This is the bi-weekly-ish open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also:
1. You might remember my nootropics survey from two years ago. I’m running an updated version this week with some new substances and a couple of other questions. If you use any nootropics – substances like modafinil, piracetam, and bacopa that are supposed to improve mood and cognition even outside the context of specific psychiatric illnesses – please take the survey. Results will be posted here eventually.
2. Some great discussion on the Superforecasting reviews. Just in case you missed it, we have at least two superforecasters here, Elissa and Dan M, who are happy to answer any questions you may have about their freaky otherworldly powers.
3. Comments of the week include Kyle on how specific knowledge about how GitHub works can help us better understand that study, and Jason Hoyt (the co-founder of the preprint site that hosted the study) on the risks and benefits of preprint review.
4. Also on the subject of the GitHub study: I was unusually impressed with the people who shared and debated it. Most people were suitably cautious, people avoided the “OKAY NOW THIS STUDY IS TOTALLY DISPROVEN AND 100% GARBAGE” failure mode, and a lot of the people I saw sharing and debating my analysis were women. This did more good than a bushel of studies in helping fight some of my bias and prejudice.
5. Some job listings in the community: the Center For Applied Rationality (CFAR) in Berkeley is looking for a full-time inside salesperson. And the effective altruist movement is accepting applications for the Pareto Fellowship (DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO 2/21)
6. LW/SSC/EA/OMG/BBQ meetups coming up in Ann Arbor on February 19th, London on February 21 and Sydney on February 21. I will probably be at the Ann Arbor one.
7. New rule for the subreddit – to keep it from getting bogged down in culture war related links, there will be one “Culture War Roundup” thread every week. If you have interesting culture war related links, please put them on that thread instead of starting a new one. I’ll trust you all to use your judgment about what is or isn’t culture war.
8. If I post something in an out-of-the-way, less-visible place like my Tumblr or deep in a comment section here, I’d prefer if people would ask permission before they repost it somewhere more visible. I know I have no right to make that request, and I’m asking it only as a favor. I am not angry with anybody and nothing has gone wrong, I just want to keep it that way.
9. Some people were very much abusing the Report Comment function, for example reporting every comment ever made by a particular person they didn’t like. Please be aware that if that happens it doesn’t mean the person gets banned, it just means I have to waste hours individually clearing each comment. The last time I logged into my comment reports panel I had almost a thousand different reports I had to go through; only about 20% could very generously be described as real problems. I will now be banning people for frivolous comment reporting. That doesn’t mean I’ll ban you if you report an ambiguously nasty comment that I finally decide doesn’t quite deserve banning, but it does mean that some people’s days of just reporting everything they see to annoy me are coming to a sharp and sudden end.
10. Thanks to Bakkot (I assume, but maybe someone else) for improving the comment highlighting function. It no longer resets every time you post a comment!
For all you tumblr users, YouGov: Emancipation Proclamation.
Does anyone know of a well-moderated political forum out there somewhere? Something like SSC comment threads, or Hackernews. It is practically impossible to find educated and well-argued opinions in any concentration. I’m not especially knowledgeable about politics and contemporary issues, but I can smell bad rhetoric and bias and I’m just repulsed by everything I find. And I never find what I’m really looking for from the better-regarded pundits… I think I’m after candid, well-founded perspectives on the overall landscape.
Thanks for any advice. I haven’t slept much and my language faculties aren’t too hot right now so apologies if this doesn’t read very well.
I mostly stopped following politics, but as of the last election, still found Jonathan Bernstein and 538 in general tolerable, but they were much more focused on explaining the mechanics of why certain electoral strategies win or lose, not taking and defending partisan policy stances.
I’ll probably have to repost this in the next OT to get anybody to see it, but I just noticed it now so here we are:
In the breastfeeding RCT that Scott linked long long ago, aren’t the results way too good?
I’d previously looked at the summary, “breastfeeding raises IQs by 6 points”, thought that that seemed plausible (especially since it predated DHA/ARA in baby formula), and went on.
Today, thanks to the topic coming up in the news, I decided to go back and read the study itself, because an obvious possible confounder occurred to me: if they were only comparing to the subset of the experimental group who took their breastfeeding advice, then they might simply be re-confirming that conscientiousness correlates with IQ and that IQ is hereditary.
What I found was more shocking: they were (properly) comparing the whole experimental group to the whole control group, and their results came despite the fact that most of the experimental group didn’t take their advice! The paper has data about what fraction of babies stopped being breastfed after 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12, and 12+ months. In the control group, the data looks like (0.4,0.239,0.117,0.13,0.114), and in the experimental group, the fractions are (.273, .229, .137, .164, .197). In other words, changing the behaviors of 13.7% of mothers gets you from the control to the experimental conditions!
So what kind of experiment increases a group IQ by 6 points solely via an effect on 13.7% of the participants? Did the affected subset get a 43+ point average IQ boost? That’s insane a priori, and more to the point it’s not at all consistent with their other results, where they do compare IQ by duration of breastfeeding and show only single-digit differences. Even if we try to take into account rounding in the most conservative way (imagine, for some reason the control group all stopped breastfeeding at 3*N+epsilon months, the experimental group at 3*N-epsilon!), that’s still only 36.6% of the group affected by the intervention, and the implied 16 point IQ difference still isn’t consistent with their within-group results.
The only other hypothesis I can imagine (while still trusting my understanding the data) comes from the one large component of the experiment that the paper reports: “the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding (ie, no foods or liquids other than breast milk) was 7-fold higher in the experimental group as compared with the control group at 3 months (43.3% vs 6.4%, respectively)”. If 36.9% more of the control group participants are feeding their babies something IQ-depressing, then you’d still only need a 16 point depression to explain the total results, and this time there wouldn’t be anything else in the paper conflicting with that explanation. Could there simply be something wrong with the water in Belarus?
Obviously the most likely hypothesis remaining is “I’m misunderstanding the data”. I’d appreciate it if anyone can see how.
That is not an RCT. It is only cluster-randomized.
━━━━━━━━━
I’ll take the observational evidence over this: no effect on IQ.
(I’m leaving this -here- anonymously because I want to reach a large number of intelligent persons, and by the very nature of my topic, I really have no idea where to turn. I should add that I am familiar with the rationalist movement mainly indirectly.)
As I’ve questioned my assumptions and- hopefully- removed my biases, this of course has led me to be more skeptical of pat answers on the topic of religion. In particular, I’ve found myself giving even creationists a hearing.
Now, make no mistake, the majority of creationist believers seem idiots. And I’m well aware of the evidences which the scientific consensus is founded on, and on all the glaring problems all creationist theories face. I’ve been catechized in evolution all my life.
But there are some creationist theorists- Barry Setterfield comes to mind- whose views and arguments, with my lack of expertise, seem plausible to me. I can’t dispute him. Indeed, from what little I understand, à priori and devoid of my background knowledge I would assume he was right.
Of course Setterfield has been rejected by the scientific community. And of course he claims that this is only because he’s challenging the consensus, and that he’s in fact right.
The problem is that I myself can’t say that he’s not. So I must turn to scientific authority to refute him. The problem is, I can’t find it.
Of course there are a plethora of anti-creationist sites on the internet. Of course plenty of them have organized polemics. But almost all of the ones I’ve seen only really dispute the low-hanging fruit- the misconceptions of the common creationist, pointing to the well-known evidences of evolution etc. This is all fine and good. But it doesn’t help me here.
There is talk.origins. But they died years ago, and I can’t find their heir.
Talk.origins published a short piece by a specialist refuting Setterfield on a basic level. Setterfield then published a brief piece stating that they didn’t understand his argument, that they were working from his early, not recent papers, and so on. And then nothing. As far as I can tell, no further argument from anyone in the scientific community. This all happened over a decade ago.
I think the problem here is obvious. Setterfield gets to insist that he hasn’t been disproven. And for all I can tell, he’s right. And, of course, for all I can tell, he’s wrong. There’s no way for me to tell, and that’s scary.
Look, I don’t know what I’m asking for here. No, I do: I want some of those qualified to actually argue against the creationist crackpots instead of ignoring them. Yes, that’d take up so much time fighting something we very much believe is complete rubbish, that already seems dying. Yes, it gives the crackpots credibility. Yes, it’s unrealistic. I don’t pretend that it’s not or doesn’t.
But the truth is, being skeptical, I can’t just take the pat assurance that all the scary creationists are always wrong from people who have scarcely looked at them, and rest confident in my worldview.
TL;DR: Where is the anti-creationist movement that doesn’t just snipe at the low-hanging fruit?
Why do you care?
How is that any better or worse than my insisting that he has been disproven?
He can insist that his opponents don’t understand him, and they can insist that he doesn’t understand them and that their arguments apply just as much to his new work as to his old.
Work your way through the first volume of Feynman’s Lectures on Physics. Nothing more than a high school calculus is needed. By the end you should be able to find some of the many flaws Setterfield’s nonsense on your own. Plus it is time well spent regardless.
(How does one do the inset paragraph quote thing?)
@Douglas Knight:
“Why do you care?”
-Because I want to be sure that my worldview is correct, and I want to make sure that others can determine the correct worldview and be sure that it is correct, with all the security that entails.
“How is that any better or worse than my insisting that he has been disproven?”
-It is more -credible- because you haven’t- as far as I know- devoted anywhere near as much time or effort to disproving him as he has to proving himself; nor have you -as far as I know- successfully persuaded anyone that he is incorrect (that said, I don’t know of Setterfield persuading anyone without significant preexisting biases that he is correct, though I haven’t looked into the issue).
That probably sounds a bit wrong. What I mean is, there’s the appearance that Setterfield has, or very well may have, put a lot more thought into the issue than the people asserting that he is wrong. Obviously if you write a complex argument on any topic, and I, having given the appearance of reading only one section of it, pronounce it incorrect, and you say I’ve ignored large portions, to an outside observer this scarcely indicates at all who is right, but also makes it seem as though I’m incompetent.
@science2:
“Work your way through the first volume of Feynman’s Lectures on Physics. Nothing more than a high school calculus is needed. By the end you should be able to find some of the many flaws Setterfield’s nonsense on your own. Plus it is time well spent regardless.”
-Should I take this as an assertion that you have or someone you know of has 1) studied Feynman v.1; 2) studied a substantial portion of Setterfield’s corpus; & 3) concluded that Setterfield is indeed incorrect?
That said, I will take this under advisement.
There is a detailed critique of Setterfield’s speed of light decay data, written by another creationist, at:
http://www.icr.org/article/has-speed-light-decayed/
If it is correct, and it seems to be, the implication is not only that that argument is wrong but that Setterfield probably should not be trusted.
1) Yes, but to be fair only after having already studied physics. That said I’ve heard from others that came to it later in life it was a tough but rewarding introduction.
2) No, just a cursory skim
3) Yes.
I don’t want to lay out a refutation because I don’t care to get into Setterfield’s logic deeply enough to do a good job of it. It just doesn’t appeal to me. It seems like it does appeal to you.
That’s why I suggested the book to you. It’s amazing how accessible special relativity is. No other physics discovery in the last 100 years can be understood with so little math. If his theory had been about quantum chromodynamics there’s no way I could make a similar recommendation.
(I assume you’ve read this T.O article on Setterfield. Note that the references to people who’ve found historical measurements of C match present measurements apply equally well to Setterfield’s arguments today. Also note the statistical incompetence displayed by Setterfield; that’s a level of fucking things up that should make you distrust future arguments. If the guy couldn’t calculate r**2 and didn’t know how to do statistical tests in the 1980s, what makes you think he gets quantum mechanics today?).
