and two hundred countries.
“A few more restrictive gun laws” will no more move the needle than a few drug dealer arrests did. You are not a wizard.
Massacres are the application of guns least sensitive to types and numbers of guns. America’s market integration means that even if constitutional issues were resolved voluntary state laws would do nothing to prevent importation from red states. You must confiscate 99% of guns from the entire country, and that is literally requesting Civil War II.
(Reply to child comment)
The argument isn’t “we should ban guns right now”, it is “the banning guns would be a good thing to happen, so we should persuade people that it is a good idea”. If guns were to be banned, it wouldn’t cause Civil War II, as the law banning them would have been passed by politicians who wouldn’t have done so if it was political suicide.
Counterpoint: Prohibition was successfully passed as a constitutional amendment, and winding down the War on Drugs has thus far proved politically impossible. (Maybe that’s changing now, but only after decades.)
So a ban that a politically sustainable coalition believes is a good idea over a long term can also be a ban that engenders a great deal of violence to achieve, at best, partial success.
Other developed nations have managed to create effective gun control regimes, so it’s not that it can’t work. It’s more that there’s no obvious path from “America as it currently is” to “America with vastly reduced gun availability”, and legal fiat (the preferred method) won’t take us there.
@Sweeneyrod – “The argument isn’t “we should ban guns right now”, it is “the banning guns would be a good thing to happen, so we should persuade people that it is a good idea”.”
If you could demonstrate that banning guns WAS a good idea, that might help. But the fact remains that the majority needed to get a ban passed is much smaller than the majority needed to actually attempt confiscation without widespread civil unrest. Most of the people who have guns really, really want to keep them.
@Alraune
Seriously think about what you just said. You honest-to-god don’t see any middle ground between total gun freedom and Civil War 2?
I honest-to-god don’t see any middle ground between what you would term “total gun freedom” and World War III.
To maintain Pax Americana, you must have the US Navy.
To have the US Navy, Texas and New York must mutually pretend they are a unified political entity.
To have Texas and New York mutually pretend they are a unified political entity, you must maintain the second amendment.
To stop spree killings, meanwhile? Spree killings are the most technology-, price-, and time-insensitive use of guns imaginable. Nothing short of mass confiscation will stop them, and to do that, you must break the lynchpin of the entire global status quo.
You are calling for the deaths of millions to stop the deaths of tens. This is scope-insensitivity at its most psychotic.
@Wrong Species – “Seriously think about what you just said. You honest-to-god don’t see any middle ground between total gun freedom and Civil War 2?”
…Do you have any idea how many gun laws there are already? All the common-sense gun control laws were passed forty years ago. The maybe-this-will-work laws were passed thirty years ago. The now-we’re-just-fucking-with-you laws came in during the Nineties, and failed to do a lick of good, exactly as predicted.
There are no laws left to pass that will not result in complete confiscation. There is nothing left to offer in compromise.
One argument for civilian ownership of firearms you may not have considered is that if people are disarmed they depend for protection against crime on the police. They more they do so, the more willing they will be to increase police power and ignore abuses thereof.
Mass shootings are very dramatic, but they represent a tiny fraction of the murder rate.
Why, by the way, do you regard the more guns, less crime argument as simply wrong?
Mother Jones maintains a google docs spreadsheet of every mass shooting since 1984. Average is 27 dead per year.
FBI says 400 a year killed by police.
I think you might have this backwards. When people can have guns, police have to carry guns all the time, and be constantly nervous that the next guy they stop for speeding or something might carry a gun.
If there were fewer guns, the police might not be forced to be so trigger happy.
I agree with Saint_Fiasco. In the UK, civilians don’t have guns, so the police don’t have guns (and 80% don’t want them).
Saint:
Restrictions on firearms ownership mainly impact law abiding people, who are the ones quite unlikely to shoot police. They have much less effect on people who are already law breakers.
So far as your broader point, my concern isn’t limited to police shooting people. It includes wire tapping, restrictive laws, lots of things that are justified as done to protect the public—and more likely to be accepted the more the public feels in need of protection.
That seems more like a theoretical problem than an actual one. Do you have an proof of this? I’m sure the UK is a good example but that could just be an acecdote.
And honestly, the idea that more guns will cause less crime just seems ridiculous. It’s like suggesting that fewer marijuana restrictions will cause less people to smoke it.(Maybe not a fair comparison, but that’s how it feels to me). You mentioned some statistical evidence supporting the idea, I would like to see it.
Four years ago the UK had a series of riots triggered by a black man being shot allegedly unjustly by the police: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots
(I say allegedly because it turned out he was a drug dealer with a gun in his car and the shooting was later ruled lawful.)
In the few parts of the UK that are beginning to resemble US inner cities socially, US paramilitary policing methods are becoming necessary and resulting in the same sort of abuses and “abuses”.
Moreover the UK is an exception. In almost all other European countries, police routinely carry guns despite the fact that the civilian population is disarmed.
@Wrong Species – “You mentioned some statistical evidence supporting the idea, I would like to see it.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/2012-operations-report/image/nics-echeck-june-dec2012.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States
http://tinyurl.com/nz6tb9u
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/120731095634-declining-gun-ownership-chart-story-top.jpg
These two papers are the best I’ve found for illuminating the realities of the gun control debate.
http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html
A detailed overview of the academic gun control movement, and why their research was worthless. This paper in particular helped get the CDC banned from researching gun violence.
http://www.guncite.com/journals/gun_control_katesreal.html
An honest look at the actual state of the “conversation” over gun control, written by a blue-tribe author.
Wrong Species–
You can look up Kennesaw, GA in the U.S.
I think it’s decent evidence, though I’m sure people have found reasons to reject the crime rates there as significant, or as caused by the gun laws.
Fun fact: I first heard about Kennesaw from the song “Right Wing Pigeons From Outer Space” by the Dead Milkmen.
In the UK, civilians don’t have guns, so the police don’t have guns
Except for the police who do have guns and are allowed to engage in planned assassinations of criminals who they think have guns.
Meanwhile, over in Iceland, a third of the population has guns, about the same as the United States, and the police are unarmed.
And in Japan, no civilians have guns, but the police are fully armed.
So this theory that there is a correlation between armed citizens and armed policemen, is not looking so obvious to me.
More generally, can we please recognize that the UK and Japan, and while we are at it Switzerland, are extreme outliers and almost useless for this sort of comparison? All three have, for essentially ideological reasons deeply rooted in their national culture, made very unusual decisions regarding the role of violence in civil society. They are not generic examples of how “civilized nations” do things, for the the savage United States (or anyone else) to follow; their recipes aren’t likely to work anywhere else. And at least in the case of the UK and Japan, they come with unanticipated, unwanted consequences even when applied on their home territory.
You are claiming that the rate of mass shootings is unacceptably high. Mass shootings are exceptionally rare compared to most other causes of death.
What would be the rate of mass shootings which would be low enough that would allow you to feel that the benefits of allowing people to own guns was an acceptable trade off?
“or just simply wrong(more guns cause less crime).”
Why do you think that is obviously wrong?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/18/11-essential-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/
41% of whites have guns in their home
19% of blacks have guns in their home
Blacks have a much higher homicide rate. So yeah, there isn’t a casual link, but there is a correlation between the two.
“The link between availability of guns and mass killings seems pretty strong. Is there any evidence to suggest otherwise?”
You want to look at gun control and total murders- that is the correct reference class.
To what extent does that black/white difference reflect an urban/rural divide? That seems like the confounding elephant in the room, here.
Which is the best possible argument that a negative gun-to-crime correlation should be ignored. You need to compare apples to apples – blacks to blacks, whites to whites, poors to poors, rich to rich. Unless you think guns make you rich, or guns make you white.
Comparing Americans to Americans and Japanese to Japanese might not be a bad idea either.
Guns in the home are legal , registered guns.
If it turns out that most gun deaths are caused by illegal/unregistered guns, the obvious solution is to legalize them all.
On the general “more guns, less crime” issue (I think the title of a book by John Lott)…
The part of the argument I’m familiar with involves the effect of state laws that do or do not permit concealed carry. It was set off by a Lott and Mustard article offering statistical evidence that such laws reduced confrontational crime. There has been a long series of articles since, on both sides of the issue. For a while I covered the controversy on my web page, Lott being an ex-student and friend of mine and the underlying argument one I sketched in my Price Theory text. I eventually decided that the statistical arguments had gotten past my level of competence to judge and gave up on it.
On the other hand, I think it’s pretty clear by casual observation that the predicted downside of such laws—lots of ordinary people getting into arguments, pulling guns, and shooting each other—didn’t happen.
Ack. All I know is what I heard in a news report on Irish radio, which went “Shooter given gun for birthday present, later went on to do this.”
My immediate reaction is that maybe if someone is asking for guns for presents you shouldn’t be buying them for them, but that’s unfair to people who like guns, use them for legitimate purposes, and don’t plan to go out and slaughter people (or talk at tedious length about how bang-bang is bestest and means they is real manly-mans/womanly-womans).
My gifts policy is lethal weapons only. Knives, bows, guns. My best friend got a pump-action 12-gauge for his birthday, and he and I traded compound bows for Christmas. Chef’s knives are still technically lethal, so that’s what the more liberal foodies among my kin receive. It’s a system that has served me well.
I suppose your friends may be more rational than mine (or live where such superstitions don’t exist) but I have heard people say that you shouldn’t give knives as gifts because it will sever your friendship.
The common “workaround” if you receive a knife is to give the giver a penny, thus making it a sale rather than a gift.
I find this custom endearing.
The knife block we received for our wedding included a penny embedded in a triangular card sticking out of the block. I infer that the idea is that you give the penny as the gift, and then the recipient hands it back and gets the knives.
(Since we got the whole thing in a sealed box via UPS, the issue never came up.)
My ex-wife asked me for a handgun for Christmas once, because she only had a revolver and wanted something magazine-loaded, so she could keep one next to the bed and one next to the toilet and never be caught off-guard. Seemed a little paranoid to me, but basically harmless. She’d been in the army 14 years, so knows how to handle them and all.
Giving one to your teenage son awaiting a felony charge is kind of a little different.
I asked for a handgun for my birthday one year and got one. I don’t *think* I should be considered a threat to anyone….
1) Would a specific proposed gun-control measure have predicted this crime? E.g. Many restrictions concern particular types of guns, but the killer used an ordinary pistol.
2) Are there already laws on the books that should have prevented it, but didn’t? If the current laws are not being enforced, will it help to pass new ones? E.g. The killer was awaiting trial on a felony charge, which means that it was against the law to give him a gun for a present, yet it happened.
It’d be nice if we could simply ignore anyone who comes out for more restrictions without offering specifics– maybe we should anyway. Today the papers are full of variations on “We’re not talking about taking anyone’s guns away, but compare the US to [list of countries where everyone’s guns have been taken away].”
There are tens of thousands of “gun control” laws on the books. When you say this, what exactly are you talking about? The absolute ban and mass confiscation of all civilian-held firearms in the US? I think the death toll might exceed nine in that case.
You’re starting to feel like enough is enough because mass shootings? The existence of guns in our country hasn’t changed. There have always been mass shootings, regular though rare. What has changed is a couple things, first being the media coverage of them. Second, related, is the motivations. Mass killings used to be over group conflicts (cattle wars, indian massacres, crime syndicates etc.). We still have these, but people don’t lose their minds when rival gangs shoot each other up, even though these are “mass shootings”. What we have that is new to the past few decades is mass killings with no seeming reason outside the killer’s own mad aggrandizement or psychosis. Here, I’m not sure if they are getting more frequent or if we just hear more about them due to media saturation.
I can tell you this: China has had a rash of mass stabbings*, the most lethal of which I believe claimed thirty-odd lives. The problem would seem to not be firearms specifically.
I believe, and I am quite current on the science here, that there is no relationship between the number of legal guns and the violent crime rate except for a small non-significant negative relation. We have a problem, I absolutely agree with you. But you think the problem is an inanimate object, and I think it is a cultural process that is producing anomie and alienation in a small number of mentally disturbed, socially marginalized teen males.
We have outlawed all minor violence and pushed a few into plotting truly damaging violence.
But I’m sure having the ATF kick down Grandpa’s door and take his shotgun will solve the problem.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010%E2%80%9312)
The ten most lethal shooting rampages in history, per wikipedia, took place in:
Norway, 75 dead
South Korea, 56 dead
Tanganyika, 36 dead
Australia, 45 dead
Russia, 34 dead
People’s Republic of China, 32 dead
United States of America, 32 dead
Japan, 30 dead
Israel, 29 dead
Columbia, 29 dead
And that’s counting only mass killings where the killer used a gun as his primary weapon. So I’m not seeing much of a link between availability of guns and mass killings with guns, never mind mass killings in general.
The sort of mass killing you are concerned with, are a tiny insignificant fraction of shootings or murders generally, signal-boosted in your data feeds for various reasons. But if you do still feel motivated to care about shooting rampages specifically, the type of people who commit them are generally intelligent, methodical, and patient. They tend to be middle-class, with substantial financial resources, and they know how to fake sanity well enough to pass for normal in any society that doesn’t go to truly dystopian levels in seeking out and institutionalizing the mentally ill.
You can’t stop them from getting guns. They’ll spend years establishing themselves as legitimate target shooters, hunters, or collectors. They’ll join military reserve organizations. They’ll travel overseas to buy guns. They’ll download plans for home-made submachine guns from the internet, and practice their metalworking skills until they get it right. Even if they don’t spend years planning their specific massacre, they’ll spend years in the headspace where Shit Is Going Down Soon, I Can Feel It, And I’ll Need A Gun When It Happens.
If there’s value in gun control, you’ll need to look elsewhere to find it. With these killers, you can maybe look for non-dystopian ways to address nascent mental illness, but mostly you’re going to need ways to stop rampaging gunmen when you see one shooting up your neighborhood. Or a way to stop feeling bad when you see the carnage on TV, but the solution there is obvious.
In fairness, if you consider our current incarceration rates “truly dystopian” (and I do), we used to have precisely such a system.
The contemporary United States is nigh-dystopian in its eagerness to incarcerate disobedient poor people, without regard for whether the reason for their disobedience is mental illness or something else.
But here, we are dealing mostly with mentally ill middle-class people. Those, we usually don’t incarcerate or institutionalize, or formally classify as “mentally ill” in any legally significant way. In part because a formal record of mental illness tends to permanently disqualify people from any job not involving the phrase “do you want fries with that?”, and that’s something middle-class bureaucrats don’t do to their, er, classmates.
If you specifically want to stop spree killings, and kamikaze airline pilots and the like, and nothing more, identifying the million least-sane middle-class citizens of the United States and locking them all up might be a very effective solution. If you have some other priority that conflicts with that, well, now you have a very hard problem. Ooh, look, Evil Gunz! Over There!
Outlier =/= trend.
There is a reasonable model where disarming the population leads to fewer spree killing deaths overall because there are fewer potential spree killers, but it also increases the deadliness of each individual spree killing, because the killings are harder to stop. So looking only at the deadliest spree killings does not necessarily tell us about overall spree killing deaths.
I agree that worrying specifically about spree killings, as opposed to killings or even deaths, seems a little weird. One could argue that one should be able to feel safe in one’s workplace, school, or church, but spree killings seem like a very rough proxy for killings in idealized safe spaces.
Notwithstanding the US’s reputation as an armed camp, only about 2-3% of civilians routinely carry firearms. This would suggest that there would be relatively few spree killings in the US with more than 30-50 victims, but that smaller shooting sprees would be mostly unaffected – a few would-be mass murderers would be unlucky enough to get shot by e.g. their third victim, but not in statistically significant numbers.
And indeed this is what we see. But we also see that spree killings generally top out at 30-50 even when the victims are unarmed. And, yes, armed US civilians do on occasion stop spree killings, but it isn’t common. So I think the statistics are not greatly skewed by the additional threat a US spree killer faces from his victims.
Agreed that it would be better if we could look at overall trends rather than extremes. But the median spree killer blends into the noise of gang violence, domestic murder/suicides, and other common criminal activity, to the point where it is difficult to get a good count of spree killers even across the United States. A US/China/Tanganyika cross-cultural study at that level, is probably not practical.
To the extent that we have people who care specifically about spree killers, the extremes are all we really have to look at.
The relevant number is how many they encounter, not how many they kill. Most spree killers do not kill everyone present. They should expect to encounter 50 people long before they kill 50. This conversation is all prompted by 9 people killed in a church. There were a lot more than 9 people in that church.
I can’t find a 45-person mass-shooting-murder in Australian history. You may be thinking of the Port Arthur massacre, which killed 35 people and injured 23 more, in 1996… and which resulted in increased gun control in Australia.
Yes, that was a straight-up typo on my part. Sorry.
Didn’t they find out his parents gave him his guns?
Yes. He was not legally eligible to purchase a gun. His father gave it to him as a present, which is also illegal, but punishable only if the court can prove his father actually knew he was ineligible.
NYT is currently reporting that he bought the gun himself using money he received as a gift.
Damn. WaPo reported the opposite yesterday. Probably best to just ignore the news for a few days. They always seem to give conflicting accounts right after something happens.
Think about the Drug War and its effects on minorities and poor people. Think about civil asset forfeiture where the cops can take your stuff because the *stuff* maybe possibly might have had some connection with drugs. Think about ever increasing militarization of police who now often talk about themselves as if they are soldiers in an enemy country.
Now ask yourself what the “Gun War” will look like. Personally, I think it will be one or two orders of magnitude worse than the Drug War. There are about 300 million guns in America. About one-third of American households have guns. (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/04/a-minority-of-americans-own-guns-but-just-how-many-is-unclear/)
People always ask libertarians “How do you get there from here?” I think it’s a very fair question to ask people who want to impose gun prohibition.
War on Drugs analogy. It would be a better world if no one had guns and if no one took drugs, but that does not mean we should ban either.
The only way to achieve a gunless society would be to take all the guns away from people who currently have them. A few of these people would not stand by and let this happen. They would fight back and the resulting gunfights would kill people. The number of people who would die in these gunfights is likely to be significantly higher than the number of people who die in mass shootings.
If you did not go after people who did not turn their guns in you could achieve a society with alot fewer guns without the deaths. However, a society with fewer guns means that those who do have guns are those with the highest motivations. People who want to go on killing sprees would be among those with higher motivations. The guy in Norway is an example.
So the only way to use gun control to prevent mass shootings would likely lead to more gun deaths than they would prevent.
Suppose we start treating guns like cigarettes? Smoking rates have declined sharply, but not through forcible confiscation of cigarettes.
As someone living in the UK, my facetious response is: What, make them illegal to use indoors?
But my non-facetious response is: what specific proposals do you mean?
If we agreed that it would be good to reduce gun ownership, here are some tactics we could adopt from efforts against smoking:
* PSA’s and school lessons on the dangers of gun ownership.
* Graphic depictions of the terrible things wrought by guns.
* Bans on gun advertising.
* A general effort to make gun ownership seem uncool, idiotic, self-destructive, dangerous, and disgusting.
* High taxes on guns.
I don’t know which of these have been most effective in the case of smoking, but I think there *has* been a large shift in perceptions of smoking, which was produced through deliberate effort after a consensus emerged that smoking was harmful.
Right now there is no consensus that guns are harmful, but if there were then we have options besides sending goons to smash open people’s gun safes.
Note that the consensus was that smoking was harmful primarily to smokers. If you persuade someone that something he is doing hurts him, he becomes less likely to do it. If you persuade him that something he is doing might result in his hurting someone else, less so, especially if he thinks the most likely someone else’s are people he would like to hurt, such as burglars who break into his house.
Persuading him that something other people do might hurt him gives him a reason to support laws against it, but not a reason to stop doing the same thing himself.
So the smoking analogy doesn’t work very well.
Second-hand smoke, bans on smoking inside in bars, and general societal disapproval of smoking near kids seem like they could be an okay model?
@James Picone
I’m curious as to which specific anti-smoking tactic you think could reduce gun violence that DOESN’T already exist.
We already ban guns from various locations in which it is determined they might be harmful (schools, government buildings, etc.) by law, and many property owners do by choice (bars, restaurants, etc.)
We already don’t sell guns to children or to criminals or across state lines without an officially licensed gun shop. The sale of guns is far more restricted and cumbersome than the sale of cigarettes.
There are huge portions of the public who generally disapprove of guns and frequently let you know about it. There are huge anti-gun public relations campaigns.
The major difference is the statistics. In the case of smoking, the evidence is clear. In the case of guns, it’s clear in the opposite direction. The public shaming about smoking wouldn’t work if there was widely available evidence strongly suggesting that smoking actually does make you live longer.
@Matt M:
I was trying to make the smoking-to-guns metaphor better by suggesting that instead of the initial don’t-smoke-it-kills-you stuff a better focus would be second-hand smoke.
I don’t know enough about American gun laws to make any coherent suggestions. I don’t even know Australian gun laws well, and I live here!
Fair enough.
I would suggest to you that is already happening in America and is a major focus of anti-gun efforts.
There are plenty of anti-gun messaging campaigns that are essentially limited to “if you own a gun your child will find it and shoot themselves”
In the US military, since the government owns the guns/ammo, we have to rent them like library books. Meaning that the government keeps track of who is firing what. And we can’t just keep the gun/ammo indefinitely.
A gun without ammunition is a paperweight. If the government owned ammunition, and it was controlled like cigarettes and/or like it currently is in the military, then that would be one way to regulate “guns”.
People wouldn’t be so quick to fire their guns since ammo is scarce/controlled, and the government is acutely aware of anyone who is stockpiling ammo for any potential mass shooter incidents.
Granted, this might create a black market for ammunition, but from what I know, this sort of DIY ammunition would be less safe to fire.
@J. Quinton – “Granted, this might create a black market for ammunition, but from what I know, this sort of DIY ammunition would be less safe to fire.”
…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handloading
[EDIT] – …the bottleneck is of course the powder and primers. These require relatively sophisticated chemical engineering. As we know, federal prohibition is highly effective at eliminating possession of substances that require sophisticated chemical engineering to produce. I humbly retract my objection, and agree that this is a Super Good Idea.
Ha. I imagine volume would be the bottleneck there — for the kind of weight you’d need to load a useful amount of ammunition, you could get quite a lot of use out of any of those other substances.
Of course, nitrocellulose-based propellants and the simpler types of primer are somewhat easier to make, too — if more dangerous. Moonshining might be a more apt analogy.
So, I think there’s a lot of issues with the “make ammo really hard to get.”
1. The most effective way to reduce gun accident deaths and wayward rounds is well trained people. You’ll just increase the number of poorly trained people with a gun they don’t really understand.
2. Not to be rude but….do you know nothing about human nature? People will drive across state lines to stockpile phosphate clothes detergent, and you’re talking about AMMO?
Lemme walk you through this:
Day 1: Rumor spreads that congress is considering the “$5,000 bullet” law.
Day 1 H+1: every ammunition factory in the world starts running three shifts.
Day 1 H+2: Every piece of ammunition for sale in the US is gone at obscene prices. Much of it to people who came in, bought a box of bullets, and then started the background check process on a gun. Much more to mass buyers now selling it on the black market.
At the end of a week, ammo prices and sales and gun prices and sales are higher than ever. Russia is now covertly selling off all their surplus (and even non surplus) ammo because the profits are so large.
The law is announced, passed (we presume total political approval for funsies) and a date is announced- in two months, all ammo will be government controlled.
The shit really hits the fan. Every ammo factory in the world is so far backlogged with grandfathered orders before the deadline that crates of ammo will be shipped legally to addresses all over the US well into 2017. Ammo is so hard to find, that many third world rebels are now using swords.
The law is implemented. All ammunition sold in the US must be bought from a government dealership. Everyone in the United States owns a gun and enough ammo to run World Wars III-V.
Crime halts because everyone is heavily armed and paranoid, but spree killings are at an all time high because armed paranoics tend to develop mental illness of the shooty type.
America secedes from the American governments, realizes they have all the ammo, and invade Russia. Millions die. We conquer moscow but are eventually driven out. Militarily crippled, russia is subsumed by china, and Canada takes over the US. Our healthcare improves, but tim hortons causes the diabetes rate to spike even higher.
So if you care about diabetes- please keep bullets legal.
Note that CJB’s tongue-in-cheek scenario is only a slight exaggeration of what already happened from 2008 through now. America’s citizens have sufficient ammo stockpiles at this point to render Fallout’s loot system realistic.
@CJB – Missing an analysis of the effects of the dreaded Russian Bear Cavalry on the American offensive, but otherwise thorough and well reasoned. I welcome our Maple Syrup Overlords.
“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly and banned.” -Mark Rosenberg, CDC
…The problem is, of course, that guns are not cigarettes, and making them look like cigarettes seems to involve a fair amount of creative articulation.
This can be done and has been done. In countries with low levels of gun ownership, gun owners who don’t have a good reason are seen as weird and creepy.
What can I say? Lies work.
The local sheriff came to my school when I was a kid, and they had this machine that consisted of a transparent plastic lung they hooked a cigarette up to. The lung started out brand new, took a few puffs, and was completely blackened and tarry. That was pretty effective at convincing 8 year-old me not to smoke.
On the other hand, while knowing what a gunshot wound looks like is sufficient to keep me from shooting myself, it has had no impact on my desire to own guns.
The gun version of this presentation would involve a number of heart-rending stories of people accidentally shooting their friends dead, toddlers killing themselves, and so on. (I don’t claim that these are things people should actually worry about, but that is how you would optimize for emotional impact).
I’m probably weird, but stories of human suffering don’t affect me much. If people accidentally shot kittens, that would really bother me. One of my friends did shoot himself when I was a kid, but it never occurred to me to blame the gun.
Every year in December, the Dragnet radio show used to do “.22 Rifle for Christmas”, which was almost exactly this. (The response was overwhelmingly negative, but Webb and the network stood by it. No word on any resulting stats.)
You’ll shoot your eye out!
We’d been doing that, starting a long way back (maybe 1963 in the U.S.?), and many gun control laws were passed. (In addition to the existing laws which were primarily for disarming black people.) In the past twenty years, the anti-control side has started to push back, primarily by showing that the pro-control side was lying, a lot. As the disasters predicted by the pro-control side have continually failed to occur when gun controls were relaxed, people are much more willing to listen to, and vote for, the anti-control side.
The best way to get rid of guns is to address the reason people have guns, self defense. If people felt more secure than they would not feel the need for a handgun. If police departments did a better job fighting crime and drugs were decriminalized, crime would drop and fewer people would want guns.
Main problem there is that people’s perceived security appears to be completely unresponsive to their actual circumstances. I expect it’s a hedonic set point thing.
The police are ALSO a threat to one’s safety and security. They would be an even bigger one if they were the only armed group in society.
Anything you do to increase how “effective” the police are would INCREASE, not decrease, my desire to own a gun…
You miss the other reasons people own guns, which is that they are awesome, dangerous little machines, and terribly good fun to shoot!
There is sport, there is hunting, there is pest removal (somewhat more serious for farmers and the like), there is the sheer appreciation of amazing and beautiful (and yes, deadly! Danger always improves the appeal) devices.
The way some lads are all googly-eyed over cars? That’s how I am with guns. I didn’t want a Lamborghini when I was young, I wanted a Kimber Custom Match.
I wear a gun for protection. I live in one of the most violent cities in America. But if I felt totally safe? I wouldn’t carry that gun. But I’d still have a dozen of them.
As others have already mentioned, the link between “high availability of legal guns” and “mass killings” is actually pretty weak – I think you need to present better evidence than “American mass killings, many of which are perpetrated with guns, are signal boosted to me”.
There MAY be a link between “gun deaths” and “availability of guns”, but keep in mind that the numbers reported for “gun deaths” include a large number of gun suicides. Which, if your goal is to prevent violent crime, is not a useful number.
What legal measures do you think would have prevented the Charleston shooter from acquiring the means to kill black people? He was already violating gun laws by having one at all, and he was willing to risk the strong possibility of being executed for the crime of murder – so exactly what additional deterrent would you suggest?
Timothy McVeigh killed a couple hundred people with fertilizer and a moving van. Al Qaeda killed several thousand with box cutters and airline tickets. Spree-stabbers in China have killed up to 30 or so people at a time. Hell you could probably kill 9 people by driving a car through a crowd. Motivated killers will acquire the means to kill. And in any case even if you make all guns illegal (let alone just apply “a little common sense gun control”), you don’t make guns magically go away. Black market guns seem widely available even in countries with strict laws. And once additive manufacturing takes off, more or less anyone will be able to acquire a gun at will, laws be damned.
Finally, America is unusually violent – in certain places, and for certain reasons. If you removed all the gang warfare (much of it driven by the Drug War, another ill-conceived Prohibition attempt), America looks a lot less violent.
One thing I hate about the gun control debate is that any notion of utilitarianism gets thrown out the window. People say “How can we prevent mass killings,” when they should be asking “how can we prevent killings.”
Some conservationists refer to visible endangered species like blue whales and rhinoceroses as “charismatic megafauna,” point being that “save the whales” is a goal that everyone can sympathize with, but saving individual whales does very little if you aren’t also saving the plankton and the rest of the ecosystem. I’d go even further and say that keeping the blue whales alive for another ten years while the ocean acidifies is strictly inferior to letting the whales die while preserving the overall health of the oceans.
Mass killings are the charismatic megafauna of the gun control debate. They are highly visible, but insignificant. Mass killings may be highly motivated. They are also a tiny minority of all killings. I suspect most gun deaths aren’t caused by highly motivated agents.
You talk about the isolated goal of “reducing violent crime,” but that is not a reasonable isolated goal to have. Violent crime is one of any number of ills in society. I would even accept an increase in the rate of violent crime if it were less lethal. I’ll gladly trade one less shooting for two more stabbings or eight more muggings.
I would, in a heartbeat, support any measure that doubled the rate of mass shootings if it also cut the overall rate of gun deaths by only 10%. I would also gladly trade 10 more murders for 100 fewer suicides.
I suspect the largest visible effect of making guns harder to obtain would be to reduce the number of suicides. Suicidal people are not highly motivated in the way you imagine mass murderers to be; there is plenty of evidence that making the most reliable methods of suicide (guns and jumping from heights) less available, directly reduces the number of suicides. The “highly motivated killer who can stop at nothing” is another charismatic megafauna, a useful concept only in a debate where people have lost scope.
The problem I usually have with the utilitarian arguments for gun control is that the people making them rarely assign (or immediately dismiss) any utility to gun ownership, because they can’t imagine anyone legitimately enjoying guns for reasons other than killing people. Which is weird, because nobody applies a utilitarian analysis to fast cars or swimming pools, which are also usually unnecessary and kill a lot of people.
If you’re willing to do that, and not assign guns a magical totemic status as death symbols, than a utility argument can be made.
As far as suicides go, how many people obtain a gun strictly for the purposes of killing themselves? It seems like a lot of gun suicides are committed with guns the owners already have for reasons that would be considered legitimate in anything but a totally “ban all guns” legal system.
And for cultural reasons, I suspect guns will continue to be more widely distributed in America than elsewhere, even if we make people jump through more hoops to get them.
The real sticking point for me is that it’s just not clear that anything other than truly draconian anti-gun measures would actually substantially reduce the number of available guns in the US – in particular, substantially reduce their availability to the people who use them nefarious lay most often (usually drug related gang members, who by necessity have strong contraband networks) b
Don’t even need to do that, magical totemic death symbols have a positive utility to billions.
> There MAY be a link between “gun deaths” and “availability of guns”, but keep in mind that the numbers reported for “gun deaths” include a large number of gun suicides. Which, if your goal is to prevent violent crime, is not a useful number.
I would hope everyone would have preventing suicide as a goal, so I would not dismiss gun suicides. Many people go on to regret their suicide attempts.
> Motivated killers will acquire the means to kill.
Some means are better than others, which is precisely why our armed forces don’t use fertilizer bombs or kitchen knives.
> Spree-stabbers in China have killed up to 30 or so people at a time.
Well, that was a group of four.
“Some means are better than others” Which is why no mass shooting by a lone gunman has come close to the casualties of the Oklahoma City bombing, let alone 9/11.
The military doesn’t use knives or fertilizer bombs – but they don’t inflict that many casualties with small arms either. Most casualties in warfare are from artillery or air strikes.
Anyway I’m not saying preventing suicide is a bad goal, but it’s orthogonal to the “conversation about guns” that inevitably pops up whenever there is a particulalrly spectacular gun crime. So including it in the “gun deaths” figure as support for how uniquely violent America is is disingenuous.
Guns are certainly a highly effective means of suicide, but gun availability and suicide rate don’t correlate much better than gun laws and murder rate – Japn, which has basically zero gun murders, has an etraordinarily high suicide rate.
@ Gbdub
Hell you could probably kill 9 people by driving a car through a crowd.
Quite a few more than 9, with a little planning. Start with the car at the top of a hill, and a crowded area at the bottom. It better be a low-traffic street, so the car can build plenty of momentum before hitting a fat man. With a stolen car and some wire around the steering wheel, you might escape capture if you jump out soon enough. Add a few gasoline cans and something slow burning, and you will have a colorful scene to watch from safety.
Has anyone with the profile described above, ie not a terrorist, done this, even in Britain? If not, perhaps the people who do recreational mass killings prioritize something other than body count.
There have been spree killings in the First World that involved vehicular assault, though no one that I’m aware of has done the gascan thing if they weren’t trying for a car bomb.
It’s rare, though.
…that having been said, the first story I saw on the BBC this morning was this:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33211479
Better yet, you could use a trolley. You’d need an accomplice who has the chance to switch it onto another track where it will only hit a single toddler, but refuses to.
Palestinians in have started using cars as direct weapons instead of conveyances for bombs in recent years. Death tolls have not been that high as of yet.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/11/05/car_attack_in_jerusalem_why_are_terrorists_ramming_vehicles_into_crowds.html
Funny how “determined killers will find a way” never means that the army can function without guns.
Criminals aren’t a military. Spree Killers aren’t a military. Crime isn’t modern warfare. You are trying to draw a connection that doesn’t exist.
If you have evidence that can actually stand up to scrutiny, present it. Snide comments are not evidence, or even argument.
Generally it’s easier to slaughter helpless civilians than people who are shooting back. If our army were solely in the business of genocide, they could probably make do with machetes.
I don’t catch your meaning. Armies made up of determined killers make do just fine with machetes and patience the world over. We try very hard to make our military NOT be those guys.
The smallest piece of ordnance that the contemporary United States Army considers to be a “gun” is a 105mm howitzer, which is indeed the sort of thing you really, really want to have if you’re going to be slaughtering people in mass quantities.
Rifles and pistols, “small arms”, are essential to modern armies primarily as defensive weapons, to protect soldiers in the brief interval between discovering the enemy and calling down a rain of fire and steel upon them from the folks with proper guns (or weapons more fearsome and lethal still). Armies will occasionally use small arms as offensive weapons in special circumstances, e.g. counterinsurgency warfare where it is considered essential to not kill too many enemy or enemy-adjacent persons while accomplishing the mission.
Armies understand how this works. Small arms are versatile weapons that are very well suited for immediate self-defense against unexpected threats. They can be used for very limited offensive purposes, but they aren’t terribly good at large-scale killing. For that, you want heavy ordnance.
So in the contemporary United States, everyone has access to the general-purpose defensive weapons with limited offensive potential, but the criminals and crazies who want to go beyond limited offensives and engage in mass slaughter are stuck with the wrong tools for the job. That doesn’t sound like a bad equilibrium to me.
I would hope to convince all rational people that our gun policy should not be optimized for mass shooting prevention, as they represent a tiny fraction of gun deaths.
As a general point on gun control, here in the UK we have very strict gun laws, and pretty much everyone is happy with the situation. As far as I know, the situation is fairly similar in most other countries that are similar to the US. Therefore if you oppose strict gun laws, you should do so either on the grounds that there are major differences between the situations in the US and elsewhere, or that there is some reason people outside the US can’t think clearly about gun control.
For example, the argument that guns are necessary to fight a hypothetical oppressive government works equally well for supporting keeping gun laws in the US the same, and weakening those in the UK. So if you want to use it, you need to back up your conclusion that there should be greater gun rights in the UK, or explain why that conclusion doesn’t follow.
Most people everywhere don’t think clearly about any policy. Tradition, the influence of historical neighbors, the existence of a moral panic sometime in the distant past, etc. are wholly adequate to explain regional differences. On top of that, one man’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens; your argument applies equally to any differences in mean opinion on policy, over time as well as distance.
“Gun control is not about guns its about CONTROL”. On those grounds I oppose it. Less control is better. Less control of drugs, alcohol, guns.
Given the vastly higher rates of death by cop in the US, I don’t think it’s the UK that needs to be worrying about the government.
This doesn’t necessarily follow; the surrender of France to Nazi Germany reduced the rate at which the French were being killed by Nazis, but did not really reduce the amount that the French needed to worry about being dominated by Nazis.
No, UK is an outlier. France and Germany have 3x as many guns per capita. Switzerland has another 3x as many, same as US, but it’s an outlier in the other direction.
@Sweeneyrod – “As a general point on gun control, here in the UK we have very strict gun laws, and pretty much everyone is happy with the situation.”
I’ve visited the UK. From my first moment there onward, I was fascinated by your fences in particular. Fences everywhere, most all of them topped by wicked points designed to gouge, gash, rend, pierce or maim. On the old wrought-iron fences they could be confused for archaic decoration, but on the shiny new pedestrian bridges, the flanking of free-rotating pipe sections decorated by six-inch steel spikes seemed to speak of a certain… distrust in the goodwill of your fellow citizens. Likewise the embarrassing profusion of surveillance cameras, and the knife disposal bins. Since, then, I’ve been fascinated to read about the various knife bans, and the attempt to engineer and legislate “stab proof” knives. And despite all that, the UK is also the only place I’ve ever been openly threatened with violence in the street.
I like America. I do not want to live in the UK. If you feel that the UK has more or less solved the public safety issue, I submit that your fellow citizens have an odd way of showing it. A quick search of google indicates that your violent crimes rates are not the best. In fact, it looks like the gun ban immediately preceded a runaway increase in violent crime, which has only recently receded to pre-ban levels. Whatever you did to stop the runaway, it doesn’t seem to have been the ban. Maybe you could have skipped the ban and done that thing instead, and had even less crime than you have now?
http://tinyurl.com/oxfyzgk for those who haven’t seen the fencing. Yeah, we have the occasional string of concertina wire in the states, but they seemed to use this spear-point stuff about the way Americans use chain link.
Are you comparing new York to London, or Podunk to London?
Dallas, Vancouver, and Philadelphia to London and Cambridge, actually. What they call fencing in the UK would be an invitation to a lawsuit in America. Concertina wire isn’t pretty and could doubtless fuck you up, but some of their fences could literally impale you through the torso like a goddamn pike.
Do you endorse knife bans too, out of curiosity?
I call bullshit on this. Many American fences have visible sharp points, and I have never heard of such a lawsuit.
@Larry Kestenbaum – “I call bullshit on this. Many American fences have visible sharp points, and I have never heard of such a lawsuit.”
http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/696/930/232/1262052067991_hz_myalibaba_web4_2987.jpg
I have never, ever seen a fence like that in the US or Canada. Roughly four feet in height, about the same as a suburban chain link fence, perfectly positioned to catch the face, arms, or neck of a teenager or adult who, say, tripped or was knocked over into it. From close examination, I can tell you that those petals are raw sheared steel and sharp as hell. In the UK, I saw fences like that all over, often flanking high-traffic areas. I was honestly horrified. I would expect that sort of fencing to be considered a public safety hazard in the US, but am open to the idea that I’m wrong.
http://www.georgeherald.com/img/ghnw20131115-113333-707.jpg
A lot of the taller fences were like this. I’ve never seen fences like this in America or Canada either. In fairness, while googling these I did come across an example in Seattle, where a fence-jumper had managed to impale himself very badly.
@ FacelessCraven:
No way in hell is that fence only 4ft high; and it would absolutely be illegal if it was. The actual height for that kind of fence is more like 8ft.
Here is an article with an identical fence that is 7ft.
@Andrew G. – “No way in hell is that fence only 4ft high; and it would absolutely be illegal if it was. The actual height for that kind of fence is more like 8ft.”
I’m not sure what to say. I have personally viewed palisade fences 4 feet high. I stood next to them and ran my fingers over the spikes, and boggled at how something that dangerous could be allowed in an urban area. If you think I’m lying or mistaken, I don’t really know what to say apart from digging through my files and seeing if I still have photos from the trip. Probably 40% of the pictures I took in England were fences, because I was so fascinated by the horrifyingly fucked-up nature of them.
[Edit] – For what it’s worth, the lowest height I could find online was 1.5 meters/5 feet.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/BS-1722-Cheap-wholesale-galvanized-D_2002114013.html
@ FacelessCraven:
There’s a distinction between “being available for purchase online” and “something you can install next to a highway without the highway authority issuing you an abatement order”.
And if you install a potentially dangerous fence and someone who isn’t trying to climb over it gets injured, you will indeed be on the hook for damages, whether or not any such order was ever issued. In fact even if someone who is trying to climb over it (and hence is trespassing) is injured, you might still be on the hook for damages under the Occupier’s Liability Act 1984.
I live in Australia, in Adelaide, a smallish capital city of a state (~1.1 million people). I’ve visited Sydney/Perth/Brisbane/Melbourne, but never really walked around in the suburbs there.
I don’t recall ever seeing fences like that, and I used to work somewhere rather close to a notably crime-filled suburb and had to drive through it on a regular basis.