The more intelligent stuff is the same mistakes the less intelligent stuff makes, except better masked by more jargon and a better understanding of how to rationalise their position.
Looking up his webpage, Setterfield is a speed-of-light-changes guy with a weird interpretation of quantum/relativistic stuff.
So, thing the first: science is not just ‘decided by the data’ in the way Setterfield (and occasionally other creationists) is getting at, and saying that while showing off a graph with some fitted curve is evidence of crackpottery. The equivalent low-complexity mistake is the “Here’s one fossil that’s out of place, therefore your entire model is wrong” tack. You can’t just take observations, fit a curve to them, note that the fit is statistically sound, and therefore the curve and any extrapolations from it are correct. Observations only make sense in the context of a model, and there are infinitely many models that fit the data. If I wanted to claim that light has no speed and that speed of light experiments are measuring some other phenomenon, I could use a graph like Setterfield’s. If my position was a different varying lightspeed curve (maybe I wanted light to go faster over time, not slower) then I could get it via careful selection of data points and start and end dates. If I was arguing that earlier measurements of the speed of light had larger errors than more recent measures, and that the more recent measures have converged to one value, I could use a similar graph. All very different implications, all fit the observed data. As it happens, I think the last model is most likely to be correct – because of the web of other reasons to believe the constant-speed-of-light model and general aesthetics.
(sidenote: not saying that observations don’t matter or don’t decide things. Predictions that came out are very strong evidence for a model, for example. All I’m saying is that post-hoc statistical models on observations are usually bullshit, and that people who are very vocal about “DATA determines truth, not CONSENSUS!” have a tendency to be nutters.)
So, second point: aesthetics. Ockham’s Razor is part of this. The model where the speed of light is a constant but measurements have error and Setterfield has carefully selected values to draw his graph is much simpler, in any reasonable sense, than the model where one of the fundamental parameters of the universe has a suspiciously-chosen exponential decay and also all of everything else that depended on that happened to turn out to make extremely good predictions while being very wrong and quite mistaken about the fundamentals. You’ve been around this argument, you’re familiar with Last Thursdayism. Setterfield is Last Thursdayism on a grand scale, picking adjustments to physical laws that produce the reality he wants (young universe) while also being compatible with the bajillion lines of evidence that that’s not reality. The low-complexity equivalent is “God put fossils there to test our faith”, or similar. Invisible, flour-permeable dragons. You should be very skeptical of models that have obviously been chosen to accord with someone’s predetermined viewpoint, like a pharmaceutical study that hypes the shit out of positive effects in elderly Hispanic women. Such models are guaranteed to look weird, because they’re not decided on beforehand, they’re post-facto fits of the data to what somebody wants it to be. They’re ugly. The most telltale sign: no meaningful predictions. I couldn’t find any suggestions on Setterfield’s website for how to test his unique unified theory; it’s all post-hoc words about how to explain things that have already happened without any benefit over the current model.
Third point, it’s basically impossible to keep something this revolutionary out of the journals for thirty years. If this guy has fundamentally overturned modern physics and biology, why does he not have two Nobels? In this case the low-complexity and the high-complexity position is the same: “the scientific establishment is keeping me out”. Give him a search in Google Scholar, all you get are things like this, in the ‘Journal of Theoretics’, which is, shall we say, not a reputable journal (it’s not a very good paper, either; very little maths, the maths that is there is mostly reproducing the effects of GR without being GR, references to New Scientist). The scientific orthodoxy just isn’t that strong, and you can get papers published questioning consensus opinions. Notice, for example, that the MOND people and the cold fusion people all managed to publish papers, despite in the first case questioning relativity and in the second case reporting fusion events believed impossible. MOND is still published from time to time nowadays, I think. So where’s this guy’s papers in actual physics journals?
The saddest thing, ever, is the fact that they never made a sequel to Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. An absolutely perfect movie.
We are in, a world of bullshit.
It’s actually the main reason why I support efforts towards extreme life extension – so we can get Paul Bettany and Russell Crowe back together in 50 odd years to finish the damned thing. Dunno what they’d do about Mr. Blakeney, though. CGI? That’s why we need a super-intelligence.
The first portion of this is a pretty good guide to New Media 101. Kudos.
I’m finally an Effective Altruist! I gave what I plan to be the first of several monthly donations in the following distribution:
42.6% to Givewell’s top charities,
40.9% to Animal Charity Evaluators’ top 6 + ACE itself, and
16.3% to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.
It’s not a huge amount compared to what lots of others give, but for me it was just enough to “hurt” a little.
And I have to say, it felt good. When I was younger, I used to smoke a bunch of weed and then take a shower. Afterwards, I would get a refreshed feeling, and the sensation I have now is quite similar.
Late, I know, but will anybody be at MAGFEST in DC (well technically right outside DC) this weekend? I’m presenting Thursday and will be there all weekend. If you’ll be there give me a shout and we can have an impromptu SSC meetup. 🙂
From radical right-wing hate group, the Mises Institute come these charts which I feel should be required viewing everytime someone says something like “why can’t the US be more like Iceland”?
https://mises.org/blog/how-us-states-compare-foreign-countries-size-and-gdp
These maps are mostly driving home to me how lacking my Europa Universalis-based sense of geography is. Hungary is really only the size of Michigan?
I am surprised every time I look at Europe that the Holy Roman Empire no longer exists.
(A friend who plays CK2 insists that when he plays the HRE always breaks up, while for me it basically just sits there blobbing and w/ Elective Monarchy, an established Dynasty and low Crown Authority it is in no hurry to break up)
This one isn’t actually Europa Universalis’ fault. Hungary lost 70% of its territory after World War one.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
What’s in this thread
That’s up to you
And I don’t even write.
This is very long, but (honest question) is anyone willing to offer a justification for the capital gains tax, the corporate tax, and the progressive income tax
I’m not up for long answers tonight. If you’re going to have an income tax at all, you almost certainly need capital gains taxes and corporate income taxes to prevent people from gaming the system by hiding useful revenue streams in not-personal-income categories. If you have regressive taxes elsewhere in your economy, that’s bad and a progressive income tax can help balance it out.
The income tax and the (regressive) social security tax are so deeply embedded in the American political system that they are not going away, so deal with it.
If you’re developing a utopia from scratch, income taxes, sales taxes, and “value-added taxes” are equally disincentives to economic productivity; playing the shell game where you move around which part of the productive cycle you take out the money, doesn’t change that. Though the fact that people openly call things “value-added taxes” like it was a good thing, is very nearly proof that they don’t grok the principle that taxes are disincentives. Adding value to stuff, yeah, let’s disincentivize that above all else.
Better forms of taxation:
A – Pigovian taxes on actual negative externalities, if you aren’t going to forbid them entirely. Various forms of pollution are an obvious choice in an industrial economy.
B – Taxes tied to services. Highway construction and maintenance being funded by gasoline taxes is a good example of this. The United States Navy should be funded by import and export tariffs.
C – If that’s not enough, property taxes. Not that we specifically want to disincentivize property ownership, but relatively disincentivizing idle property over property being put to uses productive enough to cover the tax, is perhaps the best we can do if we need that much tax revenue.
It may not be likely to change any time soon, but it has the capacity to change if and when enough people get fed up with the current system.
Obviously, I endorse these. And I would prefer a government small enough only to be funded on these types of taxes, i.e. non-broad-based taxes. But this rather conflicts with what you said about eliminating the income tax being unrealistic.
No, you are misunderstanding this.
Yes, with a consumption tax you either consume now and pay the tax now, or invest and pay the tax later. But investment is not penalized relative to consumption. You don’t earn income, invest it, then pay capital gains tax on it, then have the company pay corporate tax, then pay the estate tax when you die and leave it for your children. That is Dan Mitchell’s point about “double-taxation”. See this chart again.
Relative to no taxes at all, it disincentivizes production. But relative to the current system, it’s much better.
A flat tax, a sales tax, a consumption tax, etc. all eliminate double-taxation. They are “consumption-base” taxes.
The property tax is much more distortionary than a broad-based consumption tax.
The property tax is much more distortionary than a broad-based consumption tax.
Depends on what type of property tax you are talking about. An LVT is as close to a non-distortinary tax as actually exists. And taxes on residential real estate and other non-movable property are pretty good. See, http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21580130-governments-should-make-more-use-property-taxes-
levying-land for a good discussion of this.
The political unpopularity of property taxes comes from the idiotic way they are administered, not their economic effect. Property taxes are due in a yearly lump sum instead of monthly or withheld from payroll. Jurisdictions where property taxes get billed on shorter intervals tend to have more public support for the taxes. See, http://www.nber.org/papers/w18514.pdf
And the combined tax base that an LVT and a pigouvian system could provide is substantial and under some assumptions enough to fund a modern government without recourse to other taxes. See, http://www.masongaffney.org/publications/g1adequacy_of_land.cv.pdf
An LVT is certainly distortionary; it generally favors improvements, which is why supporters of high-density tend to like it. To see why it is distortionary, consider the impact on municipal services of a vacant 60×100 lot compared to a similar lot with a 100-unit apartment building on it.
This is very long, but (honest question) is anyone willing to offer a justification for the capital gains tax, the corporate tax, and the progressive income tax which is not based on a) malice and spite, b) the absurd view that the economy is zero-sum, and/or c) the absurd view that the economy grows by consuming more and not by producing more? I’ve been reading through some of Dan Mitchell’s blog posts on the flat tax, the Laffer curve, etc. (I don’t always agree with him, but he’s a thoughtful and yet telegenic “red tribe” libertarian guy), and though he’s just preaching to the choir in my case, I just don’t see how educated people can be so in favor of taxes on economic growth (meme courtesy of Mitchell).
In my view, the only broad-based national tax that should exist (if any) is a national retail sales tax. If that’s not politically possible, a flat income tax—with no capital gains tax—does pretty much the same thing because it does not double-tax or, like our system, triple- and quadruple-tax. (A VAT is theoretically similar but is awful because it is designed to hide the tax.) I don’t see how people who know what they’re talking about can be so against this.
First Observation: wealth that is productively invested provides only a general material benefit, not a special material benefit to its owners.
This is one of the most fundamental and most benevolent facts about a capitalist division-of-labor society. The rich, under capitalism, are not richer solely or primarily in respect of having plates piled higher and higher with caviar and wine racks filled with more and more expensive champagne. That is, though Elon Musk is many times richer than the average American, he does not consume more by the equivalent ratio. He consumes a much lower ratio of what he owns.
Insofar as Musk reinvests his wealth and refrains from consuming it, that wealth does not materially benefit Musk at all in any special capacity. It only materially benefits him insofar as he chooses to withdraw a portion of it to consume (and, of course, in the psychological comfort he gets from knowing that he could do so).
If Musk manages to create a $20,000 electric car which is superior to a $20,000 internal-combustion car, it does not only benefit the shareholders of Tesla Motors. It benefits everyone who is now able to buy a $20,000 electric car.
Second Observation: wealth consumed is a net negative for economic growth.
Apart from the amount they need to live, every piece of wealth people consume, i.e. spend for some purpose other than making more money in the future, is a net negative for economic growth. This doesn’t mean all consumption is bad: we’re not altruists; we don’t want to sacrifice all of our own happiness for future generations.