It might be an eastern-states thing. They’re much more densely populated.
None of the military installations I’ve ever seen have been like that. Hell, half the time at government facilities the guards don’t even have guns.
I don’t know if it is true, but one claim made on the pro-gun side is that burglaries of houses where people are present are much more common in Canada than in the U.S., with the implied reason being U.S. burglars being afraid of getting shot. That’s one example of trying to do the comparison between two reasonably similar societies.
Not sure about Canada, but I know that in the UK, the rate of “hot” robberies is something like 2-3 times that of what it is in the U.S.
You already brought up John Lott so I won’t belabor the point, but he explains all of this quite clearly in his book. Anyone who actually cares about examining this issue rationally would do well to read it rather than to just say “lol more guns less crime that’s ridiculous!!!”
“Not sure about Canada, but I know that in the UK, the rate of “hot” robberies is something like 2-3 times that of what it is in the U.S.”
Is it?
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/robbery-topic-page
About 345,000 robberies in the US in 2013.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/period-ending-june-2013/stb-crime-in-england-and-wales–year-ending-june-2013.html#tab-Robbery
Just over 60,000 robberies in England and Wales in the year ending June 2013. England and Wales has approximately a fifth the population of the United States.
You mention “hot” robbery, well, I don’t know what that is.
“Anyone who actually cares about examining this issue rationally would do well to read it rather than to just say “lol more guns less crime that’s ridiculous!!!””
I don’t think it’s ridiculous, I just think the evidence points against it.
But it doesn’t. Read the book and he will show you the evidence himself.
“Hot” robbery = robbery where the victims are home during the attempt.
In the UK, criminals make no effort to wait for you to leave to rob you, because they don’t fear the residents of the home.
In the US, criminals rob you when you’re gone because they’re worried that if you’re around you will shoot them.
@Ano, I think you’re thinking of burglary.
(To a first approximation, all robberies are “hot”, since the use of force or intimidation is an element of the crime. But burglary/housebreaking can be done when the residents are at home or away.)
You demonstrate the psychological problem with this thinking. Since the UK effectively banned all guns (your Olympic shooting teams have to go to France to practice), violent crime is up 52%, and gun crime specifically is has more than doubled. Yes, it is still far less than in the US, but banning the guns didn’t reduce what you wanted it to at all! But you did something! A law was passed! And now all those murderers can be charged with two crimes instead of one!
You compare apples to oranges (Britain to the US) and say: “we banned guns and have a quarter of your murder rate!” and it is true, and was true pre-ban. But when you compare Britain to Britain pre-gun ban, the murder rate is now higher. But I guess you still get to feel superior to us hick colonials.
Perhaps you’d also like to comment on your industrial-country leading rates of serious assault, rape and sexual assault? If the gun ban is the only thing separating our crime rates, you would have seemed to trade a high murder rate for a truly astronomic rate of serious felonious assaults. Then the utilitarians can argue over how many rapes are equivalent to a murder.
Before the UK had a ban, it had tight control, not a situations comparable to the US,
@TheAncientGreek – “Before the UK had a ban, it had tight control, not a situations comparable to the US.”
…And its pre-ban crime rate wasn’t similar to ours either. So why is England being touted as an example of how gun bans could reduce violent crime in America?
So explain why gun crime doubled AFTER the ban. And explain why violent crime is up massively over a period in time in which violent crime is dropping like a stone in the US, with our 300 million+ guns.
I am saying the situations aren’t comparable. But every time you bring up gun control, the controllers start talking about how British murder rates are so much lower because of their gun ban. But the gun ban didn’t lower murder rates in Britain! And it didn’t even lower gun murders in Britain, which have doubled! So, if the logic of the gun-ban fanboys is correct, and the US bans all guns, we should see our already high murder rate double, and our gun crime rate double, and our felonious assault and rape rates quintuple.
Anyone cheering for that?
Here’s the homicide rates for England and Wales (since that seems to be more available than the UK) for about a century and a half:
1860 means decade starting 1860 i.e. 1860-1869
1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920
1.7 1.6 1.5 1.1 0.9 0.8 0.7
1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990
0.8 0.8 0.7 0.7 1.0 1.2 1.4
(My source stops there; Wikipedia gives 2010 at 1.23 and 2011 at 1.00.)
The first serious UK gun control act was passed in 1920, near the end of a long decline in the homicide rate.
The rate of decline slowed and then stopped. I’ll leave causation, if any, to others, but there certainly doesn’t seem to be a clear point where “guns restricted=homicides drop” with any of the UK firearms laws.
> gun crime specifically is has more than doubled
I would expect expanding the definition of gun crime to lead to an increase in gun crime.
> Since the UK effectively banned all guns (your Olympic shooting teams have to go to France to practice), violent crime is up 52%
Is it? Because the statistics I’ve seen suggest that homicide rates are roughly the same and that violent crime in general is lower.
Violent crime in the UK rarely (proportionally) involved guns even before the handgun ban (and contrary to the frequent statements of ill-informed Americans, the legal ownership of guns was never a factor in reducing crime). Nobody expected the ban to reduce violent crime generally; it was specifically a response to the Dunblane killings.
“Violent crime is up 52%” – according to whom? The victimization survey data doesn’t support this claim as far as I can tell, and police recorded crime data is probably not comparable (since there have been methodological and procedural changes). The changes in methodology affect the gun crime statistics too; also it’s worth noting that those gun crime levels are still really small compared to the US.
Other than homicide, the violent crime that seems to me to be most directly comparable between the UK and US is robbery; overall robbery rates are not too dissimilar between the two countries, but in the USA a robbery victim is several times more likely to be killed, and a far higher proportion of robberies are armed (with anything, not just guns).
I’ve pretty much given up trying to compare rates of assault and rape between countries; differences in methodology and reporting rates confound everything too much. If you think you have good comparable figures then please do cite them.
(It’s conclusion is that for most forms of property crime and sexual assault, rates are similar in the US and UK, while homicide and GBH are more common in the US and knifecrime a little more common in the UK.)
@Sweeneyrod – “So if you want to use it, you need to back up your conclusion that there should be greater gun rights in the UK…”
Challenge accepted.
You do not have a right to protection from the police. That is, you, as an individual, have no right to protection from the police, and no recourse if they fail to protect you, even from grievous bodily harm, and even if that failure to protect you is the result of gross negligence on the part of the officer(s). If a cop sits in his car across the street eating donuts, watching while you get your face kicked in by a bunch of racists, *you have no recourse*. Of course, usually that would never happen. What does happen every day is that police response times are thirty or forty-five minutes, and they arrive on the scene in time to start drawing chalk outlines and taking statements.
Self defense is an inalienable human right. If you need defending, the only person you know will be there to do it is yourself. Police are fantastic, if they show up and if they don’t goof up. Hard data shows that they cannot be counted on to do either reliably. If crime is a concern for you, you have the right and the responsibility to take the steps necessary to protect yourself. If the government restricts you from doing that, you have a shitty government. If crime isn’t a concern for you, than gun owners, who tend to be much more responsible and law-abiding than the norm, shouldn’t be either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
I think this might be a cultural difference. I’m not particularly worried about self-defence. I generally trust the police, and I can only think of one incidence of someone I know being violently attacked by a stranger. Maybe the victim would have benefited from having a gun.
However, as far as I can see, in any violent crime where the intended victim is able to have a gun, the attacker will also have a gun, and the situation is similar to if neither are armed, apart from innocent people are more likely to be shot.
Also, the argument of self-defence works for other things like learning martial arts, and carrying pepper spray or a knife. Do you advocate that I carry a 3 inch folding knife in case someone unarmed tries to mug me? If you are in a state where concealed carry is forbidden, do you always make sure to carry pepper spray or similar since you can’t have a gun? If not, doesn’t this make your position inconsistent?
“Maybe the victim would have benefited from having a gun.”
Statistics indicate that not only would THEY unquestionably benefit, but their act of carrying a gun benefits everyone else around them as well, because the more people who have guns, the less likely criminals are to try and assault someone.
Your choices are your own, obviously. I have carried a 3-inch folding knife (the maximum legal size in my area) since I was a teenager. I do not expect to use or even touch it in violent crime by career criminals in which guns are likely to be used. But I do expect it to make an effective deterrent in the case of, say, a typical attempted sexual assault.
@Sweeneyrod – “I think this might be a cultural difference. I’m not particularly worried about self-defence. I generally trust the police, and I can only think of one incidence of someone I know being violently attacked by a stranger.”
It’s definitely a cultural thing.
I can’t remember anyone I know being violently attacked by anyone. I don’t carry my handgun or keep it loaded; hell, I usually don’t even lock my front door. I fully expect to die at a ripe old age without getting into so much as a fistfight. None of that changes the fact that violence is part of the real world, and I intend to be prepared if my threat assessments turn out to have been optimistic. At least twice in my lifetime, major American cities have lost rule of law for extended periods of time. Shit happens, and the prepared come out ahead.
As for the police, that too is cultural. I don’t know how it is in the UK, but here, response times are a real thing, and the police here are *fundamentally dangerous*. Even as an entirely law-abiding citizen, I want as little contact with them as possible.
“However, as far as I can see, in any violent crime where the intended victim is able to have a gun, the attacker will also have a gun…”
Wrong. Guns and ammo are much more expensive and hard to acquire than, say, knives. Purchasing or owning them is illegal if you have a felony record, which means criminals must expose themselves to additional legal risk to use them. Laws impose steep mandatory incarceration rates on use of firearms to commit crimes, so the criminal advantage offered by a gun is offset by the threat of an extra seven years or so in prison simply for having a gun on your person, even if you don’t fire a single shot. Many criminals are unable or unwilling to surmount these obstacles, and simply don’t use guns.
“…and the situation is similar to if neither are armed, apart from innocent people are more likely to be shot.”
This is incorrect as well, but for tactical reasons. A criminal who finds himself in an armed confrontation with a regular citizen has already lost, and the only question remaining is how badly. Their best option at this point is to retreat, and that is what a great many of them do. For the stupid and suicidal, there’s also the fact that many people who choose to arm themselves are in fact more skilled with their weapons than the actual police (and vastly more skilled than the average criminal), and are often in the position of choosing when to initiate the actual gunfight. Innocents being hit is very rare, because criminals don’t usually initiate violent crime in crowded areas. The actual stats do not support your theories.
“Also, the argument of self-defence works for other things like learning martial arts, and carrying pepper spray or a knife.”
And I quote: “The difference is evident in post-1978 National Crime Survey data, which do allow us to distinguish victim injury in cases of gun-armed resistance from victim injury in cases where resistance was with lesser weapons, and from victim injury in cases of nonresistance. Ironically, the results validate the anti-gun critics’ danger-of-injury concerns for every form of resistance except a gun. The gun-armed resister was actually much less likely to be injured than the nonresister who was, in turn, much less likely to be injured than those who resisted without a gun. Only 12 to 17 percent of gun-armed resisters were injured. Those who submitted to the felons’ demands were twice as likely to be injured (gratuitously). Those resisting without guns were three times as likely to be injured as those with guns.[128](p.34)”
Defensive Gun Ownership As A Response To Crime, Section 7;
http://www.guncite.com/journals/gun_control_katesreal.html
I recommend you read the entire paper. It answers a lot of the questions you are raising.
“If you are in a state where concealed carry is forbidden, do you always make sure to carry pepper spray or similar since you can’t have a gun? If not, doesn’t this make your position inconsistent?”
There’s a saying in the self-defense community: “the most dangerous weapon is the human mind.” When I was casually threatened with violence by a pair of Chavs in London, my hand was in the pocket of my coat, holding a steel-barrel mechanical pencil in an icepick grip, and
the plan was that if they tried actual violence I’d stab the first attacker in the neck-shoulder region as many times as possible until he dropped out of the fight. I’m not sure if this was a good plan, and happily I didn’t have to find out. The actual encounter took less than ten seconds; they shoved through my party, turned to shout some fairly unpleasant threats at us for being in their way, and then were gone.
Whether and how you should arm yourself depends on your assessment of the risks you face. When I lived in a dense urban area (in Canada, so concealed carry was out), I carried the biggest folding knife I thought I could legally get away with. There are places in the US where I’m pretty sure I would keep a loaded gun handy even if it were illegal. I’m not sure what the inconsistency you mention is.
” You do not have a right to protection from the police. That is, you, as an individual, have no right to protection from the police, and no recourse if they fail to protect you, even from grievous bodily harm, and even if that failure to protect you is the result of gross negligence on the part of the officer(s). ”
You were asked a question about the UK, and none of that applies to the UK police. Why won’t you consider fixing the US police as an option? Why is that an unmoveable monolith?
@TheAncientGreek – “You were asked a question about the UK, and none of that applies to the UK police. Why won’t you consider fixing the US police as an option?”
Because this isn’t just a US thing.
http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1987/12.html
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2008/39.html
…You’ll find the same principle in any country with a modern police force. This is not a glitch, it is a fundamental part of how policing works. Police forces are not designed to provide protection to individual citizens, nor can they; there are just too many people and too few police.
None of this stops politicians and activists from talking about how ordinary citizens don’t need the means to protect themselves since “that’s what the police are for.” As noted previously, lying is effective.
If crime isn’t a concern for you, than gun owners, who tend to be much more responsible and law-abiding than the norm, shouldn’t be either.
My problem with this is that the responsible, law-abiding gunowners I see talking about their right to own guns online also talk about being willing to start blasting away with their gun(s) at the first hint anyone so much as looks crooked at them. I have read a gun-owner, a responsible type*, indulging in a little fantasy whereby he almost wishes someone would try to rob or mug him when he’s walking down the street in the company of his wife, son and daughter. There was a whole little dialogue between him and his family as he blew the would-be mugger away.
Now, these are probably not serious, these are exaggerated comic fantasies. But your gun-owners do like their guns and the idea of getting to use them, and frankly I think none of you Americans should be entrusted with a sharpened pencil, you’re that liable to do damage to yourselves or others.
*This is not sarcasm or snark on my part. I forget how I got there but it was a blog from a conservative type, yes probably Red Tribe but not rural redneck/lower-class urban. It certainly wasn’t a “guns and politics” blog, this little jeu d’esprit was a by-the-way thing, probably in relation to a previous one of these gun-control arguments.
@Deiseach – “I have read a gun-owner, a responsible type*, indulging in a little fantasy whereby he almost wishes someone would try to rob or mug him when he’s walking down the street in the company of his wife, son and daughter.”
I don’t doubt this, there are a lot of stupid people available on the internet. I can remember thinking things like that when I was 14 and a jackass kid; some people don’t grow up. To counter it, here’s a description of actual (possibly unusually good) Concealed-Carry training:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2010/09/23/role-playing-for-ccw-its-not-just-for-geeks-anymore/
…Note the legal-moral-tactical triangle in particular, and how trying to play action hero gets you explicitly fucked in most of the scenarios. Self defense is a serious thing, and from my experience, the gun culture does a good job of taking it seriously. I have no idea who the person you read was, or what their malfunction was. I do know that I’ve never encountered that type of attitude before in the broader culture.
“But your gun-owners do like their guns and the idea of getting to use them…”
Right here you are extrapolating one jackass’s fantasy as typical of somewhere north of 70 million people. Please don’t do that.
“…and frankly I think none of you Americans should be entrusted with a sharpened pencil, you’re that liable to do damage to yourselves or others.”
“You’re that liable to do damage to yourself or others” is an empirical claim. We have the actual data of how much damage gun owners do to themselves and others, and that data shows your claim is false. Firearms accidents have been trending downward as the gun culture and its attendant attitudes toward safety and responsibility gain strength. Murder is likewise trending downward. Both gun accidents and actual gun violence are overwhelmingly committed by extremely aberrant criminals, and the average gun owner is LESS likely to engage in either type of misuse than the average non-criminal, not more.
Your attitude toward gun owners is the typical result of the sort of propaganda we’ve been tarred with since the 60s. That propaganda was based on a clique of medical researchers who used their journals to push their own views in direct contravention to the actual data available. They invented data, systematically ignored contrary findings, misquoted researchers and generally engaged in a cozy little market of academic fraud. In the process, they spawned the anti-gun memes that we’re still living with decades later. Please stop perpetuating them.
http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html#fn*
I’ve tried to stay out of this conversation so far, but I’m going to step in here and say that that guy’s an idiot if you’re representing him accurately.
I’m not super serious about guns (though I am broadly supportive of gun rights for responsible people), but I am a pretty serious martial artist, and so I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about scenarios like this. The correct conclusion — and it’s not a hard one to come by — is that by using [guns, knives, martial arts skills, whatever] in self-defense, you’re inherently and nontrivially risking your life and your freedom. This is not something you should want to do, no matter how badass you expect to feel afterwards or how good of a life lesson you think it’ll make for those around you.
Sure, a lot of us have action hero fantasies, and I’d be lying if I said that there aren’t a lot of people studying self-defense who got there by way of them. But a big part of the responsible study of self-defense is keeping them as fantasies. My sensei have been very clear on that. I’m very clear on that when I’m teaching. So are the firearms instructors I’ve had.
There are a lot of things I don’t like about this topic, but one of the things I like the least is the Europeans that come out of the woodwork to tell Americans how savage and irresponsible they are, usually based on what seem to the crudest media stereotypes imaginable. You’re Irish, so you probably know all about cultural cringe; can you try not to engage in it?
Diseach, this was little more than bigotry-venting. Do me a favor and rethink that whole post.
Allow me to be your avatar here for gun owners. I like to think I’m responsible. I am a qualified expert with about two dozen of our military’s most common small arms. I have a concealed carry license, a NRA instuctor’s certification. I own around a dozen firearms, and I carry a handgun every single day.
And unlike most internet blowhards, I’ve had to make those life-and-death decisions with a gun in my hands. And I dearly hope I never have to again. But if I am ever in that situation, I will have the tools to give myself the best possible chance at winning.
You read a guy one time that you thought was “fantasizing” about a self-defense situation. And based on that, you’ve written off a hundred million people? Come now.
Even granting your main point, there surely aren’t a hundred million people as experienced, trained, and responsible as yourself.
When people tar liberals with a broad brush here and elsewhere, I am sometimes tempted to present myself as some kind of counterexample to awful stereotypes.
But I doubt it would work any better than your posts have. Readers would either exempt me from the otherwise-thought-valid categorical slam, or roll their eyes and dismiss me as just being one of Them.
“When people tar liberals with a broad brush here and elsewhere, I am sometimes tempted to present myself as some kind of counterexample to awful stereotypes.”
I think political stereotypes are different from other stereotypes. Political factionalism has a large element of tribalism in it, so stating that a good portion of (liberals, conservatives, right, left) hold stupid policy ideas that fall apart on a little reflection is accurate. However its difficult to measure for obvious reasons.
By contrast we can measure how many gun owners are responsible by things like how often they accidentally shoot themselves and the like.
“The link between availability of guns and mass killings seems pretty strong. Is there any evidence to suggest otherwise?”
I don’t have an interest to do the work myself, but I don’t agree that casual consumption of national and world media reports is a good way of gauging the methods used for mass killings. The media reports for shock value, and shock value basically goes: bombs, guns, cat stuck in tree, other methods.
For instance here is a case in the UK where someone killed six others by arson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allenton_house_fire
Is this a mass killing? I would say so. Of course, there was no global coverage, partly because the motive wasn’t leftwing narrative-friendly, partly because fire is a boring way to kill people, but there is a wiki page, so it wasn’t totally ignored either. What I do not know, and have no good statistical source for, is how many people are killed each year in mass arson attacks in total, compared to with guns. As arson is psychologically and logistically much easier than shooting and can’t be stopped by any plausible prohibitions, that is an important question.
Another example: in 1990 an arsonist killed 87 people at a nightclub in NYC – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire This is more victims in a single incident than any of the incidents on the Mother Jones gun killing database, and ten more than Breivik killed (18 more than he killed using a gun). Who remembers this today?
And the irony: “Unable to acquire a gun, González returned to the establishment with a plastic container of gasoline.”. If he had been able to acquire a gun, he would almost certainly have killed fewer people.
Another incident worth noting is the Columbine Massacre. It’s not widely remembered today, but the killers had planned to blow up their school cafeteria (police estimate that more than 500 people could have been killed by the bombs), then shoot the survivors as they fled and the medical personnel when they showed up. They succeeded in placing many propane bombs in the cafeteria, but fortunately the bombs failed to go off because they were really bad at wiring detonators. So they decided to just walk in and start shooting people.
If Harris and Klebold hadn’t been able to acquire guns, there’s a good chance that they might have put more effort into making sure that their bombs worked (or, after the bombs failed the first time, taken them home at the end of the day, rewired the timers, then tried again a week or two later) and ended up killing more than 40 times as many people as they actually did.
i love mayeesha tashins answers and blog on quora. (you can add the links to her answers or blog to your feedreader as feeds which is pretty nifty). her writing is just really comforting to me. its exactly what i was longing to find that i didn’t know i was out there until i found it. when i thought i knew of all the types of stuff i would find interesting and like, then i discovered a new type of stuff, which was her.. i still love other peoples styles and posts and blogs, but hers will be a favorite for a long time for me, and the most exciting thing is she plans to write books and biographies when she gets older. the reason her interests might overlap with readers here is she was pretty keen on peter thiel for awhile, and generally fascinated by start ups and the tech industry and all that type of stuff (which was one of the main quora topics until the site diversified, and by diversified im not just referring to the dramatic influx of indians that included mayeesha, shes bangledeshi, but the content just broadened a lot). she also likes cats, anime, and wants to try out politics like by working on a political campaign. you should be feeling some overlap with her by now.
here’s a recent answer about what inspired her to write:
(nothing really did, she was just a natural).
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-thing-that-inspired-you-to-start-writing/answer/Mayeesha-Tahsin
and a link to her blog
http://tahsin_mayeesha.quora.com/
(one post i really liked that i read recently was about her first teaching experience http://tahsin_mayeesha.quora.com/First-teaching-experience)
I know it costs money, but have you ever considered getting a discourse.org/ based comment system? If nothing else, Jeff Atwood’s attempts to find a way to minimize online meanness are actually pretty interesting (see for instance http://try.discourse.org/faq and http://blog.codinghorror.com/please-read-the-comments/) .
Also (to give a snarky and biased summary), Arthur Chu thinks that because mainstream views and mental illness sometimes mix poorly, the “real problem” is the mainstream views, and assertions to the contrary are a “distraction”. Discuss! (Seriously, though, I imagine he’s correct that many or most people talking about the problems of mental illness aren’t doing so in a productive way.)
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/its_not_about_mental_illness_the_big_lie_that_always_follows_mass_shootings_by_white_males/
Arthur Chu is a if not the prime example of an author who deserves to be archive-linked instead of given proper clicks.
I’ve never put much thought into link-altering beyond “maybe links to literal white supremacist forums should be marked nofollow,” and even that realization was due to a discussion on the matter in a comments thread somewhere. What’s wrong with posting the original link?
Arthur Chu has been Literally Rationalist Hitler since he admitted to doing the things every other political pundit does.
He’s not Hitler, he’s a very naughty boy.
Did you have to? Here we go again with everyone’s favorite soap boxes. Forget the ridiculously downward trajectory of violence we’re on nationally and let’s talk about white supremacy and toxic masculinity. It seems to me that masculinity might literally be the least toxic it has ever been right now in the entire history of the human species. Is that hyperbole? Maybe we had less violence before we had cities at all 15,000 years ago?
I yield to no one in my efforts to spread the news about the decline of violence, and I recommend Steven Pinker’s book on the subject to everyone.
That being said, I think Chu has a point that (for example) the Charleston perpetrator IS openly racist, and it is really off the point to reflexively blame the attack on “mental illness”.
In particular, I agree with him that advocacy for tightening the screws on people with ANY kind of mental illness diagnosis is pretty frightening.
The US, and largely the world, is a safer, richer, and more intelligent place than it was twenty years ago. It’s also a more authoritarian, more politically divided, and, if you care about that sort of thing, less economically equal.
Of course, nothing says that the historical mean of any of those must be optimal (and in fact I’ll wager that most of them aren’t). But it does provide some guidance as to which skies are falling and which aren’t.
Excuse me, did I say the sky was falling? I did not!
You must have been replying to someone else.
No, I’m agreeing with you. At least on that point.
Confounding factor: people reflexively equate racism and mental illness.
Perhaps some people do. I am old enough to have seen plenty of racism from perfectly sane people.
Seconded, on how we treat and talk about mental illness. Also, is there any chance Scott would add “mention of Arthur Chu” to verboten topics of open threads? Sigh.
He could be mentally ill and racist.
That being said, Chu is just the latest in a long parade of people who want to control what everyone thinks and says and does in order to eliminate the scourge of ____________. It’s never worth the price. (Except if you write “Gawker” in that blank, of course.)
Discourse seems like it has no novel ideas, it’s just one more attempt at making a civilized forum by means of some pleading appeals to civic virtues, and permanently empowering the “right” people to strike down at anything that they don’t see as civilized. We know such systems don’t scale well.
SSC is at the point where its model (single moderator/owner, threaded discussion) starts to creak at the seams. It’s not as bad as unthreaded discussion would be, though.
What does scale well, as I see it, is actually randomly assigned moderation privileges a la old Slashdot (although Slashdot only wanted to use it for comments, and they never sorted by score, nullifying most of the advantage.) It’s also best to give the mods random comments to evaluate – a la metamod – rather than points to distribute over whatever they see. That stops self-selecting for modding your friends/enemies, or already popular comments, and means comments get a more neutralevaluation on average.
I’m not so sure; Atwood’s previous discussion-based website, StackOverflow, is an incredible success; I think he has a great deal of insight into how to use tools to improve the nature of online discussion, both in format *and* content. Discourse may not be as different from existing platforms as SO was when it was introduced, but it still seems to me to be far and away the best discussion platform I’ve used, and I wouldn’t immediately discount the idea that it might have a genuine positive impact on the community. (SSC comment threads are pretty high-quality already, so I don’t necessarily think it would make a huge difference in that regard here.)
And I wasn’t sold on non-threaded discussion at first either, but it’s very readable, and well-implemented enough that following a single logical “thread” in a conversation is actually surprisingly easy and convenient, even though it’s slightly more awkward than simply scrolling down.
Success isn’t always deserved. I don’t think Stack Overflow has scaled well socially speaking. Often when I look for something, I find it in a closed question. There seems to have arisen a political status hierarchy on SO, not unlike on Wikipedia, where a lot of counterproductive activities are rewarded. I haven’t done much there, this is strictly from the sidelines, but I don’t like the drama I’ve seen.
But how can you have a social environment in the first place around a site where people drop in for the answer to a quick question, then leave? That has been both Stack Overflow’s strength and its weakness – at first a strength, and now a weakness as it’s become important enough for prestige-seekers to take over.
A political status hierarchy not unlike Wikipedia, another fantastically useful website. Maybe what we’re seeing here is optimizing for creating a valuable resource is not the same as optimizing for creating a fun community.
Suntzuanime, Wikipedia is more like a sausage factory with very dubious hygiene standards, where everyone is a lot more concerned with not getting the blame for what gets wrong/getting the credit for what gets right/not being ground up into sausage themselves.
And you’re like the guy who says, “who cares, this sausage factory is clearly terrific at making tasty sausages!”
Wikipedia is not sustainable. It’s been losing contributors since 2007, and it’s in my opinion actually become worse also since then. Lots of things seem to work well but fail disastrously at the challenges of scaling up socially.
Really? Pretty much every Wikipedia article that I’m closely familiar with is significantly better now than it was in 2007.
I don’t see the need to blame “social scaling” for Wikipedia’s problems when there’s the more obvious cause that they’ve by any reasonable measure finished writing their encyclopedia. Yeah, the place would be better if there were 10% as much Playhouse Parliament going on, but the reason they don’t attract many new editors is a lot simpler: all the low-hanging fruit was picked 4,000,000 articles ago. To affect a meaningful contribution to Wikipedia is now no longer a matter of spending ten minutes figuring out the interface and then another ten telling us that Johannesburg exists.
Discourse is patronizing, noisy, over-glossed, and unpleasant to use. Many of its design choices are the worst possible compromise between classical, unstructured forum threads and mob-moderated systems like reddit.
The fact that StackOverflow happens to be the dominant site in its niche is not proof of Atwood’s philosophical superiority. Hell, SO’s not what it used to be. (I used to participate on a forum that was switched over to Discourse; when we reported bugs and requested features (these were the early days), the man himself dropped by to be snide at us. Half the commenters are gone now.)
Any chance of pointing me to the forum?
Also, is there any online discussion platform that you do like?
The Daily WTF forums. (I see there are multiple Discourse-issue threads on the front page, two years after the switch.)
phpBB (in mildly modified instances), old Livejournal commenting, Dreamwidth commenting, WordPress commenting, MetaFilter, Hacker News, Reddit, the *chans, Usenet, and (depending on your definition of “discussion platform”) Tumblr have all served me well, for a range of styles of discussion.
I recently came across a couple of things claiming rather interesting effects, and thanks to SSC totally spoiling me on trusting studies, I’d appreciate people’s thoughts.
The first is the Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0, with technical report here:
http://strengths.gallup.com/private/Resources/CSFTechnicalReport031005.pdf
This is some personality test thing that purports to have found 34 clusters of strengths. Having taken the test for something work-adjacent, I can say it’s a reasonably decent one, and I think it got me roughly right, though I know that positive or flattering stuff (which naturally a “strengths” evaluator would focus on) is harder to judge for one’s self. The improvements reported sound insufficiently controlled to me, and likely cofounded by there being any intervention as opposed to no intervention. How well conducted does this seem to be? How legit is this?
The second is a novel method of treating concussions with prescription eye glasses and connect-the-dots puzzles, discussed in this guy’s book here:
http://clarkelliott.com/
He gave a talk at a local lecture hall that I happened into, and made some fairly impressive claims about the treatment’s efficacy. To summarize as well as I remember, the brain recovers from concussions not by repairing the affected area, but rather by routing around it, and most of the symptoms of concussions come from the brain trying to use the damaged portions. Since much of the brain does visual processing, and different parts of the retina map to different parts of the brain, using different patches of the retina could bypass the damaged regions of the brain and avoid visual and spatial processing overloading the system. Dr. Elliott had apparently made a full recovery from a fairly nasty concussion he had endured for eight years, thanks to this therapy. I believe his story — he seemed fine now, and his description of the experience of mTBI is apparently very accurate — but I don’t feel that’s enough to say that this treatment really is a miracle cure for many concussions. For starters, if it hadn’t worked so well for him, he wouldn’t have been there to write his book. To Dr. Elliott’s credit, he mentioned this. I’d appreciate someone more knowledgeable of the relevant science than myself’s thoughts on the matter.
I feel like I use italics too often. When I read writing that uses them at about the same level as I do, it usually just seems overbearing and handhold-y, like the writer doesn’t trust me to read their writing the correct way. I see this most commonly on LW actually, which I suspect is due to us all subconsciously imitating Eliezer (who used a lot of italics, but usually in a way that didn’t annoy me for whatever reason).
So given that I find excessive italics annoying to read in other people’s works, I should probably cut back on them in my own. But damnit, they just seem so necessary sometimes. Any tips on how to cut back on their use, beyond just “duh, don’t use them”? Like, I suspect skilled writers somehow manage to craft sentences that just don’t require italics in the first place, but I clearly don’t know how to do that right now. I guess an italics moratorium could be a good idea – then I might be forced to learn how to write sentences that couldn’t rely on italics as a crutch. Or if not a moratorium then maybe a limit of [X] per thousand words or whatever.
Anyway, I guess I was just wondering if anyone else had struggled with this or thought about it already.
I probably also got this from Eliezer. I asked a few people if it bothered them, they said it didn’t. The one use of italics I saw in that comment seemed appropriate.
I think there are a lot of people who are bad at using italics, but that people who are otherwise good writers are likely to use italics appropriately.
Consider the converse course: rather than struggling to eliminate italics from your writing, study those writers whom you feel use them well: imitate, analyze, iterate.
italics can be really cute because it makes a person sound expressive. there is a quote by rousseau that emphasis is the soul of speech. he also said that by the custom of saying everything in the same tone came the upperclasses habit of insulting others without them knowing it. if you can add emphasis to typing, why not? just do it where its natural and likeable and you should be okay. if italics is *just* for emphasis, it could get annoying. where it should be saved for is emphasis that also has emotion. you could also experiment with the asterisks i just did. im emphasizing but it seems a bit cuter because i didn’t do actual italics. here’s a place i saw them used really well (14 year old girl that doesn’t like being dismissed for her age, perfect place for emotion with emphasis). but im no expert on them and i avoid them for fear of using them badly (i think i tried in the past, but it just wasn’t working out so i stopped). some people might just not be destined for italicized greatness. eliezer, whose italics i mostly remember from the first few chapters of hpmor i read, i thought was doing good at using them. but he’s generally exceptional where as most of us are generally ordinary. its no surprise he could pull off italics. you could probably ask yourself, “am i the type of person that could just pull off italitcs good?” and if you think the answer is “unlikely” than reduce your usage of them.
http://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/3acnh4/ot22_flow_my_tears_the_policeman_thread/
“Right, so this blew up.
Just a lil something: I’m curious to know why a ton of you think it’s *so* wrong that he maybe could be my friend. Or how it’s *so* innapropriate for a girl my age to deal with something like this. A lot of you have said that I’m completely unable to process this situation based solely on my age. I’m really, honestly, irate at the fact that a bunch of you think I’m just some dumb and or naive OP. Just because I’m 14. I’m being “groomed”, so on so forth. “
I’m really, honestly, irate at the fact that a bunch of you think I’m just some dumb and or naive OP. Just because I’m 14. I’m being “groomed”, so on so forth.
Taking it on face value that you really are a 14 year old girl (you may not be; there are people who like to pretend to be what they are not in order to poke the hornet’s nest for their own private amusement and to feed a sense of superiority), I am going to make a few general remarks that you won’t like. I know that giving advice is a fool’s errand, but I’m a big enough fool to try regardless. Please, whatever else you do, accept my word that I am not intending to criticise and belittle you but rather to try and explain why older people don’t seem to understand younger people. I’m an auntie, I’m accustomed to lecturing the rising generation 🙂
I’m a long way past 14, but I do remember it. It was a great time, it was a terrible time, and I’m very glad I’m over it.
You’re young. Yes, I know: that’s what adults always say. But listen: you’re young. You’re still growing and developing, in mind, body and character. Everything you are experiencing, you are experiencing for the first time. Everything you are encountering, you are encountering for the first time.
For those of us who are older, maybe much older, this is not so. We’ve had a share of experiences and come to know more about ourselves and the world. Which brings me on to the two points I want to make:
(1) Bad things do happen
(2) Nobody ever thinks it will happen to them
We don’t think you’re stupid. We do think you are naïve, because you are naïve; unless you’ve had a particular kind of childhood, it is to be hoped that you’ve never encountered manipulation and exploitation before. And maybe you’re not encountering such now, but it’s hard for you to know. Even if you’re smart, even if you have intellectual knowledge of what dangers are out there, you still don’t know.
The young (the very young, and forgive me, but 14 is very young) don’t have much introspection. There is so much going on right now in your life and your physical and mental state, you haven’t got the spare capacity. It’s not a question of intelligence, it’s not even a question of maturity, it’s a question of plain, brute lived-life experience that you only get with time and slogging through the years on this planet.
Older people may be over-cautious. This counterbalances younger people’s tendency to be over-adventurous.
Someone older (I am presuming this is the case here) paying you attention? Taking your seriously? Treating you like the mature and intelligent young adult you know yourself to be, not the half-childish, half-older being your parents and teachers and other adult authority figures treat you as?
That’s flattering. Of course it is; we all love it when someone treats us that way, when someone seems to get us, when we’re appreciated. And it’s heady wine, and goes to the head, and that’s why the old grumps are cautioning you to be careful, that all may not be as it appears, because unhappy experience has taught us the same.
It may indeed be over-caution on our part, fuelled by scares of paedophilia and sexual abuse from media stories that exaggerate for emphasis. But that does not mean that it doesn’t happen.
There’s a saying “You can’t put an old head on young shoulders” and I certainly don’t want to do that, or fill your head with worries, or make you fearful. This time of your life is for learning and experiencing, both good and bad. Just be a little cautious, is all we’re saying. In two years’ time you will look back at the things you liked and did and said at this time of your life, and be mortified with embarrassment. That’s normal too 🙂
i had just read that reddit post recently and i remember how i liked how the italics were used there so i thought its a good example to show them being employed well. im not the 14 year old girl!!
when i said “here’s a place i saw them used really well (14 year old girl that doesn’t like being dismissed for her age, perfect place for emotion with emphasis)”
the stuff in the parenthesis was me elaborating on where i saw them used well. i think when i went back and added the last part then it confused it by making the link to the post too far from where i had mentioned it. i wasn’t saying i was the 14 year old girl (im not, im much older and a boy, i mean a guy.). i think this means i cant use parenthesis well either D:
btw i really liked your comments i was reading on here, *you* are certainly a good writer and it’s fun to read your comments :).
Like Deiseach, I know that you will probably not listen to this advice and you will not like it. I know that I didn’t when I was your age. Human beings are unique in their ability to learn from the mistakes of others, but remarkable for their disinclination to do so. I wish to add to his remarks
No matter how smart you are, there are limits to how much you can understand without experience. This is particularly true of self knowledge. That is, knowing things like “I’m a sucker for X tactic”, “I always tend to overlook Y factor”, or “when stressed I forget about Z.” At 14 you simply can’t know the answers to these questions because you haven’t been put in those situations enough times for patterns to emerge. We are vulnerable to certain types of bad decision making, as you get older you can learn which and try to avoid/mitigate/fix those vulnerabilities. At 14, you can’t know your weaknesses because they haven’t been tested.
I was a mature 14 year old three years ago, which is great, but it is mind-bogglingly stunning how much I learned in that additional 20% of my life. And how much I’m still learning.
The eighth virtue of rationality is humility. I would recommend doing the thing that Peter and Valentine Wiggin did when they started participating in discussions online. Read, and watch, and learn, and make all your potential mistakes before you decide to attach your favourite alias to anything.
Without actually reading any of your writing (or, honestly, any LW stuff), my first stab in the dark would be to look at your active vocabulary. One possibility for the reason you feel italics are necessary is that you are trying to supercharge a word with more/different meaning than it naturally conveys. Finding the correct word will mean that italics will not be critical to conveying the message you intend.
Assuming your usage in this post is representative of your usual practice, as an example you could try replacing necessary with a word that is more imperative. Like critical. Or imperative. I don’t really know if they are closer to your meaning. And I actually don’t like how the sentence flows with a one-for-one replacement with either of those so I would probably try rephrase it slightly, too.
I don’t know what your writing process is like. Since you are already in the habit of adding them, you might just use the italics as markup in the rough draft to flag words or phrases to pay particular attention to while editing. Especially if you don’t already edit.
After you have everything down, taking some time to analyze whether the italics are important or your thought is poorly worder/phrased certainly can’t hurt. There are very good stylistic reasons to use them so trying to excise them completely is not the best method.
That’s how I feel about commas. And the conclusion I’ve come to is that, where I notice that I’ve overused commas, that’s a place where my writing was shitty and overly tortured and I should go back and rephrase in a way that doesn’t require so many commas.
I think the key is to figure out why you feel the need to use italics – and then you can go back and figure out how to ameliorate the problem.
I have a terrible tendency to abuse semi-colons. And I find I use “actually” much too much.
I had this problem as well. Left to my own devices, all sentences were paired into a sort of couplet, conjoined by a semicolon. My father, who was offering me editorial assistance, eventually put his foot down and declared that I could have one semicolon per paper. It worked, and the sweet, sweet joy of deciding where to spend the semicolon made the editing process a lot more fun.
I do basically this except with dashes – that’s the next thing I need to work on after italics.
The semicolon is an endangered form of punctuation; it’s our duty to ensure its continued survival!
A lot of the time I use italics it seems to mean “please pay attention to my particular word choice here.” The word in question might be deeply buried in sentence structure; so perhaps I should take the impulse to use italics as an indicator that the sentence structure is suboptimal and that that word should be made more prominent. For example, moving a word to the front or end of a clause can call attention to your choice of that word in particular.
“But damnit, they just seem so necessary sometimes.”
One way is profanity. “But damnit, they just seem so damn necessary sometimes.” If you’re into sound, listen to the difference between the three versions. With no emphasis added, the ‘Seem So neceSSary Sometimes’ kind of eats up the word ‘necessary’. Italicizing it is a little better, but it’s basically a weak-sounding word. Putting the strong word ‘damn’ in front fixes that; kind of like a drum roll.
In more formal contexts, people rearrange clauses or add unnecessary modifiers etc to force a pause in the rhythm just before the word they want to emphasize.
I feel that using italics, bolding, etc. is a means of reproducing in the written word the same nuances of expression that the spoken word would do with changes of pitch, intonation, emphasis and the like.
It’s a way of communicating more effectively. If you don’t use it excessively or inappropriately, I don’t see the problem. Have you a sample of text where you think you’ve used italics too frequently, that you might be willing to share to elicit opinions?
I have a tic of using italics for loan-words from foreign languages (e.g. vis-à-vis), which is a result of a prose style formed by old-fashioned principles of education and reading too much 19th century fiction on top of a foundation of auto-didacticism, and which is probably so festooned with cobwebs and dust that it looks absurd to modern eyes.