The great observation of Bastiat and his broken window fallacy: society does not get richer through consumption of wealth. Wealth used to replace a broken window could have been used to build a new or better building with an additional window.
Spendthrifts are not “good for the economy” because they “spread the wealth around”. If anything, the poor should admire the “miserly” rich who serve them selflessly by reinvesting their capital and despise the “playboy” rich who spend wealth that could have been invested, which is a net negative for growth.
Third Observation: corporations are not people.
People on the left love to say this, and it is certainly true. Corporations are not “greedy”, they are not sentient beings, and it does not make sense to be spiteful toward them.
Even if you hate the rich and want to cut off your nose to spite them, leave corporations out of it. All they do is serve as vehicles for the productive investment of capital. All of the income of a corporation which is not sent out as dividends goes toward production, not consumption. If you want to “soak the rich”, tax the dividends as the income of the rich, or better yet tax the luxuries they spend it on.
Fourth Observation: taxing behavior tends to discourage it.
As the Philosoraptor says, we tax cigarettes to discourage smoking. That’s because we don’t like smoking.
But we like economic growth, don’t we? We like it when people work and save and invest and contribute to society and its future.
If we must discourage something, let’s discourage laziness and consumption and short-term thinking. Taxing consumption will make people more future-oriented, more willing to save, more willing to wait for two marshmallows instead of leaping for one now. Why would we deliberately tax the two-marshmallow people?
But that’s what the capital gains tax, the corporate tax, and the progressive income tax all do! The first two purely tax productive investment, and the progressive income tax taxes working hard and saving, since the more people earn, the more they usually save.
People like to have debates over how much taxing thrift discourages thrift; the “elasticity of thrift”. Who the hell cares? Any “much” is too much!
They say society grows great when old men plant trees under which they will never sit. So why do we tax those metaphorical trees?
Therefore: we ought to eliminate all other broad-based taxes and tax consumption, which we can do in a highly visible way (to prevent the government from jacking it up surreptitiously) by placing a flat percentage tax on all retail sales.
A note on the Laffer curve: we never want to be near the top of the Laffer curve. If we’ve gone to the top of the Laffer curve (where a marginal tax increase begins to produce less revenue), we’ve already majorly screwed up. What we need to maximize is the first derivative of the Laffer curve, the growth-maximizing curve or the Rahn curve.
With apologies to David Friedman, assume for the sake of argument that anarchism can’t work. Therefore, at 0% taxes we have Mad Max, and at 100% taxes nobody works at all, society collapses, and we have Mad Max. Do we want the government to tax at the rate where it gets the most money right now? No. We want it to tax at the rate that maximizes the growth of the economy. That is, the rate sufficient to fund the government mechanisms necessary to the working of capitalism at its top rate and not a cent more. You can compare the two on this graph. (Not to endorse Mr. Yarvin, but Fnargl taxes at the Rahn curve or a bit ahead of it since he keeps some gold for himself.)
If you were harvesting apples, which way would you do it? (NB: the tree on the left says “income” because Mitchell supports a flat tax for political reasons, i.e. fear the government would just have a national sales tax in addition to what we have.)
This is not even to get into benefits like no individual has to fill out a federal tax form, ever! And the government doesn’t know how much money everyone makes or threaten to audit them.
***
TL;DR: we should abolish all other broad-based taxes and replace them with a national sales tax. There is, especially, no good reason why we should have capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, or progressive income taxes.
Objections and Replies:
The Unfairness Objection
“It isn’t fair to tax consumption, because the rich spend less of their income on consumption. That makes it ‘regressive’.”
For one thing, everything is “regressive” like this in an economy where there exists any inequality of wealth at all. As you become richer, you spend a smaller proportion of your income on everything that you buy. That’s the point of being rich. If you make $100,000 a year, a Mercedes is 50% of your income; if you make $500,000 a year, the same Mercedes is 10% of your income. This isn’t a complaint about the tax system; this is a pure objection to economic inequality of any kind.
You can supplement a national sales tax with a basic income that offsets the effect of the tax on poverty-line consumption, so that people aren’t impoverished by the tax. (This is the FairTax.)
This system is not unfair. The rich pay the same percentage sales tax as everyone else. If they choose to spend less of their income, they get taxed less, which is good. That’s kind of the point, actually: the less they spend, the more they invest and the more their wealth provides a general benefit.
Administering a progressive consumption tax is tremendously more difficult. It is also much more distortionary: we don’t want people structuring their spending in weird ways like having five guys buy five sections of a yacht to stay under some threshold. If you want redistribution, you can do it in two steps: a) increase the tax, b) increase the basic income. You can get as much welfarism as you like that way; you don’t have to screw up the economy more than necessary.
The Malice and Spite Objection
“I just hate the rich. I don’t want them to own all that productively invested wealth, even though it provides a general benefit.”
This plan benefits the rich. It benefits everyone else, too. I don’t want to hurt everyone else to spite the rich.
If you do, I don’t know what to say. I disagree.
The Zero-Sum Objection
“Everything in the economy is based on zero-sum things like status. When the rich get richer, it makes the poor worse off because they feel envious.”
This is just not true. (Scott Alexander has semi-seriously endorsed it at one point, though. Someone can find the source, or I’ll do it later.) Growth is important. By just having a little more growth, we can bring millions or billions more people out of poverty into better lives. We should not eat the seed corn.
If you’re especially worried about “conspicuous consumption” and status competitions by the rich like buying the biggest yacht, guess what? This tax penalizes that sort of thing.
The Pseudo-Keynesian Objection
“We’ve got to encourage consumption because we’ve got to BOOST DEMAND! PaRaDoX of ThRiFt!”
The paradox of thrift is supposed to be the phenomenon where everyone spends less and saves more during a depression, causing aggregate spending to fall. This is…good and what is supposed to happen in a depression, as people cut back on living beyond their means. But according to Keynesianism, some prices (mainly wages) are “sticky” and don’t fall along with spending (i.e. Keynes denies Say’s Law, that aggregate demand is determined by aggregate supply), leading to unemployment, less income, and therefore less total saving overall—since people save less when their incomes drop.
There are many objections to this. I’m not going to get into them because it doesn’t matter if it’s all true.
Because the paradox of thrift is a cyclical phenomenon! Even if we’re die-hard Keynesians, we don’t want to “boost demand” all the time! The point of Keynesianism is that government policy is counter-cyclical: you boost demand in the recession and lower it during the boom.
And guess what? You can boost demand in a recession just by lowering the national sales tax. No need for government spending increases! How about if it if we tried no taxes during the next recession? How do you pay for this? You borrow money and repay it by raising taxes in the boom time.
I don’t even endorse Keynesianism in any comprehensive way. The point is that Keynesianism does not refute it. Even Keynesianism does not endorse the suggestion that we get richer by consuming wealth instead of producing it.
The Plutocracy Objection
The more sophisticated version of the malice and spite objection: “We have to stop the rich from accumulating so much capital, even though it provides a general benefit, because the Koch brothers will use it to undermine democracy.”
I wrote out a long response to this one. Then I realized it was totally unnecessary.
If you’ve just got to soak the rich, just keep increasing the sales tax and the basic income. You don’t have to tax capital for this. And if you’ve got to break out the super-soaker, you can use the progressive consumption tax, despite it being a bad idea. It’s not as bad as what we have.
Moreover, I should add that if your goal is to “fight plutocracy” at all costs, a high progressive income tax is the last thing you should want. What does a progressive income tax do? It makes it harder to get rich but not harder to stay rich. If you’ve already got your “old money”, it doesn’t hurt you that much. What is stops you from doing is accumulating lots of “new money” in a short period of time. So if you want to “fight plutocracy”, go with the progressive consumption tax or even the Picketty wealth tax (but seriously, don’t do that one).
DISCLAIMER: I don’t know much about economics and everything I write below is very naive.
Well, taxes don’t have to be, if we decide we don’t want them to be.
It seems pretty reasonable to dislike economic inequality. You seem to be saying, “suck it up!” But why shouldn’t we use taxes to reduce it?
I want some level of wealth redistribution, and I think a lot of people agree (though a lot of people don’t), and I think a progressive income tax seems like a reasonable way to do it.
Sounds roughly equivalent to progressive income taxation?
Anyway, I’m not sure how the numbers come out, but I thought we couldn’t afford a very good basic income? With welfare targeted at the poorest people, we can afford to spend more per needy person.
—-
The taxes you are complaining about discourage investment. But the only point of investment is to allow more consumption in the future. What’s wrong with preferring more consumption now?
If consumption is bad and investment is good, shouldn’t we increase the consumption tax to finance a negative tax on investments?
I don’t think it’s reasonable at all to dislike economic inequality. That is the whole point about how the wealth of the rich benefits everyone, insofar as it is productively invested.
The only special benefit the rich get from their wealth is insofar as they consume it. So if you want a progressive tax because you just think they should arbitrarily pay a higher rate than everyone else, have a progressive consumption tax.
That way, Warren Buffet who lives a minimalistic lifestyle is not taxed any more than your average guy. But Mr. Spendthrift Playboy is taxed at a much higher rate.
For the reason I explained above, it is not the same at all. It taxes consumption, not capital. So if you only invest and consume no more than the average person, you get taxed the same amount as the average person.
Perhaps “basic income” is misleading. The FairTax people called it a “prebate”: like a tax rebate, except you don’t have to fill out any forms. It is a minimal amount of money. Basically, you calculate the amount in taxes that a household would spend on poverty-level consumption. Then you give them that much money. It’s like $200 a month.
I am not really even in favor of this, but it’s a concession to “fairness”.
There may be an argument to be made for that (it is a better idea than most government spending to “encourage growth”).
But I think the government interference in the economy should be as minimal as possible, and where it is targeted, it should be as harmless as possible. I think it is reasonable to want to cut consumption now in order to have a lot more consumption in the future. If we could increase the amount of growth by just 1-2%, that would be an enormous amount more growth.
Think about where China would be today if they had had growth at only 1% a year, rather than the rapid growth they have actually had.
Another important concern is that taxing consumption decreases the urge to waste money on government spending, precisely because people feel it now and not later. It’s the same reason people rack up too much credit-card debt: not because they rationally planned it out, but because it’s very tempting to overindulge today and suffer the consequences tomorrow.
The Unfairness Objection is, IMO, a strawman.
Don’t get me wrong: I think that a flat tax system would indeed be unfair, but not for the reasons you state.
As I see it, the Government is not some sort of an extraterrestrial oppressive entity; instead, it’s basically a giant institution that provides certain services. In order to provide these services, it needs money, just like any private corporation. If you want to use more services, generally you have to pay more money (to use a simple example, ten burgers at McDonald’s would cost you about 10x as much as one burger).
Giant corporations, as well as individual rich people who are “value creators”, use a lot more of the government’s services than poor people. A poor person might take advantage of a couple roads, health care services, educational services, etc. A megacorporation requires international highway networks, mass literacy, the RF spectrum, and a sizable percentage of the national justice system, just to name a few things (and I’m not even talking about negative externalities like pollution).
Rich entities use more services than poor ones, and not just proportionally. If VoxCo employs 100 people, it uses more than 100x the services used by one average person. Thus, VoxCo should pay a larger percentage of the tax.
This may seem unfair, but we don’t have any good alternatives. Sure, if we had some sort of an omniscient oracle AI, it could use microtransactions to charge everyone exactly the right amount for every little thing that they do; but we don’t have such an AI. A progressive taxation scheme is a viable compromise.
Nonsense.
For one, as I said, corporations aren’t people. So comparing a corporation to an individual person is a category error.
But the main point is that rich people do not at all consume more government services than poor people. For instance, take criminals or anyone who goes to public school instead of private school.
The costs of providing things like roads, RF spectrum (the government doesn’t even really provide this), and even corporate law are minimal compared to the bulk of government expenses. And mass literacy—and education in general—is not really a public good: each individual gets a lot of good out of it as well. You might as well argue that all productive activity is a public good, since it has net benefits.
To the extent that they do consume more services—such as in corporate welfare—I am against it.
“The Zero-Sum Objection”
As far as I can tell, wealth really only increases or stagnates. But money, purchasing power, is zero-sum.
It may be wrong to say that wealth benefits the rich as that wealth is in investments, but the argument is that not enough of that investment is money circulated to poor people so they can circulate it back to the rich.
Consumption tax seems interesting though. And may address that issue in the big picture. Also education. Poor people are really, really bad at managing money even when they do get it.
Or I may be missing something.
The argument is not that (as the caricature goes) some of the money “trickles down” to the poor.
The argument is that greater investment lowers the price of the goods the poor buy, so that they are better off despite having the same (or smaller) amount of money relative to the rich.
I can see both sides of this here. It’s definitely true that retail consumer goods have gotten much cheaper, but American markets for housing, education, and healthcare are so hopelessly jacked up for reasons unrelated to whether tax policy promotes supply-side or demand-side growth that the most important things that would improve the lives of the poor and their descendants in the long run haven’t gotten cheaper.
This isn’t really a failure of the theory of supply-side growth promotion, but it means making the kind of progress that would be good for and satisfy people requires a lot more than just more investment activity. There’s already been plenty of that, not just from the wealthy becoming even more wealthy and having more to invest, but central banks and pension funds, both public and private, have flooded debt markets in the last 30 years, making business capital really cheap. Of course, I don’t think the Bernie Sanders platform would do it, either, and would almost certainly do more harm than good. A real problem is the entire spectrum of what’s politically feasible is likely to not work.
@ Adam:
Sure, I agree. Lack of investment is not the only problem.
You say “taxing behavior tends to discourage it”, but why do you want to discourage consumption? Consumption is great, I love consumption. Also, I hate earning an income, so I’m pretty ok with taxing that? Consumption is where all the good stuff is, as you can see by the fact that we pay money for it, whereas work sucks which is why we have to be paid to do it.
“Aha,” you may say, “but where are you going to get the money to consume if you do not have an income?” And you’re right, and that’s why “taxing behavior tends to discourage it” is an oversimplified perspective. Tax incidence is like, really really hard to figure out. When you tax something, it’s not always clear what you’re discouraging, and it’s certainly not always the valorem the tax is ad.
That said, it’s true that if something avoids your sales tax, it will be encouraged. In countries that have a large sales tax, there is a lot of effort that goes into structuring transactions to minimize it; if you want to crank up your sales tax high enough to actually replace all other taxes and fund a generous National Income on top of it, you will find tax minimization to be a huge distortion.
I don’t want to discourage consumption any more than is ostensibly necessary to produce the income necessary to perform the growth-maximizing level of government services.
That is the point of the apply tree analogy. We have to harvest some apples (again, if the state is necessary). But is it better to pick them from the tree while leaving the branches alone, or to saw off some of the branches so that the tree now produces fewer apples?
A flat income tax with no capital gains tax is very similar to a consumption tax. Exactly the same if it is a Hall-Rabushka flat tax where you get to deduct all investment. The point is that you want a tax that says: a) consume and get taxed now, or b) save and get taxed the same amount later. You don’t want a tax that says: save and get taxed now then again and again and again. (That is the meaning of “double-taxation”). The latter penalizes capital and reduces growth.
This is a legitimate objection, but the current system is already very distortionary. The distortions can perhaps be decreased with a VAT, but the major disadvantage is that the tax is less visable.
Also, the distortions are not really bad: this was one of the arguments given by the Founding Fathers in favor of taxes on sales and imports: if they are too high, they won’t be enforceable. Therefore, the government is pressured to lower spending, which is what I want it to do. I want the government at a level where the taxes necessary to fund it would not be very distortionary.
Yes, ok, if you want the government to be small enough that it can be funded by a 5% sales tax that might work, but to want that is insane, and it certainly conflicts with your earlier suggestions that the plan could be made government-size-neutral and redistribution-neutral.
Beyond a certain level of redistribution, a national sales tax would not be enough, yes. But then you can simply have, as I said, a flat tax where you deduct all investment. It does the same thing (but is more costly/burdensome to enforce).
And, uh, I don’t agree that to want a government small enough to be funded by a 5% sales tax is “insane”.
Certainly, I think that one of the major advantages of a national sales tax is that beyond a certain point it is unenforceable. That’s why I advocate it as opposed to a flat tax. But either one is way better than a progressive income tax. Even a VAT is better.
Then, to answer your original question, my objection is that I want a functioning, modern government with substantial redistribution.
@ suntzuanime:
Then you should still favor some other form of consumption tax.
I don’t know why this isn’t getting through.
Yes, I think the tax rate should be low enough that we can use solely a national sales tax. But the larger point is that (to quote the TL;DR): “There is, especially, no good reason why we should have capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, or progressive income taxes.”
Also, I am genuinely unsure what people of your political persuasion think a “modern” government is supposed to do that costs so much money. Redistribution? Drug War? Foreign wars? All three?
Your argument is “If you want redistribution, you can do it in two steps: a) increase the tax, b) increase the basic income. You can get as much welfarism as you like that way.” This conflicts with your admission that there is a level at which the tax does not work. Have you done the math as to how high a sales tax we’d need to replace income tax as it stands and then fund a progressive-taxation-neutral National Income?
@ suntzuanime:
Okay, maybe I was imprecise. Moreover, I did clearly say that at some outrageous point, it wouldn’t work anymore, and you would have to switch to a progressive consumption tax.
I don’t know why you continue to nitpick this. I’ve already conceded that, yes, after a certain point it would be unenforceable. I view that as a feature, not a bug. But if you view it as a bug, there are other means.
I have not. However, back when it was semi-viable politically, the FairTax people did. The number they got was 30%. (23% if you calculate it inclusively, the way the income tax rate is calculated.) I’m not sure that’s really too high to be enforced at all, although there would certainly be major evasion.
Anyway, I would not personally support a tax that high. I would argue that it should not be revenue neutral but rather cut revenue significantly.
If you do think it is too high to be enforced, then you can support a flat tax that deducts investment instead.
No, the “FairTax” plan is NOT fucking progressive-taxation-neutral give me a FUCKING break.
@ suntzuanime:
Evidence?
Anyway, I couldn’t care less if it is revenue-neutral or not.
This whole issue is irrelevant to my basic point.
“Evidence?”??!?!? Come the fuck on. There’s no way you can think that a rebate of the sales tax up to the poverty level is sufficient to replicate the progressive structure of our current tax system. You’re just totally clueless.
@suntzuanime: I happen to agree with you, but just saying “you’re clueless” is not much of an argument, you know…
I properly laid out an argument, “you’re just totally clueless” was more by way of a closing salutation.
@ suntzuanime:
Sorry, I thought you meant revenue-neutral, as compared to progressive taxation.
You meant to say that it is not neutral with respect to regressivity. Well, of course not. That’s half the fucking point. What the hell made you even think I was arguing that it was?
Even when I misunderstood you, I clearly indicated that the point you didn’t provide evidence for was whether it is revenue-neutral.
If half the fucking point is to do away with progressive taxation, then, to answer your initial question, that’s my objection.
@ suntzuanime:
Jesus Christ, it’s like arguing with a brick wall.
It’s half the point of the FairTax.
Not necessarily of consumption taxes in general. Though personally, I do support eliminating progressive taxation in general, the point of my post was not primarily to argue for that.
I imagine that your proposed alternative to the “FairTax”, a “flat tax that deducts investment”, is going to run into the same issue.
You say in your TLDR “there is, especially, no good reason why we should have … progressive income taxes”, so I feel like I was licensed to attribute an opposition to progressive income taxes as part of your point.
@ suntzuanime:
It can be as progressive as you want.
Would I support that? No.
Are you one of those accelerationist http://pastebin.com/ksMBrmB3 who wants capitalism to devour humanity and become a God? Like, you talk about how the government should tax to maximize growth and “not a penny more”. I would like a penny more. I would like several pennies worth of nice things actually. The economy serves man, not man the economy.
No, I am not an “accelerationist” like Land. However, I do believe that we could use a lot more economic growth to, you know, eliminate poverty and many other problems.
As I see it, the only justifiable reason that we have a government is that it is necessary to provide some services, to keep the economy and society from collapsing. For example, national defense.
I want the government to collect the optimal amount of money to perform its necessary functions, but not a penny more. That is the growth-maximizing level of taxation. Any less, and the government starts to become dysfunctional, unable to keep the peace, etc. And more, and the government starts to hurt growth more than it helps.
(It may be that the growth-maximizing amount is zero. In that case, David Friedman is right and we have anarcho-capitalism.)
Exactly. So all the other pennies I want to keep out of the government’s hands and leave them in the hands of the market.
I don’t think you’d find anyone who would disagree with this statement; but I think you will find a lot of people who disagree with your definition of “necessary functions”. For example, I personally think that the following functions — just to name a few — are all quite necessary: investments in basic scientific research (as opposed to engineering); public health (including but not limited to vaccinations); infrastructure maintenance (roads, bridges, power grids); law enforcement (police, FBI, gun control); environmental enforcement (FDA, EPA); basic education (public schools, libraries, public colleges). But I have a feeling that you might disagree…
I certainly do disagree with many of those.
But it doesn’t matter. Even if you think the growth-maximizing tax rate is 70%, you should still support taxing consumption spending, not investment.
See my comment (far) above, but basically, I believe that if you engage in investment, you are implicitly (or sometimes, even explicitly) taking advantage of several government services that non-investors don’t use. Since you are using these services, you should pay for them. No free lunch, as they say…
@ Bugmaster:
What services?
The SEC? The cost of actually making the regulations and enforcing them is minimal. The cost to the economy of such regulations is in wasted time and expense, imposed by the government.
Right, so even if you’re not actually building any factories or hiring any engineers, etc., but merely investing your finances, then you still use some additional services:
* Financial enforcement. Just like the regular police force keeps track of people who break into house and steal other people’s jewelry, someone needs to keep track of people like you to make sure they aren’t defrauding anyone. I understand that you, personally, are a 100% law-abiding citizen, but… well..
* Contract enforcement. Similar to the above, but rather than protecting other people from you, this protects you from them — ensuring that they actually deliver whatever it is they promised you in exchange for your investment.
* Laws. Someone has to pay the salaries of all those politicians who are coming up with non-violent ways for you to say, “I invested all this money and I all I got was a lousy T-shirt, I want my money back”.
* Education. You indirectly benefit from the existence of a pool of people who are educated in some of the financial skills that you require in order to perform all of those transactions. Some of them went to public schools and public colleges, and since their skills are useless to everyone but people like you, well…
These are just off the top of my head, I’m sure there are more…
@ Bugmaster:
Financial enforcement: minimal cost.
Contract enforcement: minimal cost.
Creating laws: minimal cost.
Education: private good.
What percentage of government revenue goes toward the first three uses? What percentage of tax revenue do the rich pay?