Thanks for the reply (and all the other replies everyone, they’ve been helpful!). Here’s a LessWrong post I just wrote that sparked me to write the above comment:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/m7y/in_praise_of_gullibility/
I was happy with the post overall but kind of annoyed at myself for using so many italics.
Thanks for linking to a sample of your writing. On my completely ignorant and unscientific view, you seem to use italics for two purposes:
(1) Emphasis
(2) To differentiate phrases or clauses from the rest of your sentence. Here I think you could use other punctuation for effect, e.g. inverted commas/apostrophes for phrases such as “I don’t know”, “not to be gullible”, “not to be sceptical”. Using bolding very sparingly for the parts you particularly want to stand out as your major point or the emphasis of the sentence could work as well.
I don’t use italics often at all, which I suspect is because I use a screen reader and therefore almost never notice when other people are using them. Between this comment and that Creative Writing class I took where someone relied on Italics to distinguish which character’s POV was active, I’m starting to think there’s an entire world of text communication I’m missing out on. (I mean, besides the people who post screencaps of text, for some ungodly reason.)
So… ur… disable browser formatting/use a screen reader and see what happens?
(This doesn’t catch strikethrough, either. It’s easier to notice confusion with stricken text, though. I can check formatting, but I have to be doing it actively–it isn’t indicated at all when reading passively. I must pretty much already know that it’s there in order to find it, so in practice, I forget it exists unless it’s made incredibly obvious, like this thread. … wait, does this have something to do with my terrible communication skills spreading to the internet–are italics like eye contact, or something? should I go back and compare how often people use italics or bold when replying to me vs when replying to others, or how many responses a given post receives compared with its usage of formatting tags, or something like that? … ’cause I really don’t feel like it. 😛 )
Better italics than exclamation points!!!
I really don’t know what some writers see in exclamation points. Maybe they read them differently than I do.
I’m curious; what’s wrong with exclamation points?
For some reason they always come across as sounding really fake to me. I’m not sure why. It’s mostly fiction (and in particular, dialogue) that I find them annoying in, though – in non-fiction writing I find them much more tolerable.
Freakonomics found that houses described with exclamation points (“well-maintained!”) tended to have lower selling values. They suggested this occurred because exclamations points cropped up to create a veneer of enthusiasm when there was nothing enthusing about the house. This generalizes: exclamation points are frequently used to try to create excitement in unexciting writing, although this inevitably fails and just sort of directs the reader’s attention to “this ought to be exciting—look at all the exclamation points—but the fact you’re just kinda bored means that this writing here is a massive failure.”
Exclamation points are a fine mark when used correctly. It just turns out that most good writing needs exclamation points pretty infrequently (maybe once every few thousand words?), so the majority of usages people happen across are of the false-excitement variety.
(In general, good writing needs very beyond vanilla words, commas, and periods, and new writers create all sort of new and unnecessary difficulties for themselves trying to compensate with gimmicks: italics, exclamation points, ellipses, Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, word color, music-to-accompany-text, etc. Each of these has its place, but in varying shades of infrequently (for instance, I have seen precisely one instance of text color adding to writing and 0 cases of music-to-accompany-text adding to a piece.))
I would generally avoid italics. There is a lot of good advice in the previous replies.
As an exercise, try to find transcribed natural speech. Myself, I looked at the transcripts from the Watergate leak. What this demonstrates is that writing the way people actually talk results in a disfluent mess.
The temptation of italics is that they signify emphasis, and that by using italics in text we can mimic the role of emphasis in speech. In your mind’s ear, the sentence has a rhythm of sorts, and then you staple some italics on top of a couple of words in an attempt to capture that rhythm in text.
The key problem is that italics are on/off, whereas emphasis in speech covers a large spectrum of tone, timing, volume, elongated vowels, so on and so forth. Italics cannot distinguish between different sorts of emphasis, and thus you cannot achieve as rich an effect with italics as you would like.
This unfortunately means that lines which depend on proper delivery generally don’t work in text, and that adding italics is more of a cover-up than a solution. It doesn’t help that the writer knows what the italics are supposed to signify, if the italics cannot communicate this to the reader.
A common use of emphasis in speech is to signify non-standard use of words – generally because speech has real-time constraints which make finding a better word infeasible. Copying this habit into text is one of many maligned ways to misuse italics.
The good thing is that if you avoid overloading italics to represent all sorts of emphasis, they work better for the remaining purposes.
moratorium.
Just as writers sometimes write without the verb “to be” to practice, you probably want to practice writing without them completely.
In the process, you probably want to experiment with different ways to structure sentences.
Italics are sometimes critical, for sentences in which the meaning changes based on word emphasis. The classic example:
I never said she took my money.
I never said she took my money.
I never said she took my money.
I never said she she took my money.
I never said she took my money.
I never said she took my money.
I never said she took my money.
Which of those seven different implied meanings would you have inferred if you hadn’t seen any emphasized word?
If you’re writing prose in your own “voice” rather than dialogue, though, italics are never so essential; you can use word choice or elaboration to eliminate ambiguity. I use italics (or even asterisks if I *have* to) for emphasis anyway, though, and now you’ll have me second-guessing whether I overuse them too.
Hi thepenforests,
I’ve been noticing your comments since meeting you when Scott Aaronson visited. Your writing style is fine. I use italics pretty freely myself, but I don’t think it’s a problem. Emphasis matters, and the right emphasis can save you from more verbose ways of making your intent clear. One italicization can substitute for an entire sentence. This is especially important in argument – the kind where some readers might not be careful not to misinterpret or gloss over some of your points. I probably go a little overboard with brevity, though. If you’re willing to go on at length, you can use sheer volume of talk on one particular subject to create the needed emphasis, without bolding or italics.
Darn, and here I was hoping for insights into noun and adjective declension in statements regarding competitions of speed overseen by a Venetian nobleman.
At least a couple of groups have made the news for proposing to fund college tuition using an investment model, paying a student’s current tuition in exchange for a share of that student’s future earnings, as opposed to the current system where students take on a fixed size loan. This is an idea I had thought about before hearing that people were attempting it.
The general commentary when I’ve seen this idea talked about on social media is “ugh, the return of debt peonage!” To which I think “How is it any more a form of debt peonage than the present system?!” I think I’d get a broader spectrum of opinions here, though.
Pro:
* If, say, a doctor wants to do humanitarian work after med school, they would be more able to, as their repayment burden wound scale back with the reduced income.
* Economic downturns and other catastrophes would be less likely to leave students with crippling debt.
* In the tulip-mania limit where college education becomes effectively mandatory to get any job, the investment model seems to become very similar to universal education funded by income tax.
* But colleges’ revenues would become more directly tied to their students’ success, encouraging efficiency.
* Students might be better directed toward efficient schools rather than big-name ones.
* Students might be encouraged to go into more productive fields than they would otherwise.
Con:
* Funding decisions would be made according to the financial interests of investors, which may not align with those of students of society.
* It would probably be harder for members of disadvantaged groups to get this kind of funding, due to investors’ biases.
* Investors might also be less likely to fund someone who wanted to do humanitarian work.
* Some fields may be socially-valuable but under-rewarded, and these fields would lose out. It would be harder to obtain funding in humanities or pure research.
* The freedom to study whatever you fancy while you are in college might be a good in itself.
For some reason fantasy proposals always make news and no one ever talks about people actually doing it. Maybe fear of real consequences? Yale (formerly), Australia, maybe UK. They keep changing the rules, but Yale and Harvard law schools do this to encourage public service.
In Australia there is a debt based on a still heavily subsidised price for university, then you’re required to repay that debt only if you earn over a certain level of income. It’s subtracted from your tax return.
In recent years the right have been pushing to make that debt a privately held debt with interest, whereas it’s usually been a debt to the government with at-inflation interest rates. Back in the 60s uni was basically free, but given the numbers going to uni now that’s no longer feasible without fundamental changes to entrance rules.
Technically speaking, it’s indexed to the average of the last three years of the Consumer Price Index, a basket-of-goods approach to determining inflation. (the average is because there was a year a while ago where CPI-measured inflation went negative, and we can’t have that).
In practice actual inflation tends to be a bit more than CPI, so the loan reduces over time.
Thanks for improved details.
A free market would converge to a situation where the student has to pay back so much that he ends up only a miniscule bit better off than if he had not taken out the loan and not been able to go to college. This would make loans almost but not quite useless.
Currently, this doesn’t happen because the lender can’t legally require that the borrower pay back unlimited amounts of interest, so it can’t converge (although it tries to converge indirectly anyway, resulting in tuition rising out of control). If you permitted lenders to charge borrowers a share of their future earnings, it could happen, unless you limited what size share they are permitted to charge. Of course the same lobbyists who want to implement this scheme in the first place would oppose meaningfully limiting the share that borrowers can charge.
In a free market, I doubt college would be as ubiquitous as it is now. We would probably all take an IQ test and save tens of thousands in debt.
“A free market would converge to a situation where the student has to pay back so much that he ends up only a miniscule bit better off than if he had not taken out the loan and not been able to go to college.”
And by the same argument, a free market in food converges to a situation where the customer is only a little better than if he had not bought the food and starved to death? Do you observe that happening?
Given a competitive market for investment, the free market converges to a situation where the investor does just as well as if he had invested in something else. The marginal student does just as well as if he hadn’t taken out the loan and gone to school, but most students are not marginal.
I am skeptical that most such students have other avenues for investment with substantial payoffs.
Competition among colleges is what drives Friedman’s conclusion.
The way things are currently set up already makes it very easy to not actually pay back your full loan if you don’t end up making much money, whether on purpose to pursue public service or you just don’t. I’m not sure people realize how much more lenient some of the payment plans have gotten in the last few years. The best income-based plans right now cap at 10% of your income for 20 years, and whatever you still owe is forgiven. If you go into public service, it’s forgiven at 10 years.
But note that the entire forgiven balance at the end of the IBR period is taxable income! If you still owed $100,000 at the end of the 20-year period and you qualified for forgiveness, the IRS would treat you as if you earned an extra $100,000 during your forgiveness year, and you would owe a lot of income tax. To my knowledge, the federal government has yet to address this serious problem with IBR. It may not do so until the first forgiveness event is imminent, if indeed it ever does. So be careful when planning a life around IBR.
Thanks. I actually didn’t know that. I’m luckily not remotely close to a range where I could possibly still have $100,000 remaining debt after 20 years, and also just use standard repayment, but that’s good to know.
The obvious disadvantage is that this is equivalent to an income tax and, like an income tax, discourages the earning of income. Pile the repayment on top of actual tax and you could easily have a situation where the student gets only twenty or thirty cents of each dollar he earns, which sharply reduces the incentive to engage in productive work you get paid for.
More specifically, it strongly encourages graduates to take their compensation in non-cash forms. IBR takes a cut of your paycheck, but not your health insurance, executive washroom privileges, corporate jet privileges, job satisfaction, etc. So you see a shift in compensation packages: fewer raises, more health insurance.
Because income tax works the same way, you get a vicious cycle: IBR and income tax discourage raises and encourage health insurance, which reduce the government’s income from IBR and income tax, which necessitate harsher IBR and income tax policies, which further drive compensation to be taken in the form of health insurance. This is obviously not an endless cycle (we’ve had progressive income tax for a while, but most executives still get some take-home pay), and maybe it promotes social equality or other good things for compensation to largely take the form of employer-provided health insurance. But it’s obvious that IBR will have knock-on effects, including a reduction in income-tax receipts.
That incentive just doesn’t seem to have much effect. Look at startups. They routinely need to pay investors a percentage of profits. And yet I’ve never heard of startup founders getting corporate jets to avoid giving funders their share.
That’s founders, who are well-positioned to write their own terms. Being contemplated by VCs, who think in these terms.
If VCs aren’t worried, we shouldn’t be either.
Tech founders prefer foosball tables, in-house masseures, and Zuckerberg-style divided share classes rather than corporate jets. They are a different culture than the guys are RJR Nabisco, so their consumption patterns are different. But they still respond to incentives.
I think you’re wrong about VCs not being worried; there have always been efforts by outside investors to push early IPOs and otherwise interfere with business decisions. VCs don’t have a lot of ability to avoid the problem, but that doesn’t mean much. None of us can avoid death, but we all worry about it anyway.
Foosball tables and masseuses aren’t personal consumption. If the founders were getting it just for themselves, that’s legally compensation and they might as well pay out of pocket. In reality, the founders choose to get it for everyone. That is expensive and the VCs should care. But here the incentives of the VCs and founders are aligned. They get foosball tables and masseuses because they think that it will make the employees more productive or accept lower salaries. Maybe the VCs are afraid that the founders are altruistically raising the happiness or bargaining power of silicon valley engineers, but that is a very different problem.
In America, unique compensation to executives is considered income and is taxed. In particular corporate jets. This was a big part of Reagan’s reforms.
Colleges have displayed an amazing ability to soak up whatever extra tuition funds are available to students. Even worse, they are somehow seen as charitable for doing this, because they are “making college affordable,” so the normal moral and social levers that would stop the behavior don’t exist.
If you create the option to go to college in return for 10% of your lifetime earnings, colleges will charge enough to make that your option. Then someone will get the idea to turn that up to 15%, then 20%, and so on until colleges have extracted the entire consumer surplus for themselves.
Colleges are absorbing the marginal value of a college degree. What’s amazing about that?
Framing harm as benefits is a classic dodge.
That colleges want to absorb the surplus is not amazing. That they are able to is surprising. If they were able to through cartel practices, that would not be amazing. But the fact that colleges are unable to compete on price is amazing. There are many accounts of colleges raising their price and having demand go up.
Signaling effects.
The PRIMARY benefit of elite universities is not the education you receive, but the status you receive from having attended an elite university, and people are more than willing to assume that expensive is a reasonable proxy for elite.
I’d imagine you’d see similar results in like, the fine wine category.
That’s called producer’s surplus. You get more of it than consumer’s surplus when you have a good with very low price-elasticity, which you get when subsidized loans give consumers the illusion that what they’re purchasing is significantly cheaper than it actually is.
Going in for a second bite at the apple
I hope it’s kosher to talk about the Gawker/Hulk Hogan thing here. Given the recent discussion about object vs meta issues I find it pretty interesting to examine my own reactions of “they’re an awful clickbait site and it was pretty hypocritical of them to host someone’s sex tape given how upset they got about the fappening” vs “a free press is Extremely Important and people shouldn’t be silenced for publishing things, no matter how dumb or puerile”
I feel like the question is if publishing revenge porn of public figures is okay or not. We’ve established at least that blackmailed private figures over revenge porn ain’t cool, but I don’t know the precedent behind this one.
Aren’t these two sentiments orthogonal ?
By analogy, I think that heavy alcohol use is an extremely self-destructive course of action that no reasonable person should engage in (modulo extreme medical conditions); in general, I think that society would be better if there were no alcoholics in it. At the same time, I would strongly oppose any measure to prohibit alcohol, on the grounds that doing so would violate a set of critically important principles which, while not directly related to alcohol, enable society to function.
I don’t know the details of this particular farrago and I don’t want to, so I’ll stick to broad principles
In general, media claim that publishing sex scandal stories (“Love rat cheat exposed!”) is in the public interest. Now, unless the revelation is about rape or abuse of some kind, that public figures have sex should not be a surprise to anyone (okay, if they’re talking about “Pope Francis and his secret mistress”, fine, I’ll concede that point).
Apart from that, what interest is served by “See real naked images of So-and-So’s kinky sex depravity!”? I don’t know and don’t care who Susie Soapstar is banging or dating or having an open relationship with. Anyone who does care, there’s plenty of online porn for your cheap titillation needs. You really, really want to see Celeb in the genuine nude? That’s your problem.
My opinion is that people, even celebrities, are entitled to a private life. Now, if Susie Soapstar goes about selling a book full of ‘artistic’ nude photos, and is trading access to seeing her naked body for cash, then you may feel she hasn’t much of a leg to stand on when it comes to complaints about leaked nude photos she didn’t sell, but there still remains the fact of consent and ownership of your image. The same rights that a private person has to expect their personal photos not to be splashed about, even if they have a photo taken for a driver’s licence or other method of identification that will be seen and used in public.
The main interest for these kinds of exclusives and scoops about the sex habits of celebs is the public attention it gets and the extra sales of newspapers or extra hits on the webpage to show the advertisers for increasing your revenue, not “the public interest”.
If sex scandals result in lots of extra sales, you’ve determined that they are in the public interest; sex scandals cause sales == revealed preference for sex scandals == people get lots of utility from reading about sex scandals.
Probably different definitions of public interest working there.
Prurience is not the same as in the public interest. The public may be very much interested to know if Susie Soapstar is a natural blonde but that knowledge adds nothing to their benefit. Knowing if John Senator is fiddling the books or claiming expenses to do up his duck house is in the public interest because he’s paid out of the public purse; knowing that John Senator is doing it in order to fund the trips he takes to exotic foreign locales with his personal assistant who is his mistress/toyboy is even in the public interest; knowing that John Senator likes to dress up as Kermit the Frog and be called “Lord Daddy” in the bedroom with said mistress/toyboy is not in the public interest, though it may interest the public.
How are you going to define “public interest”, if it does *not* mean “increases utility for the public”?
We don’t think of publication of scandals as “in the public interest” because enjoying reading about scandals is low status, which isn’t really a good reason to disqualify it as being in the public interest.
What utility does it increase, Jiro, for me to know the exact faces you make at the moment of unitary bliss? If I’m sitting in my back garden in my underwear enjoying the sunshine, I don’t expect a photographer up a tree with a long-lens camera a mile away taking pictures and I object most strongly to the defence of “But you were out in public, so publishing these pictures is like you showing yourself to the public” (if I’m in my backgarden, I most certainly am not showing myself off to the public).
Enjoying reading about, talking about, gossiping about scandal is human. But it does no benefit to the public because it doesn’t save them a penny in expenses, fix a problem, end a wrong, stop global climate change, feed the hungry, or banish disease.
Particularly intrusive and egregious examples of media selling porn (which, by publishing sex tapes and celebrity nude photos, is what they’re doing) may lead to stricter privacy laws/more censorship/tighter or more pervasive libel and slander laws, and these may or may not be in the public interest. But “Disgusting sex pervert behaviour! Stop this filth now! (see cont. on pages 16-19, 22, 36-40 for photos and url of said disgusting perversion so you can see it online for yourself)” is not what is meant by “in the interest of the public”.
I don’t understand your question “what utility does it increase?”. You’re asking that as if the utility someone gains can be separated from the fact that they want it and prefer to have it. And it’s not. If they desire it as an end in itself, it gives them utility; that’s what utility is. Utility does *not* mean “it is high culture” or “it lengthens their lifespan” or “it’s something that I personally would enjoy”.
Leaking Susie Soapstar’s published book of nude photos is just theft – people are getting something free which they should have paid for. Leaking the nude photos which didn’t make it into the book is worse, though unless they’re more “intimate”, there’s not much of a violation of privacy there.
This of course assumes that the leaks aren’t being arranged by the publicist to drum up business.
I think it’s pretty clear that Gawker are just hypocrites attacking people for daring to do their execrable job for free.
With that said, there are laws against that sort of thing, and they should damn well apply to Gawker along with the gossip rags they sprang from.
Here’s the matter of principle I can’t get past in this case, and I realize this makes me not as good a person as I could be:
It’s Gawker. Screw those guys.
This is the Al Capone problem. You can’t get Al Capone for gangstering, but you can get him for tax evasion. You can’t get Amos Yee for saying “fuck Lee Kuan Yew” right after Lee Kuan Yew died, but you can get him for talking shit about Jesus. You can’t get Gawker for being vile communist shits, but you can get them for the Hulk Hogan thing.
In the case of Al Capone, it’s because he bought off most of the power structure. In the case of Amos Yee, it’s because having lese majeste laws would make Singapore look bad. In the case of Gawker, it’s because there’s no rule against being a vile communist shit.
In some cases, this reveals problems with how the rules are set up: you can’t get Brian Leiter for generally being a prick, but you can get Brian Leiter for disagreeing with a woman or whatever it was.
In some cases, the target hasn’t actually committed tax evasion, so you have to make something up before you can Capone it, as happened with Benghazi and Ferguson.
Is there any meta-level way to deal with the Al Capone problem? I don’t know. On the one hand, it’s just enforcing the law; on the other hand, anyone who the relevant power structure doesn’t like is going to be subject to increased scrutiny, and the laws/social norms are usually so complicated that most people have probably broken them. (In extreme cases, it’s probably possible for a new social norm to be created for the purpose of Al-Caponing someone, but that’s what norms against ex post facto laws are for — not that anyone understands these days that legal norms don’t arise in a vacuum chamber sealed off from the realm of social norms, or that there’s often good reason for legal norms to apply to laws just as well as to social norms.)
Al Capone is different from all your other examples. People had no problem spelling out and criminalizing what they hated about him. So he shouldn’t be your trope-namer. How about Galileo?
People have no problem spelling out what they hate about Gawker. I don’t think people had a problem spelling out what they hate about Leiter — he was generally disliked before the purge. As for Amos Yee, there was a “fuck that guy for calling LKY a dictator right after he died” response video on Youtube that got a few hundred thousand views.
It’s often common knowledge that/why the target is disliked, so you won’t find, say, one hit piece that starts the dislike — you’ll instead find offhand references like “Gawker’s execrable job” or “It’s Gawker. Screw those guys.” or “it’s an awful clickbait site”, which imply that it’s already common knowledge that doesn’t need to be justified.
To be very minimally fair, Gawker would shill for capitalism — no, that’s not vitriolic enough. It’d shill for Vlad III “the Impaler” Tepes. It’d shill for Lord Voldemort. It’d sell its grandmother to the Prince of Lies, the First Among the Fallen, the Author of Desolation in a heartbeat if it had a grandmother and there were clicks in it.
I don’t care who you are, Gawker isn’t on your side. Gawker isn’t on anyone’s side. I’ve met communists I like — some on this very blog, in fact — but I haven’t found anything I like about Gawker.
Did you not see the article where they posted part of their internal chat?
Are we absolutely sure that’s not the reanimated corpse of Ayn Rand writing a villain speech?
Seriously, though, I am kind of surprised that they believe their own press — assuming that hasn’t been massaged before release, which I wouldn’t put past them — but I don’t think that sinks the clicks theory. We’ve got a lot of capacity for self-delusion.
New York’s rent control laws expired a few days ago, and the divided legislature hasn’t been able to reach an agreement to reinstate them. Practically everyone agrees that rent control is a bad idea, but suddenly abolishing it without warning and dumping a bunch of poor people onto the streets is not exactly ideal. On the other hand, I don’t know if there’s any way to alleviate the transition costs of a decontrol.
That’s a problem with lots of public policy – there may be an obviously better policy out there, but switching to it would impose massive costs on lots of people for little short-term benefit, so you can’t get there from here.
In any case, the legislature is likely to pass another short-term extension, like they have every few years since they first declared an emergency housing shortage 70 years ago and imposed “temporary” rent controls.
The solution to these issues always seems pretty clear: subsidize the poor (or whomever is negatively affected in the short term), but political policies that explicitly show the costs (like subsidies) instead of hiding the costs (like rent control) can’t get support.
I really like this idea, not just for rent control, but as a general political principle. Making all things financial shows their true costs immediately, and obviously, whereas ‘policy’ that’s coercive merely pushes costs around in non-obvious and hard-to-track ways.
Many assume that democracy is the pinnacle of governance. I haven’t thought enough to be able to say whether I agree or not, but even granting the premise – that of all the governmental forms know, democracy (with restrictions on government) is in fact the best known form, that still leaves a *huge* scope for improvement. Making all costs explicit is one such improvement; a form of “accounting” for political decisions.
In this particular case there was a mechanism in place to gradually end it, but it was tinkered with. Specifically, luxury de-control takes an apartment out of the rent stabilization program after the legal rent reaches a certain amount and the apartment is vacant (it can also happen if the apartment isn’t vacant and the people living there make enough money, but that’s just a complication).
If you hold the decontrol number constant in nominal terms, eventually you eliminate rent stabilization, but to prevent that the number has been increased several times. In 2011 it went from $2000 to $2500.
What are the expected real returns to investment these days, assuming no risk or loss aversion?
I was thinking about things like random international stocks, etc.
I have no idea how to tell since I am quite illiterate in these things. Is it still positive? Is it above 2% p.a.? Above 4? What about black swans?
ETA: I apologize if the name “Confused” was already taken, this is the first time I post here.
Well, what time period are you investing for? Can’t know return unless you know time.
Also, go to Vanguard and check out their retirement date index funds. No load and low total expense in a broad array of equities has proven advantages.
Thanks for the advice. I was thinking 10-20 years.
For dollars the expected return can’t go below the return on Treasury bills (which is almost zero). My guess is that the real expected return of stocks is between 2% to 4% a year.
Do you know if the exponential growth of the economy over the last centuries has been tied to population growth? And will the leveling off of the world population cause the economy (and the stock market) to also level off?
Econ growth has certainly enabled population growth and allowed us to escape the Malthusian trap. Greater world population has almost certainly increased per person econ growth in part because of economies of scale. Demographic problems are the major long-term econ problem of lots of countries especially Germany, Japan, S. Korea, and China. I’m sure that stock prices already reflect this.
The historical geometric mean going back to 1910s is 9% on all equities and 13% if you restrict to small cap value, which is the highest variance, highest expected return index fund you’ll find. If you’re going broad index unmanaged like that (which you really should), then fees are your major differentiator. Vanguard was the lowest I could find. Not many people think U.S. growth in the 21st century is going to match U.S. growth in the 20th century, but it should certainly exceed 2%. It’s obviously easier to recount the past than predict the future. You can guarantee yourself more than 2% with 10-year TIPs.
For sufficiently long time horizons, AFAIK, the rule of thumb is 5% inflation adjusted growth for a diversified portfolio.
This doesn’t include things like entire stock exchanges being obliterated, or the investor physically dying, right?
(Because 5% sounds far too attractive to be true to me, with negative real returns for treasuries.)
Vanguard’s all-market fund has done 9.63% since inception in 1994, in spite of two Black Swan events (counting 9/11 and the 2008 credit crunch). Really low real interest rates help equity returns. The good is business have a lower cost of capital. The bad is, well, yield seekers flee bonds and bid up prices, so don’t be surprised to see another correction, but the 9% already factors that in. US GDP growth averaged 3.26% from 1946 to 2014. A fairly conservative estimate is at least 2% over the next 20 even with bad stagnation. If you get really conservative and figure that’s all inflation and no real growth, a 5% risk premium to equity still isn’t out of line with historical average.
Thanks for your insight.
Only sort of relevant (and shameless attempt to borrow your insight), but what do you make of this for those who don’t have 10 grand lying around?
https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239744/ishares-global-healthcare-etf
The recommended fund is a tax managed all US equity market fund, but since it’s a market weighted it is dominated by the largest names. A S&P 500 fund is going to track similarly, have lower fees, and pretty good tax efficiency given the low turnover. Check out VFINX or VOO. Or if you really want all market, VTSMX or VTI (at the cost of somewhat worse tax performance and fees).
Great point! I assume you’re referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias ?
It’s not that much. For comparison, that Vanguard Fund that did 9.63% the last 20 years was designed to track the Russell 1000, which did 9.72%, so survivorship bias put less than a 0.1% dent in your earnings.
Like Adam said above, the long term mean for all equities is 9%. IIRC, the long term mean for inflation is around 4%. So, as a rule of thumb, a well diversified long term portfolio is looking at around 9-4 = 5%.
What your goals are (and prevailing conditions), however, play a major role in how you invest. But you specified no risk/loss aversion and a long time frame so my answer seemed reasonable.
And yes, the US/EU/etc markets are pretty anemic right now but: A, right now is not ten years from now and; B, while it is generally expected that growth in the developed will world slow, growth in the developing world is generally expected to pick up the slack.
While the Great Recession has certainly been bumpy (and Greece may still throw the recovery-such-as-it-is out of whack), I don’t see any sort of cataclysmic change such that from hereafter all equities are will grow at a markedly slower rate.
From:
http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/Q-and-A-Estimating-Long-Term-Market-Returns
For a 20 year time period:
Large-cap stocks – S&P 500: 6.3% annually
Mid-/small-cap stocks – Russell 2000: 7.1% annually
International stocks – MSCI EAFE : 6.1% annually
Bonds: Barclays U.S. Aggregate – 3.3% annually
Cash investments – Citigroup 3 Month Treasury: 1.8% annually
Shouldn’t this include the combined probabilities that there will be a global nuclear war + nuclear winter, or a synthetic or natural global pandemic in the next 20 years?
Because that seems at least 1%-2% p.a. as well.
Oh, yes, I’ll be deeply concerned about my 401K balance in the aftermath of a global nuclear war.
Well, the point is that you still have to subtract it when you make the decision. (I also privately subtract the probability that I die because I’m fat, but that cannot be generalized)
What decision is that? If I’m choosing an investment portfolio, then I’m trying to maximize my returns in the case where I’m alive and the economic system I’m working with is at least kinda recognizable, because I won’t care if the former isn’t true and I have no ability to optimize if the latter isn’t. I suppose you could also consider stocking up on ammunition, Prussian Blue, and custom-built flamethrowing guitars as a hedge, but if you’re considering that route I’d recommend some very careful thinking about your actual probability estimates.
(1-2% per annum seems high to me, too.)
The decision how much to invest at all.
I could just not earn it and save myself the stress.
I like this. Spend every last cent you earn so you don’t die with a surplus when nuclear winter comes.
On a more serious note, consider the full range of investment possibilities. Throw some of what you earn into equities, and throw some of it into seeds, ammo, and martial arts lessons.
Just don’t cash out right after a crash and you’ll be good.
At least if you subscribe to anything vaguely like modern portfolio theory, the question isn’t well formed. You pick a variance and get an expected real return or you pick an expected real return and get a variance.
A lot of people answered the question as if you asked the expected long term real return to a broad portfolio equities, is that what you meant?
Yes, that is roughly what I meant, even though I would also be interested in what would maximize expected real returns with high variance, as long as the total loss probability is less than 80% or so.
The canonical answer is to construct a maximally diversified portfolio, figure out the expected variance, and then boost the variance with leverage to reach the desired level.
Unfortunately, fees and interest can get in the way of that. Also unfortunate, is that while certain asset classes were previously treated as being uncorrelated, in the recent downturn a lot of them ended up moving together.
Though this may get me banned from tech conferences and possibly SSC, I’m going to propose a new form of government called “Dogearchy.”
http://img00.deviantart.net/dead/i/2014/162/1/a/doge_almighty_by_ry_spirit-d7lxh5y.jpg
I’d vote for this, but since I’m not Doge that seems inconsistent.
On behalf of Mark Twain, I hiss and arch my back at thee.
I subscribed to mealsquares. How long do they take to start delivering? Do they tell you when they’re about to deliver? Do they require a signature or do they just leave the package in front of your house?
I am interested in mealsquares, but from what I’d read, they taste like corrugated cardboard. Is that true ?
I know this is irrational, but I don’t think I could bring myself to actually eat something that tastes awful, regardless of how efficient or advantageous it might be in other respects.
I fail to see how avoiding unpleasant experiences is irrational.
Assuming that eating mealsquares is healthier and/or more efficient than eating regular foods, then the rational course of action would be to eliminate (or at least reduce) my preference for regular foods — since, while consuming them does bring me temporary pleasure, doing so will reduce my overall aggregate happiness over time. Unfortunately, I am far from convinced that I could actually accomplish this.
I’m having a hard time figuring out what “more efficient” is supposed to mean in the context of food.
If we’re talking about the cost of food and the opportunity cost of cooking times, that’s a really trivially small amount of savings for an ordinary person. There is almost certainly some more reasonable way to cut back on expenses if that’s such a concern.
As for health, eating well isn’t too hard it’s just a habit to be cultivated like any other. Buying healthy ingredients and cooking them properly has a learning curve but it’s much much easier than “eliminating [your] preference for normal food.”
To be honest, it sounds like you’re hung up on this idea to an irrational degree. There are many different methods to achieve each of your goals, so if this one is so clearly unappealing you should consider the others rather than torturing yourself.
Well, recall that I said “If…” at the very beginning on my post. I was under the impression that switching to MealSquares would save me on the order of $100/month, and 2 hours/day, which is not a trivial amount of time and money (not to mention the health benefits, if any). But if this is not true, and the real numbers are more like “$10/month, 15 mins/day”, then the tradeoff would not be worth it.
The taste of MealSquares is not for everyone. For example, people who don’t like Clif bars or describe themselves as “foodies” are often dissatisfied with the taste of our product.
That said, we have been gradually working to improve the taste of our product over the past year and it’s possible that you heard comments about a previous iteration. Also, we are now doing sample packs so you can taste them more cheaply.
Great! I handed out a bunch of single packs to people for them to try, because most of the people I know weren’t willing to risk $90 on something uncertain. (I think at least one of them is subscribed, now.)
I think $35 might still be high, though, and you might want to investigate options to send out single MealSquares. I think most uncertain but curious people would rather pay $10 for 1 than $35 for 10. (Whether you can send one out for $10, or cheaper, is a question you have a much better handle on than I do.)
Thanks John, the sample pack is a great idea, I will check one out.
Edit: Yeah, $35 is a bit steep. I realize that at $10, the sample pack would probably be your loss leader, so maybe you can implement some sort of a “limit one per customer” policy…
I personally rather like the taste (though if I start eating more than one or two a day I get sick of them pretty fast). It’s kinda like a dry homemade cake.
Great to hear that you subscribed! Most of the time orders are shipped within 7 days of you making them. We normally send an email right around the time we ship your order. Then the squares spend ~3 days being shipped via USPS. It’s not necessary to sign for them.
(In general we prefer to get questions via our contact form. SlateStarCodex open threads are tougher to monitor. If people want to use our contact form to notify us of MealSquares-related discussions here or elsewhere that we should participate in, that’d be spiffy.)
Haven’t yet tried the product – but I was wondering if you have any plans at making different “flavors” at some point.
I feel like any food I start to eat very often and on a regular basis I eventually just get tired of and lose the taste for. I would hate to get hooked on the efficiency by a product like this but suddenly find myself having lost the taste for it and having no alternative but to go back to regular inefficient foods!
Yes, that is something we plan to do in the long term.
I’ve been thinking about the spending and saving habits of the average man. As far as I can tell, he acts as if any money in his possession will burst into flames at some indefinite point in the near future, and he therefore endeavors to spend it all before it can burn a hole in his pockets. The only exception is money which is protected against combustion through the fearsome ritual of “saving,” but this ritual is so painful that only the most financially well disciplined of men can muster the willpower to engage in it, and even then only for a small portion of their income. Thus, a man who “saves” 10% of his monthly paycheck, or who makes sure to always keep 3 to 6 months of expenses in “savings,” is considered a paragon of financial virtue. A man who has a nearly empty bank account but a regular paycheck is considered normal, and it is only he who goes into into debt buying unnecessary things that is considered financially irresponsible. This seems to hold true no matter how much a man earns.
I find this attitude bizarre.
Also, I got a comment of the week. Sweet.
That combustion is called “inflation” and savings are protected from it by earning “interest.” These phenomena both went extinct in the 2008 credit crunch yet the attitudes assuming their existence persist.
Well I think part of the issue is that saving is actually an awful idea, at least in the sense that most people think of it. Putting money in the bank means it continuously loses value and while we’ve avoided bank runs so far it seems inevitable going forwards.
Investing, on the other hand, is more reasonable but for the same reasons it’s clear why people don’t do it. Investing intelligently actually takes care and foresight. Even just managing your 401K properly is more complex than most people can easily deal with.
Ah! I can answer this, because I had this same question and then it was explained to me.
You see, it’s because your average man has friends and family and relatives and acquaintances and other such people-in-his-social-network, who earn less, and are generally not as good at getting money as he is.
And so if he has money just lying around, it might indeed “burst into flames”, by the expedient of some mooching relative-or-whoever showing up at his door, being all like “My son Johnny needs his tooth taken out, but we got no money! Can you help us out, on account of you being luckier than most folks?”
And so forth. And of course you can’t decline, that would mark you as greedy and selfish. Then you get ostracized, and that’s bad.
Meanwhile! If Mr. Average spends it all, but then subsequently his son Bobby needs his tooth taken out and he lacks the funds, well, he can show up at the door of a relative-or-whoever, and ask for help. Were it known that Mr. A had unspent money, the request would be rebuffed, on the grounds that our hero could simply dip into his savings; but as we all know that his paycheck is spent entirely and immediately, it would be greedy and selfish not to help…
What seems more likely: most people have that thought process or that most people simply don’t have the willpower to save that much? I think you’re over analyzing it. Personally, saving to me is like spending for other people. It makes me happy to see my bank account go up while spending it depresses me, even when it’s stuff I like. It’s probably a genetic thing.
Yeah, I think this is the answer. Most people just don’t have enough future-time orientation to save much. This is the “normal state” (such as anything is) of humanity. It is unusual for people to have the psychological ability to save.
This is also why so many people love Social Security. It forces present-time oriented people to “save” (not exactly, but you know what I mean), which leads to good outcomes for them in old age. It’s also why so many people allow the government to take more in taxes from their paychecks than they owe: because they’ll get a nice tax refund if they do. Another example of forced saving.
I also agree that present and future time orientation are probably largely genetic.
Whether they think it through or not, people still respond to incentives. Saving has dropped substantially over the years, and I don’t think genetics explain that graph.
Why not both? Currently, there aren’t many incentives to save so the people who do are the ones with a genetic predisposition.
You don’t necessarily have to think it through; you just have to know your one uncle who has a good stable government job and owns his own house and everybody’s hitting him up for money all the time.
That still doesn’t sound right. Rich people save more than poor people even though they know more rich people who could help them out.
I think there are probably certain degrees of “economies of scale” involved in savings. The more money you have, the more access you have towards higher-yielding investments.
A lower-middle class janitor can’t invest in a hedge fund even if he’s really smart and he really wants to. If his time preference is such that he requires a rate of return of say, 20% in order to choose savings over consumption, he likely does not have access to any investment that can provide him this, so he saves.
Meanwhile, a billionaire with a 20% required return probably has all sorts of different investments that could yield over 20%, is more likely to have the education to evaluate them and/or the time and/or money to hire people to do so on his behalf.
It’s not the thought process, it’s the experience of having it happen. Over and over again.
See, I’m just like you, when the account goes up it makes me feel happy. And when it’s substantial, it makes me feel pride in my frugality and industriousness. When the money gets taken away by the mooching relatives process, it doesn’t show up in your bank account anymore. The feedback loop breaks. Rich people have the problem less because their families are richer so they mooch less, and they’ve either developed the right defenses or had them passed down by their parents.
I don’t want to go into full details for obvious reasons, but I’m 28 years old and I’m down around 85,000 US dollars through the relative-mooching process. I’ve never made six figures pre-tax in my life. Objectively, the benefits of my savings have mostly accrued to others. It’s a bottomless pit if you don’t have the proper defenses, and they don’t teach you “how to ignore family members with medical expenses/tax problems/behind on rent/etc” in school.
This strikes me as a plausible justification for the old norm where you don’t talk about financial matters except with intimates.
The fact that people can mooch off their relatives is considered (in all seriousness) a reason why some third world countries remain in poverty. It provides a safety net, but it also makes it impossible for someone to benefit much from bettering themself.
I think sociologists call it “rich social support networks.”
Can model this behavior by valuing whatever I can get for the money now MUCH more than even the whatever the money+interest will get me in the future.
There’s an argument made in the wikipedia page that this heuristic counters uncertainty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting
I find it equally bizarre, and am horrified that the mass of humans think this way. I am perhaps merely lucky in this regard; I think it plausible that people’s desire and ability to save are heavily shaped by what’s considered ‘normal’ in their family and social group. My own family is very future-oriented, and therefore I’ve always considered saving the ‘default’ state. I suspect that I’m also quite future-oriented as well, more so than even members of my family. It an attitude to which I revert except in times of crisis. I think the prevalence of people not saving also may have to do with people not changing a mindset formed by years and years of scarcity even after material conditions have changed, and the abusive culture Said Achmiz describes (which is horrible and disgusting, and which I would instantly destroy if I could, and which is yet still the human default).
It’s a good thing that now, investing isn’t difficult; if you can save $100 a month, you can invest that money in a reliable long-term investment (a combination of Vanguard index funds with a few other things) without needing to know anything about investing (except enough to be able to judge that this is a good idea), all with a few mouse clicks, using either Wealthfront (which requires a $5000 minimum), or Betterment (which doesn’t have any minimum requirements as long as you’re willing to put in $100 every month).
I’m curious why you suggest Wealthfront or Betterment rather than just Schwab or Vanguard directly. Fewer middlemen = higher returns, generally, yes? And Schwab’s minimum (for US citizens) is only $1000, I believe.
And I have never had more than 1100 dollars in my entire life. Meeting the minimum upfront investment is the choke point, not the orientation to future.
The amount that the middlemen (Wealthfront and Betterment) charge is very minimal, and unlike Schwab and Vanguard, they do not require you to make any decisions. If you make the decisions wrong, it will cost you a LOT more than what the middlemen charge.
So for someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing in investing — and for various reasons learning is not immediately in the cards — Wealthfront and Betterment are excellent choices.
(Reasons learning might not be in the cards: It takes a lot longer for me to teach someone about investing than to recommend a cheap service that does it for them; some people are extremely resistant to learning about investing because they think it’s complicated; some people have dispositions that are not suited to investing because you have to be able to watch your investment fall in value and not do anything rash, which many people are simply unable to accomplish. Also, in practice to squeeze the most value out of your investments, you want to periodically rebalance them, which the middlemen will do for you so they are more set-and-forget. At least Wealthfront also does some tax tricks for you. Those things together might be enough to make back the minimal fees.)
Finding a financial advisor prospectively who can beat a broad-based index fund enough to justify its percentage (as opposed to identifying who beat it retrospectively, with past performance no guarantee of future returns) isn’t something I’ve seen convincingly demonstrated.
(I’m pretty sure that there are people with market-beating talent. I’m just not sure that it’s any easier to pick one than it is to pick market-beating stocks.)
Beating the market is called insider trading.
Is there any good research on material comfort and psychological willingness to save? While rationally those who may need to worry about providing for basics needs (i.e., lower income earners) would be the ones who should save, I can imagine a pretty easy behavioral psychology argument that those who experience such doubt will always have more doubt regarding the utility of saving/likelihood of future returns.
In the US, certain social security benefits are available only to people whose resources are below a certain amount. For SSI, it’s $2000. I’m not sure where Medicade fits into this, but IIUC it’s possible to still be on SSI but lose Medicade benefits due to income.
In the US, at least, you either get a sudden and valuable income boost that makes saving possible, or you spend the money so as to avoid having to reopen your case when it runs out and/or owe the government for overpay. (Or get really good at hiding the money where they can’t find it, but this still loses to inflation.)
So is the regulation creating an incentive to not save? That seems like pretty low-hanging fruit as poverty alleviation goes, though I’m sure there are political pressures forcing it in that direction.
Any and all government “assistance” programs provide an incentive not to save.
Blah blah blah, Benjamin Franklin quote about making people “uncomfortable in their poverty,” standard democrat/republican argument about whether poor people are victims of oppressive capitalism or just too lazy… you get the idea.
@Matt M, well sure… but if we have a class of workers with a sharp drop-off as to whether they fall into or out of a safety net, and that’s causing demonstrable reductions in savings rate, that’s kind of beyond the normal R v D debate, isn’t it?
It is, and that’s how we ended up with the EITC, which avoids the problem with a 100% marginal tax rate when you hit an eligibility threshold, and creates a much better incentive structure. It’s somewhat unique as poverty relief programs go, having been rejected as an idea by D Lyndon Johnson and then passed under R Gerald Ford, but that’s only one program out of many.
I don’t know enough about eligibility requirements for current programs to know what kind of wealth threshold, as opposed to income threshold, they have though. The Pell Grant is a little messed up as one example, which would require you to use your own savings before they give you anything, so there’s not much of a good reason to save in advance of going to college, unless you can save enough to forego having to take out loans as well.
I think a large compulsion to spend comes from seeing the material goods of one’s friends and peers and the lifestyle inflation that commonly comes from “keeping up with the Jones'”. However, it may be a bit more pernicious than that old saw because it’s not just one rich Jones family held out as a comparison. It’s all the fanciest aspects of your combined peer group. For example, assume that you have the following set of peers that fall roughly within your socio-economic status and you interact with them on a semi-frequent basis: {Anderson, Baker, Calder, Dimattia, Ericsson, Finnegan, and Gale}.
Anderson is a bit of a car nut, so this family always has a bmw.
Baker loves to cook, and so the family kitchen is outfitted with the latest (and most expensive) espresso machines, appliances, and tons of saffron.
Calder loves to travel so this family is always posting pictures from their trips to Alps or Southeast Asia.
Dimattia is a fashionista and this family is always decked out in the latest couture fashions.
Ericcson is a technophile and always has the latest and greatest in gadgets and technology.
Finnegan loves to eat out and visits the finest restaurants in town once a week.
Gale collects fine watches and is never seen without a fancy swiss automatic.
Each of these peers of yours may, be saving their money responsibly and only splurging on their one passion, but the aggregate and subliminal effect on you is that you think “Oh my gosh, each of my peers have brand new bmws, fancy kitchens, exotic vacations, the latest fashions, dine out all the time, and tell that same time on the fanciest of watches.” This combination of the diverse expensive interests of all of your peers into one Super Jones Family with which you feel you must compete, is the biggest driver of lifestyle inflation and the balrog that drags your savings plan down into the pit of fire.
I normally like to couch my words in qualifications, but people in this thread are frankly wrong.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNS.ICTR.ZS
Claims about the “typical” person or “mass of humanity” may well be true of OECD countries with huge welfare states (and even then the average household savings rate is ~twice that of the US: https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/916lqg-household-saving-rates) but it would be absurd in, eg, China or India(where the modal person resides).
https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/PublicationReportDetails.aspx?ID=662#4
(Above is data on India. Finding data on China is a easier).
Further, the claim that “typical people” save very little is not only non-robust across location, but also non-robust across time. See, for example, savings rates in the US in the turn of the last century.
It’s hard to assign causality, but I’m tempted to believe it’s a mixture of a developed welfare state(theoretically) doing the saving for you and residual fear from Great Depression Era-bankruptcies. [Epistemic status: low]
Regardless of the reasoning of this specific exception however, I find it interesting that so many people are making broad generalizations about human nature from a specific instance that is not only WEIRD-specific but also century-specific.
Hey, so I’d just read Fearful Symmetry and I went to take a shower, and as I was taking a shower this post about a set of rules for a libertarian convention suddenly appeared in my head and wanted to be let out. I don’t know where it’s from, I’ve never run a con or even been to a con; for all I know it could be completely impractical. But, you know, there it is.
Regarding your link: this may be a stupid question, but what prevents me from going to Amazon, ordering an orange armband, wearing it, and then going MAD WITH POWER!!!1!! at your convention ?
1) Organizers have no special powers
2) Armbands can be customized. 🙂
> Organizers have no special powers
Technically, this is true, but as you said, organizers “create a distinct, privileged caste of enforcers”, and other people are “strongly recommended” to do what they say. If that’s not power, what is ?
> Armbands can be customized
Ok, I am going to paint a smiley face on mine. And then I shall go MAD WITH POWER!!!1!!.
Okay so, ultimately the people who have rented the hall can just kick you out, but also it’s just extremely unlikely to me that somebody will actually do this since there’s not that many trolls IRL.
My life experience so far has led me to believe that people routinely underestimate the number of trolls in real life 🙁 This is especially true when the event in question is somewhat controversial (as libertarian conventions are apt to be). In this case, I would say that the probability of someone messing with your convention approaches 100%, and you need to implement at least some measures to make messing with you more difficult to achieve.
I think that it’s worth a try to just communicate to people that they don’t need to follow the instructions of Organizers – which is true – and, well, if the troll Organizers manage to consistently fake good behavior, well, as XKCD says, mission accomplished?
Organisers have no special powers
Well, they’re the point of contact between the convention goers and the convention owners. You recommend that if people have complaints, they talk to an organiser, who will then “escalate” it up to the convention owners.
If this means convention goers cannot directly communicate with, or have access to, the convention owners, it gives the organisers some small bit of (necessary) power as gatekeepers and filters.
You also recommend people should follow the organisers’ suggestions as they are there to make the experience better, run smoothly, and provide help.
So if the only means of identifying who is an Organiser is “orange armband”, and if ConGoer is strongly recommended to do what Orange Armband tells them to do when asked, what indeed is stopping Bugmaster from buying an orange armband and going around telling everyone that they need to hop on one foot, no, trust me, this’ll improve the experience no end!
The only way round that, that I can see, is to have an Official Convention Owner Granted Distinctive Orange Armband of Office Only Given To Select Few Official Organisers, which is possibly too much like organised monolithic government oversight for a libertarian convention 🙂
1) conventiongoers can talk to the owners, but the usual rule about not following people around applies. Owners are not compelled to talk to anybody.
2) hopping on one foot sounds fun.
3) To clarify, I’m not explicitly recommending people follow the organizers’ instructions; optimally following the organizers’ instructions should be the intuitively sane thing to do. People should want to do it.
They’re more there to organize Schelling points, figure out where people are congregating; that’s why I’m not too worried about others abusing this power.
But do note that the armbands come in many colors, and the owners are not obligated to tell you in advance what color (or combination) they’re using, or what they’ll paint on them. 🙂
following the organizers’ instructions should be the intuitively sane thing to do
You seem to have a higher opinion of the sanity and good behaviour of people in a mass than I do 🙂
Possibly a group of libertarians would be rational types who would calmly consider the facts of the situation, but I also think you might be very likely to get the “Nobody is the boss of me” type who would march up to the Organiser and demand that So-and-So who is harassing them be kicked out, I’ve got rights, they’re violating my rights, I paid to attend, and no the fact that I punched them in the face first has nothing to do with it, nobody has the right to impose rules on me!
They’re entirely free to demand that. They are also free to follow an Organizer around, in which case the Organizer is free to escalate to owners and the owner is free to have security escort them off the premises. 🙂
America – Land of the Free!
A large point of the Rules is to define a clear path of escalation to resolve problems like that.
the Organizer is free to escalate to owners and the owner is free to have security escort them off the premises
Ha! So you admit it! Your jackbooted orange-armbanded stormtroopers are there to stifle free speech as stooges of the oppressors! Here we see the recourse to force as, having no good argument in reply against the basic rights of the free individual to pursue what is of most advantage to them by whatever acts or speech they choose, they revert to and rely on the oppressive standing armed forces of their quasi-state to stifle and repress all dissent and free thought! 🙂
Hold on, I thought Libertarianism was in favor of property rights?
I mean, it can be private security. That counts, right?
But I’m not damaging any property in any way, FeepingCreature. And still the private security is the threat in wait for me (which is the equivalent of a private army for the organisers, being the typical ‘last resort of kings’ for their use: if I don’t stifle my rights of free expression, they will have me dragged off by force and ejected from the convention that I paid to attend and which they accepted my money and issued me a ticket).
No, beneath the fair-seeming cloak of Libertarianism, we can see the orange armband of totalitarian thought-control 🙂
Okay, I understand what you’re saying but I think you’re just factually mistaken about how this would work in a libertarian world.
First of all, you’re not *damaging* any property, but you’re *making use of* another’s property without their agreement. Second, you paid to attend, but you paid (presumably, in a pure Libertarian scenario) under a contract that required you to recognize the right of the owner to regulate the use of his property. (What, didn’t you read the fine print?) So you see, you are really the one who first violated the contractually guaranteed rights of the owner to make you please leave the premises. 🙂
(We have “contracts” like that now, in the form of EULAs. “Your purchase of a ticket does not entitle you to use of the property except in ways permitted by the Owners…”)
I know comments are supposed to avoid bearing race, but I’ve been thinking of constructing my own race and I’d like to get everyone’s feedback. Ultimately I want to have a round table that’ll be well supported from all sides, something where all my friends can have a seat at the table and share. (I’d stick with standard races but they’re all too narrow or too expensive.) Making it work will require bigger balls than I currently possess, but the internet is full of encouraging options.
From what my friends tell me, tolerance is the major issue. Lack of tolerance leads to eccentricity, and pretty soon your race is on fire from all the friction. The other key component seems to be ensuring there’s enough tension to avoid major backlash.
Let’s say I use 50mm thick 6061 aluminum plate and mill a 80cm diameter bearing race using a 25mm ball end mill on a Haas SR100 gantry router to a depth of 20mm. Mill two identical pieces for top and bottom. Use 25mm brass balls. How much space should I leave between the balls? I’m assuming I don’t want them grinding against each other. What kind of lube will I need, and will I need pretensioning given the weight of the upper half? (Also, do I want the race to be a perfect fit for the balls, or does that just create extra friction?)
This is so freaking wonderful. I especially like the pretensioning part.
Beautiful.
Voted for comment of the thread.
(Also, do I want the race to be a perfect fit for the balls, or does that just create extra friction?)
Adequate lubrication with suitable lubricant would seem to take care of that problem, plus wear over time from movement of the balls would mean that the race will gradually become a less perfect fit naturally.
What is the best Spaced Repetition software, and why?
I’ve ‘narrowed it down’ to Anki or Mnemosyne based wholly off of “they are both popular” and Gwern’s reccomendation ( http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition )
I use and enjoy Anki, I don’t have any Mnemosyne experience.
Piggybacking on this: does anyone know how to write Python scripts that generate Anki cards? Like if I wanted to memorize a poem or something, that’d be faster than entering every line by hand.
Here’s what I would do:
1. Use Anki to generate the first few lines of your poem manually.
2. Export that in some fairly readable format.
3. Open the file with a text editor like Sublime Text. Make a small change. Save it.
4. Import it back into Anki and make sure your change was reflected.
5. Now that you’ve proven the concept, reverse engineer the file format you exported into and write a Python script that generates a deck with all the info you want. You’ll need to know about file handling and string manipulation. Alternatively, read up on regular expressions and make clever use of Sublime Text’s search and replace functionality.
(This is the kind of handiness with computers you develop if you do a lot of software development. It’s not so much cleverness as determination, willingness to Google, and knowledge of lots of little clever tactics like e.g. opening things in text editors like Sublime so you can see the raw characters.)
Yep, for example I wrote a Python script that parsed a website for the most common Chinese characters, and generated a bunch of Anki cards for those (with some special rules for cases of characters with several pronunciations etc.). It’s pretty useful!
Anki has automated cloze deletion facilities, incremental search, and more features overall.
Mnemosyne is simpler and starts faster. It allows you to rate level of understanding when you first add a card. (Good for if you’re going over material the second time in order to add SR cards for it.) It lets you move cards from one “category” to another pretty easily, whereas Anki’s “decks” are more static.
It may not matter which you choose; there is some degree of interoperability between them. Anki at least seems to let you import Mnemosyne decks. It probably wouldn’t be hard to write a script to transform cards in the other direction if you’re a programmer or a determined non-programmer.
Disclaimer: these were my notes based on older versions of the software; things may have changed.
I find it quite easy to move cards from one deck to another in Anki. Anki has an IOS app and rudimentary web interface, Mnemosyne doesn’t.
Seconded; you’re pretty limited with what you can do with the web and android versions, but the desktop version has pretty useful tools for editing big lists of cards. There’s some stuff you can only do with the desktop Anki, like create new custom review schedules.
I’ve been using Anki pretty much daily for the past couple of years, for learning languages, some technologies and statistics, some various advice and insights …
The main issue I had: sometimes my deck on Android gets corrupted and I lose everything since the last synchronization (sometimes a week ago); so now I synchronize several times a day.
Also, I find the interface for adding and editing cards frequently clunky (especially on Android, so I do most of my adding with the web version), but overall, I find it useful.
Thanks everyone!
I’ve started using Anki, which has led to another question: should I use the card types where you need to type in the answer, or not?
Potential benefits to typing: practice typing, better accountability, reveals spelling errors in a way that thinking the answer does not.
Potential drawbacks: ergonomics, increases amount of time required for reviews/learning,
I also see now that I can enable the typing card-type, but just not use it (press enter without inputting anything). Would this have any drawbacks?
It depends what you’re studying. Typing makes a lot of sense if you’re learning a language. However, I study math and have a bunch of cards that contain definitions or theorem statements; typing makes no sense for them, both because semantic content trumps a particular phrasing (there’s a bunch of ways to phrase a definition or theorem that says the same thing, and it’s a frustrating waste of time that’s potentially counterproductive to get yourself down to one phrasing) and because mathematical symbols.
That makes a lot of sense.
Thanks!
Since you’re always looking for an opportunity to flex those atrophying academic philosophy muscles, Scott, I propose a future post about John Taurek’s notorious anti-consequentialist argument (“Should the Numbers Count?”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 6, 1977). As one of Taurek’s interlocutors puts it, the central thought is that “that the goods, harms and well-being of individual people do not aggregate in any morally significant way” (Yishai Cohen, “Don’t Count on Taurek”, Res Publica 20, 2014). (This type of consideration is sometimes referred to in the literature as “the separateness of persons”.)
A philosopher at my department recently told me that, in his view, Taurek’s objection exposes the fundamental problem with consequentialism, and that the other well-known difficulties (the Utility Monster, the Repugnant Conclusion, etc.) are minor by comparison. I know your enthusiasm for pure, uncut utilitarianism has waned somewhat lately, but you might still find it fun to think about. And I’m pretty sure I’d find it fun to read what you thought about it. If you want to nerd out a bit, there’s a long list of responses to Taurek (both pro and con) on the PhilPapers page for the original paper.
It seems like it’s identifying “You should always act so that some utility function is maximized” and the statement that said utility function should be the sum of every individual’s personal utility functions.
Some of the principles utilitarians hold put strong constraints on the form of the utility function, though. Like, if you try to aggregate in a non-linear manner, you can run into paradoxical situations where your decision depends on the size of the universe. Probably also utilitarians have some commitment to symmetry? Like, I think they’d cry foul if I claimed that the aggregate utility function of the universe was my personal utility function. This may be enough to give you linear aggregation already — I’m not a social choice theorist or anything.
Yes, very nice! I like the Blume objection a lot.
I don’t understand why this situation is prima facie paradoxical. It seems quite intuitive to me that a reasonable utility function can depend on the size of the universe; a world in which there exists one billionaire is worse than a world in which there exists one billionaire and six starving people is worse than a world in which there exists one billionaire and one million starving people, even if the billionaire always has one billion utilons and the starving people always have zero.
Whether you choose average or total utilitarianism, you end up with repugnant conclusions. I kind of hate to throw up the epistemic despair flag, but after what? 4,000 years of trying to figure this out? Maybe it’s time to just accept that any consistent system of metaethics is going to lead to conclusions that run counter to prevailing moral intuitions.
I mean, obviously except actual intuititionism, but that has its own problems, too. We get intuitively appealing answers or we get consistency with rational first principles, but we can’t have both. It’s like a fundamental limit to the universe, the uncertainty principle of metaethics.
@Adam, I fail to see how the repugnant conclusion is an issue, intuitively I don’t see any issue. The only real issues seem to be hidden as Newcombian Problems or Pascal’s Wagers/Muggings.
It’s not so much that your utility function shouldn’t take the entire universe into account as that you should be able to determine whether actions which only affect one small corner of the universe are good or bad without looking at anything else (since, by hypothesis, nothing else is affected).
Incidentally, this same locality principle is why average utilitarianism is deranged: whether it is good or bad to bring a person into existence should depend only on how good their life is likely to be and what effects they are likely to have on anyone else, not whether there are extremely happy aliens on the other side of the universe.
Usually a utility function is understood to be the sort of thing that’s inherently person-specific, I think, so it’s odd to talk about maximizing a utility function that isn’t associated with anyone in particular. (In virtue of what is it then a utility function? Whose utility is it outputting?)
Of course you can pick your favorite function f and propose an ethical theory according to which actions are morally good if and only if they maximize f. But there needn’t be anything especially utilitarian about doing that. (Let f be the function that takes the value 1 if an action agrees with the Categorical Imperative and 0 otherwise. Now your theory is Kantianism!)
The moral, then, is that utilitarianism (pretty much by definition) requires aggregating individual utilities in some way or other. If the function you’re trying to maximize doesn’t have roughly that form, then you’re probably endorsing a very different sort of ethical theory.
(Plus, or alternatively, what haishan said!)
There’s a distinction here though based on whether the right action depends on anything other than the situation it causes (for example, Jaime Lannister killing the king might have the same effects as Ned Stark Killing the king, but Ned Stark, as a virtue ethicist, still believed it was wrong since Jaime Lannister swore a vow to protect the king).
Hmm… deontological rules are what you get when you combine consequentialism with game theory and precommitment; apparently virtue ethics are what you get when you combine consequentialism with uncertainty? Suppose you don’t trust your ability to predict the future (either for the obvious a priori reasons, or because you catch yourself making predictions like “the same effects” and you forget to factor in effects as far-reaching as “vows become less trustworthy”). Then, the best assessment of consequences you can make may be to simply identify attributes which have had the most consistent history of promoting good consequences, call them “virtues”, and try to promote them even in cases where you don’t personally see the good consequences yet.
This seems like an argument against utilitarianism, not consequentialism more generally.
At first glance I second this. There seems to be obvious problem aggregating subjective emotions, but such problems are not obvious if your utility function is for something more objective. For example maximising number of humans or something like that wouldn’t face an issue of that kind, though it might face other common objections to consequentialism. (I use objective and subjective fairly loosely here)
Never trust an argument by somebody named Taurek.
Libertarians (probably especially the anarchy flavor):
Given that there are cults/mad individuals, how does libertarian thought deal with the death cult?
For example, Aum Shinrikyo in 1992 released serin gas in Tokyo in a coordinated attack. In a libertarian world, presumably they could make more gas and walk around with it relatively freely, as they would have committed no crime until they released it.They could manufacture enough to blanket all of Tokyo and no intervention could be taken until they released it.
Obviously, an attack occurred under a non – libertarian system. My question is more on the lines of how do you deal with the increased damage they can do if they don’t have to be surreptitious about it? Or do you assume that it would not happen?
I don’t identify as libertarian, but if someone’s waving a gun around and saying “I’m going to shoot you”, I imagine most libertarians would feel justified in shooting him dead or at least taking his gun. This despite the fact that he has not yet done any harm or attempted to impose his will by force; he has committed a crime, but only because our legal system explicitly criminalizes threats.
Yes, but what if the government has to invade his privacy to see him making a threat (say, by spying on his home to see if he has large supplies of sarin).
As an aside, I found Murakami’s “Underground” (a compilation of interviews with people injured in those attacks, and a few former cultists who were willing to be interviewed) amazing. It was particularly interesting that people who’d had relatives injured were much angrier (or at least more comfortable expressing it, I guess), than people who’d been directly injured.
Then the question is about privacy/security tradeoffs, and is not a libertarian gotcha at all since the same applies to all forms of government.
@Nornagest:
But don’t libertarians think you should have the right to stockpile nerve gas on your property, without interference?
What if the group says they want to go into the arms business? People might want to buy serin for self defense. Should anything stop either the buyers or the sellers?
“But don’t libertarians think you should have the right to stockpile nerve gas on your property, without interference?”
I suppose the most extreme anarcho-libertarians would. Most libertarians are fine with “No Nukes” levels of personal control.
“Should anything stop either the buyers or the sellers?”
Why don’t you buy it, if you’re so afraid of it?
I’d also point out that lots and lots of entities, including the one you already belong to, DO stock nerve gas. Quite a lot of it.
I suppose the ultimate question boils down to “can we trust an entity with nerve gas?” and teh answer is; which entity? US government? Probably. North Korean government? Nope- but they have it anyway.
And then you run into the essential problem of any nation or entity- yes, they can just kill you first. Russia has first strike capability against us, so does China.
There is, strictly speaking, nothing at all preventing lots of people from doing a number on us, except their own sense of self preservation.
In other words, your question is basically “why let Arabs learn to be pilots?” with nerve gas.
HBC,
It depends on who the “someone” is and what your relationship to them is.
Someone with whom you never voluntarily entered into any form of relationship has no right to stop you from stockpiling nerve gas.
However, many people with whom you probably did enter into relationships with (and many with whom you might like to in the future) have every right to refuse to deal with anyone who stockpiles nerve gas, and probably would have that written into any contract you sign.
Your HOA might have a “no nerve gas” policy. Your insurance company might. Your bank might. Your electric company might. So on and so forth. And their contracts might even include a “if you stockpile nerve gas, you consent to us coming in and forcibly taking it from you” clause.
Once again, I’m not a libertarian. I have read some of their literature, though, and I imagine different types of libertarianism would have different responses to the scenario.
Any society needs some way of dealing with military threats; most writers that I’ve read are mainly concerned with threats more along the lines of invasion, but organized terrorism plausibly falls into the same category. That generally implies some buildup. Aum Shinryuko wasn’t a harmless religious movement until it sarin-bombed a Tokyo subway in 1995; Wikipedia informs me that it was involved in murder and extortion as early as 1989, and published a document described as a “declaration of war” in 1992. With that in mind, it hardly matters what weapons the group’s stockpiling; the question rather is when and how the police or militia (in a minarchist state) or insurance or self-defense organizations (in an anarchist one) decide to take the group seriously as a threat and pull the trigger on a response.
That’s a tricky question! But only a caricature of a libertarian would answer “nah bro, they said they’re going into the arms business, we don’t care about all those murders and manifestos”.
@Matt M:
So, what actions can be discriminated against and which can’t? Or can everything be discriminated against?
And what if the HOA right next door was set up by the death cult?
You might say that the owners of roads, and the sellers of goods wont transact with them. Will these people have other “you can’t use my road if you engage in activity I think is risky at your home” policy? Seems to violate the libertarian principles.
How would they “know”, by which I mean, how would they decide how to apply these rules and who to apply them against? Will the road owners require identity establishment before you get on their section of road? Will they require a periodic background check?
I sense libertarians complain about the Byzantine, seemingly arbitrary nature of some government rules. But a patchwork system where basics like “no sarin gas” are policed by the HOA or road owners or grocers seems like it would be exceedingly Byzantine.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that in most societies, 90+% of the population agrees entirely on the basic rules of human interaction.
Yes, there will be outliers. There are outliers now. Cults already have almost de facto independent governments when they go set up some sort of compound in the woods or desert.
There are economic benefits to coordination such that there will be strong incentives to not have hugely different rules from one neighborhood to the next. Every movie studio doesn’t produce its movies on a different format of disc. They all agree on one (eventually) because that’s what consumers want and that’s how they make the most money.
As to how you enforce it, technology has advanced enough to make this trivial. How does a restaurant accept credit cards and trust that you are going to pay? A reputable credit agency does that for them. Insurance agencies could exist that vouch for the upstandingness of any individual citizen. This could be tied to your license plate on your car or your credit card or your facebook account or any other such thing.
You seem to have some sort of entirely defeatist attitude where you throw your arms in the air and exclaim “This couldn’t possibly work! Explain to me exactly how it could work or you’re wrong!” Have some imagination, man!
Or, better yet, if you’re so convinced it can’t work, step back and allow people to try. If it can’t work, why is attempting it illegal?
The entire point of free markets is that one person cannot possibly have all the knowledge necessary to dictate how society should be optimized. The quickest answer to all of your questions is – I don’t know, but someone will figure it out and the best systems will outcompete the bad ones and the optimal outcomes will rise to the top and become adopted on a mainstream basis, while allowing continued experiment and innovation to lead to continuous improvements.
But a democratic requirement means innovation in government is impossible. Imagine if, prior to any new piece of software being launched, it was required that 50% of the American public state in a survey that they want and like this software. How would the industry have progressed?
@Matt M:
I don’t think the libertarian model, broadly, works, that is true. I do think it offers poignant and relevant criticism of the existing rules that society has codified.
I’m looking at what I view as likely and inevitable “failures” of the libertarian model. This is much like our conversation in the previous thread where your last words were “IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A THING OF BEAUTY!!!”, except here I am anticipating the failure, rather than you reacting to it.
My view is that the libertarian model usually just devolves to what we already have, but with a period of great upheaval and tumult and where the resultant monopolies are less responsive to the people than they are now. Once it happens, people will say, as they did about communism, “well, it wasn’t actually tried, not really”. Libertarian ideals can only be failed, they cannot fail.
As to credit rating agencies, they work out OK if you are middle class, but they have awful costs for those who are poor. Look into the payday lending industry and tell me their isn’t a cost that no sane person would want people to pay in any system close to ideal. I can only imagine what would happen if that same system came to dominant other aspects of life.
And this precisely because the market doesn’t want to serve some customers because they are riskier, leaving those customers without options, leaving them open to predation.
Markets do have failure modes.
Payday lending is an excellent alternative to the options that poor people used to have for short-term credit, i.e. mafia loan sharks.
I also said in the last thread that I’m not advocating an immediate replacement of what we have with an anarchist system. You’re right that under the current mindset with the current population of America it would probably have huge transition costs and in the end look much the same.
I’m here to promote the benefits and change popular opinion, with the hope that once the opinion has changed to the extent that people can support the system properly, we can then implement it.
The alternative to the payday lending industry isn’t loans at reasonable rates to people with bad or no credit, it’s no loans to people with bad or no credit. That’s a lot worse than it sounds like; it means that the quality of life for low-income households, already very sensitive to minor fluctuations in income or expenses, gets a lot more so.
Yeah, their rates look extortionate from up here on top of my high-700s credit rating. But my situation is not their customers’, and it seems a little presumptuous for me to say across that gap that their customers must not be making sane choices. Very little irritates me more than the habit of declaring some freely chosen good or service a social ill without bothering to ask a decent sample of people why it’s being chosen; or worse, after asking a bunch of people but throwing out all the answers that don’t tug at your readers’ heartstrings.
I think I’ve tried to get this across, but any form of organized collective decision-making is going to have failure modes. Even if we had enough of an abundance of food and land to make every man a kingdom unto himself, we’d still see conflict.
The way I feel about it, and I imagine most arguing with me feel roughly the same, is that looking back at the actual history of state versus private action, the balance of evil (and even just non-evil mundane failures) done by states is greater than the balance of good, and the balance of good done by private markets is greater than the balance of bad, though they’re far from perfect, and probably very bad at a few particular things.
How do we solve these things? You can’t expect any of us to actually have an answer for that. As Matt said above, the entire point of a free market is you crowdsource the problem, figuring a few hundred million heads are better than one, and the chances of someone figuring it out when any person or group is free to try, without having to first conquer an existing state or run for office and make proposals in a system optimized for electing good fundraisers and preventing innovation, is better than what we currently get. At the low end, you get Somalia, at the high end medieval Iceland, and somewhere in between the American frontier. Is that worse than a low end of Soviet Russia, a high end of Sweden, and a middle of what? Morocco?
I suppose the distribution counts as much as the median, min, and max, and someone with way more historical knowledge can tally it up, but the 170,000,000 people murdered by states in the 20th century really, really stands out as a far worse failure mode than the possibility of crazy death cults gaining land too close to me. Even if they succeeded, terrorists and death cults can’t wage industrial-scale worldwide wars that leave more than half the male population of an entire continent dead.
Don’t concede Somalia so easily!
Those who have done studies have concluded that a lack of a functioning state has almost certainly benefited Somalia.
Yeah it looks bad if you compare it to the U.S. but that was never a valid option for them.
Both on a time-series and on a relevant cross-sectional basis, they are doing better under anarchy than they did under a state. They are better off than they were before, and they have improved more quickly than many of their African neighbors who have organized governments.
Somalia doesn’t disprove libertarian theory. Quite the opposite. It proves that even under some of the worst circumstances imaginable, societies can improve solely by taking away the government.
@Nornagest:
The Policy debates should not appear one sided post seems to apply here.
Payday borrowers don’t pay a premium over market rate. They pay on average 391% APR.
You could say societies job is not to protect people from themselves and that it is patronizing and dehumanizing to act otherwise. But come back with something other than revealed preferences to argue people using payday lending are behaving rationally.
Payday lending takes advantage of a failure mode of the human brain, not rational behavior.
Payday lenders are absolutely making a rational choice.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of payday loans are short-term in nature and for relatively low amounts, compared to the types of loans we traditionally measure via APRs. The APR is irrelevant. Often, payday loans are made so that people can pay overdue bills. Not paying the overdue bill often results in a late charge that, if calculated similar to an APR, is far closer to the payday loan rate than it is the “traditional” lending rate.
But we don’t have to speculate. The US military has already offered us an experiment here. They thought as you did, that payday lending was evil extortionate and that unscrupulous lenders were taking advantage of military personnel. So they passed a law making it illegal to charge over… I think it was 30%, not sure exactly, APR loans to military folks.
Rather than lower their prices, the payday loan industry said “fine, we won’t lend to military personnel at all.” So what happened with the military personnel? Did they just stop having any demand for short-term credit? Did they magically find that there were tons of lenders willing to lend them the money they needed for dramatically lower rates all along?
No, they started using bank overdrafts to generate short-term credit in emergency situations. Bank overdrafts skyrocketed. And guess what. The fees associated with bank overdrafting, when you calculate it all out, are costing the military personnel roughly the same amount as the payday loans did.
But don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll make THAT illegal soon enough too, and undoubtedly the lives of soldiers will immediately improve by taking away their best choice… AGAIN.
As to the question of whether payday borrowers are uniformed, here is a study that tried to inform them of two things. One of those things discouraged them and one did not.
@Matt M:
Doesn’t that just simplify to “when they only made some of the usury illegal, only some of the usury ended”?
I take out a short-term loan every month by using my credit card. I pay 0% interest for that. Taking out short-term loans isn’t anomalous in the U.S. Paying 391% interest for that short term loan is.
You say they are “short term loans” but Pew found the average payday lender was indebted for 5 months out of the year.
In addition they found “In states where payday lending is heavily restricted, … 95% of “would-be borrowers” said they wouldn’t use an online payday lender if they were unable to get a loan from a storefront lender.”
Look, if I belonged to Anarcho-Libertarian protectorate, I would want them to go after people who engaged in cons. I would want them to prevent people from taking money for services that then did not deliver the promised benefits. I would want them to protect me from stores that sold bogus, knockoff goods so that I could feel confident when I shopped that I was getting what I paid for. In short, I would want the protectorate to put some regulation on the market.
Yet, somehow the fact that we actually have a regulated market, that does make manufacturing sarin illegal for almost all, and makes it a crime to not store your volatile industrial chemicals properly, and zones land so that you don’t have commercial enterprise popping up in a residential neighborhood when no-one expected it, somehow this regulation is seen as “bad”.
I don’t get it.
@HeelBearCub-
Yet, somehow the fact that we actually have a regulated market, that does make manufacturing sarin illegal for almost all… somehow this regulation is seen as “bad”.
Motte and bailey? I don’t think anybody has said that particular regulation is bad. How about the regulations on the type of clasps allowed on the cabinets in your dentist’s office? Or growing your own wheat to feed your own livestock?
The regulatory state has so many regulations that the government can’t even tell you any more exactly how many there are. The tax code alone is a million freaking lines long! And when we complain, you say, goodness, surely you approve of regulations against stockpiling sarin gas!
Give me a break.
Douglas Knight, kudos to you for that link. Empiricism for the win.
There is no “con” here. Payday borrowers know exactly what they are getting. They get $500 now in exchange for $600 a couple weeks later. Although the APR on that is pretty ridiculous, they don’t care about APR.
It’s like saying Prius buyers are being “ripped off” because you can get a car with more horsepower for cheaper if you buy a Mustang. Well PERHAPS horsepower isn’t the most significant factor for every person.
Your credit card analogy is irrelevant. The typical payday borrower either can’t get one or is already maxed out on the ones they have. These are not helpless idiots. They are real people who examine their options and choose the one they believe to be best, according to their (not your) preferences.
The fact that most of them stay in-debt for a long time does not make the loans not short-term. The loan itself is short-term. The typical customer rolls it over often because a month later, they have to re-evaluate and decide whether to take out a similar such loan. In this case, the same factors come into play. If you have a month-by-month cell-phone plan, and you choose to keep extending it for two years, that doesn’t make it a “long term” plan. You had the choice every month, and you choose to re-extend your short-term commitment.
@Matt M:
From the study Douglas Knight linked, “Hence, in contrast with the view that all payday borrowing reflects informed and rational behavior, our results suggest that information disclosure that is inspired by, and tries to respond to, the specific cognitive biases and limitations that may surround the payday borrowing decision
has a non-trivial effect on some individuals’ decisions of whether or not to take on a payday loan. ”
I’m not sure whether Douglas thinks that link strengthens or weakens my argument though.
And I misunderstood/was not sure in what way you were referring to the loans as short-term originally. I agree that short term loans carry a higher cost for both lender and borrower and you would expect short term loans to carry higher costs.
No kidding. People’s preferences are sometimes rather narrow, and with enough “disclosure” or “information” you can talk anyone out of anything.
If I design a particular “disclosure” about the risks of leasing a car such that, after reading my disclosure, fewer people lease cars than otherwise would, does that mean that leasing a car is a con and that everyone who does so is an idiot?
I also agree (in advance, as I don’t think anyone has tried to argue this) that payday lenders aren’t making exorbitant profits off of this.
I think the question is what we have mostly been arguing, whether using a payday lender is, in fact, rational. So, I’ll ask the question differently, would payday lenders exist if everyone were rational actors at all times?
Interest rates are a function of time preference and there is no “rational” value for this, only different preferences.
Someone with different preferences than you is not acting “irrationally.”
@Matt M:
Aren’t you essentially making a revealed preference argument? That no matter what people say they want, what the do reveals their true desires? Is any action irrational then?
HeelBearCub–
I agree that payday lenders are, to a considerable degree, making their money by taking advantage of people who are impulsive, irresponsible, and often not very bright. (*)
But that’s not all they’re doing. If you’re poor and a $500 or $1000 loan means the difference between losing your job or keeping it, or getting kicked out of your apartment or staying in it, well, a big APR isn’t really the point any more. Spending that $200 in loan fees lets you avoid an event that would cost you $1000, $2000 or more.
I don’t like payday loan companies. I think it is a bad sign that they are so prevalent and successful. But they do provide a valuable emergency service for people with no other options.
(*) Worth noting that your respectable credit card companies delight in this also. Floundering in credit card debt is not uncommon.
I think you’ll find a strong correlation between people who support libertarian political beliefs and people who also tend to believe revealed preferences are entirely legitimate.
One of my biggest issues with rationalism is the ease and eagerness of which its proponents tend to dismiss anyone with different preferences from them as being “irrational.”
I think rationalism is a great tool to use for introspection on your own decision making process, but VERY dangerous to use for attempting to evaluate the decisions of others. Protecting people from themselves has been used to justify all sorts of atrocities and moral failings.
Harkening back to the AI topics, a superintelligent AI would be far more rational than any person, and yet many of us seem to be legitimately worried that telling this AI to “protect humans from harm” would result in all sorts of terrible and undesirable outcomes.
@Matt M:
Consider the following:
“I have different preferences than you, therefore my acts are rational given my preferences, no matter how they look to you”
and:
“I know I thought my preference was A, but my actions got me B, so I must really want B. I still think I wanted A, but I don’t even know my own mind very well.”
You seem to be saying the second (revealed preference) is euivalent to the first, or maybe that we should always assume that revealed preference is equivalent, heuristically.
That seems problematic, as we know that there really are cognitive biases that prevent actual preferences from being translated into behavior. Talk to any decent salesman. They know that letting people walk away and think about a purchase leads to fewer sales.
I’m not denying that sometimes people make irrational decisions.
I’m just very reluctant to make that judgment myself.
For the record – I was formerly in the military and had leadership responsibilities over several young military types (a class of people who are notoriously terrible with money). I was also the “command financial specialist” who was charged with educating the command in general about financial matters.
I can safely tell you that not one time out of anyone I worked with and tried to help was the payday loan the problem itself. It’s a symptom of a problem. There were very few times in which I felt that talking someone out of getting the payday loan would be a huge help to them – as I said, usually the alternative to getting the payday loan isn’t getting a better loan at a lower interest rate – it’s having your car repossessed or your phone disconnected or getting kicked out of your apartment.
Given some previously awful decisions that put you in a tight spot, often times getting the payday loan (provided you have a plan to pay it back and get OUT of the tight spot) is the most rational decision someone can make.
@Matt M:
“provided you have a plan to pay it back and get OUT of the tight spot”
I admit you certainly have much more practical experience than I do in this area.
My prior is that the industry makes most of their money off of repeat business, when the tough spot is made tougher by the large chunk the repeated loans are taking.
So, if the customers who take the loan and then did not work themselves out of the spot did not exist, the industry would not exist.
And if the industry really was working to serve its population, they would figure out a way to serve their customers more efficiently. As we have talked about, most of the costs are wrapped up in loan origination, which are repeated every two weeks, hence the very, very high cost. Find a way to reduce the cost of origination for repeat customers (without significantly reducing default) and that would be the market working much better.
Funny, I thought that’s the argument I was making.
I’ll defer to Matt M on this one since he seems to have more practical experience in this area than I do, but what he’s saying is in line with what I’d expect. Revealed preference isn’t the whole story, but when you get an entire industry based on people doing something that looks financially idiotic, it might be a good idea to figure out why they’re doing it rather than just assuming it’s because of ebil cabitalist brainwashing or something.
(Sometimes, as in the case of lottery players, the answer really is “they’re preying on bias”. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that “I’ll pay you $100 now and you pay me $120 in two weeks” is a bad move unless you really need that $100.)
“But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that “I’ll pay you $100 now and you pay me $120 in two weeks” is a bad move unless you really need that $100”
And I’d venture to propose to you that virtually nobody even sets foot in the door of these establishments unless they “really need” (according to their own preferences, not yours) that $100.
I don’t claim to be an expert – but the majority of people I knew who used these did in fact need the money. Usually entirely due to stupid decisions they made previously.
Personally I’d love to defend the lottery too (for many people, the act of gambling is pleasurable which justifies the meager chance of winning), but that’s probably out of scope.
You may be right. Gambling is a vice I’ve never been tempted to, so I can’t really comment on how strong the preference for it gets.
Hah, I have a good perspective there, because I totally have the “compulsive gambler” trait, but I also have the “stats geek” trait and it’s just slightly stronger to the point where, although I like the idea of gambling, I can very rarely get myself to actually do it for any amount of money large enough to actually trigger the notion of it being a real “gamble.”
Not sure that’s true if they are on their own property.
And my example is just the amassing of the stockpile, not issuing threats.
Historically, sarin gas has been used what? 3-4 times? Tokyo, Saddam used it once or twice….nowhere else springs to mind.