Firstly, “minimal cost” is not the same thing as “no cost”. All these minimal costs add up. Secondly, why do you say that education is a “private good” ?
Secondly, I wasn’t talking about rich people in general, but about investors specifically. If you and I both have the same amount of money; but you invest yours whereas I do not; then you should pay some amount of tax on each investment transaction, due to the reasons I stated. If you are generally much richer than me, then chances are very good that you do a lot of other stuff that would cause you to pay more taxes. As I said, itemizing all of that is a very difficult task (for us non-Singularity humans, that is); and thus a progressive tax is a reasonable approximation.
If I “indirectly benefit” from other people being educated, I am also “indirectly harmed” by the fact that other people need to pay taxes to provide free educations, and paying those taxes makes them a bit poorer and therefore marginally less likely to be useful to me.
You could try to argue that the net result is a benefit, but when you compare the total benefit to the total harm, you get the same amount of benefit and harm that you’d get if everyone paid for their own education and imposed no obligations whatsoever on others. Since the current scenario is a redistributed version of that scenario, you can’t end up with everyone having obligations in the current scenario.
Also, if other people’s education benefits you, by the same reasoning your education benefits other people. The tiny benefits to a large number of people add to the same thing as the tiny percentages of the benefit provided by each other person to you, so it balances out even just considering the benefit and not the harm.
I think most people who favour government spending money on radio and television broadcasting, support for opera and theatre, statues and monuments, public fireworks displays, and the like believe those to be nice things to have, but not necessary government functions.
@ Bugmaster:
Yes, the costs add up, but they don’t add up to very much. It costs very little, relatively speaking, to pay all the Congressmen and Senators, even with their staff, and to fund a room full of bureaucrats making regulations. And the costs of things like the SEC and even the court system are largely recouped by user fees.
I don’t have the exact numbers of how much these things cost, but it’s a small fraction of the budget. The “cost” of regulation is not the cost of paying the guys to write them, but the cost everyone else has to pay in complying with them.
On education: what Jiro said. Just because the government pays for it, doesn’t mean it’s actually a public good.
No, there’s no reason you should pay any taxes on that money until you actually consume it. You pay the same rate either way. But taxing investment and consumption penalizes investment relative to consumption.
The rich already pay more: even a flat tax covers a percentage of income. It’s not a flat sum.
Now, I’m not convinced that’s even really “fair”. I do not actually think the average rich person uses more government services than the average poor person; I think it’s the other way around.
But even under a flat tax, if you make ten times as much, you pay ten times the amount in tax. That seems more than “fair” to me.
Now, a consumption tax is “regressive” with respect to income, but flat with respect to consumption. And since the only special benefit the rich get from their wealth is insofar as they consume it, if they are taxed the same percentage on their consumption, this seems perfectly “fair”. Taxing their investment as well as their consumption means that the investment is penalized and taxed twice.
Anyway, progressive taxation has absolutely nothing to do with taxing rich people for their “fair share”. It exists because a) they can get away with it, as the rich are a minority, b) the rich have a lot of money, so they’re a good target for governments seeking revenue, and c) it appeals to class resentment.
It’s the same reason people rob banks: “that’s where the money is”.
And 50 years ago, you may have had a point. Now, you do not:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/
In another thread someone made reference to treating society as a game of SimCity; a better pejorative, I think, would be treating people as numbers in a spreadsheet. Total wealth increases, but it is increasingly the case that it is exclusively captured by the managerial class (most would expect “those with the capital,” but that’s not entirely correct.
Those clamoring for a growing economy – which, to be perfectly honest, sound more and more like evangelism than sound theorizing – only care that GDP goes up; they don’t realize that median wealth isn’t increasing, and I’m not sure they can. See the earlier comment mocking voters for not realizing wages are going up in sync with inflation, which isn’t true at all, unless you average out income across all individuals, but that’s the same incorrect reasoning behind the “wage gap” that takes claims of average wages and insists this applies in each individual case.
This is not a winning deal for Americans not connected enough to capitalize on economic growth; in other words, the vast majority. Point-of-fact, it’s going to wreck them. I know you, and libertarians of this ilk, like to clamor that you feel no obligation to them; my question to you all is: what, exactly, do you think is going to happen when they all finally figure out the game is rigged, and you’re going to fuck them over for a quick buck?
When I talk about “increasing economic growth”, I do not mean “GDP going up”. There are many problems with just going by GDP. I mean falling real prices for the goods and services that people buy.
There are many hypotheses about why this might not be occurring. For instance:
a) Prices are falling, but this is being obscured by quality improvements, which are hard to measure.
b) Overall, the world economy is growing (and quite rapidly; the decline in global poverty since the 1970s is enormous), but investment in the American domestic economy is relatively hampered by growing levels of government regulation and restriction, making investment elsewhere more appealing. Solution: ease these restrictions and make America more competitive.
c) Actually, real income is rising, but inflation is being overstated, making this rise appear smaller.
d) This one is probably most important: as the government hampers the productivity of capital, you have to invest more to keep making the same amount. As a result, business and “Wall Street” take up a greater share of the economy just to keep turning out the same products as before. So we have GDP growth with no real growth. It’s the same as how the Soviet Union had half the GDP of America but far lower living standards: sure they had half the GDP, but most of it was tied up in useless, barely-productive investments (despite spending much more than us on “heavy industry” as compared to consumer goods).
Anyway, the strong version of the “Great Stagnation”—that real median income hasn’t risen at all since the 70s—is false. The weak version—that it hasn’t risen “enough”—is true, as I see. And the reason is that we haven’t had enough growth.
What exactly do you want to do? Take all the money from the rich and redistribute it? Not only is that merely a one-time boost (and not even a particularly large one), it comes at the cost of destroying our future productivity. The vast majority of the wealth of the rich is held in the form of productive capital, not consumption goods.
Taking the capital and redistributing it so that it can be consumed does not help anyone. It is just eating the seed corn of the economy. If a farmer eats his seed corn, he’ll have a lot in the short run, but he’ll have nothing to plant with.
Taking the consumption goods away from the rich would not be as harmful—except that these consumption goods are the incentive they have to become and stay wealthy, i.e. to produce the goods that are demanded by the consumers on the market.
I think living standards ought to be rising much more. And I think the way to do that is to eliminate barriers to investment and production. That means, first of all, ceasing to double-tax investment. It also means abolishing regulations, restrictive zoning laws, and occupational licenses that hamper the economy, as well as easing immigration restrictions.
A huge amount of the stagnation in real living standards comes from the fact that two sectors—health and education—which are effectively taken over by the government, have grown in cost without any proportion or limit. That’s why I support a free market in healthcare and a free market in education, abolishing the extremely pervasive government regulations and subsidies that are responsible for running up the cost.
I don’t think the answer is to “soak the rich”. I think that would do the opposite of helping. The productive investments on the part of the rich are the major factor keeping growth from being lower than it now is.
If “the people” should get so angry at things that they decide to hang the rich from the lampposts, that would be an enormous tragedy. Not only in the human suffering, but because the rich were actually the ones on their side. The people they ought to hang from the lampposts are politicians and bureaucrats hampering the economy with restrictive laws.
Huh, so uttering that very word is now a ban-worthy offence ? That’s… disheartening.
It’s not bannable. It just gets your post removed by the spam filter.
I don’t mind the bans, but I hate the damn spam filter.
On the one hand, consumption tax is probably the most efficient in terms of minimizing deadweight losses. On the other hand, to fund the entire government out of them they’d have to be absolutely huge. We’re talking in excess of 50%. The impact it would have on poor people would be immense, we’re talking serious civil unrest. Not even remotely plausible in reality.
That said, there are simple improvements that can be made without major upsets to the current income distribution. Removing corporate taxation would be great, there’s an absurd number of distortionary measures that are based on it.
If you think the necessary tax burden is that high, then you can support a progressive consumption tax.
It’s not what I support because I don’t want government revenue to be that high. But the implementation is simple:
a) Create an income tax, with tax brackets as normal.
b) Set them to whatever you want.
c) Allow people to deduct all investment from their income tax.
Sales tax has well-known enforcement issues. VAT has many fewer problems with this. So it seems like VAT+UBI (or other aggressive social spending) + a few Pigovian taxes would be a good approach from my generally left POV. Tax visibility concerns are also not as big a deal to a liberal type. I’d also want to insert additional progressivity into the system one way or another (UBI doesn’t cut it), mainly because of the diminishing marginal utility of money, but also because of the status-competition effect and the plutocracy effect which you attempted to refute, not very convincingly in my mind. (May post on that later.)
I suspect if you and I were party leaders in Congress we could work out a deal that we both think is a huge improvement on the current system, after which we would promptly be booted from office in disgrace and our plan buried because it would be incredibly unpopular with seniors.
Judging from the rest of the thread you probably realize this by now, but you would have been much better off if you’d cleanly separated out your case against tax progressivity from your case for taxing consumption.
I genuinely don’t see how a highly progressive consumption tax couldn’t deal with the “status-competition effect” or the “plutocracy effect”. I mean, I don’t see those as genuine problems, but I think they could be dealt with.
Maybe so, but I did want to argue both because the actual plan that I do support is a national sales tax. You’re absolutely right that it has distracted from the main point, though.
I don’t mind the actual arguments for a progressive tax. I just mind the “Fuck you! I want a progressive fucking tax, not this bullshit.”
What I wrote was that I’d want to inject additional progressivity into the system. I’d consider doing it through a progressive consumption tax, but as you point out that creates more complexity; I’m not sure there’s not a better way and I don’t feel like thinking about it at the moment.
@Vox:
1) I’m not clear if you are arguing for some optimal tax strategy if it could be imposed from on high or not. If not, then one clear answer is that new policy has to take existing policy into account. Lots of decisions have been made based on existing policy. An economy the size of ours will not turn on a dime without things breaking.
2) It’s all well and good to decide that “investment” shouldn’t be taxed, but it ignores that people have choices in how they structure compensation. If you give people a place to hide their money from taxation, they will do everything possible to make sure their money gets hidden.
3) Investment is a bet on future consumption. Your entire analysis seems to ignore this. In other words, people who invested in the past damn sure want their to be consumption happening now.
4) No mention of marginal utility? I wouldn’t have expected that from you.
1) Yes, I’m arguing for what we should move toward, not what should be put in tomorrow.
2) That is the precise virtue of a simple, well-defined consumption tax or flat tax. There are no deductions, no special ways to hide your taxable income.
3) Not necessarily all of it. Quite often, they want to leave a substantial amount for their children. But sure, you can argue that it would be unfair to have a high consumption tax on retired people, after they’ve already paid income taxes and capital gains taxes. That can be handled by staging it in, or by having a substantial tax rebate for them.
4) I don’t think it’s really relevant, unlike some people. The vast majority of the wealth of the rich goes into investment, so that has nothing to do with diminishing marginal utility. And the very fact of diminishing marginal utility is what encourages them to spend less of a percentage of income on consumption. I don’t see why they should be further discouraged with a high marginal rate on top of that.
@Vox:
3) You completely missed my point. If I invest, why does the invested money generate a rate of return? Because it either:
a) Became debt for someone else, which they used to consume
b) Bought a resource to be consumed later which I hope will become more valuable in the interim
c) Was used to create a product, turning raw goods into a finished product of some sort, and that product was consumed.
In other words, investment depends on consumption. Trying to say investment is “good” and consumption is “bad” ignores the fact that investment and consumption are inextricably linked.