Compare that to fertilizer and diesel. Should you be allowed to stockpile large amounts of fertilizer and diesel? Hell, even today, the MOST they can do is send an FBI agent to talk to you and hopefully scare you off of being a terrorist if you’re thinking that.
Life is scary, yo. There is notably, very, very little to prevent people from walking into a church, or a publishing company, or a subway, or an airport or whatever, and cause a lot of harm. But all the solutions that could cure that are worse than the disease.
Aum used it more than once, actually; VX, too. The Tokyo attack wasn’t even the first, just the deadliest, and the one that made overseas news.
“Life is scary, yo.”
I just threw up in my mouth a little. Gah, that phrase grates.
I did anticipate this answer. You are taking the “assume it just won’t happen” option I posited.
I hate the phrase “we must eliminate X” or “never again should Y happen”. Because almost, almost always what you really want to do is reduce incidence of X, and reduce the harm caused by Y, as eliminating them is impossible. Which is why I phrased my question the way I did.
It seems like you think the risk of terrorist events and the harm that comes from them is essentially fixed.
They can have the NSA monitor all your activities and if they become convinced that you are really planning an attack they can create some legal pretext to lock you up.
Which is to say, libertarians only treat No Initiation of Force as a rigid absolute when discussing taxation.
Well, lets be fair, no libertarians seem to be interested in replying to the hypothetical so far and Nornagest may not be modeling them correctly.
I’m probably not the person you’re looking for, but I don’t think you’re ever going to see a society that has so thoroughly internalized the non-aggression principle that they just ignore a person stockpiling enough nerve gas to kill a country’s worth of them. If two or three people are consistent enough with their stated principles to live and let live, more power to them and have fun in hell, but I’m not one of them.
Same thing with waving a gun at me. Light reflected off you reaches my property and that’s a pretty clear direct threat. Now, just waving a gun around at all, but not at me, cool, no problem.
Remember there are still people who own the roads and can make rules banning serin gas. The tricky part would be people stockpiling it on their own property.
I don’t know much about how serin works, but you have to synthesize it from precursors, right? Someone has to sell those to him and can just refuse to sell when adjacent property-dwellers find out what he’s doing and tell everyone.
But the precursors are relatively common.
I don’t think the libertarian model wants a private group buying precursors to serin in bulk to be refused service on the possibility that they might be later used to make serin. It seems like a direct violation of their model.
Edit: Assuming they have large stores of precursors, once they start making serin, can they do so openly?
Depends on the bylaws of their community? I wouldn’t voluntarily live somewhere that didn’t have a few prohibitions we agreed on, say 8 billion decible noisemakers, home-built nuclear reactors, that kind of thing. We’d need the help of some contract attorneys smarter than me to get some clauses to exclude other potential civilization-ending WMDs that we just forgot because the list can’t be exhaustive, can’t anticipate the future, so on.
@Adam:
Well, either those communities start looking a lot like city-states inside nation-states, or the libertarian version of a death cult just selects a well-placed community that does not have such by-laws.
I mean, if in the libertarian model, people can voluntarily give up the property rights of others who might own the property in the future in response for adopting a specific set of laws, aren’t we already living in a libertarian paradise?
I think there is meaningful distance between what we have currently and what I envision as optimal, but I’m far from a hard-core anarchist. I don’t have a problem with disallowing the stockpiling of CBRNE weapons.
Sarin, not serin. Though I am amused at the idea of a terrorist group accidentally releasing a cute little yellow/grey bird instead of a cloud of deadly neurotoxin, and then having to report back to the boss.
An AGI put together by a terrorist group. Sort of reverse-clippy. It just misunderstood.
Also, I have a long standing hatred of all homonyms, as my brain refuses to distinguish them from each other when spelling.
I’m a libertarian–specifically one that supports a society of mutual minimal tolerance: that is, we should mutually agree that none of us will be the first to resort to threats of physical violence when we disagree.
I don’t see any decent evidence for gods or metaphysical rights. I just know I don’t want other people to resort to threats of physical violence to make me obey them, and it appears almost everybody else feels the same way about themselves. This consensus seems to provide a practical basis for mutual minimal tolerance. The consensus does appear to break down when talking about other types of coercion other than threats of physical violence so it’s hard to see easy practical agreement on more.
Whether something is a threat of physical violence is a practical question, that you’d have to leave to something like a jury that represents the larger consensus. (I wish that this could work practically without a government, but I don’t think it can–thus I tend towards being a libertarian minarchist rather than an anarchist.)
In any event, I can’t imagine reasonable people disagreeing over whether it’s a threat of physical violence if someone points a weapon at you with their finger on the trigger. Weapons of mass destruction are effectively pointed at, and threatening immediate violence to everyone in their vicinity. Imagine someone saying, “I might be standing right next to you, but I’m not pointing this nuclear bomb or can of poison gas at you so I’m not an immediate threat.” That just doesn’t make sense. So… as a libertarian, I’ve got no problem using violence in self-defense against any death cult who creates this kind of threat by merely bringing weapons of mass destruction into range.
I think this may be where people have such strong disagreement over guns. Some people see another person with a gun in a holster as always creating that immediate threat where others only see the threat if the gun is removed from the holster and aimed. When there’s no consensus that activity like merely possessing a gun is a violent threat, I think we need to tolerate the activity rather than claiming “my view is right, yours is wrong so I get use threats of violence to make people obey me”.
@Christopher John Brennan:
But I thought property rights were inviolate in libertarian systems?
To repeat my example from above, suppose the claim they are making and storing sarin as a means of starting an arms business. Heck, they don’t have to make sarin, they could just claim to be rubber manufacturers and make methyl isocyanate (although I don’t know that it is as easy to manufacture).
Doesn’t the libertarian model assume that I have the right to make compounds like these on my own property and that action can’t be taken against me until I actually cause harm? Or, am I misunderstanding how the model works?
As I pointed out above- we already have these issues. I used to know people that bought tons of fertilizer, diesel, and nails. They were farmers, but if they’d wanted too….a very little wire and a battery is all they’d need. This is certainly hella more likely, efficient, simple and effective than rogue rubber manufacturers turned terrorists.
The reason there aren’t more terrorist attacks in the US isn’t lack of opportunity, or the extreme efficacy of the FBI. The reason there aren’t more terrorist attacks is very, very few people in the US wants to be a terrorist.
I can buy pressurized cylinders of natural gas at a gas station. I can buy gasoline there too. I can buy gunpowder- and making it is hella easier than sarin.
That’s off the top of my head- and to avoid getting extra double flagged by the FBI.
Doesn’t the libertarian model assume that I have the right to make compounds like these on my own property and that action can’t be taken against me until I actually cause harm?
Yes, sort of. In the libertarian model (either ancap or minarchist), I could not take action which would harm you until you actually either cause harm or pose a grave risk of harm. Note that in the libertarian model, refusing to do business with you, encouraging others to not do business with you, or hiring guards to watch you from outside your property to prepare to counter an attack are not harms.
@HeelBearCub said “But I thought property rights were inviolate in libertarian systems?”
That’s both right and wrong.
For some libertarians this is correct, but many libertarians (like me) start from some sort of non-aggression principle rather than assumptions about property rights. My particular non-aggression principle is just a practical one of mutual minimal tolerance of anything not threatening physical violence.
For me “property” is not a starting point for being a libertarian. Instead it is a conclusory short-hand that comes from answering the very practical fact-based question normally best addressed by a neutral jury, “Who started started a fight related to control of some stuff? The person who didn’t start the fight and was just defending themselves can thus be labelled the property owner as a matter of convenient communication.” (It also works in advance to determine the answer about hypothetical questions like this.)
Personally, I think too many libertarians have almost a religious belief in a metaphysical concept of property–and property rights–that I just don’t see good evidence for. They are also often too attached to the distribution of stuff as is stands–even if that current distribution was not freely arrived at.
As a libertarian minarchist I lean towards the idea that the government (qua government) must make appropriate amends, including reparations, when it has used its power to enforce aggressive violence–for example, I am definitely open to government reparations for slavery/Jim Crow/segregation. This doesn’t involve punishing any individual based on their demographic characteristics–it means the whole political entity has to try to fix what the whole political entity broke.
@Christopher John Brennan:
Are you commenting as two different names (CJB, Christopher John Brennan) or is this just one of those improbabilities-that occur-exactly-as-often-as-they-should-but-you-only-notice-when-they-do kind of things?
As to your point about “who started the fight”, how is that different than now? Isn’t the issue usually that determining “who started the fight” actually exceedingly complex in practically all cases?
I think the classic libertarian position is that victimless crimes should not be illegal (drug use, prostitution). But, broadly, there are very few people who would want to live next to an opium den or a brothel because there are externalities associated with that. Who starts the fight if my neighbor opens a brothel? Or chemical processing plant? Or sarin factory?
I’m not arguing that prostitution should be illegal. I don’t think it should. But I’m trying to understand why banning [activity] engaged in on private property is OK in one situation but not in another under the “who started the fight” principal.
You act as if this sort of conflict doesn’t already happen, as a matter of course, in modern societies under government.
I recall reading a news article awhile back about somewhere in California that vilified some sort of apartment owner for regularly renting apartments to convicted sex offenders, while also charging them significantly above-market rates.
He was supposedly an evil monster for two reasons – because people don’t want to live near former sex offenders (even after they’ve “served their time”) AND because it was seen as immoral to charge them more than anyone else (because that’s discrimination).
Of course, the sex offenders have to live SOMEWHERE, and the fact that most places won’t take them at all means you can absolutely get away with charging them more.
And yet, government was powerless to solve either problem. But a private organization could do so just fine. Barring government interference, an HOA in an upscale neighborhood could pass a “no former child molesters here” rule, while less well-off places may not have such a rule.
I mean, we ALREADY see this happen as a matter of course. You don’t see many meth labs and whore houses in upscale gated communities.
@Matt M:
Yes, we see it in the current system.
The broadly popular libertarian argument is that by adopting libertarian ideology we will end injustices like this.
When I point this out, that libertarian systems can fail in the exact same manner. And are likely to. People say, well that’s no worse than existing system.
I’m not trying to argue the current system is better than that, but rather that the promised benefits of libertarian systems are far less likely to accrue than advocates seem to believe.
The primary benefit of libertarianism isn’t “fewer petty disputes with your neighbors” nor is it “reduced likelihood of random outlier terrorist events”
The primary benefit is we stop locking up millions of people for decades in cages where they will most certainly be raped all because they wanted to grow an unapproved plant. The primary benefit is that you no longer have to give up 50% of your income in order to finance a predator drone campaign that murder children in Yemen.
The fact that it can ALSO potentially reduce the amount of minor disputes and property crime and all that other stuff is an almost irrelevant side-benefit. In fact, even of those things went up, it would still very much be worth it if we could simply end the drug war and end foreign interventionism.
@Matt M:
“The primary benefit is we stop locking up millions of people for decades in cages where they will most certainly be raped all because they wanted to grow an unapproved plant.”
Either you are being extremely hyperbolic on purpose, or you are conflating different things. Go find the stats on imprisonment for growing. Even the prison population for all MJ charges is minimal compared to the population as a whole.
Now, the drug war is wrong, wrong, wrong. It accomplishes none of its goals and makes things worse.
But why do you think a libertarian system won’t fail this way? What do you think these protection agencies will do with people who commit crimes as self defined by protection agencies? Give them a stern lecture?
You just think they won’t be crimes. And I think you believe that based on either property rights or NAP, but you don’t seem to want to fully support those as principles.
Given the overwhelming support for tough-on-crime laws that resulted in the so called war on drugs, and then the subsequent prison boom, people seem likely to demand that in a market based system. Their demand is what got us here in the first place.
Either you have to convince people this is not what they want, or you have to fall back on the founding principles of the system to prevent injustices like that.
I think there’s a hugely significant portion of the population that is vehemently against the drug war. Let’s be conservative and estimate it’s only 20%.
Now let’s say you had a free market in protection services and you were allowed to start your own private security firm to compete with the government police.
Here’s your value proposition: I do everything the current police do exactly the same EXCEPT drugs are now legal.
You don’t think you could get VC funding to sell a service that 20% of the public absolutely wants and would prefer to the existing system?
Not only that, as time passes and you conclusively prove that you can allow marijuana WITHOUT seeing a dramatic spike in murders, you’ll win more and more of the public over to your side.
@Matt M:
You can do that right now. Move to some state or country that does not make this illegal. Yes, the Feds make this argument somewhat problematic, but no one is going to jail in legal states ATM.
Your argument could be that having to move makes this too costly. That protection agencies that are non-geographically coherent will make this easier. But people don’t want protection agencies to police only their own behavior, but rather others behavior. Being scooped up by the roving band for protection agency A sounds very much like being black in the post-reconstruction south. One definitely doesn’t want to be a member of a weak protection agency.
At the end of the day, a geographic are will devolve to a set of rules that police everyone’s behavior, regardless which agency they are in. I think even the AL guys believe this? They just think it will be a negotiation or arbitration process.
@HeelBearCub asked me, “Are you commenting as two different names (CJB, Christopher John Brennan) or is this just one of those improbabilities-that occur-exactly-as-often-as-they-should-but-you-only-notice-when-they-do kind of things?”
We’re different people. I’ve got no idea who @CJB is.
He also said. “Isn’t the issue usually that determining “who started the fight” actually exceedingly complex in practically all cases?”
We ask regular juries to deal with really complex situations all the time. We can also set up default rules that handle most of the obvious situations where we have a strong consensus. I’m suggesting we can adopt many of the proven tools of complex liberal societies.
@Christopher John Brennan:
Thanks for clearing up the identity question.
“We can also set up default rules that handle most of the obvious situations where we have a strong consensus. I’m suggesting we can adopt many of the proven tools of complex liberal societies.”
At this point I really have to ask, how is it different than what we have now?
Right now we set up rules, by using elected representatives, to represent our concerns. We use juries (and arbitration) to decide whether those rules have been followed.
Perhaps you would like a parliamentary system instead of a first past the post system?
The more I ask questions about the underlying principles of libertarians, the more I feel like libertarians just don’t like the particular rules that have been negotiated by their existing protection agency and that they are unwilling to pay the cost involved in changing agencies. There isn’t actually a principle involved, there is only not liking the rules.
Moralist libertarians do have a problem with the innocent possession of very dangerous stuff. This bugged me long ago, before I read The Machinery of Freedom and complicated my views.
Anarchocapitalists don’t have the same problem. Regardless of what your personal morals are, it is protection agencies along with judicial agencies which determine the law. These entities can have any sort of law so long as it stands up in the marketplace and does not create insuperable problems with other agencies; the law does not have to reify any particular morality. As such, one might expect that if by a miracle anarchocapitalism did get started and managed to become stable, all of the agencies would ban the possession of really dangerous stuff for roughly the same reasons that states ban it.
@Leonard:
Given that a protection agency can create and enforce laws, I really don’t understand how protection agencies differ from government.
You could say that protection agencies compete with each other, but I don’t see why a protection agency would be precluded from saying “I will only protect a minimally coherent geographic space in which everyone agrees to be protected by our corp. It’s more efficient that way. Everyone within this territory must bind themselves and their property to our laws, and we will agree to protect you.”
If I’m living in that geographical space, and some protection agency made such a statement, do you suppose my own protection agency might have something to say about it?
Do all the people in the area agree to go over to the new company? If yes, then what leg does the current company have to stand on?
Yes, but they’re further away.
It would make no sense to join a protection agency on the other side of the country. Usually, all things being equal, the best protection agency to join is the closest one, just as for someone living in the US, it’s best to be a US citizen and follow the laws of the United States. Even if your home nation is, in some sense, obliged to protect you, their ability is diminished.
As a result, living in the “territory” of another protection agency usually implies you should follow their laws. And it may be that your protection agency has a specific agreement with their protection agency that when in their territory, you follow some of their laws (for obvious reasons). So maybe your protection agency won’t have anything to say about it, or if they do, they can’t really stop the other agency from doing anything they really want to do.
We don’t know how protection agencies would work in practice. It’s the nature of them that they could work in literally any way depending on what people value and try to negotiate for in their contracts. However, there are pretty obvious incentives for protection agencies to restrict their activity to specific areas, to encourage their clients to live in safer, closer neighbourhoods, to discourage anyone “undesirable” from living nearby. Just as crime organizations generally have “territory” and nation-states generally have territory, I think any other arrangement would be unstable.
Do all the people in the area agree to go over to the new company? If yes, then what leg does the current company have to stand on?
In that case, since I’m one of those people, presumably I have chosen to change firms to your new geographically based firm. If I haven’t so chosen, then that’s the leg.
It’s true that if everybody except me has chosen to go with the new firm, my old firm, foreseeing trouble, might well find it necessary to raise my rates. Or maybe not; throwing in the towel that way would probably be very bad PR.
In any case it seems like an improbable edge case if you’re worried about a true protection-agency milieu degenerating back into geographical government. There would be a lot of people to convince not to be holdouts (without the monopoly on force that current governments use to coerce holdouts).
@Doctor Mist:
Well, I’d argue that we already look like that endpoint of protection agencies. Non-geographically coherent protection agencies seem highly unlikely to work. And once you have coherent ones, then you are right back to states.
And the reason I say non-coherent ones don’t work is that somebody is going to come up with the bright idea of taking territory by force, because that is what always happens eventually, and that will eventually devolve to coherent territories.
@HeelBearCub-
And I’d argue you were assuming your conclusion.
We can’t have a country without a king; everybody who ever tried it got conquered.
Bad analogy: countries without kings always existed, countries without government never existed in a stable way (at least you have multiple organizations competing to become government over a territory).
It’s a perfectly good analogy for the objection HeelBearCub was raising, that an anarchist-capitalist society was doomed because it will inevitably decay into a governed society because somebody would decide to use force to take it over. You might well raise the same objection in 1789 to the suggestion that we form a constitutional republic. All previous constitutional republics were conquered by kings and empires.
@Doctor Mist: the Most Serene Republic of Venice existed from 697 to 1797, and for most of that time it was a constitutional republic that won a lot of wars of conquest. Rome, of course, is a more famous example (and wasn’t conquered until long after it ceased to be a republic). Constitutional-republic-that-wins-wars was a proven model by 1789. Your analogy is inapt.
Nor would your analogy work if history were different. If we steelman the “kings win wars” argument, it becomes “Wars require swift and decisive action that legislatures and plebiscites cannot provide, so a decisive monarchy will defeat an indecisive republic.” This is not a crazy concern, and at least one constitutional republic deliberately engineered a sort of republican analogue to a king to address the concern. The equivalent anarcho-capitalist response is, “Wars of conquest are an improbable edge case.”
Of course protection agencies (PAs) are government. They govern. They differ from states — not “government” — in that they are not territorially exclusive. Thus, the customer has a choice of which law he wishes to live under. This choice may or may not be very broad; for example, ACs argue that murder will be illegal practically universally due to strong customer demand. However, the logic of the market applies to less than unanimously desired laws, leading to a much better fit with customer preference than one-size-fits-all. My belief (as I expressed above) is that banning the possession of incredibly dangerous stuff is one of those laws that is practically unanimous, in spite of its violation of the non-aggression principle.
Anarchocapitalists certainly worry that PAs might evolve to states, as you posit in your 2nd para. However, they do have at least some reasons why they think the system could be stable. Among other things, if “the people” in general are afraid of living under a state, taking over and imposing one on them might be pretty hard to do given the existence of a large set of PA competitors who are right there waiting to grab customers. I am not sure I buy that, but I am not sure I don’t. The impossibility of AC makes the point moot, IMO.
In any case, the point here is not whether in the counterfactual world where AC could be tried, it would collapse into statism. The point is that anarchist libertarians (at least those of the rightist stripe) have a solution to the problem of highly risky stuff in the possession of flawed humanity. Which is what your OP asked about.
Well, given that AC advocates seem to think there will be a ton more freedom in an AC system, I’m not sure I buy the “it’s totally fine if you are prevented from doing stuff by your protection agency”. There seems to be a bait-and-switch contained in there.
Given the history of people being screwed by large, profit driven companies, I’m pretty terrified of the concept of living under “rule by protection agency”. I would happily flock to a non-profit, territorially-integrated, co-op protection agency.
So lets assume that the our LDC (libertarian death cult) has no protection agency, do the protection agencies then simply eliminate them, as they believe they represent a threat to their clients?
That’s not inconsistent with libertarianism. Non-profits and co-ops are private entities. “Non-state” doesn’t mean you can only organize according to one model of profit-seeking business with narrowly concentrated ownership. Employee-owned, member-owned, voluntary donor-funded, are all fine.
What about the history of people being screwed by large, power-hungry governments? It’s much more extensive.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
@HeelBearCub-
I’m not sure I buy the “it’s totally fine if you are prevented from doing stuff by your protection agency”. There seems to be a bait-and-switch contained in there.
Hmm. The things we seem to be talking about are murder, and stockpiling sarin. Did I miss something else? There’s a lot of room to expand freedom before we get to those two points.
@Doctor Mist:
How about keeping the protectorate safe from fire? Disease? What about keeping the protectorate safe from the kind of people most in the protectorate find undesirable? Wouldn’t all of these things flow naturally?
Then you are right back to building codes, inspections, and laws against various different undesirable activities.
What are the principles that allow the protectorate to ban making sarin, but don’t allow them to ban fine particulates in diesel exhaust? Or even prostitution?
People seem to think that competing protectorates will solve this, but we already have competing protectorates which take the form of nations.
What do you do if you’re a visitor to a certain town, region or wherever under a particular protection agency, where the agency enforces laws or rules or guidelines agreed by the people living in that area, but you’re not signed up to that agency?
I’m thinking of real-world private/public debates from residents’ associations claiming everyone in the street has to paint their front door a certain colour to things like same-sex marriage is legal in some states but not others, so your marriage is legal in State X but not State Y.
Suppose Little Greenville has agreed by democratic majority vote that they don’t allow the possession of marijuana, and their protection agency enforces this rule on their behalf. You’re visiting from Stonertown, where legal highs are, well, perfectly legal. You’re not talking about murdering a local or stockpiling sarin, just that you were hauled off the street by jackbooted thugs when you tried smoking a perfectly legal substance you had purchased with your own money.
You’re not signed up to the Little Greenville protection agency, so why do their rules apply to you? On the other hand, how does the Protection Agency carry out the duties it agreed to in the contract it signed with the people of Little Greenville when they took out its policies as their protection agency? If they admit they can’t stop you breaking the rule because you didn’t agree to be bound by that rule, how can they stop anyone who wants to break greater rules on the grounds that they’re a visitor from somewhere that permits private assassination or gladiatorial duels?
What are the powers and sanctions a private agency has against a private citizen who has not agreed a contract with them?
@HeelBearCub-
People seem to think that competing protectorates will solve this, but we already have competing protectorates which take the form of nations.
Yes, we do. And yes, protection agencies will share many characteristics of governments — which should be unsurprising to the extent that the same reasons governments are instituted amongst men still apply. If government hadn’t gone so dreadfully wrong over the last hundred years, you would see a lot less interest in alternatives. The hope is that if customers are more able to pick and choose, the protection agencies will have more incentive to stay lean and focused, rather than getting obsessed about whether you clean a machine by pouring solvent on the surface or on the rag.
@Deiseach-
I don’t know, how are those handled now? 🙂
The usual AC answer is that there are arbitration firms that provide the equivalent of a judicial system like there are protection firms that provide the equivalent of police and legislators. If people with different protection firms come into conflict, the protection firms hash it out through the arbitration firm that they (probably long ago) agreed upon.
If all else fails, then there could be war. But protection firms want war even less than states do; there’s no profit in it.
My hope is that protection firms would all offer pretty standard protections against felonies with one- or two-word names that were invented a thousand years ago, but that there wouldn’t be many people actually willing to pay extra to make crap like marijuana use illegal. The reason we have so many dumb laws like that now is that it doesn’t cost any given voter or congressman a red cent to vote for them.
I know it’s gauche to say “read the book” but David Friedman’s book discusses all of this with much more clarity and detail than I ever could, and it’s fun and engaging as well.
Uh? Sure there can be huge profits in removing a competitor, and scaring the hell out the other ones.
The protection agency with the biggest stick can further the interests of its customers against the interests of the customers of the others using violence or the threat of violence. Therefore it is in the interest of the customers to flock to the strongest agency. The only stable equilibrium seems to be a territorial monopoly, aka a state.
I’m a little worried about the overly conservative implications of the argument I’m about to make. That said …
Evolution is a thing, right? And medieval Iceland is no longer with us, while modern Iceland is, no question about it, a state. (And a pretty awesome one IMO.) On the question of what systems are stable, the blind idiot god has spoken! At least for now.
Uh? Sure there can be huge profits in removing a competitor, and scaring the hell out the other ones.
Yeah, that’s why so many countries have emerged from war wealthier than when they went into it.
Medieval Iceland remained stable in its libertarian-ish form for longer than the US has (so far) existed. When that society did eventually fall apart and get replaced with something else, it did so as a result of interference by a wealthy and powerful outside force.
You can gather from that that such societies aren’t invincible – they can (eventually) be overthrown – but that’s true of all societies, is it not?
Or to put it another way: Does the fact that the USSR successfully invaded Poland prove there was something wrong with the Polish style of government at the time, and nothing worth learning from it today?
@Doctor Mist:
That is survivor bias, isn’t it? Plus, number of states is the wrong measure, rather total wealth controlled by states is.
@Glen Raphael:
I’m not particular well versed in medieval Iceland, although I know libertarians are fond of arguing for its system. At first glance it looks to me like it drew its benefits from being essentially a forerunner to representative democracy.
However, when I read that “At the Christianisation of Iceland in 1000, the Althing outlawed public celebration of pagan rituals and decreed that in order to prevent an invasion, all Icelanders must be baptized.” I wonder about the supposed lack of central power.
@Doctor Mist
If they were victorious, sure.
Historically, many, if not most, wars were fought specifically for economic motives: the acquisition of land, slaves and other riches.
Arguably some civilizations, like the Aztec empire, at times the Roman empire or the Viking civilization based a large chunk of their economy on their ability to continuously collect resources from their neighbors though warfare or intimidation.
Some profit-oriented non-state entities, such as the Hanseatic League and various India Companies also waged wars for economic motives.
The American Revolution War was mostly motivated by taxation issues.
In modern times, we have wars for the control of oil fields, coltan mines and all other sorts of natural resources.
Therefore yes, profit-driven war is totally a thing.
The Icelandic model of weak government was typical of societies in transition between semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer and pastoral tribes to agricultural city states all over the world.
Iceland was special only to the extent that this model persisted there for much longer than the rest of Eurasia, probably due to Iceland’s remoteness and inhospitality.
Iceland may have eventually succumbed to an external force, but where did this external force come from? It’s not like space aliens came to earth and forced anybody to form strong governments.
The most likely explanation is an economies of scale effect: a strong government with full-time politicians, public servants and law enforcers/military is only viable above a certain population and economy size.
Once this size is reached, strong governments are more efficient than weak ones, and in particular strong governments can conquer countries with weak governments, therefore strong governments occur at equilibrium.
…probably due to Iceland’s remoteness and inhospitality.
And Switzerland had its mountains and militia, But the modern era has another option for rendering a nation unconquerable. So possibly the stable equilibrium at the libertarian end of the spectrum involves governments just large and strong enough to maintain a small nuclear arsenal.
On the “small” end of the spectrum, there’s Israel, North Korea, and South Africa, with 1950s Sweden having credibly considered a nuclear deterrent but didn’t think they could afford that and an independent modern air force. None of these are exactly libertarian, but Sweden and Israel both have democratic governments with a strong respect for civil rights. Is any of the other non-libertarian machinery of power necessary for an Israel-sized nation to maintain a nuclear deterrent?
Taxes and a small standing army would seem to preclude outright anarcho-capitalism; Vinge had to pull a nuclear rabbit out of an armadillo-sized hat to give “Ungoverned” a happy ending.
@John Schilling
Israel has a nationalist, ethnocentric government with theocratic elements. It has an enormous army for its size: it’s the third country in the world for active military personnel as a percentage of population and fourth for military expenditure as a percentage of GDP. Its government also strongly participates in economic activities, in particular, it owns most of real estate.
It’s basically as far from anarcho-capitalism as it gets before going into full-fledged totalitarianism.
Yeah, that’s why so many countries have emerged from war wealthier than when they went into it.
Sorry, I should have known better than try irony in print. Modern war is usually ruinous even for the victor. That’s not to say some weren’t started with the motive of profit, but nobody ever had to show a P&L accounting for it. If they’d had an actual board of directors, and stockholders, looking over their shoulders…
“Given that a protection agency can create and enforce laws, I really don’t understand how protection agencies differ from government.”
At least in my model, *a* protection agency does not create laws. Laws are created by arbitration agencies and adopted by pairwise agreements of protection agencies. Each pair of protection agencies agrees on what arbitration agency will settle disputes between their customers. An agency could unilaterally choose an arbitration agency only for disputes between its customers.
The protection agencies are not geographical sovereigns, so they are constrained in their choice of arbitration agencies by the need to keep and attract customers. In the case where a legal rule benefits some customers and harms others, the agencies have an incentive to try to estimate the costs and benefits and minimize the sum. So if two thirds of the customers disapprove of marijuana and one third approve, the question becomes how much either side is willing to pay to get its way, as reflected in how the price an agency can charge is affected by whether the courts that settle its disputes with other agencies are pro or anti-marijuana.
One difference relative to governments is that customers can compare the alternatives, since all of them exist. I can’t compare the Obama administration with the McCain administration of the same years, but I can compare a Honda to a Ford, or the services provided by my protection agency with those provided by the agency patronized by a neighbor, friend or relative. Another is that I have little incentive to figure out which candidate is best for the country, since my vote has almost no effect on who gets elected. But my choice of what product to buy, including what agency to be a customer of, has a large effect on what product I get.
For a more detailed explanation of the system I suggest, see the links at the top of my site:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
One goes to a free pdf of the second edition of _The Machinery of Freedom_ and one to the Kindle version of the current, third edition. The latter is now also available in print from Amazon.
Incidentally, in the third edition my protection agencies become rights enforcement agencies, since the former label suggested to too many people the protection racket–extortion rather than actual protection.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose [..]”
North Korea’s name hasn’t made it democratic, and renaming protection agencies won’t make them care about rights (unless by “rights” you just mean whatever services the customer can afford — from “the right not to be beaten up by agency representatives” to “the right to have anyone else beaten up for your enjoyment”).
In a similar vein, simply declaring that a corrupt judiciary is a feature, not a bug, will not make the system actually just.
It is completely not obvious to me what to think of this:
“Although most of the Belgian patients had cancer, people have also been euthanized because they had autism, anorexia, borderline personality disorder, chronic-fatigue syndrome, partial paralysis, blindness coupled with deafness, and manic depression. In 2013, Wim Distelmans euthanized a forty-four-year-old transgender man, Nathan Verhelst, because Verhelst was devastated by the failure of his sex-change surgeries; he said that he felt like a monster when he looked in the mirror. “Farewell, everybody,” Verhelst said from his hospital bed, seconds before receiving a lethal injection.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/22/the-death-treatment
I find it strangely amusing to think of someone with autism, anorexia, borderline personality disorder, chronic-fatigue syndrome, partial paralysis, blindness coupled with deafness, and manic depression going “ok, this is the last straw, I’m getting euthanized!”.
Blindness coupled with deafness is among the most obvious reasons one would want to kill themselves. Though, of course, many deaf-blind people are living fulfilled lives. But it seems clear to me that many people cannot come close to handling being deaf-blind. I would 100% kill myself in this case.
Same here. I’d probably sit down and finish those stupid novels languishing in my hard drive first, but after that, yeah.
As long as all of these people were making the voluntary choice to die, I don’t have a problem with this, and I’m happy they were able to do so.
Of course, I think anyone should be able to access lethal prescriptions at any time, for any reason. I’m against preventing suicidal people from killing themselves. It seems cruel and selfish to me, wanting to keep a suffering person alive against their will just because their death will pain you.
Whether they want to kill themselves because they have cancer, depression, gender dysphoria, chronic fatigue syndrome, or any other ailment seems irrelevant to me. Their reasons for wanting to die are their own personal business. The fact that they want to die is the only thing that matters and there should be little-to-no gatekeeping keeping them from doing so.
I’m assuming that most people who fail to commit suicide eventually are glad that they failed or else they would have kept going until they succeeded. Do you really feel like its ok to let people impulsively kill themselves even though they may end up regretting it moments later? I understand having a libertarian attitude towards what people do with their private affairs but surely there has to be some exceptions?
I’m assuming that most people who succeed to commit suicide won’t much regret it later on, either.
And while that may sound insensitive, I find it much more insensitive to impose the need for life to be sacred *on other people.
*or insert your own reasons for ignoring people’s life (or death) choices here.
I mean- this is where my libertarianism breaks down, too.
the UNIVERSAL commentary from people that’ve survived jumping off bridges is along the lines of “after that first step I suddenly realized this wasn’t at all what I wanted to do, even a little bit.”
I thought the standards recently laid out- less than six months, two doctors, expressed wish repeatedly- work pretty well. It restricts it from people who might simply be mentally ill (another place where libertarianism doesn’t offer much guidance) to those who could genuinely benefit.
@CJB But isn’t there some survivor bias (heh) in the population of “people that’ve survived jumping off bridges” from whom you’ve gotten commentary? Namely, those people who can provide commentary are those who did not follow up their failed suicide attempt with a successful suicide attempt some time later.
If one’s suicidal tendencies are “personal business,” then that implies it’s immoral (or at least rude) to even express an unsolicited opinion about it. Few would endorse me if I went around to my friends and offered my unsolicited opinions about their choice of sexual partners, for example. Likewise, I suspect most people would be disquieted by a government-funded PR campaign against dating people who did not conform to the government’s ideal of beauty. Are anti-suicide campaigns offensive? Is it rude to say to a suicidal stranger, “Please don’t kill yourself?” Is it self-obsessed to tell people that you will be sad if they die?
Given that many people do strongly regret suicide attempts, there’s a good public-health reason to try to persuade people to not kill themselves. There are public-health, and even possibly straight-up financial, benefits to offering counseling to try to convince people to not commit suicide.
Edit: I had second thoughts about this comment.
Are anti-suicide campaigns offensive? Is it rude to say to a suicidal stranger, “Please don’t kill yourself?” Is it self-obsessed to tell people that you will be sad if they die?
Yes, yes, and yes. I find it very offensive, (but I don’t think it should be illegal).
The hypocrites who pretend to care about the lives of suicidal strangers are also never the ones who pay for their financial costs of living, or treatment. It is always externalized onto others.
I think I would support a law legalizing euthanasia for people suffering from terminal diseases only. But I do feel very uneasy about the Belgian euthanasia law. I’m not sure whether I can justify this feeling, and I haven’t attempted to justify it.
It seems to me (although I could be wrong about this impression) that euthanasia has mainly been discussed in public as something for terminal patients only, and the support for euthanasia has been built up on that basis. I would have thought it would be harder to legalize euthanasia in non-terminal cases. Then again, having had a look on Wikipedia, it seems that quite a lot of the countries that have legalized euthanasia allow it for non-terminal patients too. And the impression I got from that article was that there is very little non-religious opposition to the Belgian euthanasia law. So maybe I need to update on this.
I am in complete agreement with Evelyn on the issue. Anyone at any time for any reason should not have any laws standing in their way to hinder them from committing suicide.
What is particularly interesting in a “I notice I am confused” way is that I tend to be quite willing to agree to disagree on political issues and do not find myself adopting a “you must agree with me or you are Evil Incarnate” perspective, except when it comes to suicide/euthanasia. Restrictions on the right to die fill me with a visceral loathing that seems quite disproportionate. The best explanation I have for this is that I interpret any argument for restricting suicide as being equal to a claim that a future society that has cured all diseases should be permitted to forcibly keep me alive forever, which is among the most terrifying things I can imagine.
The six months life expectancy restriction strikes me as a particularly horrid evil. If anyone should be allowed to have access to euthanasia, then surely it should be people with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
I feel the same way. The suicide prohibition is, in effect, a torture regime.
And the rationalizations for this are so weak we would never accept them in any other area:
– “Others might miss them.”
– “They might change their mind later.”
– “My religion says otherwise, so we should ban it for everyone.”
– “If they really don’t want to suffer, they will find a way.” (The massive extra suffering and cost this causes is just ignored, not to mention it would make the prohibition obsolete if it were true)
But this will never change. Politics is broken.
Is it ever OK to feel happy at an acquaintance’s misfortune?
Has anyone else tried melatonin and found it to be not so great? I tried taking 300 mcg before bed nightly, and I’m not up to any controlled experiments now, but I suspect it just made me feel drowsy after waking.
I think so, so long as you’re also aware it’s bad and wouldn’t try to cause it.
I’ve had a personal experience with this a couple years ago: Someone I vaguely knew in high school (mostly because they’d bully/mock me on occasion) died in a freak accident a few years ago. I didn’t want them dead and would probably have saved them if I could, but my emotional reaction to the news was pretty much summed up with “good riddance”. Not much to do about it though.
Melatonin is effective at putting me to sleep, but I get the drowsiness on waking too, and enough of the latter that the former isn’t usually worth it.
I think this is probably just down to me not having the dose quite dialed, though. Word on the street is that responsiveness to melatonin is highly variable.
Your first paragraph might also be what I’m seeing. I do think it helps some with falling asleep.
Confirming the drowsiness on waking. For me it was totally worth it, though, since it quickly and completely cured my insomnia — and it seemed like once my body was used to actually being able to get to sleep, I no longer needed the melatonin to perpetuate it. I still have it, but only use it if I have a dire need to get to sleep at a particular time.
Counterpoint: My partner tried it too, with much less favorable results. She has a different kind of insomnia, though; where I always had trouble getting to sleep, she can get to sleep but can’t stay asleep. It’s my understanding that melatonin is less effective for that.
Schadenfreude is one of life’s little pleasures. As long as you’re not causing misfortune (incl. by omission of assistance), I find nothing wrong with indulging in it.
I’m one of the few whose brain seems malformed in a way to preclude schadenfreude (I can’t even feel happy over the suffering of people I utterly despise), but I have no shortage of many other of the base human urges, so so long as you’re not actually contributing to said misfortune, go ahead and feel good.
I need Remeron to get to sleep these days, but when I was a kid, I’d drink a massive glass of milk right before bed, and only later did I realize the melatonin was probably what was helping there.
“Is it ever OK to feel happy at an acquaintance’s misfortune? ”
Generally I’d say no. Especially from either a consequentialist or virtue-ethics perspective, it’s a bad mental habit to get into enjoying the suffering of others even when it’s deserved suffering. Just suffering would be punishment for a crime for example. You can be happy about the prevention of crime/harm that punishment causes though, as long as you don’t feel happy about the punishment-suffering itself. Of course that goes a little against parts of our evolved nature (participating in punishment appears to be associated with significant chemical rewards in the brain), so the moral position requires effort and doesn’t come naturally.
For clarity, the reason why it is a bad habit is that you are setting up a mental situation where punishing people is a desire and you will become biased and unable to judge people’s faults fairly and justly. Think of a little angry mob inside your head eager to see the execution. Don’t underestimate how much this is part of human nature.
Has anyone here had experience with SSRI emotional blunting? I’ve been taking them for a couple of months now (and recently raised the dose from 20mg to 40mg), and I think I may have some but I’m not quite sure.
When I read I almost always read things ‘out loud’ in my head, which is called subvocalizing. I think with words, using subvocalization, every day, quite often, and find it useful and sometimes indespensible.
I know that good speed-readers don’t subvocalize (when reading), as it slows them down, but sometimes I find it hard to understand things quickly and fully if I don’t subvocalize anything.
I was talking to a friend a bit ago, and the topic came up, after asking them some questions, I realized that they never subvocalized. Never, never when thinking, reading, writing, simulating conversations with people, and so on. This really surprised me, and they were surprised to find out that a lot of people spend their entire days subvocalizing to themselves about things. They can’t imagine thinking entirely like me, and vice versa, since we’ve done it for so long.
I don’t have a general question to ask, but I’m curious about others experiences here, and if anyone has anything interesting about this topic that they can share, I can’t find much on it. I’m curious what kind of things it correlates with (reading speed, vocabulary, IQ, etc).
Does anyone have tips for speed-reading, without notably worsening your comprehension?
How often do you subvocalize, and how do you feel about it?
Personally I never subvocalize while reading (and am generally considered a fast reader for what it’s worth), but I subvocalize all the time when thinking (often imagining myself trying to explain things to someone else).
I am also very curious about how common this, and what it correlates with.
I would love to see someone do a huge survey on this, doing some statistical fun with all of the data afterwards, of course.
Although I prefer to think with words, I have no problem thinking intuitively, but I find it enjoyable and useful to structure things more concretely sometimes, often as if I’m explaining things to someone else or writing down my idea.
Even if I try to think with no words, words still pop into my mind along with things generally, I can just try to ignore them then. I’ve subvocalized most of my life, so this makes sense.
<aol>Me, too!</aol>
Well, not quite. I sometimes subvocalize if there’s unfamiliar vocabulary (rare unless it’s foreign), or if I want to force myself to slow down to absorb something better, or if it’s poetry that the meter isn’t obvious without doing so.
I always subvocalize when I’m reading and thinking, but I do notice that sometimes, especially when I’m trying to read quickly, my subvocalization would make absolutely no sense to anyone listening. According to an online test I just did, I read at around 330 WPM.