4) If we have to fund government services (which benefit society as a whole) from somewhere, leaning more on the dollars with the least marginal value to the individual makes sense. You are leaning heavily on “consumption bad, investment good” to make your argument here, which really just goes back to point 3.
3) Obviously, the only purpose of investment is to have consumption in the future. The point is that, if we invest now, we can have more consumption in the future than we have if we don’t invest and consume now.
Investment creates more consumption in the future. That’s why it’s good. If all we cared about were the most indefinite future, then we only consume the bare minimum and invest everything else continually. But of course I don’t think we should do that.
And really, the proposal I have doesn’t favor investment over consumption. It just ceases to disfavor it by eliminating double-taxation. Favoring it would mean a negative tax on investment; there might be some argument for that, but it’s not what I support.
4) Perhaps, but if they earned those dollars it doesn’t seem fair to me that they ought to pay a higher rate on them. And moreover, you are decreasing the incentive to invest and accumulate wealth, since, as you say, the only purpose of investment is to consume. Why work twice as hard to get rich if your consumption is going to be taxed at twice the rate?
@Vox:
I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. If everyone has the idea that they should invest everything they have past subsistence then the rate of return on investment will be very, very low. Investment depends on consumption, consumption depends on investment. It’s a virtuous cycle.
Arguably, the largest incentive to invest is the existence of a market for your goods. No market, no investment.
And investment (capital gains) is already taxed at a far lower rate than income. You keep conflating accumulated wealth (which isn’t taxed until death and then with a huge write-off), capital gains, and income, as if they are all the same thing.
And you are ignoring the fact that we already have what amounts to a fairly flat total tax rate. Yes, the federal income tax is progressive, but the total taxes paid at the federal, state, and local level tend to be far flatter in actuality. The federal income tax is not the only tax out there.
The super majority of federal dollars go to Social Security (paid for by a flat tax that phases out), Medicare/Medicaid (paid for by a flat tax), the military, and debt service. I’d argue that the military and debt service are of greater benefit to the wealthy, but there may be valid counter-arguments.
As to the “why should people work twice as hard to be wealthy” argument, that really just boils down to a Laffer curve argument, and our taxation levels aren’t that high.
All of that said, plenty of progressive governments fund themselves through VAT taxes. I really don’t have an objection to them in principal, but, for example, all of those people who invested in ROTH IRAs would be pissed.
“Arguably, the largest incentive to invest is the existence of a market for your goods. No market, no investment.”
Investment in building factories is just as much a market for goods as consumption would be–the factories need steel and concrete and furniture and machine tools and … .
“And investment (capital gains) is already taxed at a far lower rate than income.”
True when the inflation rate is low. But the tax is on nominal capital gains, not real capital gains, so when there is significant inflation much of the tax on gains that don’t really exist.
@David Friedman:
“Investment in building factories”
That is merely kicking the can down the road. The factory you want to sell to is not buying if they don’t have consumers. They aren’t increasing their demand if there aren’t more consumers.
At the tail end of every supply chain is a consumer.
I find that extremely surprising coming from you David. What am I missing here?
@HeelBearCub
Presumably the consumers are the people who made and sold you the steel and chairs and machine tools.
@ HeelBearCub:
If we were all robots who just wanted economic growth for consumption in the indefinite future, we would have factories producing machine tools to make more factories to make more machine tools, and so on without any end to it. That is what the Soviet Union was theoretically doing with “building heavy industry”.
And you can obviously see how this would create the highest future prosperity. The problem with the Soviets is that their economy was so inefficient and the returns on investment so low, that they had to devote 50% of their spending toward investment just to keep the same amount of factories that they already had from falling apart.
Investment “depends on” consumption in the sense that consumption is the motive behind investment. If you didn’t know that you or your children would be able to consume those investments in the future, you wouldn’t make them. Unless you were a robot or a perfect altruist.
But investment does not “depend on” consumption in the sense of providing the means. Investment could go on perfectly well without any ultimate consumption. The means of investment are natural resources, labor, and capital goods—which are the same as the means of consumption. The question is how much consumption you want, versus how much investment. It can be 100% in either direction.
Of course, if we had 100% consumption, the quantity of consumption would quickly fall to a terribly low rate, since that which was consumed would not be replaced.
If we had 100%, investment, our descendants would be very rich in the future, but it wouldn’t do us much good now.
Ultimately, the balance is determined by people’s time preference, which is the same thing that determines the rate of profit.
I don’t see how the military provides special benefit to the rich at all. They are the ones most able simply to move if the country gets invaded. If you mean military cronyism, well maybe, but I’m simply against that.
Debt service doesn’t make sense at all. Borrowing money is not a source of net income for the government. What they borrow, they have to pay back. At best, it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I don’t think we’re past the peak of the Laffer curve. But that’s irrelevant because we should never be anywhere near there.
I do think we are significantly past the growth-maximizing point on the Laffer curve, i.e. the peak of the first derivative of the Laffer curve, i.e. the Rahn curve.
It’s probably worth recusing myself in any discussion of capital gains tax, but we should note it’s only lower than labor income if it’s long-term capital gains.
Also not gonna say it’s super common, but at least some forms of investment actually create new consumption markets.
Tax is a means of redistributing power – where people are buying necessities, sales tax reduces their power as consumers, but it does nothing to redistribute power at the top of society.
We tax the rich, not because we want to reduce their consumption, but because we wish to redistribute the power to steer society.
Little naive me thought the reason we taxed the rich was to get money to fund the government.
Snark aside, government is a means of redistributing power. Using tax to promote virtue and prevent vice is just a sneaky/inefficient/diplomatic/you make the call method of governing. Or tool of governance, if you prefer.
Also, a government which can create money does not need to tax anyone to fund its operations. In such a case, some argue, taxation is more of a means to control how much of the economy the government uses than to generate revenue.
A government which tried to fund itself solely on the basis of printing money would quickly find its money became worthless.
And if you force people to use U.S. dollars while inflating them, you are essentially just imposing the Picketty wealth tax: transferring purchasing power from every dollar holder to the government.
Anyway, of course I’m not denying that the tax code is used for social manipulation. But not only do I think it shouldn’t be the purpose, I genuinely don’t think it’s even the primary purpose. The primary purpose is to get revenue for what people perceive to be necessary government functions. Hell, otherwise we’d probably only have taxes on the rich and abolish all the other ones because they’d be politically unpopular.
There is a nasty trend abroad of conflating the value of things with money. If I own a million dollars of stocks, I don’t have a million dollars. I think it’s fairly uncontroversial that the money itself is a form of information technology organized by a private-public hybrid of banks (the deposits of which constitute the main stock and supply of money) and the government (whose debt and tax revenues underpin the banking system, and whose tax demands/granting of banking licenses/legal tender laws, ensure the value of the money the banks create).
So it really would be more accurate to say that we tax in order for the rich to be able to have money.
Anyway, let’s forget about that, and say that I am the king and I have decided that I want to build a giant statue of myself. The economy is running at full capacity, there are no unemployed people, we use a rare form of pebble as our money. So, what I do is tax all the poor people, get the pebbles, they can buy one less bun each day, some bun makers become unemployed and then I give them the pebbles and tell them to make my statue. Cool.
Now let’s say that I’m the king, but that there are a load of nobles in my kingdom, who own all the land and use the pebbles they get paid in rent to pay people to agitate against me. If I use the same tax strategy as above, is there any way for me to stop them from doing this? Preventing the poor from eating buns isn’t going to stop the rich from agitating, unless I tax the poor, give the money to the rich in order to get them on side with my regime and… oh wow… that *is* how it works, isn’t it….?
Obviously, money is not the same as wealth.
That does not mean that money is a conspiracy invented by the
Jewsrich to get one over everybody else.If the government got out of the currency business altogether, do you think we just wouldn’t have money? Well, you would be wrong.
Yes, taxes are a way for the government to force people to pay for things they don’t want to pay for.
Uh, do you realize that all you are saying here is “suppose the king doesn’t have the power to tax the nobles”? Then he would have to co-opt them.
If the king had the power to tax the rich, he would take the pebbles from the rich, which they collect in rent, and redistribute them to the poor, who would ally with him so that they could buy more buns.
Any analogy you are trying to draw between either of these situations and our current one is very tenuous and misleading.
@vox
“That does not mean that money is a conspiracy invented by the rich to get one over everybody else”
The basic structure of our current monetary system was invented by the (mercantile) rich when they became the government. Not so much a conspiracy, more a reflection of the realities of power. (The broader based elite was certainly more successful in mobilizing resources, especially for war, than the previous system.)
“If the government got out of the currency business altogether, do you think we just wouldn’t have money?”
The type of money we have is determined by the kind of society we live in – there are many ways in which these things could be organized, but if we are talking about taxation *now* we should be mainly concerned with the *current* monetary/social system.
“Uh, do you realize that all you are saying here is “suppose the king doesn’t have the power to tax the nobles”? Then he would have to co-opt them.”
I was suggesting that the reason why we might want to tax profits/ the rich is that we might not like what the rich are doing with society. Reducing the consumption of the poor certainly won’t achieve change in that direction.
If the purpose of government policy is to stop the poor from buying certain things and giving them other things that we think might be better for them (and that is not an idea I necessarily disagree with) then by all means stop them buying their buns.
If the purpose is to stop the rich driving society off a cliff, then stopping poor people buying buns isn’t going to work.
@ Mark:
That sounds like the “malice and spite objection” to me. What exactly are the rich doing to drive us off a cliff?
Since I’m the one arguing for the maintenance of the status-quo, I’m not sure that is a question I can answer.
Edit: I’ll answer anyway.
It’s not so much what the rich are likely to do, (as in the rich will waste all their money on statues) it’s more to do with the system itself. That’s vague because I actually think the current system is kicking along fairly well – and I don’t see any reason to believe that trying to concentrate more power in the hands of the wealthy is likely to make things better.
Aha, I see the problem.
My first thought was to point out that for wealth to be equivalent to power, the wealthy must spend that wealth, at which point it would be taxed.
But then I realized that for this to be true, bribes, campaign contributions, and other payments to government officials would have to count as consumption.
Suddenly I understand why Vox’s plan will never fly, no matter how much I like it in principle.
I think power is a big problem about redistribution. People who like redistribution seem to like it because they don’t want rich people to have a lot of power, especially power to influence the government.
They leave out that government is the dominant power in a region. That’s what makes it a government. Giving it more money means giving it more power. That power can be used to do things which are probably useful, like a highway system, or doing some enforcement against crime, or giving money to prevent destitution, but any little mistake (like about nutrition) gets wildly amplified. Give the government more money, and how do you know it won’t just imprison more people? Or have badly structured charity which keeps people poor?
I’ve talked with pro-redistribution people, and they seem utterly blind to this issue. They have a strong belief that rich people=trouble and money for the government=benevolence.
If they supported actual redistribution (more money taken from rich people is assigned to benevolent projects and/or a basic income) I wouldn’t be so frustrated with them.
Well, I suppose the libertarian perspective is like this: the government doesn’t serve the “class interest” of anybody except perhaps professional politicians, and the “false consciousness” is in thinking that most of the functions it performs are necessary.
The leftist perspective is: the government serves the “class interest” of the rich, and the “false consciousness” is on the part of the poor and middle-class who don’t want to turn it around to serve to serve their “class interest”.
One side thinks the interests of rich and poor are naturally in harmony, while the other side thinks they are naturally opposed.
One good argument I’ve heard against a consumption tax is that either it introduces distortions in favor of importation or it’s incompatible with free trade. If there are no tariffs, then I can buy goods abroad and dodge the sales tax, and if there are tariffs, they bring their own distortions.
The least distortionary tax is the poll tax, because there’s nothing you can do to change the amount you pay except move out of the country, but it’s so regressive that even conservatives won’t go for it. But it would be interesting to combine it with a basic income.
I am not extremely against the poll tax. I would be against it if it were anywhere near high enough to pay for the current level of spending. Also, it’s unconstitutional.
As for tariffs, if imports are taxed the same as domestic goods, there is no distortion. You probably wouldn’t be able to eliminate the incentive to drive to Canada and buy a pack of sodas, but that’s pretty minor.
Following the text of the Constitution, it’s only unconstitutional to make payment of poll taxes a prerequisite for voting in federal elections. The Supreme Court extended that to state elections. But that doesn’t seem to ban them in general.
Two points.
One: the argument for soaking the rich doesn’t need to involve fears of democracy being undermined, concerns about status, or malice. All you need is declining marginal utility of income. If you can have the government tax away half the income of the richest half of the nation, squander 80% of it, and give the rest to the poorest half, you might still increase the national utile count.
Two: if you can work but have no property, what you want is for the property owners to have an insatiable desire for stuff that needs work to produce. What you definitely don’t want is for them to decide that they’ve got pretty much everything they want and are happy to keep their property to themselves without having it put to any more productive use. Mindless consumption is a bad thing in a poor laborer, a good thing (from the laborer’s perspective) in a rich capitalist.
Except that the vast majority of the wealth of the rich consists in productive investments that provide a general benefit to everyone.
No, this is completely wrong.
Mindless consumption by the rich is a terrible thing from the laborer’s point of view. When the rich guy buys a Ferrari, the net result is that the economy is down a Ferrari. It’s the broken window fallacy. Buying Ferraris you don’t need is no different from just breaking windows.
When you talk about the rich “not putting their property to productive use”, I’m not even sure what you mean. You mean they buy factories and just don’t run them? That doesn’t happen. If it did, it would be a type of “mindless consumption”. There is no difference, economically, between buying a factory to burn it down versus buying all the produce of that factory for the purpose of consuming it.
The way the rich put their property to use is by saving and investing their wealth.
Re: argument 1: yes. But so what? Think through what would happen if you actually did soak the rich: steal all their wealth, which as you say is in the form of shares and so on rather than consumables, and hand it all out to the poor. As far as I can tell, those shares end up getting sold to roughly the richest people you didn’t rob, and the money the poor get in return is spent by them instead of by the people who bought the shares, who would have spent it otherwise. End result: more equality, possibly higher national utile count. I am not very confident that this is correct, and obviously it is not a thorough analysis, so please tell me where you disagree, if you do disagree.
Re: argument 2: I agree that breaking windows means less useful work gets done. But if you’re running a window repair business, a spate of smashed windows is certainly good from your perspective, even if not from everyone else’s. For someone who has no productive resources but does have the ability to turn stuff into other stuff, the owners of the stuff deciding they like their stuff how it is is something to be concerned about.
I do disagree.
What happens in this scenario is exactly the same as if there were a sudden, massive increase in time preference. When the poor divest themselves of the stock, they sell them in order to spend more on consumption right now. The price of consumption goods rises, while the price of capital goods falls. Resources are allocated away from investment for the future and toward present consumption.
You’re right that eventually, things would even out and there would be a new class of rich people. But in the meantime, the percentage of the economy that is directed toward investment would plummet. The result is that standards of living would increase greatly—for a very short time—until the goods being consumed stopped being replaced.
As I alluded to in another post, we can imagine all the natural resources, labor, and capital goods in the economy being allocated anywhere from 100% consumption to 100% investment.
The usual analogy for 100% consumption is “eating the seed corn”. If the farmer eats the seeds which he is supposed to plant for the future, he will have more to eat temporarily, but then he will starve.
100% investment would be a society of robots building factories just to make more factories.
It is necessary that the percentage directed toward investment is at least at the replacement rate. The seed analogy is helpful here. If each plant produces only two seeds, then in order to have the same amount of plants next year, you can only eat half the seeds. If you actually want to have more plants next year, you have to eat less than half.
Now suppose we increase the yield, so that each plant produces three seeds. Then you can plant one seed and eat two. Or plant two and eat one, so that you’ll have double the number of plants next year without eating less. Time preference is the difference between (on one extreme) eating none and planting all three, and (on the other) eating all three and planting none.
Anyway, if you transferred all stocks and bank accounts to everyone equally, the percentage of investment would drop well below the replacement rate. If consumption is above the replacement rate, the economy shrinks and next year you have less to consume. If this keeps going, eventually you don’t have any.
Sure, it’s good for the windowmaker’s perspective.
But the whole fallacy is thinking that, because it’s good from his perspective, it’s a net good for the economy.
If windows became indestructible and we never needed new ones, there would be a temporary dislocation as the windowmakers found other jobs. But they would do something else; their skills and the resources they use would be put to more productive use.
If the rich decided to halve the amount they spend on consumption and double the amount they invest, the Ferrari company might regret that, and so would its workers. But this is completely balanced out by the gains to the steel producers and construction companies who build the new factories or office buildings. In fact, more than balanced out, since the factories or office buildings are involved in the production of more wealth, while a Ferrari does not produce more wealth.
You need a *little* bit more than declining marginal utility: you also need the auxiliary assumption that different people’s marginal utility curves are similar (in level, not just in shape). Without that, you can’t get from “A’s ten-millionth dollar is worth less to him than his ten-thousandth” to “B’s ten-millionth dollar is worth less to him than A’s ten-thousandth dollar is to A.” The auxiliary assumption seems like an open question to me, seeing that some Bs make more strenuous efforts to get that ten-millionth dollar than some As do to get their ten-thousandth, and we have a whole pejorative vocabulary for people who act like their marginal-utility curves for money are too much higher than the norm.
To expand on that …
If you assume that everyone has the same utility function for income but different abilities to get income, then declining marginal utility of income implies that the richer you are, the lower your marginal utility of income.
If you assume that everyone has the same ability to get income by trading leisure for it and the same (declining marginal) utility function for leisure but different utility functions for income, then the richer you are, the higher your marginal utility of income.
“If you can have the government tax away half the income of the richest half of the nation, squander 80% of it, and give the rest to the poorest half, you might still increase the national utile count.”
This presumes that the government will use the bidding power better than the rich. What do the rich do with the money they don’t spend on vacation homes and yachts? They save and invest it–in stocks, bonds, currencies, etc. In other words, it goes to the companies and institutions which fund managers and the like deem likely to be profitable. When fund managers guess right they might end up supporting the next Apple or Chipotle–that is, supporting companies which ultimately employ thousands.
As seen with Solyndra and the like, the government is not a very good investor. As Vox says, the least socially useful thing the rich can do with their money is buy yachts and the like. Of course, the government doesn’t “invest” most of its tax revenue, though they like to call it that; rather, they spend it on social security, medicare, and the military. These things may be more utile-producing (well, the military is questionable) than the yachts, but they don’t do anything to grow the economy’s productive capacity.
The thing is, people think of the wealth of the wealthy as being like this big pit of magic productive forces that can be put to work making things better if only the rich can be forced to stop sitting on it. That isn’t how it works. Money is just bidding power. The amount of stuff and labor power remains the same; the question is who has the bidding power, i. e. who is directing how the land, labor, and capital get arranged. I think entrepreneurs are far better at directing these to the uses which serve the ultimate goal of consumer satisfaction, so I want the government in charge of as little bidding power as possible.
The notion that an economy can be sustained or even grow by the power of a circular flow of increasing demand for stuff which thereby calls stuff into being is well, fallacious. Just wanting stuff doesn’t make it appear at a price you can afford. Savings and investment are necessary to make the economy produce more, better goods and services at lower prices, and you get more savings and investment precisely through deferring consumption.
You’re lucky if the government just squanders money. There’s a reasonable chance it will hurt the people who can’t defend themselves against the government.
Yeah, I am actually giving government apologists the benefit of the doubt by assuming that the government will do mostly harmless or mildly beneficial things with their bidding power. I actually think that most of what they do with it is actively harmful in the long run.
The year is 1234, and you’re born inside some farm off in Eastern Germany or somesuch. Your dad, like most people in your age, happens to be a farmer, and you spend the first sixteen years of your life growing coarse rye, beets and cabbages to pay taxes, fight off starvation and feed your growing number of siblings. Once you do become sixteen, your parents tell you that it really may be better if you try your luck elsewhere, and so you try to move off to some place where they might need someone who’s willing to work hard and knows how to farm.
You travel by foot for a few days, and entering some other part of the land, the local lord tells you that sure, you can go and cultivate his land; all you need to do is give him half of your produce in tax. Sure, it’s a lot to pay, and he wishes it could go otherwise, but you wouldn’t want your farm to get overrun by bandits, do you? You agree, but since you think that’s a very high tax rate to pay, you move on.
A month later, you learn that every time you move along, the same sort of deal seems to apply: yes, you can work my land, but it belongs to me and I will charge you a lot of your labour to get to work here because that’s how much I think my security is valued. If you don’t like it, that’s okay, you can move off to some other place, I won’t stop you.
…
How does libertarianism stop this from happening?
I’ve read before that there’s many libertarians who argue society ought to have something along the lines of security companies rather than a police force. Similarly, there’s the arguments about free exit and immigration rights, people get to work where they wish to. Libertarianism also advocates strong respect for property rights, be it in the arguments against low taxes or against government authority in general. I realise my analogy isn’t perfect at all, but framing medieval Europe as a place where everyone was free to come and go as they pleased, the property rights of those who actually had any to their name were respected, and you could ‘buy’ the security of anyone you wished isn’t strictly wrong.
I suppose you could view libertarianism as a movement more than as a total ideology: the argument that there’s an X level of government that’s good and we’re way beyond that probably isn’t even wrong. What I put into question is that putting our security into the hands of companies is going to work very well.
Also, I really like the commentariat here, so please keep things level-headed if at all possible. An explanation for how a libertarian world might avoid the problem I mentioned would probably explain why our modern world isn’t a feudal one as well, since you could make a very similar argument along those sorts of lines.
Object level question – your third son (neither the heir nor the spare) – did his father not pay a sharecropping tax? Is this whole concept new to TS?
Object level query – how did feudalism work in (random principality of) what is now Germany? My understanding (which might be flawed) of the English version is that a non-trivial number of the peasantry was actually born to the land, and needed the lord’s permission to move, marry, etc. (Also had a greater call on the lord’s table in times of need, but that was thin soup at best.)
More to the point of your question: Libertarian would reduce the burden of the king/prince on his lesser nobles, and from the earl to the baron, and the baron to the knight, so that the knight didn’t have to use the surplus of ten farms to feed and house his family, smithy, and warhorse, and so would allow the individual lord room to offer better deals – say, 4/10 of the produce – to select wandering third sons.
You can’t have a feudal system with all its inefficiencies at the top, and expect freedom on the bottom.
That’s right; around 90% of the peasant population in medieval England held some sort of nonfree tenure. It would have been difficult for landlords to chase down many runaway tenants — medieval nobility didn’t have the resources to do much policing — but since moving to a new manor usually took consent on the parts of both your old lord and your new one, and since these were Dunbar-sized groups or not much above, we could expect a fairly effective level of soft enforcement.