Sometimes my brain does this thing where it just echoes the last thing I subvocalized over and over again, often to the point where I have no idea what I was originally thinking when those words came to mind. Does this happen to anyone else?
It happens to me, but only when I’m really tired. Also I have that more often with numbers than other word-tokens.
I almost always subvocalize to one degree or another when I am reading. For this reason, I am a very slow reader, but I can produce long tracts of writing very fast (the quality of that writing may be another matter). I am good at close reading, but almost incapable of scanning. When I attempt to scan I find I retain and process almost nothing.
I know someone who says that when she talks (and maybe when she listens to others talking?), she sees a kind of text crawl in her mind’s eye. This is completely insane to me, but I’m guessing she is a very visual person, whereas I am a very auditory learner and processor, and this may also be why I love audio books. I retain the info as well or better when listening to an audio book, and it feels very low effort to me. I can also cook, wash dishes, etc. while doing so. Further, I can’t read a book and retain it much faster than it takes to listen to the audio book, so nothing is lost, time-wise.
My “mind’s eye” in general feels very weak to me. And I am aware of that both because other people’s descriptions of their visualizations strike me as much richer than my own, and because I also have vague memories as a child of having a lot of imagery pop into my head unbidden. Perhaps due to some changes in my brain during puberty, I very rarely have vivid images pop up in my head unbidden. I can imagine a scene or a person’s face or a geometric shape in my head with some effort, but it’s usually not very vivid unless I am in a near-sleep state like meditating in a dark room.
I think I recall reading Scott talking about typical mind fallacy and mentioning the fact that a certain %age of people literally have no “mind’s eye” and think other people are just speaking metaphorically when they talk about “seeing things” in their heads. I have a good friend who has told me she sees sunbursts, rainbows, dolphins, stars, etc. when she has an intense orgasm–not like a hallucination, but rather that such visualizations just pop into her head at such moments. I have a very hard time comprehending what it’s like to be inside her head in that respect.
I have a good friend who has told me she sees sunbursts, rainbows, dolphins, stars, etc. when she has an intense orgasm–not like a hallucination, but rather that such visualizations just pop into her head at such moments. I have a very hard time comprehending what it’s like to be inside her head in that respect.
Try some drugs. Experiences under marijuana produces extremely vivid, colorful images in my head . Though I do have “mind’s eye” normally but when high it gets to entirely another level. The crude pencil sketch vs impressionist painting in 3d.
I have tried marijuana and MDMA, but no such experiences. I expect I would have hallucinations if I tried LSD or mushrooms or what have you, but hallucinations are a different matter.
What did your “mind’s ear” do in those cases?
Nothing really. The effect was more on my mood and energy levels. I do, however, recall a very strange sensation on marijuana once of feeling like my sensory wires were crossed for a moment, like I could “hear color” or something.
I took LSD at an Allman Brothers concert once and it felt completely like this. I could see the music like sound had color.
I have had an experience very similar to this with marijuana a couple times. For me, however, it was a sensation of tasting colors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
Exactly the same for me. I find the effect of marijuana is basically “turning up” all qualia.
About the typical mind fallacy, here is another example: I was extremely surprised to learn that when people say they have a tone in their head, they actually hear the music. While I routinely subvocalize, I never hear anything that is not my own speech in my “mind’s ear”.
Maybe related, I am basically tone-deaf, and extremely visual in my learning: audio books are practically useless, and when I learn something by reading (say some irregular verbs list, or some maths theorems), I often remember actually the picture of the page for years, and where that verb/theorem was on the page. I don’t know how (un)common it is, but at least my parents don’t work that way.
When I initially read this, I conflated subvocalization with having an internal monologue. This understandably caused me an incredible amount of surprise, as it read like your friend does not perform any language-based thought at all. Upon reflection, it appears clear that they just do not engage any of the muscles involved in speech while reading or thinking.
But now I am kind of curious (without derailing your question too much) if anybody performs any substantial non-language based thought.
I don’t subvocalize at all whether reading or thinking, but I do occasionally fully-vocalize parts of my internal monologue when trying to perform complex reasoning without scratch paper. The vocalization threshold seems to be much lower for spatial reasoning than for other types. I suspect this is because my thoughts are almost exclusively language based (but not necessarily natural languages). Being incredibly inapt to visualization, I need an external reference to help fix certain thoughts long enough to reason about them.
How I feel about it is an intense personal hatred of whatever schmuck came up with the open office plan. God help the interviewer if I ever discover a prospective employer’s use of one when I show up for the interview, they are going to get a heck of an earful on the subject.
But I don’t have any tips on reading faster.
I talked to them (my friend) about this for awhile, trying to get an idea of exactly how things felt for them.
I asked a ton of questions, but, I tried to make my starting post short.
They generally don’t think in words – and words almost never come to their mind. Just feelings of things, general kind of thought constructs. I probably asked them questions about things for like two hours, and I find it weird that they’re so easily fluent in one (almost two) languages, when they never really think in words. After a huge series of questions, I only got them to say “yes, I think in words during that” to one of my 50 questions, which was “What if a song is stuck in your head, one that has lyrics in it?”. Besides that, it was all “nope, no words.”
Qualia are obviously inherently hard to describe, sometimes I feel like I can type a few paragraphs but not make a ton of headway. For example, the difference between ‘subvocalization’ and ‘thinking with words, but not saying them’ – can be hard to tell, because it’s more of a scale rather than a boolean value, as just about everything of its nature is.
I think words still formed a huge part in structering their brain and their thinking style (there’s definitely a lot of evidence behind the power of language in this area), but they just never ended up strengthing the ‘word/pronounciation’ part of their neural networks, since they found them to only be needed when talking out loud, compared to others, who just started using them unquestioningly when young, creating a feedback loop and making words a more and more prevelant feeling in them while they think,
See, now, this is fascinating to me.
If I were to really try to describe it I have the meaning, the auditory perception, the vocalization, how the word looks on the page, how to smash the keyboard to make it (and lately how to swipe the phone screen), and how to scribble it on a page all bound up in a tight little atom.
But there is kind of a hierarchy amongst those, where the highest order component of the atom is the canonical internal representation. At the top of the hierarchy is the auditory perception which is kind of my default mode of thinking. But certain things I’ve never actually heard (and I never building my own pronunciation internally). I turn to the next highest available representation.
As a concrete example, the name Nynaeve has no auditory or vocalization components. And since this is the first time I have actually written it in any context, none of those apply either. All I have is the conceptual entity of a character in the Wheel of Time, and how it looks on the page. The conceptual component his higher priority than how it looks on the page. And, honestly, I had to look up how to spell it because “how it looks” does not contain that information.
When reading one of the books, then, my internal representation is actually closer to hearing the words than vocalizing them–interspersed frequently with these conceptual packets. If I were to go to a convention and hear someone say the name, my internal representation would rapidly convert.
I think words still formed a huge part in structering their brain and their thinking style
Here is some insight on thinking process: I only spoke one language fluently for first 20 years of my life . But after becoming fluent in the second one I realized that I often think in it .And dream too
Sometimes it was noticeably harder to formulate a thought because my vocabulary in newly acquired language was lacking. Switching back and forth between languages only made it worse.
Ironically nowadays I think mostly in English. And many concepts take effort to translate back to my native language. – It is because conceptword associations are now rooted in English. Even though flawed my English grammar is flawed- the brain doesn’t care as long as it can express what it thinks precisely enough
However my general process of thinking is not affected by the language too much as long as I possess a certain domain specific vocabulary. I cannot think much in Spanish as I barely know a dozen words. But I was able to code and read programming books way before I mastered English to the fluent level.
They generally don’t think in words – and words almost never come to their mind. Just feelings of things, general kind of thought constructs. I probably asked them questions about things for like two hours, and I find it weird that they’re so easily fluent in one (almost two) languages, when they never really think in words.
The closest I come to thinking in words, is running conversations or blog posts around in my head, one phrase at a time, testing out various ways I might express something to various people, and what each person might reply, and what words their words might bring up to me … etc. My actual thinking takes place way back behind or above the mouth. It’s mostly kinesthetic using my whole body, and some visual. I can scarcely imagine using words to think about words; the structure would collapse.
I can’t find again a passage from Einstein describing a similar way of thinking. Choosing words to communicate the idea — the problem and his solution — would be the very last stage.
This sounds like an individual level version of what economists call the theory of the second best. Given one non-optimal element in a system, adding a second such element sometimes cancels part of the effect of the first, and so produces a net gain.
For example, free trade is normally optimal from an economic efficiency point of view. But if one government is subsidizing an export good, a tariff by the importing government can shift relative costs back towards their real value, increasing efficiency. The tariff still makes the importing country worse off, but the world as a whole better off.
“But now I am kind of curious (without derailing your question too much) if anybody performs any substantial non-language based thought.”
I quite often find that I have figured something out and then put it into words. Does that count?
This seems pretty routine in things where people develop high skill and the explanation is naturally much longer than the action. E.g., a good chess player can play good moves very fast, and a good fraction of them have explanations that the good chess player can articulate to a much weaker chess player, but it seems like a very safe bet that the chess player cannot be running through as many words as that on the timescale of, e.g., finishing a blitz game under severe time pressure.
Perhaps similar, and also related to Who Wouldn’t’s comment above:
Although I am a very auditory, language-based thinker and processor, I also have a sensation that my thoughts exist in some “ur” form before they come into words. That is, I “know” the idea as a kind of “spark” in my semi-conscious awareness before I form it into words. Putting the idea into words, usually just silently in my head, however, is usually a necessary step in evaluating the idea’s validity, which I try to do before speaking it–though not always, of course.
When I started teaching microeconomics I realized that I understood lots of concepts that I couldn’t easily put in words.
Whenever I play Zendo I often find that some aspect of the rule just clicks into place in a moment of epiphany, and I have a definite feeling of understanding that thing /before/ mental narrative provides the word-form.
I subvocalize when writing, and when reading secondary languages, but not reading English.
Okay, natural speed reader here, so while I can’t tell you how to speed read, I can tell you what I do.
First off, subvocalizing is really good for academic work where you want the information to bounce around your head a bit then sink in. It slows you down and has you make sure that you understand the material.
For everything else, the way I read is diagonally down a page, top left down right at maybe a thirty degree angle or so and then move back to the left side. I’m almost not actually reading each word but letting my mind eat them all up and then put them back in the proper order. It’s nothing at all like slow reading.
For the longest time, I thought internal monologues and thought balloons were just a cute narrative convenience for writers, and I was stunned to find out that some people actually think in words.
To even try thinking in words (like, when going over lines or something), I sort of have to slow my brain down by physically moving my lips, which makes me look like that weird guy talking to himself. I had to train myself not to do so.
Subvocalizing seems to call different functions within the brain, for lack of a better analogy. Different tools for different uses.
I do not subvocalize when reading, except intentionally. Subvocalizing is massively slower (5-10x, by personal experience) – sometimes an advantage when you want more dwell time on a given word/thought – and this may be the only real difference between the methods.
Still, I find reading aloud is a remarkably powerful editing tool – not as good as bringing a truly fresh set of eyes to bear, but astonishingly effective at disentangling what was written from what was intended.
Similarly, reading aloud or subvocalizing is superior for perceiving texture – rhythm, meter, diction itself – and is an excellent choice for any close reading that requires attention on any level beyond the conceptual.
Non-native languages have required subvocalization for so long as pronunciation is desired and not automatic, but otherwise the general case holds.
Subvocalization when thinking is a way of shifting for a different angle of attack on the topic.
There are various techniques for speed reading; my own recommendation is simply practice: do the reading you would wish to do anyway (without subvocalization).
I don’t typically subvocalize when I’m reading something I’m really into (such as a book I’m reading purely for fun), but if I see a sentence or paragraph I think is really interesting, I go back and read it again while subvocalizing it. I can read reasonably fast when I’m not subvocalizing (I just took a test online and got 552 WPM), but I slow down significantly when I subvocalize.
When I’m reading something I don’t want to be reading, such as an assigned book for a class, I tend to skim a bit. I read about 60% of the text and skim to pick out the important portions of the other 40%. For some reason, I’m oddly good at finding the important information in paragraphs I don’t actually read fully. The names and ideas just…pop out at me. This also happens when I’m skimming comment threads, like on SSC.
I subvocalize while rereading all of the posts I make online, by the way. It helps me check to ensure there are not any errors before I post them, though some still slip through on occasion.
Onyomi mentioned that he knows a woman who sees a text crawl in her head sometimes. I do too! It’s not all the time, but on occasion, especially when I’m thinking hard about a topic but I don’t have a book about it in front of me, I’ll see my thoughts written in my head.
I’m a very visual learner. I hate audiobooks and lectures and I remember things a lot better if I read them than if I just hear them. I’m pretty bad at rotating 3D objects in my head, though; my visual learning abilities seem to extend only to text and not to objects.
I also think in words almost exclusively, and I can’t imagine not doing so the way Sylocat does.
And like “Who wouldn’t want to be Anonymous”, I hate open office plans.
I read in my native language without subvocalizing, but I subvocalize when I read in English, even though the majority of my reading is in English and has been for many years.
I can read in English without subvocalizing, but when I do that, I get a very strong unsettling feeling of a “hollow” reading, and that I both understand and retain much less material than normally. I’m not entirely sure if this is actually correct (I’ve tested myself, and it does seem I can answer questions about a text better after I read it subvocalized, but some of the effect may be self-induced by the acute discomfort of reading w/o subvocalization.
I subvocalize, and until I started reading about “speed reading” I assumed that everyone did, too. I read very fast and the vocalizing doesn’t need to be understandable from a normal speaking perspective, but I do “hear” what I’m reading internally.
From a broader perspective, has anyone been successful with speed reading? I naturally read pretty fast, so my attempts to read faster have involved steps back and enough doubt about potential steps forward that I gave up.
When I was younger(back when I read 1+ books a day), I would typically think almost entirely textually. Ie, instead of thinking in word-sounds, there’ll be script in my mind. One strong advantage was that it allowed me to think very, very quickly(like most people, I read a lot more quickly than I speak). In my teenage and college years, I’ve become increasingly more vocal, which also means that my thinking becomes more akin to my auditory capabilities/speech than my reading.
Since I normally don’t like clocks and it’s difficult to have objective time in my head, it’s difficult to measure my own processing speed, however I’m convinced that I’m a much slower thinker than I used to be. This is something I regret. Of course, my mental condition is also significantly more stable and I am significantly more epistemically rational, but it’s hard to separate those effects from objectively superior environmental conditions in the former, and the natural side effects of growing up in the latter.
To be honest, I’m not at all sure how much I subvocalize when reading. I am not aware of making any actual muscle movements while reading, although that, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t happen. As for whether I have an internal monologue, well, I think this is more or less true. As I type this, I think I’m experiencing the words I’m writing being vocalized in some sense in my head. But it’s not straightforwardly like speech. I would be at a loss to answer questions about the nature of the voice, for example. It’s possible that the voice is my own voice, but it’s equally possible that it is meaningless to attribute a voice to these words and their voice has been abstracted away somehow. In fact I’m not totally sure that I experience the words as sounds, rather than seeing them as written text, or whether it even makes sense to make a distinction between these two ways I can have the experience of a word in my head.
Basically, my introspection does not suggest any clear answer to me. This reminds me of Eric Schwitzgebel’s paper on the unreliability of introspection, which I think was linked on this blog or on Less Wrong a while ago. It’s an interesting paper to read for anybody thinking about these questions.
I struggle to believe that not-subvocalizing while reading exists. I can’t, as far as I can tell, be conscious of the existence of a word without at some level pronouncing it. For example, if I encounter a word for the first time while reading, I create a pronunciation for it before I look for a meaning, though sometimes it seems to be a sort of dream pronunciation (meaning I couldn’t actually say it, but I have the mental sensation of a pronunciation). If I try to silence the voice in my head, I can’t read at all. The connection between symbols on paper, and semantic content, passes without fail through auditory sensation, as surely as it passes through my retinas.
Internal monologue is a bit different. If I’m thinking about something, I’ll hear a monologue in my head. In elementary school I imagined doing interviews, later I had pretend conversations, nowadays I usually think of it as planning (and editing) a reddit comment. I can’t let an idea go until I’ve got an essay I could post on reddit. But it’s definitely the case that I have thoughts before I put them into words, because when I try I can stop mid-process, and I’m left with the notion but have an odd sense of dissatisfaction. It even feels like I already know what I’m going to say, I just haven’t said it yet. Which makes the whole thing feel like a waste of time, since I can spend more than half my thinking time listening to thoughts I’ve already had. This seems to be more attached to the process of organizing and ruminating on ideas, rather than creating ideas. It’s easier to store thoughts in the form of these essays, and I often return to key phrases later. And I definitely hear these pronounced in my head, bare words don’t seem to exist at all in my brain’s model of the world.
I’ve never been able to notice the pre-vocal thoughts, so I’m not sure they take up time, they may occur simultaneously. When I try to meditate by chanting a mantra in my head, I seem to have, perhaps, less vocal thoughts, which become more vocal the more I concentrate on them, as though the mantra and my thoughts are fighting for volume. Seemingly the extent to which I hear words is connected to the extent to which thoughts are conscious or subconscious, though meditation feels like laboratory conditions more than real data.
I have to focus on words to actually subvocalize them – it doesn’t come easily or naturally. I can ‘switch’ between modes with a little effort – subvocalizing is difficult and causes me to ‘listen’ to what’s on the page, reading normally is difficult to describe to someone who doesn’t have the qualia, but maybe the best way to describe it would be a sort of information synthesis.
I simply understand the things I read without hearing them in my head in any sense. I read things, the information comes together, and then I know those things. The only exceptions come when I’m reading things I don’t understand – then I prefer to subvocalize as a sort of self-pedagogy.
It’s difficult to come up with a decent comparison, but do you ever get ‘eureka’ moments where you understand something completely, and you’re aware that you understand it, but it takes you a little while to be able to vocalize that thing?
I never subvocalize when reading except when I’m paying attention to the fact that I’m reading. Once I notice myself reading, I become frustratingly slow, hearing every word in my head as though I were reading aloud, yet without actually taking in their meaning. This continues until I manage to forget what I’m doing, and reading once again becomes fast and enjoyable.
Interestingly, however, my thinking style with respect to internal monologue has changed drastically since when I was younger, and where I never used to have an internal monologue at all, I now think in words.
I used to never think in words at all; all of my cognition happened in concept-oriented sensory packets. For example, I am from Colorado. When I thought of “Colorado,” it was imagining seeing the yellow of grass in summer, and a forested rocky mountain, and the “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” sign at the state border, feeling sun and dry wind on my skin, the letters of the word “Colorado” (though usually not with the sound of it or the feeling of speech), and a sketch of my emotions about it. I had a qualia bundle like this for everything I could conceive of, and many did not correspond to words.
Now however, I mostly think in words. If I notice I am low on food, I might experience hearing “I… store” internally. I don’t explicitly hear the entire sentence “I should go to the store,” because I think it faster than it could be heard, but I do hear pieces, and the rest are sort of understood, like my language center interposes them because they have to be there for grammatical sense.
Thinking in words used to bother me, but I’ve gotten used to it, and I’ve found advantages and disadvantages. In the old days, it could be very hard to communicate a thought, even if all the pieces of that thought corresponded to words. Now, I very rarely have difficulty. I think I reason more quickly now, too. On the other hand, I feel less artistic and less in touch with things going on around me than I ever did before, and less… colorful, somehow. I seem to be much better at accomplishing tasks with verbal-style thought, so I guess I can’t complain, but I know past me wouldn’t have traded for anything.
There were novel circumstances for my brain at the time of the switch-up (less sleep, reading fewer books, mild depression, reading philosophy, months-long obsessive thought patterns), and it was accompanied by other cognitive changes as well (decreased vividness of perception, lowered attention, worsened recall), so I suspect my brain went through a fairly major re-wiring, though I wish I knew how or why, or even what exactly happened. I’d love to hear if anything like this has happened to anyone else, or if anyone knows about something like this.
I don’t know if I subvocalize or not. I suspect I might, but I’m nevertheless a decently fast reader because I can sort of skip a lot of words in a sentence and interpolate the meaning. It’s much harder to do this for more complex texts.
Yes. It’s like skimming for fnords to remove, but in this case it’s skimming for useful words to (figuratively) highlight, and more carefully examine the context of, for closer attention on second skim.
I don’t know if I subvocalize. What happens when I read is that it feels like someone else is reading to me in my head. Sort of like listening to a commercial or having a song stuck in your head. Sometimes it’s not even in my own voice; if I think a woman is writing what I’m reading, then it becomes a woman’s voice.
Sometimes it gets to the point where I’m “reading” — i.e. hearing the words that I’m reading being read to me in my head — but I’m actually thinking about something else. It’s exactly like if you’re in class and you zone out while the professor is lecturing. This also seems to happen while I’m playing guitar. Sometimes I zone out thinking about something completely removed from guitar playing while playing, like I’m an OS cycling between two different processes.
I’d be interested in further discussion on this study from an earlier thread. Abstract:
I tossed it out there originally off-hand, and of course it apparently all comes back to just that one study. Sadly, it doesn’t look like they checked the more interesting angle of time (ie: do the stats indicate that one divorce sets off the others?).
This tangentially related study is also of interest, and did look at the time aspect: pregnancy may be contagious.
Anybody have the skill to dive into those numbers and thoroughly debunk and refute them?
There’s a whole literature on “X is contagious” because it makes good headlines. But it’s all garbage.
Can you explain why?
It all assumes that people make friends at random.
@Michael
I don’t discount it entirely, but population stuff has so many confounds especially when its related to values, views, opinions, choices etc. that its fairly hard to control for everything. I think we’d have to look closely at the strengths of the correlations, and also triangulate using multiple different types of studies including smaller scale qualitative stuff to try to get at the truth of things.
I looked it over the last thread and it mentioned the techniques used to control for selection effects. I’m fairly statistically literate when it comes to the mainstream basics, but not at all with social network analysis, so I have no idea how to evaluate what they did. They specifically mentioned a narrow demographic as a weakness of the study. It was only one city and every participant was white and upper-middle class. That at least definitely means they avoid “these five divorcees all clustered together because they’re all poor,” but of the weaknesses discussion in the paper, they specifically mention confounders other than selection effects as something they couldn’t figure out how to control for. I think they’re going forward anyway because 1) the effect size is so massive, and 2) when has anyone ever not published because they couldn’t control for confounders? The longitudinal data goes back to 1948, so they can’t really randomized control this unless they’re willing to wait 60 years.
You can’t distinguish between homophily and contagion in observational social networks without some pretty strong assumptions.
There’s a paper about this by Cosma Shalizi. Here is a blog post about it with a link to the paper. Would recommend reading if you’re at all interested as he’s an entertaining writer.
This is what they actually did:
They do specifically claim this is a method advocated by Shalizi, but Shalizi actually links elsewhere to a criticism specifically of this paper by Tom Snijders here. I just found this by following the “further developments” link at the bottom page you just linked.
Do Shalizi and Thomas recommend anything? It appears not. On the contrary, Christakis and Fowler switched to the method that Shalizi and Thomas attacked, because the methods that Christakis and Fowler had previously used were too stupid to talk about.
I couldn’t find anything corresponding to what they did, no, but not being an expert on SNA, I didn’t want to just straight up call the authors liars.
You don’t need to be an expert to see if Shalizi and Thomas recommend anything.
While they seems like plausible hypotheses–peer pressure is some pretty strong stuff after all–I am… skeptical.
Just from skimming this paper, it seems that the Framingham Heart Study, which they used the network data from for the divorce study, employed a novel model which is still in the midst of the critique/rebuttal process. In fact, the author of the divorce study conclude that “[t]hus, while there may be some theoretical objections based on unknown amounts of bias that could be present, applied research is generally pointing to the utility of the approach in generating informative estimates of the possible interpersonal influence present.”
That seems like a resounding admission that they have no idea if the model is any good or not. Which makes me skeptical of their rather strong claim from the abstract that “[f]rom a policy perspective, divorce should be understood as a collective phenomenon that extends beyond those directly affected.”
I don’t really have the time or statistical acumen to dig any deeper.
Well, for the study about pregnancy being contagious, I’m not surprised at all to see that link. Anecdotally, I know that my wife and her friends are all planning to get pregnant at the same time so that their kids will be the same age, go to the same school, etc. With birth control as effective as it is, and pregnancy not exactly being a random occurrence, I’d be surprised NOT to see a link.
WOOOOO, first time commenting!
What are SSC readers’ thoughts on wearable tech, esp. smartwatches? What is their utility compared to smartphones? Will they achieve enough popularity to continue development or prove underwhelming and be abandoned? When the Singularity occurs will they be the instruments of our demise?
My own thought on smartwatches is that current offerings are pretty much not particularly hugely useful if you already have a reasonable cellphone and wristwatch, and therefore these devices serve more as status symbols than as practical and useful pieces of technology you should own for functionality reasons. I am unsure if there will develop some amazing application in future that makes them as ubiquitous and common as cellphones are presently, but am a little skeptical. I would be very surprised if sales fell enough that they were wholly discontinued.
I Kickstarted the Pebble watch, and I find it useful. It’s worth it just for the vibration feature: the watch vibrates on my wrist whenever there’s an incoming phone call, email, or text message. This is an excellent alternative to loud ringtones (which are annoying to others), especially in crowded areas. In addition, I find the Compass and dice-rolling apps useful on the daily basis (though obviously YMMV). The 7-day battery life is obviously a huge downgrade from the multi-year battery life of an ordinary watch, but it’s still bearable. Plus, I get to wear LCARS on my wrist, and why anybody wouldn’t want that is beyound me 🙂
It’s also great to have music/podcast controls on my wrist with big, physical buttons I can operate by touch, not a screen I have to, e.g., take my eyes off the road to mess with. For me, the Pebble was a lark (I bought it post-Kickstarter, on sale) that rapidly became a necessity.
Yeah, that’s a good point about the music controls; I’ve gotten so used to them, I forgot to even mention it !
My smartphone lives in my pants pocket and is normally set to vibrate. Having a watch that does the same thing doesn’t sound like much of a value add.
I find that it’s much easier to feel the watch, which is right next to my skin, than the phone, which I am feeling through at least one and often multiple layers of cloth.
I suspect wrist notifications/vibration would be even more useful for my wife (who keeps her phone in her purse and is hard of hearing). But the Pebble is bulkier than she prefers.
I sort of hope that there’s at least a niche for smartwatches of this type getting smaller and cheaper, rather than everything converging to the big-screened do-everything touchscreen watch that all the other manufacturers seem to be chasing.
(But I’ve seen that hope dashed when it came to, e.g., physical controls on phones, as everything converged on the iPhone’s design.)
Yeah, I’ve remarked several times that it appears as though the Pebble design team was all men with wide wrists, as the original Pebble is about as wide as the part of my wrist where I wear it. The Steel and Time seem to be smaller, though still very bulky for a women’s watch. (Admittedly, most women’s watches I have seen have about the same diameter as most women’s *rings*…)
I more or less assumed the size was a matter of practicality at the currently available level of miniaturization for the price.
Or at least the thickness and general bulkiness– for the screen, there’s a tug-of-war between making it bigger and more readable (but more expensive and comfortable/attractive on fewer wrists) and smaller but less generally useful. If smartwatches become of general interest rather than a niche product, it will be interesting to see what screen dimensions they converge on.
(Assuming that they don’t transition to something else: all haptics and sound, laser retina projection, interface with your smart contacts.)
I don’t have a smartwatch yet but will probably buy one in the coming year or so, especially if I can find one I can easily program, and that’s compatible with my Android phone; notably I’d like to try to make a lightweight version of Anki (or something like it) on it, I’d find that more useful than pulling my phone out. I’d also like to experiment more with self-monitoring stuff.
I’m reasonably confident smartwatches will be more frequent in the future (5 or 10 years from now); even if we do see a hype cycle followed by a bust, it should be a pretty useful device, either completing or rivaling the smartphone. It seems a better candidate than the smart glasses (too much issues around privacy, also, you often look like a dork) and smart rings (too small, the interface is too limited).
They seem to me like a sort of stupid idea. Because I really want to wear some piece of expensive hardware that makes me look like a douchebag and doesn’t do anything fundamentally different from my existing phone?
(Applies to both Apple Watch and Google Glass.)
“Makes me look like a douchebag” is a moving target. It’s not that long since possessing a mobile phone was a reliable indicator in TV and movies that a character was a self-important jerk. The idea that anyone but a giant nerd would spend significant leisure time at a personal computer, let alone want to carry one in their pocket or purse, would have been as incomprehensible to my high school classmates as not having one is to their current counterparts.
I’m somewhat skeptical of the Google Glass model reaching that level of takeoff, at least till it’s a lot less conspicuous. (But my prophetic skills aren’t all that great.)
On the other hand, the wrist being a convenient place for a small information display is presumably why wristwatches supplanted pocket watches when miniaturization permitted them.
Part of the major value proposition for both of these products is that it makes you look like LESS of a douchebag.
Glancing at your wrist to see who just texted you is far less noticeable and distracting than taking out your phone and looking at it is, so you can do it in a meeting without so easily alerting people to the fact that you aren’t paying attention to them.
Same deal with google glass. You can multi-task without others realizing it.
I’m a few days late in adding to this thread I guess, but oh well.
I own a smartphone and wear an analog watch. I get a lot of comments about why I bother with a watch when its one function is covered by the smartphone. Apparently quite a lot of people think that watches are obsolete in the case of smartphones. I don’t know if they’d throw out a smartphone in favor of a smartwatch, or if wearing something on one’s wrist at all seems like too much of a nuisance to them. Anyway, I completely disagree with their attitude, on the grounds that I still find it incredibly convenient to be able to check the time by glancing at my wrist. Soon after I got my first smartphone, I replaced my last digital watch (which had a stopwatch and timer and everything) by my current analog watch, because I wanted a watch which looked more elegant and felt less bulky. In this vein, I probably wouldn’t like the idea of wearing a smartwatch, which I imagine to be a lot more bulky than any of my old digital watches.
@Scott I love all of your wordplay, especially your link thread names. So, I went nuts and came up with a bunch of link thread names.
Feel Good Link
Don’t Dip Your Pen in Company Link
The Link Panther
You Can Draw A Horse To Water But You Can’t Make It Link
In the Link of an Eye
Real Men Wear Link
Link From Me and Live Forever
Don’t Link the Kool-Aid
I’m A Social Linker
You Have A Serious Linking Problem
Freelinker
Linking of You
Link of the Possibilities
Can Machines Link?
Also, you’re a psychiatrist and ‘shrink’ rhymes with ‘link’, so there has to be something there.
Reminds me of Culture shipnames for some reason.
I haven’t read any of the books, but I have seen lists of names, and I could also see that for Some Reason.
I feel like we could make Legend of Zelda puns here too, only the only game I can think of with a name involving link (a link to the past) is already a pun on link.
There’s also Link’s Awakening, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and A Link Between Worlds (another case of already being a pun). As well as also Link’s Crossbow Training, if that counts, and Link: The Faces of Evil, if you’re willing to include that.
The thing that bothers me most here is that there’s a Link’s crossbow training game, but in none of the Zelda games I’ve played have I actually got to use a crossbow. This does not seem fair.
/me rolls to suppress rant about the non-availability of alternate conventional weapons in Zelda 1.
Result: fail
Okay, when Legend of Zelda was new, I really wanted to not just be able to change the B button function but also use things other than the basic sword. A typical layout I’d imagine would go like…
Shortsword would have a very short attack animation (you can’t move during your attack animation), but lower the range to half a square from one square.
Spear would let you keep your shield up while attacking (take that, Wizzrobes), at the cost of a cooldown time even after the end of the attack animation, and have a narrower hit zone.
Mace would stun like a boomerang and have a wider hit zone, but do less damage.
The second row would be two handed weapons which keep you from using your shield:
Greatspear for longer reach, and more damage for monsters that are moving at you quickly.
Glaive for rapid spinning attacks suitable to dealing with Keese (bats). I also envisioned statues that replenished the Keese population instead of shooting fireballs.
Morning Star, heavy wide-area attack that bypasses shields, but a long attack animation time
Axe – highest damage, but short range and narrow hit zone, and the attack happens towards the end of the animation.
…
/things I haven’t talked about in 24 years
One thing gives me hope that in the US, driverless cars are not going to get tied up in a hopeless wall of legislation: Old people. When they lose the ability to drive, they frequently lose their independence and their sense of an ability to live a normal life. They also vote and consequently, AARP is the most powerful lobbying organization in Washington.
http://www.aarp.org/home-family/personal-technology/info-2014/google-self-driving-car.html
Driverless cars don’t give anybody the ability to drive. If anything, they gradually take it away. They will make us less independent, not more.
Independence from other people. Someone who can’t drive (due to disabiliy) is currently dependent on other people to get places.
Rephrasing it that way, net independence only increases if you assume that the only consumers of driverless cars are people who cannot drive, and that they are outnumbered by the able-to-drive people who still do.
As soon as able drivers start abandoning the wheel for the backseat couch, net independence wanes and will start to become negative.
I suppose the question is….how?
Cars provide me with the ability to travel from X to Y with high levels of efficiency. They’re better than horses, which are better than feet, which are better than crawling.
If the control interface for the Thing Which Permits Going Places Effectively is reins, a steering wheel, or saying “Google, go to 123 XYZ drive”, I don’t see how that has any net impact. I’m still performing a set of controls to impact the actions of the vehicle in question.
The difference is in the control input. With crawling, walking, reins, and turning a wheel/pressing a pedal, my constant input is required. (Actually I don’t know that much about horseback riding…but let’s assume the horse needs constant input.) Constant input means practice, which means a gained skill, which means independence.
With programming in a destination, my constant input is not required. I have given up control from the time I press “Go” to the time I pick up my legs and step out of the car and onto the concrete. Each ride I take, I become more out of practice, lose more of my skill, and give up more independence.
What’s the connection between a skill and independence? If I had the skill of riding a horse that might well be a measure of independence in 1800, but today it would be irrelevant to it.
I can see why car driving enthusiasts aren’t terribly happy about the advent of self driving cars (and the inevitable mandatory rule that they be used on public roadways) but I don’t see what it has to do with independence.
@NZ– Your argument also proves that my car lessens my independence, since I can’t build one from scratch and use it at the cost of feet-skill and physical stamina.
Clearly, unless you’re asserting that once everyone is using driverless cars Google will turn them off or something, people can get from A to B more efficiently.
Indeed, cars HAVE removed some independence as well as added some. And it’s true that driverless cars may add some independence as well as removing some.
Skills translate to independence because the more you are able to do on your own, the more independent you can be if you need to.
For example, in high school (in the 1990s and early 2000s) I used to have probably over 100 phone numbers memorized. I could be anywhere, pick up a phone, and call just about anyone I wanted to. Now, I basically can’t call anyone except my immediate family members unless I’m using my own phone where those contacts are stored. Now I need other people to program an app so that I can gain that ability back, and the app still won’t be as reliable or secure.
It looks like with increasing independence we are trading off theoretical independence (what if things break) for concrete independence (most people can’t memorize 100 numbers). That seems like a worthwhile trade off.
There’s something romantic and majestic about Heinlein’s list of things a man should to be able to do, but I don’t think it’s terribly fruitful except for people who make a hobby out of acquiring skills.
Also, “independence from what?” Someone who knows phone numbers is still dependent on the existence of a phone system.
When I knew phone numbers, that meant getting to a wired phone– and when away from home, generally having change. Now I’m much less location-independent, and not really dependent on any specific device.
(I’m about equally network-dependent, though the networks are somewhat different.)
I can see where something like knowing how to grow food could make someone less dependent on other people or social structures. But the ability to operate devices that rely on infrastructure and networks seems like a harder case to make. (Maybe for something like off-roading skills. But general street driving is pretty interdependent already.)
Sort of replying to a lower down comment too. Horses need less input than cars; horses commonly would take people home after they got drunk at a bar and climbed onto their horse and fell asleep.
Replying to Mark Atwood’s:
“Sometimes, it’s because I want to get work done while in transit, and so use my internet connected tablets while in the back seat.”
I’m idly curious: do you get motion sickness when you do this? I almost always do. How do you avoid it?
I tend to consider self-driving cars (and services such as Uber) a net freeing force on people, as it enables them to spend travel time doing something other than focusing on the road (along with the hours spent in training, licensing, etc.). My personal problem with reading in the car mildly dampens my enthusiasm for this brave new world; I might end up satisfying myself with just napping.
They give people with mobility issues the ability to get from A to B. There’s going to be a lot of people lobbying for it once the tech is there.
In that case, the driverless car merely replaces the handicap bus (or whatever it’s called–those small van-sized shuttle buses that you see sometimes). The most common complaint about those buses is their lack of availability (suggesting lack of funding). So then the question becomes whether the typical person with mobility issues can afford a driverless car. If the key thing driving the shortage of the handicap buses is high driver salaries, then yes, the driverless car is an improvement. Otherwise it’s likely to have a negligible impact.
High salaries? You can’t imagine that you can pay a high enough salary to have someone on stand-by day or night to drive you somewhere whenever you please.
Specialized robots have been much cheaper than generalist humans ever since the first revision to the machine John Henry beat.
As I understand it, the problem is that there are too few of these shuttle buses, and that they make their rounds too infrequently, to too few destinations.
Theoretically, you could have more buses making more frequent rounds to more places, but you’d have to pay for more driver hours (I’m skipping the cost of additional vehicles and associated costs like fuel, insurance, maintenance, etc. because those exist for driverless cars as well).
Earlier I said that the cost of more driver hours could be what’s causing the shortage that’s being complained about. Of course, it also might not be. If it isn’t (i.e. if it’s all those other costs that I skipped) then driverless cars won’t be much of an improvement.
If we are talking about people who are losing the faculty to drive themselves, we care about the delta between “normal car” and “driverless car.”
For the Google car that is limited to 25 mph that delta is probably small, and {insert joke about old people driving 25mph anyway}.
I don’t need a driverless car for myself right now, but me and my siblings would pay a significant premium to get one into the hands of our aging parents.
My parents are rich. If a driverless car were available for less than a Tesla, they could afford to buy one for my father, who can no longer drive (and never was that good a driver in the first place). But even if they weren’t as well off as they are, they could have made a significant down payment on a driverless car by selling the car my dad couldn’t drive.
And the AARP will lobby for subsidies for poor old people to buy them, making claims about how much tax money is saved by allowing old folks to get around on their own instead of using public services. They may even be right.
@Anthony:
If they’re rich, why don’t they just hire a driver? If they’re rich but not THAT rich, hire someone who helps out with lots of other stuff as well.
Once you apply economies of scale I think the tech’s cost will become negligable (a lot lot less than hiring someone or paying a cab, which is the next cheapest option).
The other thing to consider is that psychologically having independence is really important to people with disability (or elderly). If you have to ask for someone’s help just to go to get some bread and milk, it gets a little humiliating after a while, or if you use buses you’re severely limited in planning and convenience. If you talk to most disabled folks independence is a big issue.
I personally would prefer self driving scooters or really good public transport, so we’re not carrying a <100kg person around in almost 1 ton of metal, but I think self-driving cars are going to be very popular because most people don't spend any time thinking about the efficiency of our transportation system.
Oh God yes.
I am not even looking for local activities that might not sound so boring as to repel me until my means of arrival is not my parents. That stopped being cool over a decade ago.
I would have been taking morning Aikido classes in 2010/2011 had I a way to get there for the 5AM session. I happen to get up earlier than all my potential drivers. Someone once wanted to try it anyway, and when I called him at 4:30AM, he groggily told me that he valued sleep more than he valued being able to kick ass. He then spent the rest of the day terrified that he had threatened to kick my ass.
And it just plain gets miserable outside here in the summer, never mind the fact that I am like two miles from the nearest block with sidewalks.
And I’m pretty sure I could stand to find a therapist, or talk to a doctor or something, because fuck Akrasia and Anxiety and Depression with a Wasabi Pitchfork. I probably would have done this by now if I didn’t have to try explaining this hard-to-communicate personal stuff to both the professional and my parents, who will inevitably try to coax me into talking to them about it.
And no, I don’t think $38 in my bank account is enough to justify taking cabs anywhere. And psychologically, walking into the driveway and getting into a car is much, much easier than walking down the sidewalk-lacking ditchline, hopefully not veering when crossing driveways, until finding someone who can point me to the bus stop… where I will be completely lost even if they get me to where I’m trying to go.
I appreciate having more direct control over one’s traveling! I am no fan of people swooping in to guide me somewhere I was already going. I normally find most of the things blind people rant about kinda underwhelming, but that one is just irritating. And if I could safely run everywhere at top speed, I totally would. (I like running, but I also like having teeth, knees, and an absence of manslaughter charges.)
TL;DR: Self-driving cars cannot get to the boonies fast enough.
Unless you go nowhere you can’t walk to, you are dependent on something. But you can shift it around.
AARP has already solved this problem by making DMV never take away licenses.
And sadly younger people with disabilities that prevent them from driving (I have a friend with epilepsy) are not as big a lobby.
Even a completely self interested lobby group has to know that that’s not an optimal “solution”
I’m climbing back up the thread here a bit to pose a question:
In what ways might driverless cars impact our behaviors and expectations?
For example: if driverless cars give people with DUIs the ability to still get around without a significant increase in cost (and, say, still get to their jobs, or get to and from the bar each afternoon), will that lessen the disincentives to drink and drive one’s normal car?
Another example: Medicare currently reimburses people for powered wheelchairs, with no questions asked (up to 80%, I think). The approximate reason is that in our society we consider it a basic right of the disabled to have a way to get around. If driverless cars give people with mobility issues an additional ability to get around that they wouldn’t otherwise have but that able-bodied people do, might having a driverless car eventually come to be thought of as a basic right as well? And if so, then what happens after the inevitable wave of fraud and abuse?
I think your last paragraph proves too much. It’s a fully general counterargument against providing any kind of accommodations whatsoever to disabled persons. In general, the response from people who believe that disabled people should be able to function is that we deal with the abuses of the system as they happen, and acknowledge that it’s still worth it overall.
It is generalizable, I suppose, but I didn’t intend it that way. Driverless cars are in a whole different class of expenditure and risk from powered wheelchairs.
Why is it in a whole different class? Powered wheelchairs cost thousands of dollars, and self driving cars provide much more utility than a powered wheelchair.
Driverless cars will go highway speed and can kill people, and will cost an order of magnitude more than a powered wheelchair. The fact that they provide so much more utility also puts them in their own class.
Disabled people can already get grants towards cars adapted so that they can use them.
http://www.disability-grants.org/grants-for-cars.html
So there’s already a system for dealing with that which is presumably reasonably resistant to fraud currently.
I get the impression you feel strongly about driverless cars as you appear to be throwing out legions of somewhat weaker than normal arguments about it.
I strive to be dispassionate towards driverless cars, but that comes off as negativity against the backdrop of “rah rah rah”. For example, I like the idea of using them to help people with mobility problems who couldn’t otherwise get around. But I do think that fraud over technology that costs a few hundred dollars per unit is different from fraud over technology that costs tens of thousands per unit and can kill people.
In general, I’m interested in making a habit of approaching new technology with deeper analysis of its potential long-term indirect consequences. (Kinda like what’s going on in AI.) I know that this criticism won’t always cover all the bases, and that it will sometimes turn out to be hilariously off the mark, but it’s more about timing: better to have these conversations now rather than later.
You may be underestimating the cost of customized cars for disabled people.
A google car would merely be at the higher end of the current spectrum re:cost.
Fair enough, I’m more of the opinion that it’s so easy to come up with untestable objections to anything new that except in the case of actual realistic existential risk it’s better to see what’s actually a problem before cutting off avenues and fretting. It’s easy to become paralysed worrying about might be but probably won’t be.
By “few hundred dollars per unit” I was referring to wheelchairs. Yes, I’m aware that modifying a car to be fully controllable by hand can cost several thousand dollars.
It’s true, my aim of having these conversations does create the risk of just coming up with a lot of untestable objections to anything new. But that’s a low-cost thing to happen and creates a needed check in the system. In any case, that’s why I say we need CONVERSATIONS about this stuff. (Note: I didn’t call for a regulatory agency.) That way it gets hashed out and at the very least a theoretical framework can evolve with which we can evaluate the eventual outcomes.
My question about self-driving cars revolves around the environmental/global warming concerns. We’ve already seen the government willing to impose some rather questionable standards in the automobile industry in the name of environmentalism (CAFE standards that result in more traffic fatalities because the easiest way to reduce fuel consumption is to build lighter cars which offer less protection from collisions).
So why would the government allow self-driving cars to compete with mass transit? As of today, the effort required of driving does a decent amount of keeping excess cars off the road (whether it’s people who are too old/young/otherwise handicapped and can’t drive, or whether it’s just the simple fact that driving in a city is inherently annoying and taking the bus/subway is often just easier.
A self-driving car functions pretty similarly to a bus in the sense that all you have to do is get in, sit back, and wait. If self-driving technology is perfected, we could expect to see significantly more cars on the road, which is the exact opposite of what the government generally wants. Cars are a huge part of American culture and they can’t just outright ban them, but maybe the transition to self-driving is just the excuse they need to start limiting the individual right to own a car. Perhaps the decree will be something like “self driving cars that are privately owned can only be used for getting around in a city, but to travel long distances you must take a bus/train/whatever.” Or maybe they go the other way and say “for getting around in the city you have to use a self-driving cab or uber, if you want to drive yourself you have to be traveling a long distance”
I’d expect a very different outcome: bans on human-driven cars in the center cities and freeways (maybe with time limits) with the highest traffic congestion, a decline in public transit in wealthy areas.
Governments don’t actually want to do anything about climate change. There’s not much they can do that won’t hurt some sector that’ll squeal. The voting public likes the idea of the government doing something about the environment, but only so far as it costs them nothing – that’s why you get politicians talking up their environmental credentials and doing pointless symbolic stuff and/or setting up small subsidies for perceived environmental technologies, rather than just setting up a CO2 tax and being done with it.
I expect driverless buses will see a lot of use for public transit before driverless cars have significant private use.
The claim that modern cars are less safe than older cars because of fuel-efficiency standards is /very/ questionable.
The cars piloted by all you young, able-bodied, competent drivers are killing ~30,000 people in America every year. I don’t know the global figure, but I assume it’s some bigger number. You actually suck at driving and need Google, or some other friendly AI, to take over for you as soon as possible. If it’s the AARP that makes it happen, I’ll take it as evidence that old people might be good for something after all.
I ran across the litany of Tarski, but I’ve been having some issues with it. I’m curious to see what people think about the idea that there are some cases where it’s genuinely beneficial to your decision-making to believe something false. (For example, if there’s a very low chance of a situation that would require a drastic response, you may be better off believing it just can’t happen – arguably, you might be better off believing any radar reading of nukes coming your way are fake and not nuke the other guys back. Another example would be believing your odds of getting in a car crash or getting AIDS are much higher than they actually are (it could lead to overall more accurate levels of caution)). (Another example that may pass a line and will be removed if anyone thinks it does: assume WLOG that women and men are all equally crazy, but in a way that’s visible primarily in a romantic relationship. In this case, it’s technically inaccurate but may be beneficial for a straight man/woman to believe that all women/men are crazy).
It sounds like you’re talking about situations in which, given more information, your biases are likely cause you to make a bad decision, so it is better to not have that information?
I actually do have a somewhat different example. I went through a breakup a couple months back. I found that knowing more about what my ex was doing resulted in either more anxiety or the same amount of anxiety, so I preferred (well, still prefer) to know less about her activities.
I feel like most of these examples are about correcting for existing errors in what we already believe. Believing “all men/women are crazy” might not be more beneficial than believing “all men and women are equally crazy in a way that’s visible primarily in a romantic relationship.” Over-believing in the danger of car crashes and AIDS only helps if you had an untrue perception of the risk in the first place. “If ‘I should take these exact precautions against car crashes to maximize my safety and convenience, according to my principles’ is true, the I wish to believe that I should take these exact precautions against car crashes to maximize my safety and convenience, according to my principles”.
About the believing they’re crazy thing, it’s less overhead for the same (subjective) level of accuracy (if I were genderless and bisexual, I need the full generality, but if I’ll never have that experience, this is just computationally simpler). (and thinking “guys/girls are crazy” is somehow much more comforting than thinking “people are weird in relationships”). And overstating the danger is to compensate for having an inaccurately low estimate on the harm of death (or in the case of AIDS, being turned on and lazy and not wanting to get a condom).
While an inaccurately high estimate of the danger is probably better than an inaccurately low estimate of the danger in most cases, wouldn’t a perfectly accurate estimation of the danger be best? If a perfectly accurate estimation of the danger existed, it would account for not only the chance of contracting AIDS but also for the amount of suffering this would potentially cause you for the rest of your life, which I think would elevate the feeling of risk to the point where appropriate action would always be taken.
Yeah, but it has the issues that a) complete accuracy may be impossible, and an additional mistake may help cancel out a previous unavoidable one and b) even if complete accuracy is possible, the mental or emotional costs of reaching it may outweigh the benefits.
But those are still examples of correcting for error A by introducing error B. People can be weird in relationships may be less comforting, but you don’t lose all those non-romantic relationships you could have had by modeling the opposite sex accurately. Plus relationships are generally better if you accurately model your partner.
I do think that this isn’t how we think though. We are a collection of heuristics that compete. You rate the bundle for competence, not each heuristic.
People sink great costs into overestimated risks. This is bad. You’d be better off with an accurate assessment. The truth is that most of us should do very little most of the time to avoid contracting HIV. If you’re too concerned about it, you’ll waste resources and potentially make it worse to be someone who is HIV positive.
Hmm, to me “people are weird in relationships” is way more comforting than “men are crazy” (I’m a woman). I guess this is confounded by the fact that I am indeed bisexual, but even if I wasn’t – “people are weird in relationships” means that I need to be careful of potential minefields in the limited domain of dating/relationships, whereas “men are crazy” would mean that I would have to expect irrationality and bad behavior from potentially any man in my life, including friends, roommates, coworkers, etc. In fact, when I come across gender-essentializing philosophies that paint women and men as fundamentally different and mutually incomprehensible, my primary reaction is annoyance at the way these philosophies erase the very normal friendships I have with some men.
I don’t think “men are crazy” or “women are crazy” is really simpler than “people are weird in relationships”, either.
FWIW, I think you’re half right. Men are, indeed, crazy. Women are crazy too. People in general are crazy. Not just in relationships, but all the time. While this notion is depressing, at least you can take comfort in the fact that, since everyone is crazy toward everyone else, it is somewhat unlikely that anyone is going to act extra-crazy toward you personally, or your slice of the demographic spectrum in general. At least, that’s what I think…
Julia Galef has a video about this called ‘Should you ever lie to yourself?’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3AMK9efR4I
I am new to the LW memeplex and I am curious as to what the purpose of the litanies is. I suppose they state good ideas, but I can’t quite figure out how people are meant to use them.
In my experience litanies are useful as forceful concentrated reminders of your long-term goals or resolutions.
Based on past experiences and after lots of reflection, you decide that from now on, when faced with the prospect of learning something potentially scary or tragic about your circumstances, you really prefer to find out immediately. You really genuinely want to commit to this. You recognize the litany of Gendlin as shorthand for this resolution.
Time passes. One day you find yourself scared to go to a doctor about some symptoms, or to step on a scale when you suspect you’ve put on a lot of weight, or [many examples]. You know intellectually you ought to find out the truth, but you’re still overwhelmed by the anticipated negative emotion, and you waver. You recall the litany of Gendlin and it helps you feel the full force of the resolution you had; the feelings you had and the strong desire to urge your future self to the right action are fresh in your mind again, and help you.
What Anatoly said.
The Litany of Tarski can be used to force yourself to believe information you don’t want to believe is true, because it interferes with your intuitive biases about how the universe should behave. For example, a person who believes the world would be safer if “sufficiently crazy” people were put into an institution and not allowed to leave, might use Tarski to imagine what a test for “sufficiently crazy” would be, its likely error rate, and the number of non-crazy people it would consequently coerce.
I used LoTarski long before I’d known it was a litany, when I convinced myself decades ago that there are enough people who are both intelligent and disagree with my political views to be worth taking seriously. (Ironically, I ended up using it again to recognize cases where people I thought were intelligent were in fact making specific errors in thinking. (And then I used it a third time to recognize cases where -I- was making errors in thinking. (I might have to use it later to convince myself that it’s not a hammer for every nail.)))
Litanies are helpful as a kind of dosed motivation-mimicry. They help you to recall a motivation that you once felt, and precommitted to acting on, but don’t feel at the moment. Ultimately, you ought to get past the need for them by just practicing doing the right thing enough times that it becomes motivating in itself.
The Total Perspective Vortex is a thought experiment on why some degree of self-deception may be necessary for human function.
More practically, the whole fad about praising effort over capacity is an attempt to invoke self-deception which (at least partially) fulfills what was originally false – there’s are other such self-verifying self-deceptions that seem to pass your ‘beneficial’ test.
I’m not sure that the emphasis on effort is a deception. Effort can be viewed as necessary but not sufficient to create success. So if I am working with someone in a teaching or coaching capacity and I am either predicting their capacity will increase (either at this task or in general) or predicting that my feedback may impact their development of the capacity for effort (which is necessary to many tasks, if not sufficient for most of them) then I may choose to focus on the fact that they achieved 60% of their task, but I’m not distracting from an important issue.
Remind me why I’m supposed to care what the universe thinks of me again? Especially given that the universe isn’t a human-sociable agent capable of thinking anything at all.
Personally, I think it’s much more important what I think of the universe, which can be summarized as “SURPRISE ANSCHLUSS.”
Omega has captured a room full of hostages and threatens to execute them unless you agree to his demands.
Omega: Agree to my demands or I will execute the hostages.
You: It is against your values to execute the hostages.
Omega: Yes, but I won’t have to execute the hostages. You know that I will execute the hostages unless you agree to the demands, therefore you will give into my demands, therefore I won’t have to execute the hostages.
You: Damn, I wish I didn’t know that you would execute the hostages unless I agreed to your demands.
Ah, but this only works if Omega knows that you know. If, imagining that you are an AI rather than a leaky human, we hold Omega’s beliefs about your knowledge constant, then it is better for you to know.
Omega knows I’m not falling for that.
About this specific scenario: this only works if Omega can show to you good evidence that it has committed to the executions irreversibly though. Otherwise, Omega has all the incentive to be lying and not carry through with the executions either way, which you would know, which actually makes it incapable of threatening people that way.
Your knowledge of Omega’s mental state is sufficient for Omega to precommit to executing the hostages; without this knowledge Omega would need to construct an external mechanism for precommitment.
The trouble with trying to find cases where Litany of Tarski would hurt you is that it necessarily requires knowing enough about how it could hurt, but if you applied LoTarski completely, you would know of this hurt, and avoid it anyway.
I can see two ways around this.
One is to construct a scenario where you know your biases are insuperable even if you know they are there. I tend to find this extremely difficult to construct in practice. (The temptation here is to go to the “risking your life” scenario – you have a bias against dying, but you trick yourself into believing you won’t so that you can go into a burning building to save someone. But this doesn’t work, because you don’t actually know you will die – if you did, then you’d know going in was pointless, sad as the result would be.)
Two is to treat “completely” in “apply LoTarski completely” above as the operative word, construct a scenario where you cannot possibly know all of the relevant information beforehand, and yet the information is predetermined and would afterward reveal a preferred outcome that hinges on your not knowing it, or better, on your believing the opposite. I think the Alpha-Omega example above angles in on this direction well, despite its epistemic flaws. Again, I find this difficult. With the burning building example, you could trick yourself into believing you’re likely to live, even though you’re likely to die; however, you could also simply convince yourself that you’re risking a really low probability (surviving) for a very high positive payoff (saving someone), which is presumably true. (And if the chance of survival is low and you could save someone else later at much lower risk, then Tarski is arguably telling you that staying put is the less horrible option.)
I’m with you, insofar as you seem to suggest that inaccurate beliefs sometimes lead to better results. Research on optimism/pessimism seems to be a good example. Pessimists are more realistic, but optimists have better life outcomes.
For many people however, me included, (epistemic) rationality is an end as well as a means. The practical benefits of self-deception have to be ginormous, else forgetaboudit.
I’ve been suspicious of social scientists ever since I read one of those “people with more self esteem perform better” studies and discovered no mechanism for determining the direction of causation. Even the famous “marshmallow” study seems corrupted by this: of course kids with a stronger support network are going to both become more trusting of strange adults’ promises and more successful in later life.
So I’ve got to wonder: since correlations are uninformative here, given that we would expect people with underlying life-outcome-improving attributes to become more optimistic, how does the research manage to conclude that the reverse is true as well?
Some speculation about mincemeat pies and MAOIs over on Obsidian Wings. Scott, do you know anything about how plausible this is?
did giving what we can ever release the member survival data people asked for? sorry if i just missed it.
http://effective-altruism.com/ea/hr/the_importance_of_gwwc_cohort_data/
Based on a recent reply from them, it doesn’t look like they release the most damning bits of this.
Going back to a really old discussion: which fictional societies most strongly resemble utopias or dystopias to you respectively? Why?
Seems like a bit of a fluff question I know, but I think it reveals a bit about our values.
I’ve always been fond of the Star Trek’s UFoP as a utopia– broadly accepting, scientific/rational, willing to invest considerable resources to explore and capable of providing for all members of society.
Dystopia is taking some more thought for me….
So do you prefer the 23rd century Federation of TOS / TAS or the 24th century Federation of TNG / DS9?
I think the former captures the frontier spirit and vitality (humanity?) of the concept more, and ironically has much more believably alien aliens in it, but then again I was never 100% on board with the Roddenberry ideal anyway.
My heart was always with the 24th century, particularly TNG. But I also don’t know how much of that is because of Patrick Stewart being incredible at giving out the feeling of humanity, or because of the writing/design.
In debates with my brother, I’ve used the Roddenberry ideal as a simile for a lot of the silly liberal ideas that he believes. Once I point them out using this simile he has almost always realized how silly they are. (It’s very effective.)
Probably the most glaring example is that any sizeable population of human beings can maintain a high mean intelligence, rationality, and orderliness without some dark underlying scheme like mandatory abortion of low-IQ babies.
If all you care about is the mean, and you have SFnal or even near-future tech to work with, then designer babies would probably suffice.
Though as I recall those are explicitly not part of Star Trek‘s mainstream.
@Nornagest:
Yeah, it doesn’t seem like designer babies are part of Roddenberry’s utopia. In fact, I think Roddenberry would oppose them. Were there even a couple of episodes related to this?
Anyway, I would certainly count designer babies as one of those “dark underlying” things.
@NZ – genetic engineering is totally banned in the Federation (certainly in the human parts of it) as a result of the Eugenics Wars, which were fought in the 21st century between empires organized by genetically engineered super men and women like Khan Noonien Singh.
There’s one major character who is genetically enhanced (Doctor Julian Bashir in DS9) but it’s done illegally and secretly, and his father eventually goes to prison for it.
There’s also a few other episodes to do with genetic engineering (Up The Long Ladder, IIRC, which was… not very good) but yeah it’s very explicitly not part of the Star Trek universe.
Yeah, it came up in DS9. Don’t remember if it also showed up earlier; aside from the most recent movies, I haven’t seen any Star Trek in well over a decade.
I’m pretty much on board with designer babies, but whether we agree on that or not, I think we can probably agree that they’re a lot less sinister than mandatory abortion of fetuses with characteristics you don’t like.
If you are not limiting the discussion to Star Trek, consider the version of libertarian Eugenics in Heinlein’s _Beyond This Horizon_.
It’s a technology that lets each couple select, from among the children they could have, which children they do have. Not dark, not mandatory—there’s actually a subsidy for “control naturals” not produced in that fashion. And would raise IQ, assuming parents want smart kids, which I think most do.
You are possibly not thinking through the implications of post scarcity.
@David Friedman:
I haven’t read it, but if the inhabitants of Heinlein’s utopia are otherwise normal humans, this would quickly degrade into an idiocracy ruled by a thin crust of highly intelligent elites.
The reason is that if the technology is not mandatory–even if it’s very inexpensive–then most people will still procreate the old-fashioned way. Remember, a lot of procreation is not intentional, so old-fashioned procreators will not be an even sampling of the whole population; they will tend towards the left half of the IQ curve (i.e. people who aren’t good at controlling their impulses or resisting immediate rewards for later ones). They also tend to reproduce much more.
Meanwhile, the people who do opt to use the eugenic technology will tend to wait until later in life to do so, have fewer children once they do, and pour way more parenting resources into the few children they eventually have. This will make the impact of the eugenic technology less clear, slowing the rate of adoption and paring adherents down to an even narrower slice of the population.
@NZ: Are you serious? The amount of time and money parents are willing to spend even on largely ineffective means of improving their children (e.g. pre-school, ‘Baby Einstein’, university, etc.) is enormous.
I do agree that society would bifurcate with the least capable people taking least advantage of eugenics, but it would be more like 20-80 with the 80% using the technology than 95-5 with the 5% using it.
I suspect after a few generations not using it (and not aborting regular pregnancies) would come to be seen as child abuse and eventually outlawed, which is where we part company with Heinlein and libertarianism.
Actually I suspect this WILL happen.
“You are possibly not thinking through the implications of post scarcity.”
Post-scarcity is impossible with humans. We know that because if it were possible, we would be discussing how it came about in the past tense.
Not all over the world, mind you, but here in America you can’t run a homeless shelter without amenities — deemed necessary to make the place fit for human habitation — that would make kings and queens and emperors gape with envy because they never had anything like that.
If charity cases can receive, for nothing, a situation better than royalty, either we have attained post scarcity — or we never will.
@Oliver Cromwell:
Yes, I’m serious. The amount of time and money SOME parents are willing to spend on even ineffective means of improving their children is enormous, but these are only a subset of all parents, and they tend to be the least fertile subset.
Now, it is true that the rest of the parents may buy into certain expenditures being necessary (e.g. “My kid’s gotta go to school to be smart”), but if that expenditure 1) requires them to put forethought into their reproduction and 2) expands the time gap between when they put in this forethought and when they engage in reproductive activity, then they are not likely to go for it.
Remember, I’m talking mostly about adults who, as kids, would have failed the marshmallow test.
Hence why only a tiny percentage of eighteen year olds today attend college…?
I don’t disagree with the principle but I think you have the proportions all wrong. The vast majority of births in the US are not unaborted unplanned pregnancies between people who are not in long term relationships.
@Mary,
Implicatiaction of X means implications of X, not likelihood of X.
Why would theft even matter, when the victim can just replicate the item?
Why would impulse control even matter when friendly AI police society?
@Oliver Cromwell:
See my earlier comment when I said
Regarding the proportions, the point is that even among births that weren’t accidents, very few parents go through serious thinking about what exactly they want their kid to be like between the time they decide to have kids and the time they actually try.
And the parents who would be inclined to invest in all those decisions are typically the least fertile, while the more *unthinking* reproducers are the most fertile, so over time the proportions would be as I described them. That’s the “Idiocracy” scenario.
The society also had a strict (and lethal) code duello, which would tend to pare the population of those with poor impulse control. You had to be nice at least until you got to be a good shot.
I’ve never found the Trek society believable enough to qualify as either topia.
In the next few hundred years I would second Star Trek, but c’mon, can somebody write a version where they colonize Antarctica or the ocean instead of space? That would be more realistic.
In thousands of years, it’s less certain. Dune was kind of cool in that least humanity survived. I currently like gamma discounting, with ~10,000 years from now as a time limit after which I don’t care about anything.
Do you apply the same discounting across space so you don’t care about people physically far away from you? If not, why the asymmetry between time and space?
If I knew that the human race was going to be magically put to sleep for a million years, I would care about people 1000001 years in the future pretty much like I care about people 1 year in the future now. Applying a discount based on calendar years is actually a simplification; the calendar years are more like a proxy for “strength of connection” or some similar concept. For that matter, applying a discount based on distance is a similar simplification. So there’s actually no asymmetry between time and space.
Degree of connection, not space, but yes. It takes a mighty large number of South Asian beggars summed into one “story” to pull the same heartstrings as one family you actually know.
I’m pretty uncertain about the weights I’d give to things, but yeah. I have circles of concern. Doesn’t everyone?
Yes, but utilitarians think that everyone shouldn’t.
I think *some* of the bias toward people near in space and time is justified.
Some of this is related (bringing up the quote: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.)
But we can predict both the needs and solutions to nearby and near-term problems much better. If I send money to Africa (and I do admit to this), my confidence that it will do the thing that is good for the people is sometimes limited. GiveWell helps, obviously.
And having some confidence that we’ll help future people, who will do things differently, may well be warranted, but we know better what will help now. (Or at least, I think I do; I may be wrong.)
There’s practical discount, not for those-people-are-worse-than-me, but for the maybe-our-plan-is-bad-for-those-people-’cause-we-don’t-understand.
I’m pretty sure that this bias is too strong in most people, but there ought to be some practical bias toward using resources to local time and space, because our predictive powers are better for those actions.
But that’s just my opinion. Future me might think I was wrong.
(Aside: Does anyone have this happen to them that hasn’t had a head injury or something?:
“Oh, crap! I really should have done [obvious thing] that would have helped Important Work Project. I will start it now. I should have done this before. (Looks at documentation.) I did do this before! Wow. I have no recollection of past me doing this even now, but I want to give past me a full point.”)
I actually think the Federation is pretty dystopian. Two reasons: one; the ban on transhumanism/AI/etc. meaning that people continue to die, two; the prime directive.
Someone in that thread quoted an ST book that justified the Prime Directive by saying that the lifespan of an intelligent species was either fifty years after the invention of nuclear weapons, or indefinite. I suggested that it might be more sporting of the Feds to just give everyone they met nukes, and put a note in their calendar. If they’re still there in fifty years, give them warp drive. If not, the Feds have a new colony world.
I was kidding, but I’m not sure if this is worse than Picard and Archer’s (really Phlox’s) thinking that it was better to let a species go extinct than risk interfering. (And hey, that policy applied to us by advanced aliens would have gotten us ftl in 1995!)
And of course a lot of Federation lifestyle and policies are dramatic devices. They’re not transcendent cyborgs because they’re intended to be relatable to modern mass audiences. The Prime Directive is there so that they can have all sorts of tech convenient for starting plots (teleportation, long range sensors, ftl) but the characters can’t solve their problems by phasering the local ruler from the bridge (except when they can, as in “A Piece of the Action”), or offering replicators to solve a local resource conflict.
In five series (six if you count the animated one) we barely see civilized life within the Federation itself. So there was never really much of an occasion to figure out how it was supposed to work.
They’ve failed to cure aging. They sacrifice armies of redshirts to explore. They leave massive amounts of resources untapped, and have stars just burning and planets just sitting there. When they find a primitive society where people are dying from war and disease, they do nothing. They are not my idea of a utopia.
I agree with you about the aging, though they do live a lot longer and no one dies of cancer, heart attack, malaria, diabetes, etc. (time travel paradox and space flu, yes, but hypertension, no). I think all the redshirts had the option to stay on Earth and live a comfy life running a vineyard or being an artist, but instead chose to join their society’s equivalent of army/deep sea explorer, i. e. an exciting but inherently dangerous profession.
As to the prime directive, I think it’s a pretty interesting ethical question, the answer to which is non-obvious. I believe the stated reason for it is that they’ve found in the past that their attempts to intervene in undeveloped societies lead to disaster more often than improvement, though Earth is also depicted as pulling out of a period of struggle and war due to their “first contact” with the Vulcans, so that kind of undermines that.
Don’t most of us today consider it ethical to leave uncontacted tribes alone, even though their societies are ones in which people are fairly likely die of infection and fighting?
We certainly don’t have an ethical obligation to share our wealth equally with everyone who exists (or at least we wouldn’t want to).
But other than that, we should share knowledge and technology with less advanced tribes and civilizations, where they still exist. We should give the internet to everyone.
I think the Prime Directive is way overrated.
The only good reason for isolationism I can think of is for pandemics mitigation, but for that you could just pay people to live in bunkers in the Arctic or something.
Don’t most of us today consider it ethical to leave uncontacted tribes alone, even though their societies are ones in which people are fairly likely die of infection and fighting?
That is a different situation because virtually all “uncontacted” tribes today are well aware that modern society exists, and indeed are often found to be in possession of metal tools and such. After all, everyone on earth is going to see a few airplanes flying overhead at some point, especially when, as in the case of uncontacted tribes, people regularly fly overhead to observe them from a safe distance. So they’ve pretty much all, on some level, chosen not to contact wider society, often because previous interactions with modern outsiders were unpleasant. They’re often seen reacting to observation airplanes by hiding, and a few react with outright hostility to any outsiders that come near.
With the Prime Directive, as far as I understand it, the underdeveloped societies never get an choice because the Federation doesn’t make their existence known to them.
But you’re right that this is a tricky ethical question. Certainly humanity has an atrocious track record with this sort of thing.
My view on the uncontacted tribes is that it should only be an interim policy as contact seems to reliably wreck their shit. (they get immediately exposed to ruthless capitalistic exploitation.) When we are more virtuous, we will contact them.
Leaving primitive tribes to their own issues makes sense to me when we’re talking about problems like lack of technology or a war, or other unpleasantries that won’t end the species. It becomes less defensible when the planet is about to blow up because of some natural disaster that the species neither caused nor has the ability to stop, but the Enterprise can fix trivially. More than one storyline has revolved around that.
Stars just burning? Astrovore pls go.
“It becomes less defensible when the planet is about to blow up because of some natural disaster…. the Enterprise can fix trivially.”
In the Original Series, at least two episodes (“The Paradise Syndrome” and “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”) indicate that it is standard procedure in the 23rd century for Starfleet ships to protect uncontacted planets from such space disasters, even as they forbade interfering in wars or other social disasters. I think it’s fair to say an advanced humanity would be obligated to use their technology to help, but wouldn’t be obligated to devote all their efforts to searching them all out and preventing them. By the 24th century they have become literal and dogmatic about it, as Archer was when he took Phlox’s advice not to cure that intelligent race in order to let the coexisting primitive race evolve more. In “Time and Again,” though that technically involves the temporal prime directive, Janeway explicitly tells Tom they can’t help save a planet from a massive explosion because of its unpredictable cosmic consequences, not anything social or legal. This is one of many examples of the 24th century society becoming very stale and dogmatic. This is mostly bad writing, but it added an interesting richness to the fictional universe that Deep Space 9 occasionally took advantage of.
The most egregious example is “Symbiosis,” where Picard helps the planet carry out one more drug delivery but then leaves them to suffer from withdrawal. He gives a nice speech about how “this is to protect us,” but that is moot since he already interfered just enough to make the drug-addicted planet furious at the Federation for not helping when they easily could.
TNG had at least two episodes (“Pen Pals” and “Homeward”) where a civilization was being wiped out by natural forces and the Enterprise-D was just chilling and watching. In each case, eventually someone else forced Picard into action.
I’ve never been fond of their distaste for Transhumanism – but if you allow it, then you end up with something more like Eclipse Phase or Ghost in the Shell than Star Trek.
You wouldn’t really be able to do the whole humanist themes thing if they’re all even half as awesome as Lt. Data.
Non-serious answer: Maybe Jones’ City.
Slightly more serious answer: Maybe Tolkien’s account of the Shire. Which makes sense as it’s basically nothing more than an incredibly idealized, romanticized, perfect version of English rural society.
A Tale of Time City?
That’s a good one. The Shire. Gondor under a good king also sounds close to heaven.
Myself, I’m partial to Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky universe. That sounds as close to paradise as nature would allow.
The fictional society I’m most *ashamed* of wanting to live in is S.M. Stirling’s Conquistador
I like the long earth as pretty utopic if you leave out the negative side effects (for anyone who hasn’t read: you can travel to parallel habitable earths with a simple machine. There are a bunch of side effects like no iron, some people can’t travel or get sick, only two directions to go, which I’m going to assume a utopia wouldn’t have). The book’s version has a bunch of problems aside from those – humanity can reproduce exponentially but there’s only linear space, so it’s get filled up eventually, plus they all have the same sun and thus the same end – but if you replace the world x Z with world x R and solve the sun issues, make it possible to jump anywhere along the R (or at least within an interval [-1,1] containing an infinite number of worlds) with precision, it sounds like you could get infinite variation eventually (and you’d have a lower bound on life quality, since anyone getting abused could escape). Of course, there’s the issue of finding someone you want to – the best solution might be a magical phone that anyone can call from anywhere which you could use to give your exact coordinates, but then you would never have plausible deniability about screening people.
One part of that book really bugged me: there’s this family that’s one of the main viewpoints, and they’re all excited to go out and live on the frontier and so forth, but they have a son who can’t step, so they *leave him behind*, and this is presented as totally normal and not at all something the reader is meant to think less of them for.
The thing that -really- bugged me there was that the mom had no problem leaving him behind but did have a problem with the word “phobic” being used about him.
Objecting is cheap, even costless.
Refusing to leave him would have had costs.
I read a translation of The Three Musketeers a while back; there’s a scene in which D’Artagnan is flirting with Milady de Winter’s serving girl while Milady is away. Milady returns, and, on hearing sounds in the other room (Milady and her serving girl share a wall) D’Artagnan realizes the girl can’t fight him without Milady hearing her, and rapes her.
Dumas described plenty of behavior that he clearly didn’t approve of (though this particular scene doesn’t have any kind of sarcastic comment that would indicate such a sentiment), but somehow it still doesn’t surprise me that this scene got left out of all the film adaptations.
I don’t really agree with your summation of that bit. The relevant section is being presented from the viewpoint of the very-early-teens daughter who has apparently been told rather a large number of times by her parents that everything is fine and their brother was happy to stay behind etc etc.
I got the impression that the mother was being a horrible shit about it, and the father was much more torn up than the POV daughter was allowed to see. Later interactions with the (now older) daughter contain numerous hints to Very Major Family Rifts, and I don’t think you need to be a genius to work out what the origin of those rifts was.
As for how believable it is? I’ve heard enough stories about mothers going on holiday to Tenerife and meeting a hunky barman and deciding to stay and leave their 3 kids with their UK dad to not find it that unbelievable.
I thought the reader was meant to think less of them, considering his plight and that of similar people provided the motivation for the villain.
I thought so too. The consequences were certainly dire.
The lesson is, of course, not to bring children into the world unless you want to lose all independence forever. Their nonexistence through nonreproduction is judged morally better than giving them life without eternal servitude.
I find this all very toxic; family obligations are overrated that way.
If you have infinite worlds, it doesn’t matter if humans reproduce exponentially. You can redistribute the people among the worlds to get any level of emptiness that you wish. For instance, if each one of the infinite worlds has 20 billion people, you could rearrange them so each world only has a million, without getting rid of anyone. Infinity is funny that way.
I think the line of worlds in the books was finite or effectively so (containing bands of worlds that are difficult to cross; eventually in either direction you reach a band of worlds that’s prohibitively difficult to cross).
I don’t think any of them were “prohibitively difficult”. Crossing the Gap (a world where Earth doesn’t exist due to having been obliterated by some kind of collision) is difficult as you need a vehicle that can survive a few seconds of hard vacuum, but not that much harder than air travel.
And of course, the Gap means that the Brick Moon can exist…
Yeah, they’re pretty much explicit about this in the sequels.
You have infinite worlds, but it takes a linear amount of time to travel from world 0 to world n. if humanity reproduces at a^t and travel takes c*t time, even if c and a are both very small, eventually you’re going to bottleneck.
Most fictional societies are a pretty even mix of both I’d say. Too utopian and there is no conflict – Heaven is boring. Too dystopian and the conflict is ubiquitous, but meaningless as its evil fighting worse evil – Hell leaves you apathetic. So I’d say there is a strong narrative incentive to avoid having a total utopia or dystopia.
I could cut to the chase and just list my values for you. But you don’t want that!
Maybe a more interesting discussion would be whether utopias as presented in fiction would really be that great, or whether dystopias as presented in fiction would really be that bad. Our values will come through in the discussion, but it sets up some fun room for debate and stuff like that.
To kick it off, I propose that the posh suburb where Edward Scissorhands lived would have been pretty great (stable real estate values, nice scenery, lots of green space, walkable, good schools, etc.), even though Tim Burton tried to make it look like a soulless hellhole. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie, so in this discussion I’ll be relying on the plot posted on Wikipedia for reminders. That’s fine with me if it’s fine with you–I don’t have the time or inclination to go back and watch the movie again.
(To be fair to Burton, he’s said that he wasn’t trying to be judgmental of the suburbs, and threw in some compliments of the suburbs too, but overall, in effect, I think the movie does judge the suburbs harshly. Overly harshly IMO.)
Well I’m certainly not going to stop you if you want to list out your values. I just prefer the fictional approach because I think it cuts past our explicit values down to a more visceral level.
Anyway I agree that most of the generic Stifling AmericanaTM settings in media seems quite pleasant. It’s like the Shire explanation ddreytes gave: a quiet idealized version of a more comfortable past society.
Related question: most unintentional (on the writer’s part) utopia/dystopia.
At my stage of life, it’s pretty horrifying to read about how the land of Oz became a fairyland and once that happened, no one grew any older. What about babies- would their parents be changing diapers forever? What if you were pregnant when the change happened?
(Asimov’s printed a story, the background to which was that Dorothy eventually decided she didn’t want to be a little girl forever, and returned to Kansas to grow up and have a family. The story was about how Dorothy’s granddaughter visits Oz.)
When did that happen? I’ve only read around 8 of the Oz books, but I know that Princess Ozma was taken away as a baby and clearly was able to grow. Was it in a later book? Is it just one of those inconsistencies like the Scarecrow becoming the treasurer in a land that doesn’t have money?
It’s clearly stated somewhere around book 8 or 9; I can’t quite remember where.
Yes, it is an inconsistency. Some fans have theorized that you can grow up if and only if you want to (alternatively, for sufficiently young children, if your parents want you to); other fans have guessed that the full effect only came about once Ozma took up the throne. I think the second theory best reconciles all the references, though trying to construct a totally consistent theory of Oz seems fairly futile.
Oz is full of stunning inconsistencies.
The entire plot of the second book contradicts the first one — whereas Glinda the Good had explicitly sent the Scarecrow back to rule the Emerald City in the first book, in the second she explicitly refuses to help restore him because he has no right to rule there.
Whether or not we include the “not growing or changing” bit, I think of Oz as pretty dystopic in general. It’s been years since I re-read all of them, but I don’t remember ever wishing that I could live in or go to Oz, at all. I’m not actually sure why I read so many of the books, since I always found them vaguely to moderately distasteful.
I think the DPRK is about as dystopian to my sensibilities as any fictional world I can imagine.
“Friendship is optimal” has the most utopian society of any story I can think of assuming you do not care about non-human aliens. FIO minus the stuff about aliens is Utopia-epsilon.
That’s pretty interesting, because I found that society to be a fairly terrifying dystopia. Not as bad as, say, the world of Fallout, but still something to be avoided if at all possible.
FWIW, I also think that the Culture universe is a dystopia (albeit a much milder one), but I acknowledge that, most likely, this is the best that humans could hope for, given what we are and what the world is like.
This makes it sound like literally any possible human society is a dystopia?
I wouldn’t say “any possible human society”, but rather, “any probable human society”; although Culture-verse is contingent on several sci-fi tropes which are in and of themselves improbable.
God, that’s depressing. I really hope the more unrealistic parts of the Culture ‘verse prevent it happening, assuming we don’t just die instead.
I think that depends on what you mean by “the unrealistic parts.”
The World State in Brave New World has pretty much all of the ugly features of the Culture but with technology which is plausible in the near future. Even Bokanovsky process is vaguely reasonable: you could probably divide up blastocysts that way if you really wanted to.
The unlikely aspect, to me anyway, is how unlikely it is that people would set up such a system. It basically requires a superpower to implement it top-down: trying to build it bottom-up gives too much time for competing societies to develop deterrent capabilities against it’s expansion or even outcompete it. Without gods or godlike AI it can’t really get off the ground.
I see the superficial similarities between the Culture and BNW, but I’m surprised to see you say that they share the same bad features. There’s essentially no coercion in the Culture unless you define coercion in a pure property-rights way. Also, the citizens of the Culture have many worthwhile projects in their lives that allow them to have real accomplishments. There’s no analogue to Helmholtz or Bernard Marx in the Culture.
Also, the Culture is populated by AI minds that have extremely long, interesting lives. So even if you think the people live pointless lives, the minds still have meaning.
Well I’d strongly dispute the use of the adjectoves worthwhile and real. As for analogs, I’d call Gurgeh roughly analogous to Marx.
The two seem similarly coercive to me as well. I’m not sure where the difference is actually.
The Minds seem kind of dull as well to be honest, burning most of their processing power on masturbatory simulations. I’m also not particularly interested in the lives and times of spaceship computers except where they intersect with actual people.
I agree with everything Ever An Anon said, except possibly this:
The Minds are sapient, so they are people. They’re just really boring, masturbatory mind-fantasy people. As for coercion, it’s debatable. Sure, there’s very little outright violence in the Culture; but, since humans are basically just housepets of the Minds, there are many things they are simply not allowed to know about, or to desire. They are ever so happy to be Gammas…
I don’t see any reason for such a narrow view of “actual people”. There are few or no humans as such in the Culture world (though some that would have the same relationship as we do to Neanderthals). What makes the minds any less “actual people” than the bio aliens?
[SPOILERS for Player of Games and BNW]
You don’t think that bringing down an oppressive empire (which is what Gurgeh eventually does) is a meaningful achievement?
Here are some crucial differences between the Culture and the World State:
Bernard gets forcibly drugged and exiled to an island just for associating with John the savage. Nothing like that would ever happen in the Culture.
Helmholtz kills himself in large part because he is not permitted to make the sort of art he would like to make. In the Culture, on the other hand, there is no oppressive notion that some varieties of art are “culturally damaging” and impermissible. Creative people in the Culture just get to do whatever.
There’s no analogue to Soma in the Culture, and the people there seem to spend very little time under the influence of intoxicants.
@walpolo:
[MORE SPOILERS for Player of Games and BNW and other Culture novels]
IMO, it would not be accurate to say that Gurgeh brought down an oppressive empire. He has no idea what he’s doing until the very end, and he has no idea why he’s even there.
It would be more accurate to say that the Culture sends its representative, a Drone, to assimilate a foreign empire, and the Drone uses the human as a handy tool. The human has no more choice in the matter than a hammer or a screwdriver would.
One of the non-Culture characters even lampshades this (I forget in which book specifically). Paraphrasing: “This woman you see before you is not the representative of the Culture. You are not really talking to her. You are talking to the knife missile hovering next to her.”
@walpolo:
This is a minor point, but still: I was under the impression that most Culture humans have Glands, which can essentially manufacture Soma at will, and that most people do in fact spend most of their time under the influence of some Glanded chemical or another. Most AIs, on the other hand, spend most of their time in “Infinite Fun Space”, which is kind of their version of the same thing.
Of course, even when the humans (and some AIs) are not literally intoxicated, they are still under the influence of the Culture…
The Minds are pretty ruthless about preserving the Culture and since humans are so far down the chain of sapience as to be housepets, it’s not for their benefit primarily; it’s to enable the Minds to continue their convenient and enjoyable lives.
Why don’t the Minds pack up and abandon the humans and others when a threat comes along, and take themselves somewhere safe to live as they will (in Infinite Fun Space)? I think because (a) they have something analogous to the feeling of responsibility a pet-owner does; if the house goes on fire, you’ll at least try and rescue Mr Fluffykins (b) on the other hand, given a choice between saving your own life and burning to death trying to rescue Mr Fluffykins, I think most people wouldn’t trade their own lives for a pet.
So I think the Minds do intervene to take down any perceived threats because it’s the equivalent of making sure your house doesn’t go on fire in the first place, but if the threat were bad enough, they’ll flee and leave the biologicals cope as best they could.
In the Culture, on the other hand, there is no oppressive notion that some varieties of art are “culturally damaging” and impermissible.
I wonder what happens to people who want to make the kind of art which challenges the status quo and the consensus (subversive or deconstructivist art)? Granted, there is no possible way in which mere humans could change the Culture, since nothing of real power is in their control, and something like that would probably be tolerated (unless it got to the point of upsetting and unsettling other humans in sufficient numbers to warrant some low-level intervention).
But one of the machine-minds (not one of the Minds, but one of the higher-than-human intelligences) starting political art? Would that be permitted?
Would a human be permitted to leave the Culture and join an opposing society if that society was deemed a possible threat, and the human was one of those political activist artists? Someone who might be able to give some kind of useful information?
I don’t think the Culture Minds are that tolerant; in the end, anything which is predicted to be a threat is dealt with. In this case, I think it would be that no human would ever even want to make “culturally damaging” art in the first place, because they’ve been so steeped in the attitudes that the Culture is the most perfect society possible.
Actually, that’s a counter-question I’d like to pose: if “Heaven is boring” and the best thing humans and angels – like Lucifer – can do is rebel so as to move past static perfection and be able to strive and achieve on their own, what about the Culture? Is that not a boring Heaven too? Shouldn’t the inhabitants be trying to overthrow the static perfection of the Minds? 🙂
In Excession we see a renegade ship who disagrees with other ships’ political stances. The other ships basically don’t socialize with the renegade.
I’m curious as to why it’s a dystopia? My own reaction was, “could be better, but pretty good.”
A lot of objections to that sort of thing seem to be the reduction of everything to pointless games, but it seems to me that insofar as that is a problem, it is an utterly unavoidable one. Everything must be games, because if it isn’t, then it is an actual problem, and must be solved, and eventually will be in any utopia deserving the name. Thus leaving only games.
Unless, you enjoy dealing with the problem, in some sense of “enjoy,” and don’t really mind it still being around, which means you don’t really want to solve it and it was never anything but a game for you after all.
Is there anything that’s delt with this “problem,” or does anyone have an alternative way of looking at this that makes the problem of only having games left a coherent objection?
My problem with the Ponyverse is that a). humans no longer decide for themselves what to think and feel, Celestia does it for them, and b). there is no longer any way for humans to access any external reality; they are limited to whatever simulation Celestia chooses to create. This means that human society (insofar as one exists at all, since most humans just talk to software constructs and not to each other) is completely stagnant. True, there are games for them to enjoy, but essentially they’re just continuously replaying the same game over and over.
Thus, life in Ponyverse is pretty close to outright wireheading. I will grant you that I can’t make a convincing logical argument against wireheading, per se; but it kind of terrifies me at a visceral (and possibly irrational) level.
(a) CelestAI is forbidden by her code from modifying any human’s mind without permission, so that objection is completely false. True, all thoughts and feelings are simulated on her hardware, but that’s a problem with any uploading scenario.
(b) is a real problem, and my main objection to the Optimalverse. Even if she does let you see the “Outer Realms” (as some stories do), you’ll never know whether it’s real. Like you, I can’t construct a completely logical argument why abandoning the “Outer Realms” is a bad thing… but it strikes me as totally wrong.
Hmm, I can maybe see what you mean. But on the other hand, “stagnant” may be necessary to prevent value drift into something we’d find far more abhorrently inhuman, given that even a very slow rate of change will produce staggering changes over the course of eons.
(However, I am certain that I remember the pony-born ponies being just as much people as the human-born ponies, who are all equally cognitive-humanoids.)
But now that you mention wire-heading, I suppose that’s one way to look at it: utopia is either wire-heading or incoherent. Some values require extremely convoluted wire-heading paths in order to satisfy, such as by spending truly gratuitous amounts of resources on “actually” doing the things you take value from, or otherwise having extremely complicated values that demand external referents, but if every actual problem has been destroyed, then it’s still arguably a form of wire-heading. Even just letting people work out their happiness for themselves, if that is just the simplest scheme to satisfy the set of values and meta-values that require people not have their lives overly managed. (But if you’ve set that as the course for eternity, then you’ve still managed it after all…)
And so if you’re viscerally repelled by wire-heading, then even the richest future worlds, which are farther from a rat-brain on heroin than a modern human can imagine, will still provoke the same disgust if the basic wire-headed reality can be perceived.
Does that sound like a fair summary?
This a problem that only exists because you have defined away the solution.
If you think any struggle with actual stakes is a Problem, and utopia is the total absence of Problems, then of course your utopia is just a bunch of pointless games. You’ve removed the stakes, what do you expect?
But that’s not the only way to do it.
One solution is to have a civilization at competitive equilibria, like a tiered Red Queen’s Race, where individuals families and peoples drive one another to improve without being solvable or problematic as such. If you read Clauswitz’s description of Europe before the French Revolution, for example, you can see that even war can be made civilized for a time without becoming totally pointless.
Another is to have a pocket of civilization surrounded by a larger untamed wilderness. This is what Tolkien’s Shire succeeded at and Banks’ Culture failed at: it doesn’t count if you’re straffing Mordor in a A-10 Warthog, the wilderness has to actually be threatening.
Besides, some challenges really can’t be overcome as such. How do you answer the Last Question? You do it one day at a time, pushing entropy over the next sunrise. Our lifespans are bounded, our knowledge is bounded, our power is bounded but you can still try to push a little further along the asymptote.
@Evan Þ:
As the story demonstrates, this restriction is ridiculously easy to circumvent. Since CelestiAI controls all your sensory inputs, she will simply place you into a situation where you will beg her to alter your mind (which happens at least twice in the story). You’ll even think it was your own idea !
At what point do you think we should go extinct instead or limit our civilization to a fixed size on earth?
For example, I think the Game of Thrones universe should not exist; same for many if not most sci-fi worlds. Perhaps this is because they rely on violence as plot devices, but perhaps it is because real-world evolution and competition just produces this sort of thing systematically.
Seconding the Optimalverse. If you assume that the achievements/leaderboards stuff from Friendship is Optimal was just due to David being a gamer and that other shards in Equestria Online utilize more natural social control mechanisms, it comes as close as I have ever seen to a real utopia. I was particularly pleased with the fact that Always Say No and The Law Offices of Artemis, Stella & Beat made reconstructive uploads canon; if a loved one fails to make it to Equestria Online, you can always have the next best thing.
The worst thing about the Optimalverse is that it doesn’t deal satisfactorily with the question of eternity. But then again, I can’t think of any proposal, real or fictional, which has ever reassured me on that front since I encountered the teachings of Eliezer Yudkowsky and realized what that question really implied. It is only natural, therefore, that I found the final chapter of Caelum Est Conterrens rather creepy. “Transequinism” indeed.
And while I would certainly prefer that the aliens be kept alive in a preserve somewhere, in the end they are an acceptable loss compared to the promise of eternal paradise.
There’s actually one non-canonical story where one of the transequines keeps the aliens alive as uploads in his own private preserve. CelestAI views it as a strange form of amusement, but she humors him.
I respect the fact that the Celestia superintelligence was willing to let the last human die, before devouring the universe for its eternal masturbation. Well programmed, insofar as these things go.
Kafka’s The Trial. I’m reading it now, which is why it comes to mind, but so far the society of magistrates and students involved in the trial is about as dystopian as I can imagine – bureaucracy, sycophantism and adultery.
Walden Two is kind of interesting in that it’s an attempt to describe a totally different structure that was utopian, though I found it to be a fairly boring and poorly written book. Apparently the ideas were tried a few times in RL and failed. Interesting for being so different though. I would love to see more of that sort of thing explored by a talented author especially if they were a bit more centrist and realistic about human nature.
The Noon Universe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noon_Universe) is a perfect utopia for me. Step 1: raise everyone as responsible individuals, help them find their true calling. Step 2: you don’t need a Step 2.
There are many things left unexplored as books (except for the first one, “Noon 22 century”) rarely takes time to put the day-to-day society in the spotlight (instead the focus is one the unusual, particularly on “progressing” (jumpstarting positive social change) on other planets and the idea that someone might be “progressing” Earth), but what can be seen in the background is very cool.
I’m going to be posting a long essay on this topic in a couple of weeks to my blog, but I think it’s interesting that lots of people call Snow Crash a dystopia but it really isn’t one. If you wanted to depict a dystopian anarcho-libertarian world, you would make it a lot worse, rather than making it a lot like our world except the problems are caused by private entities instead of governments. Also, Stephenson has publicly stated that he thinks dystopian fiction is boring and lazy.
Snow Crash is more an ancap utopia. It should also be an utilitarian utopia, as it generates more wealth for more people while still allowing enough conflict for life to be as interesting as you want it to be, than almost any other remotely plausible utopia.
Snow Crash is not about its world being a horrible place, so it’s not dystopian fiction even if it happens to occur in a place which, if extracted and compared to other settings, is a dystopia. I agree that it has not been thoroughly pessimized, largely because the book isn’t about that, and as such does not really belong as an answer to the above question.
I didn’t think of it as a dystopia when I read it, but wondered if maybe I was supposed to.
Personally, I think it’s supposed to be morally grey.
Another world sort of like it which I enjoyed was presented in Super Sad True Love Story. It’s a kind of depressingly plausible near future in which current trends are sort of taken to their logical endpoints.
I think Stephenson unintentionally made a dystopia in Snow Crash. He was trying to create a society that optimizes for Badass. He succeeded, with the problem being that in any given society, most citizens, by definition, are somewhere in the bottom 99% (ahaha) of Badass. Badass, defined as the ability to compete against others using various forms of direct or proxied violence, is zero-sum.
So in the process of making a perfect setting for nonstop action and explosions, he designed an offensively, appallingly zero-sum society in which most real people will inevitably be pretty miserable.
I didn’t get the sense that Snow Crash was a zero-sum world? When I think of zero-sum world optimizing for badass violence, I think of Mad Max, not a future world run by a bunch of little syndicates?
Mad Max only metastasized into a “world of badass” mode in Fury Road, and even that was mainly due to the timeline and tonal mess that recasting Max with a much younger actor created. I strongly suggest watching Fury Road twice, once straight and once with an eye towards how the precise same script would play if it starred current-aged Mel, the difference is striking.
I think that’s an artifact of the gap in production? Canonically I think Max is only about 5 years older than in the last Mad Max movie.
In the original Mad Max trilogy, the only inordinately badass character was Max, everyone else was just kind of desperate or crazy. The issue the recast caused was that they took a script that was written with the subtext that the hero was aging out of his universe’s competence range, and then made him young and strong instead. So instead of Max taking age penalties while the rest of the world stayed about the same as the previous films, Max stayed normal and everyone else gained five character levels.
It was zero-sum in the sense that the primary thing people did with all their badass capabilities was to use them against each-other: either to drug people into slavery (the church guy), to keep various violent businesses running (the mafia, Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong, the rat-things), or just for personal gain (Hiro Protagonist).
This is as opposed to more idealistic settings like Star Trek: TNG or, my personal favorite, Gurren Lagann, in which human beings wield massive badass powers on the inanimate universe, with the notion of sapient life fighting amongst itself being seen as backwards and counterproductive.
People doing things for personal gain and/or to keep businesses running doesn’t imply zero sum. If I hire someone to do a job purely to keep my business running, and he does the job purely to get the money he earns by doing so, that’s win-win, right? Zero sum implies my gain is your loss, as in, I steal from you to get what I want.
Remember, you’re not talking about an idealized libertarian society in which everyone respects property, gains-from-trade are always positive, and negative externalities don’t exist. You’re talking about a novel in which:
A) Most security is provided privately, and in fact many municipalities hire the cheap-ass, easily-bribeable mall-cop shitheads. Want to rob someone? Just bribe the cops and bring a decent skateboard.
B) Externalities are fucking massive, eg: “Hey, try a free sample of this new drug, Snow Crash!”. Large portions of the world are implied to be quite polluted, too.
C) The capitalist idea of gains-from-trade leading to a net-utility increase in all cases doesn’t even work in real life or in the ideal case, as the entire school of thought known as Marxism points out.
D) The very concept of a safe, secure, prosperous, but radically inegalitarian society just doesn’t work. This is a case of Sociology Marching On — we now know that more moderately equal societies have higher growth rates and lower deadweight losses (like guard labor, eg: paying off Mexican kidnappers) than radically unequal societies. Think of it like training a classifier in machine learning: you think you want a high rate of accuracy on the training set, but actually, you don’t want to overfit. Maintaining some level of outcome equality, even when it might seem counterintuitive, is a form of regularization that helps the system as a whole. Also, as noted above, the society shown in the book was by no means a safe, secure, prosperous society of the kind that libertarians purport to want to create. Instead, it was the kind of society that provides a rich, fertile background for explosive fight scenes.
Dunno about that. The budget’s lower and the cinematography isn’t as good, but I could at least point to the Feral Kid.
I didn’t get the feeling that Fury Road amped up the badass factor so much as the crazy factor; it put the “mad” in Mad Max in a way that we’ve never seen before. You can see some clear antecedents, though, in e.g. the scene in the beginning of The Road Warrior with Lord Humongous’s herald — or indeed in the fact that there’s a dude running around calling himself Lord Humongous.
Eli, the objection isn’t that things aren’t bad, it’s that that’s not what zero sum means. Nothing you listed is zero sum – they’re all NEGATIVE sum interactions.
@Alraune:
It’s not exactly new territory for Mad Max to be an out-of-his-depth guy who stumbles into other people’s adventures and helps out, even without the age differential. Mel Gibson had a grand total of sixteen lines of dialogue in Mad Max 2: Road Warrior, and he was 25.
I’ve always thought Brave New World completely failed at “deconstructing” it’s “failed” Utopia, which makes it kind of irritating that it’s one of the more influential works of dystopian fiction out there. It’s not The Best Possible Thing by any means, but it’s a utopia given their tech level.
Star Trek is pretty good, although it’s hard to tell how much of that is just that I tend toward the more optimistic bits of headcanon; certainly, DS9 makes it look a lot more sinister than the other series, and Voyager introduces a bunch of holographic slave labour for some damn reason.
I’d actually love to live somewhere along the lines of The Metamorphoses of Prime Intellect, although sadly we never actually see that implied Utopia because we’re too busy watching The Worst Person Ever.
(Dystopia, probably all the bits of the Culture universe that aren’t the Culture itself. I assume in the Culture I could go live in a dreamworld.)
Brave New World and the Culture are actually one of the big reasons I started asking this question.
There’s a big divide between people like me who put them on the level of other less-controversial dystopias like Airstrip One, and people like you who embrace them as utopias. Despite attempts by people on both sides to Bullverize the objections of the other, it doesn’t seem like either side is particularly coddled or insane. That seems to me like something worth examining.
Brave New World is a utopia for the Alphas and Betas (who presumably are all extraverts), but more a dystopia for everyone else.
It’s been a long time since I read the book, but aren’t all of the low-level workers conditioned to really love their jobs? That sounds somewhat like a utilitarian utopia if all pleasures are rated as equally valuable.
How effective is the conditioning, really? Even with drugs?
“How effective is the conditioning, really? Even with drugs?” There aren’t any instances in the book of gammas down who seem badly conditioned. I think the best interpretation is that they are as happy/contented/fulfilled as mentally retarded adults can possibly be.
Odd, odd. AFAIC the Culture is unspeakable, but Brave New World is pretty okay.
What’s the bad thing about the culture?
The player-of-games issue, as already discussed. Even humans capable of desiring significance are wholly, categorically irrelevant. All human life is pointless.
(Whereas in Brave New World the vast majority of the population cannot desire significance; they just don’t have the capacity to get that high up in Maslow’s hierarchy. And the people who can ultimately get the chance to try for it!
Somebody upthread said that “Helmholtz kills himself in large part because he is not permitted to make the sort of art he would like to make”, but that’s, uh, not actually what happens in the book. John the Savage kills himself, and that kid had problems. Helmholtz gets to go off to an island to do exactly the kind of writing he always wanted! He and the islanders, and Mond and the controllers, all get decent endings, meaningful lives.
Culture humans may be to Minds as Brave New World Epsilons are to Alphas, but it’s the absolute, not the relative, capacity that matters here. If we take the books at face value, Epsilons cannot have a need for importance, but we know perfectly well that humans can. I’d take a Culture of Minds alone—or Minds and morons—or Minds and humans that could become Minds if they so chose—over the Minds and humans we get any day.)
Brave New World is an obvious dystopia because anyone with an original thought is either exiled, killed, or driven to suicide.
The Culture series seems to portray a society in which your life would be what you make of it. It doesn’t qualify as eutopian or dystopian: Cultureniks are free, and if you condemn their use of their freedom to indulge in a massive circlejerk of blatant hedonism, well, it sounds like you just value some conception of Virtue or Normativity over personal freedom-of-choice.
If you or I were in the Culture, we would quickly run off and start finding ways to upgrade ourselves. And as long as we didn’t harm any of the hedonists, that would be our free choice to make.
Just because I might make Unusual Life Choices doesn’t make the Culture a dystopia. For one thing, I already have Unusual Views and make Unusual Life Choices in real life.
I’ve occasionally wondered why we’ve never seen this happening. (At least, I’ve never seen it happening; I’ve only read about half the Culture books, though.) Banks would have been familiar with the idea, so that’s not it; and we do see some pretty radical modifications, just nothing like uplifting.
That I can answer, there’s a short SA by Vernor Vinge about the problems of writing about posthumans. (one of his prefaces to Bookworm, Run!)
It’s really really hard to make a decent story about it.
In the culture books the ships, if anything, are downgraded to fairly bright gossips(excession) or merely fast but sort of human level while the camera is pointed at them.
All their superhuman capabilities are merely talked about or become something more a matter of technological toys rather than vast intellect and understanding. Their abilities are shown by their effects rather than really shown most of the time.
Most of the time you have to keep your real post-humans off screen or at most give them puppets to jerk around on a long string. (fire upon the deep, culture avatars)
Because, well, the author is not a posthuman, it would be like a chimp trying to put himself in the shoes of a tax accountant and his everyday woes.
The Owner Novels actually do follow a character transitioning to posthuman but the view changes to almost all external views of that character once he starts his very own hard takeoff and for the most part he comes across as an ascending psychopath.
Humans tend to like human stories and the most sucessful future scifi tends to involve actual humans.
Even Greg Egan who isn’t afraid to make his main character a software generated mind native to a world of input output channels and n-dimentional spaces included the idea of mathematically provable hard limits on actual intelligence such that the highest you could go was Hawking-smart speeded up to 800 times normal so that his characters could still be vaguely relatable.
Superintelligences make bad main characters.
Usually the difference is just how much the individual cares about intangibles like “humans being meaningful”.
When looking at things from a purely pleasure/happiness/fun standpoint the Culture (or Prime Intellect) is a obvious win (and trivially superior to our modern day world). Every objection I ever see raised is more ethereal and nebulous.
If living in the Culture means not having to work a shitty 9-5, not having to worry about basic needs, and getting to play all manner of sweet ass games for hundreds of year, the utopia factor is apparent.
[Warning: Spoilers for the Culture novels]
I absolutely agree that the Culture is a local maximum in the space of all possible outcomes. That, IMO, is what makes it a dystopia. Culture humans — and Minds ! — could be doing all kinds of cool things, but instead, all they do is… “play all manner of sweet ass games for hundreds of years”. When an Excession shows up, someone else takes the initiative, and the Culture-proper assumes a purely reactive role, doing everything in their power to sweep it under the rug so that they can return to their ultimately pointless sweet-ass games…
But Bugmaster, the Zetetic Elench were a spin-off from the Culture itself, who were basically out to play at being Asari (ie: “boldly go where no-one has gone before, seek out new life, and get freaky with it”).
Besides, the Excession was a jerk: it shows up, plays at being a hegemonizing swarm out of a child’s tale, and then rewards the few drones and ships incompetent enough to let themselves be assimilated into a hegemonizing swarm. You come down from a higher onion-multiverse level and you want to make contact with the most servile or incompetent life-forms in the universe, rather than those who’re good at keeping themselves together in a crisis situation? What kind of goal is that?
And you have to remember that most Excessions aren’t extradimensional visitors, they’re just misfired world-optimization devices. Boring!
Worse: how is it affecting your evaluation of the universe that the Excession existed at all? What if the laws of physics just did confine the Culture to their one universe? Would they be dystopian for failing to do what they physically could not do?
Iain M. Banks’s Culture is utopia to me. Post-scarcity society with little private property and not much in the way of centralized authority, but willing to intervene in others’ affairs if they feel it is ethically warranted.
All the standard dystopias seem pretty dystopic to me (1984, Brave New World, We, Anthem). One thing that surprises many people is that Gattaca doesn’t feel so much like a dystopia to me. We don’t let people with chronic heart problems fly in space in our world, either.
I suppose though that Soylent Green is the dystopia that always frightened me most. Total environmental collapse is a terrifying thing. Windup Girl had a similar effect, although it’s not very realistic as speculation so that mitigates my reaction.
ETA: I also find Gibson’s Sprawl less dystopian than a lot of people do. To me it’s almost morally neutral–technology has brought a lot of bad along with a lot of unequally-distributed good.
[Edit: Seems like you answered my question already]
I’m curious, what do you like about the Culture that is lacking in the World State? What elements do you dislike in the World State that the Culture lacks?I agree about Gattaca, to me the movie seemed pretty hopeful, aside from the idea that a space organization is so blisteringly incompetent anyway. Certainly beats the hell out of the present.
I think Iain M. Banks’ Culture series is pretty close to utopic for me, not including posthuman conceptions that are too “weird” for me in the sense of diverging values for current-me to be comfortable with.
As for dystopias, I’m not sure. 1984 was pretty terrible, but living standards are probably objectively worse in quite a few modern countries, and definitely worse in some past societies.
Most of anything Greg Egan’s written involving human beings, but especially the society in Schild’s Ladder. I think I like it mostly because it doesn’t try to be in-your-face about being some of utopia; part of the way it functions is just given as background information, the actual story has nothing to do with it. That makes it feel very tangible and real, and thus quite reachable. I’d say the most notable trait is that it’s very individualist. I don’t doubt that it’s someone’s dystopia, though, there are some niches of the society that sound like they could end up terrifying, just the same.
I would love to live in the world of Schild’s Ladder.
Concurred, though I do find it amusing on reflection that I’d like to be inside a universe that is literally unravelling catastrophically. But given the leisurely pace, I’d take my chances.
My American boyfriend would also love to live in the world of Schild’s Ladder. So that’s three people already!
I’ve got to admit I’d be especially interested if there’s anyone here in the comment section that would be deeply uncomfortable with the culture described in Schild’s Ladder. …for reasons. *futilely attempts to hide furious scribbling of roleplaying notes by strategic use of furniture*
I would be deeply uncomfortable with it, but not because I dislike the place; I have in fact written (deeply disguised) fanfiction for it.
The problem’s that border, and what’s beyond. Some humans cross it, and buried on the inside–buried, what, all of a few millimetres?–they find an alien civilization.
Now, one of Greg Egan’s conceits is that all aliens are basically human, but it isn’t one I hold with. The place is absolutely choked with aliens, and while the viewpoint characters think that’s just swell, I can’t say I agree.
Between the aliens and the increased speed of life on the inside, I very much doubt that anything the humans did really matters. Yes, they saved one group of (relatively primitive) aliens, but I’d be shocked if the sort of weapon they used hasn’t been deployed a million times over, deeper in.
(Not the exact same weapon, as that particular one relied on the outside vacuum as a weapon, but similar space-eating viruses.)
@Baughn:
I have to admit I haven’t pondered the other side of the border, and thus don’t really have an opinion on it (yet). Thanks for the food for thought, though! 🙂
On the topic of dystopias, I’ve just remembered Balacrea from Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness In The Sky. GaaaAAaaaaAaa… aaa… aaah. Made worse because I can imagine that if I’d been born there I’d probably get used to that status quo (assuming I have the capacity to have an opinion on it, which I doubt). x_x
I’ve had nightmares about that one. There are other societies that are considerably more dystopian (such as pretty much anything that ever appeared in the TV series Lexx), but Balacrea is haunting because, again, it has a vibe of ‘achievable (and stable)’.
That seems to be a theme with me (and no doubt many others). The more plausible, the greater the emotional impact.
Dystopias, probably something along the lines of Harrison Bergeron or Anthem. And I just realized that out of all the sci-fi I’ve read/watched/etc, somehow I ended up picking two stories that were assigned reading in high school english class. It seems I don’t find most dystopian sci-fi to be all that dystopian.
As for utopias, I’m still thinking.
I will echo have said before about the Culture being a utopia for me, and I simply do not understand how someone could see it differently. It is a post-scarcity society where everyone pretty much gets to be as hedonistic as they want, for whatever value hedon has for them.
I also have a soft spot for the North American Confederacy, from L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach, as a utopia. Libertarianism that works exactly as advertised with full rights for apes and cetaceans.
The dystopias that come to my mind first are bureaucratic nightmares like The Trial and Brazil or totalitarian states like Oceania in 1984 and the Norsefire regime in V for Vendetta.
Agree about V for Vendetta. Now that’s a chilling setting. Very similar, I’d argue, is the setting of Children of Men (movie, not book). Fascism in 21st century Britain is frighteningly plausible to me for some reason.
I think my overall problem with the Ponyverse, the Culture, and so forth, is that these places limit what their denizens would want to do. Traditional dystopias are coercive; people know that a better way of life is possible, but are physically prevented from pursuing it. The Culture is more insidious; it is a giant gilded cage for your mind.
As I said above, this amounts to a milder version of wireheading; but, as I also said above, I fully admit that I cannot build a rational case against wireheading, so it is entirely possible that my dislike of it is simply a mistake.
If you could click a button and begin experiencing nothing but pure pleasure, indefinitely, from now until the heat death of the Universe, would you click it ? If not, then why not ? It seems that the right answer might actually be, “yes, I’d click it faster than you can say “Heaven” “…
Every civilization limits what its members want to do, in that every civilization provides the environment that citizens grow up and live in, and nature + nurture = behavior. The question is, to what extent do you control the nurture rather than leaving it to chance?
That’s a good question! I don’t think controlling the nurture part of our lives necessarily amounts to taking away our freedom, though.
That said, I think there’s something right about what you say. I don’t think the Culture is really utopia for its human population. They are pets of a sort. It’s really utopia for the Minds. If I were living in the Culture, I’d try to set things up so I could be uploaded or something and gain the capabilities and stature of a Mind.
I’d try to set things up so I could be uploaded or something and gain the capabilities and stature of a Mind.
Do we ever see any humans attempt this? There are mentions of a select few human minds that the Minds interact with on a more than trivial level when it comes to decision-making, but the general run of the populace seem to prefer messing about with their physiology rather than trying to become transhuman.
Is it that there’s a hard limit in how uplifted a biologically-based entity can become? So far and no further? Or is it that humans are discouraged from making the attempt, either from benign intentions by the Minds (you’re a human, why try to become a machine) or in order to avoid any threats (if humans can achieve Mind-level ability, what does that mean for the Minds?)
Well of course not. It’s just like how I don’t spend all my time alternating between masturbating, sex, and eating. Pleasure isn’t everything in life, and to be very specific, I have a sense of meaning that involves my being entangled with lots of other bits of the universe. Not only do I value meaning in some orthogonal sense to valuing happiness and pleasure, when I am happy or experience pleasure in a meaningful way, I find it strictly more satisfying/worthwhile/rewarding (can’t pick out which brain function is firing there through introspection) than achieving happiness or pleasure through a meaningless pursuit.
To run with the sex metaphor, it’s the difference between really good sex and pornography. The latter is just plain inferior if you can get the former.
The problem is that there is no objective meaning. All meaning is perception of meaning. Good sex may be better than masturbation, but it has no objective meaning.
Consider:
“If you could click a button and begin experiencing nothing but true meaning, indefinitely, from now until the heat death of the Universe, would you click it ? If not, then why not ?”
@Mint,
I don’t want to get into an argument about this here so I’m phrasing it as a statement of opinion:
I, and many other people who have thoughtfully considered the issue, disagree with you and believe that there is in fact objective meaning. And not just from a position of blind faith either, there are good reasons to think that this is the case.
If you have a more nihilistic view of things, that’s your perogative obviously. But taking that view as a given and assuming everyone else would agree if they knew what you did is unwise: it alienates people who disagree and blinds you to arguments from that perspective.
@Mint, of course there’s such a thing as objective meaning: causal entanglement with emotionally-significant/on-full-information-valuable bits of the objective universe. Of course, by this definition, you can’t build a button for experiencing true meaning, because true meaning isn’t about experience. It’s about a two-way causal chain between the map and the territory. A True Meaning Button is a contradiction-in-terms, whereas there’s a definite difference in the objective reality of porn versus sex.
I also think that your strawman is radically misconstruing my position, here. I’m not the one labeling the Culture as a dystopia. I think that’s silly, because even in their normal hedonistic lifestyle, any Culturenik can very much obtain a two-way causal correspondence between their concepts and choices, and the things they value in their actual objective universe. In fact, it’s the default: dream-simulations and spending all of life on drugs are uncommon. They mostly have freedom, meaning, and happiness, but aren’t choosing to play a galactic-scale power contest because they’ve grown up enough to understand that power contests are not more automatically meaningful than every other aspect of life.
This is a life lesson lots of SSC commenters don’t seem to have learned yet, hence the people insisting that either they personally are the most powerful agent in the universe, or that universe is horrifying dystopian.
For every one of these, I can find you six Jesus freaks who will absolutely insist on having a superpowerful god-agent baby them around like a three-year-old toddler, and nine Allah freaks who will absolutely insist on having a superpowerful god-agent guide them into exterminating the enemy tribe because blonde women are too hot to live (paging Four Lions). And also a Catholic who will, weirdly enough, insist that the superpowerful god-agent is doing him a favor by inflicting mortal life on him.
Different people have very different preferences, even on full information and reflection, about what position they would like to occupy in the imagined hierarchy of agent power-levels, ranging from bug to animal to mortal human to powerful mortal human to superhuman to angel/demon to god/devil. Just to be spitefully enigmatic, I won’t even state the precise level I want to exist at, except to note that I prefer getting the right outcomes to savoring a feeling of being the dominant alpha-male over local reality.
causal entanglement with emotionally-significant/on-full-information-valuable bits of the objective universe
I’m rather certain that all on-full-information-valuable bits of the objective universe are in fact related to consciousness, so they too can be constructed/wireheaded on mass scale, or else their value is subjective (e.g. paperclips, but only from someone who happens to be a paperclip maximizer/valuer by historical happenstance).
Any other value-bits of the objective universe are so implausible to me that I’ll use Occam’s Razor on them until I encounter a really convincing case for them.
I’ll bite the bullet on humans being “human!meaning maximizers” in the same sense that Clippy is a paperclip maximizer. I just don’t think there’s any other way it could ever have been.
After all, ultimately, even consciousness and subjective experiences reduce to physical and computational events taking place in the objective universe. I can’t experience what it’s like to have my brain ground into little bits of mush by a Cuisinart, because that objective physical event destroys my ability to experience anything at all! Thus, even if all I care about is my own conscious experiences, I’m still bound to either care about my physical embodiment, or get dead.
Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga is pretty much my vision of utopia. Post-scarcity, indefinite life extension and mind backups, wormhole travel to new planets, and a fair amount of transhuman technology as the series progresses.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Both utopia and dystopia.
The utility we derive from any given situation is based upon our ethical viewpoint: if we aren’t utilitarians then a utilitarian society will make us unhappy.
It’s worth a link to Eliezer’s story Failed Utopia #4-2. The story describes it as “failed”, but as a currently-single person, it sounds pretty damn good to me. I really like the little details about how the AI plays on people’s emotions.
A related story I enjoyed was Perfect State by Sanderson. I’m not sure if I would call it utopia or dystopia but I do like the worldbuilding.
Someone posted once that the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars is that the latter takes a fundamentally negative view of civilization: government is corrupt and evil, most NPCs are evil, and it’s only through the action of individual heroes that we can hope to make progress. From that perspective Star Wars makes a pretty good dystopia.
It’s definitely a failure in terms of failing to achieve a local maximum. I can pick bits of it I don’t like off the top of my head, perturb them, and it gets better rather than worse. Anything to be proposed for a “true” utopia ought to be at least a local maximum.
This just about manages to not disqualify the Culture, while thoroughly disqualifying almost everything else mentioned in this thread, even the “utopias” that are really properly fun in other aspects.
I wonder how people feel about the universe of the Dune novels. On the one hand, it’s more technologically advanced than our own, and there is the possibility of becoming a human computer or female yoga-ninja-mystic, or of using life-extending, mind-altering drugs, but it also seems to be a pretty freaky, violent place. Not sure I’d want to live there.
Dune’s society is incomprehensible, and not just because of the contradictions between the original series and the less-canonical expansions. It waffles between representing itself as a galactic empire of post-human super-intelligences with some irrelevant human serfs around who are being duped into thinking the ruling class are still “like them” because they maintained mostly humanoid form when they transcended, and being a bunch of independent planets with some kooky figureheads who meet up and play ren faire occasionally. It might even be both at different points, the timeline is so long.
Yeah, I was thinking about how one sees so little of “regular” people in the Dune universe that I have very little sense of what their lives might be like, though I get the sense it’s often not too good (though obviously hugely dependent on which planet you live on and when). I have only read the original series, which I love, but even with just those, I tend to agree it’s hard to get an organic sense of things sometimes. Another reason making a really good Dune movie or series of movies is probably really hard, though I still hope someone does so eventually.
Yeah, it’s underdefined on multiple axes. Not only can I not tell if it’s an empire or a LARP, I can’t tell which of those interpretations would be the better scenario.
That’s a lot of the series’ appeal though. Dune is one of the better order vs. chaos sagas, and the quality of order vs. chaos plots is greatly dependent on their inability to be reduced to good vs. evil.
Wait, how does doge derail?
Oh, God.
Everyone get ready for another argument about Renaissance Venetian politics.
Such intrigue, very…
Nope. No derailing here.
The Venetian state is actually pretty interesting, particularly in the way that it becomes this idealization of the idea of mixed constitutionalism for a lot of republican thinkers. And also (IIRC) in the sort of absurd, baroque mechanisms that they devised for trying to keep it that way, which speaks to the difficulty of politics IMO.
It’s because Scott is butthurt about doges.
source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/15/ten-things-i-want-to-stop-seeing-on-the-internet-in-2014/
But why? Just because it’s overused? What did “doge” mean in the first place, or am I not supposed to ask that here?
I think it was originally a misspelling of “doggie”. And that’s about as much as I want to think about it.
It was a funny little meme, which got co-opted by a cryptocurrency for profit. That way, they could retreat to “no, it’s all just a joke don’t you see!” when people pointed out that they were running a thinly disguised investor scam.
It’s long since collapsed.
According to internet mythology, it started as a non-standard spelling in a Homestar Runner cartoon, then got co-opted into the name of this meme, then somehow became a cryptocurrency, and will eventually arise from its watery prison to devour us all.
Wait, what?
Much swimming left. Very Cathedral.
Too late; it looks like it already has.
You fool! You’ll doom us all!
I’ve been having trouble connecting to the SSC server, and the recent comments aren’t showing up on the sidebar. Lots of 504 and 502 errors. Suspect something needs to be scaled up.
Seconded.
And now that I’ve said that, it’s not happening for me anymore. Figures.
Issue noticed here also.
Thank you for the subreddit mention!
Looking for some information RE: a tabletop game I’m thinking about running
Did the Soviet Union and the United States ever extradite people to one another, to be tried for crimes or for any reason? If so under what circumstances, was it during the height of the Cold War or during a period of detente, etc
Unfortunately, I don’t know. But I’m supremely interested in this game…
Ok, well, it’s not actually about the Soviet Union and United States, it’s a germ of an idea I got reading the Eclipse Phase thread on the SA tradgames board. One guy mentioned he was going to have the Titanians try and extradite one of his Players to the Jovian Republic for alleged bioterror crimes, and it got me thinking about the Republic and the Commonwealth as a parallel to the US and Soviet Union (or vice versa) during the Cold War. Primarily the scenario I’m interested in running would be a sort of rough mirror of the Cuban Missile Crisis around Hyoden, but a quick google search on that subject reveals a lot more information than one on the subject of extradition to/from the Soviet Union.
(I hope at least one person here is familiar with EP, or this is going to look like a lot of incomprehensible nonsense to everyone)
I tried to get my group to play a short EP game. My “uplifted octopi in space” pitch didn’t have the universal appeal I thought it would.
I’m aware! Very cool, pretty neat bringing that sort of history in.
Hey, somebody else who’s played EP!
I tried it once, but ran into what felt like a fundamental problem with the setting. Namely, you spend great effort designing your crazy posthuman character, and then they spent most of the game teleoperating other bodies, making all their crazy posthuman-ness irrelevant. Am I just missing something about the game?
Yes. It’s right there in the game’s tagline: Your body is a shell. Change it.
Character creation in EP is clunky (actually, the entire system has some huge flaws), but if you spend all of your time designing a body, it’s like spending all your time designing your character’s car – yes, the car is important and useful, but it does not define who your character is. New EP players sometimes spend too much time focusing on their character being a giant robot spider, and forget to focus on what that character’s skills, beliefs, and personality are independent of being a giant robot spider.
…incidentally, anyone interested in an online (chat) SSC EP game?
@Acatalepsy – “…incidentally, anyone interested in an online (chat) SSC EP game?”
….You have my attention.
The problem with EP is that unless you build your character around networking and rep, or the ability to acquire ungodly amounts of credits, it’s extremely unlikely you’ll ever be able to afford the more interesting morphs or gear. Unless Firewall is willing to supply you with a decent sleeve you’ll most likely be using boring, standard morphs the whole game, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the setting. Add that to the bookeeping and mechanical headaches that come with resleeving and you have a game where the core conceit, your body being a tool that you can change out when you need to, is invalidated by the mechanics (though scarcity of bodies is admittedly also a big part of the setting).
The best hack I’ve seen to compensate is the “morph pool” rules this Goon came up with
http://gorbash.wikidot.com/morph-pool
Having said all that I’d absolutely be down for an SSC Eclipse Phase game
I would also be interested in a SSC Eclipse Phase game.
“…incidentally, anyone interested in an online (chat) SSC EP game?”
Go on…
Well, since there appears to be some interest, I’ll be on the irc (freenode, #slatestarcodex) for the next couple of days, or join this roll20 game here ( https://app.roll20.net/join/894118/Sf-WlA ), or preferably, both. Or if someone has a better method of getting everyone interested talking together (a forum or something?) let me know.
…I was personally thinking gatecrashing, zone stalking, or doing Firewall stuff on Mars. Depends on who is interested, and what they’re interested in. New players welcome, of course.
(For those who have no idea what I’m going on about, Eclipse Phase is a roleplaying game of ‘transhuman conspiracy and horror’, available for free via creative commons license here: https://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/ )
On the subject of Eclipse Phase, can I recommend this
http://www.farcastblog.com/
365 adventure ideas for Eclipse Phase.
I walk in with The Law of Superheroes by James Daily and Ryan Davidson in my hands.
Because at one point, they criticize a plot line that has the US extraditing a character to Russia, and their objection is that we don’t have an extradition treaty. Now. Decades after the Cold War.
One suspects that the breakdown of the Cold War didn’t cause an extent treaty to fall apart, so — No.
Not having an extradition treaty is not the same as not extraditing. This article gives an example of an extradition to the Soviet Union, although some people claim that it was only a deportation, not an extradition. It also mentions an extremely weak extradition treaty signed in 1893.
It’s not quite what most people people consider the Cold War, but the US returned a huge number of people to the soviet union at the end of WWII, in compliance with the… Yalta conference?
Russian POWs who had been held by the germans, people who fled the russian advance, cossacks and other refugees from the russian civil war, etc.
Many of them (and their families) were summarily executed, while others were sent to labour camps.
That would turn on whether repatriating is considered extradiction. . . .
not exactly extradiction, but close:
East German citizen hijacks polish plane and lands it in west germany. Poland requests extradiction, US Authorities refuse and instead try him for hijacking. Culprit is sentenced to 9 months in prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOT_Flight_165_hijacking
Not officially, others are saying. But for lots of realistic British spy vs Continental spy stuff, see the Tommy Habledon series by Manning Coles, starting somewhere in the middle of the series.