On the other hand, it wasn’t uncommon, and was to some extent accepted in law, for serfs to flee to larger towns (distinct from villages and not governed in the same way; most got their revenue from import/export duties, often levied at the walls) and try to find work there. That had its own problems; medieval towns were deathtraps, with so much disease, violence, and opportunity for accident floating around that many of them experienced negative population growth. But people did do it, so we can safely assume that they had motive to. Just not enough motive for it to be super common.
Feudalism anywhere rather varied in its nature, but the exact historical details are neither here nor there. In the late middle ages especially, urbanisation ended up in many laws binding serfs to their lords becoming practically unenforcable. That said, in eastern Germany especially, serfdom was particularly nasty and lasting.
If I understand your proper response correctly, you’re saying something along the lines of ‘the king can stop relying on people’, which sounds like telling me this is a mere coordination problem. I’m not sure if that follows when you could simply have a larger percentage of military sorts and retain the same problem.
Competition for customers. Security firms can be expected to behave competitively because they will not get any customers if they don’t.
This is true in our world too. Governments tend to want to make their country relatively pleasant and free because doing so is how you maximize your nation’s wealth. Nations don’t have to compete for citizens to anywhere near the extent that ancap security firms would have to compete for customers; it is a lot easier to imprison someone when you own their whole country. So this would be far more true for competitive security firms.
The fact that productive ability these days comes almost entirely from humans rather than resources is crucial to this. If things change and this becomes no longer true, I don’t think begging for a Basic Income will work, because the only reason your government currently cares about you is because you are a productive resource for it to exploit. Lose that, and those with the power to coerce will no longer care about winning your favor.
EDIT: as for why you don’t see anarcho-capitalism existing in the world already, remember that coordination is crucial. If there is an area of land which contains ten territorial sovereigns and one non-territorial ancap agency that has committed to defending its customers, wherever they are, and nobody else, wherever they are, the territorial powers’ views of who owns what are aligned with one another, but not with the ancap agency. Each territorial power gets on with nine of its fellow powers and fights continuously with one. The lone ancap agency fights with all ten rival powers. Obviously it is totally unsustainable.
But reverse the rules and the reverse is true. An area of land that contains ten ancap agencies, each committed to defending its customers and nobody else, irrespective of location, and one group that claims sovereignty over a part of the land, will see the ten ancap agencies getting on fine with one another and each only having disputes with the territorial group, while that territorial group will have constant disputes with everyone else. You can see how either system is stable against a gradual change toward the other.
It strikes me as possible that territorial sovereigns are just a much more natural Schelling point than the non-territorial, customer-based idea of anarcho-capitalism. Which would provide a possible explanation for why it is so rare.
“The lone ancap agency fights with all ten rival powers. Obviously it is totally unsustainable.”
I agree it’s probably not stable under most circumstances, but perhaps not for a single reason as simple as obviously falling into fights with all ten rival powers. (It seems to me that the relationship between the Catholic Church and local sovereigns had some recognizable similarities to this for many centuries, and remained reasonably stable — at least not enormously more unstable than the relationships between adjacent territorial sovereigns, or internal struggles within territories.)
The Catholic church is not a security agency, has not contracted with its followers to defend some particular set of rights against anyone who violates them in exchange for payment.
My argument is not that territorial and non territorial organisations cannot coexist at all. Of course they can. But when they are making claims of ownership of the same kinds of thing, you will inevitably get conflicts, because their structures do not fit together at all.
All of this hinges on security organisations being entirely uninterested in acquiring more land and/or less competitors. I’m not sure this is an assumption that’s safe to make.
I’m sure they would like both of those things. But it seems unlikely they would like them enough to be willing to incur the costs involved with waging war in order to try to get them.
This seems to be at odds with the history of security organizations.
Security organizations have seemed quite willing to go to war to prevent competition on their own turf or expand territory.
On the other hand, we currently live in a world in which there are a large number of territorial monopoly powers. Most of them are not at war, most of the time.
And note that waging war in order to get customers is much harder than waging war in order to get land. Land can’t run away.
Most of them are not at war directly most of the time, because of the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons. Indirect wars are another matter. Currently, nearly ever major world power and pretty much every regional power in the Middle East is involved in a proxy war in Syria and Iraq, as they have been for the past several years. A similar though much smaller scale proxy war happened in Ukraine 2 years ago, and of course there were too many of these sorts of proxy wars to count during the Cold War.
Prior to the invention of nuclear weapons, direct wars between territorial monopoly powers were very common, the 2 world wars being only the most famous examples.
Smaller scale territorial monopoly powers tend to be, if anything, even more warlike, as demonstrated by the frequent gang wars in American inner cities and throughout Latin America.
Drug gangs wage war with each other to get customers all the time. This is mostly done by using force and intimidation to establish monopolies in the territory where customers live, so the distinction between wars over land and wars over customers isn’t always so clear-cut.
@NN
That’s true, but in that situation, what is being fought over is control over territory, not control over individual customers. You can see how the latter would be much more difficult, no?
As I said above, a situation in which all powers are staking claims on territories is in equilibrium. A situation in which all powers are staking claims on their individual customers is also in equilibrium. You can imagine others – for example, a situation in which powers stake claims, not on a small area of land for an indefinite time, but on a large area of land for a fixed time. To an extent, this is how a democracy works. It isn’t possible for someone to appoint himself king of a small part of a democratic nation, because the rights he claims are in direct conflict with the rights claimed by the party currently in power – to rule the entire nation for the duration of their term.
Although there might be temptations to invade, you do not get similar problems with one country being ruled in one way and a neighboring country being ruled in another, because the rights being claimed do not conflict.
And yet every mob and gang has turf.
When you have ten competing ancap protection agencies, that isn’t stable either. Organizations that, in the end, are required to protect their members from violence by “the other” have to have territorial integrity. Those ten competing protection agencies will simply end up by a monopoly. Because who is going to stop them?
What makes you so sure that territorial integrity is so vital? Other businesses don’t need territorial integrity. We get on perfectly fine with multiple different grocery stores operating in the same town.
As I said – territory based organization is obvious and easy to think of, while non territorial organization is kind of weird and obscure. And it’s difficult to shift from one to the other unless you do it all at once. So I’m not surprised that gangs tend to be territorial. I don’t think that means it’s clearly the only way things can be, though.
Because defense is inherently territorial.
One of the jobs of a security organization is to protect you from other security organizations. Really tough to do that when you don’t have territorial integrity.
Why would a security firm have any interest in attacking a customer of a competing security firm? Remember that violent disputes are expensive, and any security firm that does not want to waste its resources and be driven out of business will be inclined to avoid them as far as possible.
And being close enough to your customers to send someone out to help them does not require total control over the territory they are in.
Why would a security firm have any interest in attacking a customer of a competing security firm?
Customers of security firms will have an interest in attacking customers of competing security firms. The security firms will be obligated to back them up. This will be expensive, but it will also not be solved by polite negotiation at the retail level. At the wholesale level, the efficient negotiation between security firms will be for geographic territories and promises not to extend protection to residents of the other firm’s territory.
Bob, Ted, and Alice are in a love triangle. Bob’s security firm, ‘X’, acknowledges that if a man finds his wife in bed with another man it is normal that he’s going to kill them both and that should be the end of it, anyone tries to turn that into a feud and they’re feuding with Bob’s firm. Alice’s security firm ‘Y’ holds that domestic disputes are never to be resolved by violence and promises to protect Alice. Ted’s very expensive security firm ‘Z’ promises that Ted is always right, thus attacking Ted is always wrong and will always be avenged.
Bob comes home to find Ted and Alice in bed. Wackiness ensues. Firm ‘X’ notices that most of its customers are in Redville, where women know that getting caught fooling around is a death sentence and so the issue never comes up, but the tiny handful of customers they have in licentious Blue City are getting them in lots of bloody expensive feuds. ‘X’ stops offering policies that cover Blue City. And tells ‘Y’ that the Redville women who insist on buying their policies are causing so much trouble that it will be easier for ‘X’ to run them out of town en masse than fight the battles one at a time. ‘Y’ decides to pull out of Redville rather than fight. ‘Z’ is probably in merger talks by this point, hoping that either ‘X’ or ‘Y’ can sell their clients on a two-tier system if the price is right.
Different security companies offering substantially different protection policies in the same geographic area, is highly unlikely to be a stable equilibrium. And if they all offer the same policy, that’s a natural monopoly for whichever one can offer it cheapest.
Next month, I’m traveling over 3,000 miles beyond the territorial limits of my security organization. Should I be worried?
Depends on the reputation of the security agency with monopoly coverage in the area you’re travelling to. And on whether you insist on e.g. killing your wife if you catch her sleeping around, or sleeping around yourself, or whatever it is that you’re accustomed to doing at home but is out of policy in the new coverage area.
Well, then. If my security organization’s rep is good enough to keep me from being preyed upon by a rival organization in an area where the rival has a monopoly of force, then a fortiori it should be good enough to protect me in an area where neither has a monopoly. There are still any number of reasons why the ancap scheme might not work, but I don’t think the absolute need for a territorial monopoly is one of them.
Generally speaking, when you travel outside your homeland, you live by the rules of where you go, not where you are from. When in Rome.
Security organizations don’t come into another territory to protect their own from doing things there that are allowed at home. We did not go to war with Iran over journalists being arrested. We don’t stop stupid kids from getting flogged in Indonesia.
Yes, you should always be aware of the local rules when traveling there. Don’t do drugs in Indonesia unless you would like to risk execution.
If my security organization’s rep is good enough to keep me from being preyed upon by a rival organization in an area where the rival has a monopoly of force, then a fortiori it should be good enough to protect me in an area where neither has a monopoly.
There are no such organizations except perhaps Great Power governments, and I think it naively optimistic to expect that for-profit corporations in a competitive market will have the power and reputation of Great Power governments.
@John Schilling
Why do you think that is the case? A security firm that negotiated with other firms to agree on what its customers’ rights are, then only defending them when those rights are breached, would have enormously lower operating costs than a security firm that got into fights with whoever its customer asked it to.
I’m not seeing why you expect these security firms to be so steadfast in what they do and don’t defend. They are selling services, not taking positions – I don’t see why they would care about the services they offer their customers any more than the CEO of Walmart cares about groceries. Certainly not enough to refuse to negotiate or compromise.
Why do you think that is the case? A security firm that negotiated with other firms to agree on what its customers’ rights are, then only defending them when those rights are breached, would have enormously lower operating costs than a security firm that got into fights with whoever its customer asked it to.
If your vision of anarcho-capitalism is a cartel of security firms negotiating with each other to decide what rights their customers will be allowed, I’m missing the part where they have any incentive to offer their customers any rights beyond serfdom. Serfs are easier to keep out of trouble than free men, generally less troublesome to deal with, and you can take more of their money.
If a security firm decides to defect from the strict cartel model and negotiate with potential customers, that might lead to net profit through increased market share. But it will definitely lead to a different package of negotiated rights than the one where the firms just negotiated with each other. And when multiple firms start negotiating with their customers, they will do what every competing businesses do in every other industry – target different market segments. Still more different sets of negotiated rights, and that does lead you to conflicts like Bob having a contractual right to kill an unfaithful right and Alice having a contractual right to be protected from a vengeful cuckold.
I expect that in practice you’d see some combination of mergers and cartelization leading to a two-tiered industry. Serfdom for most, privilege and immunity for the rich, and probably wergild by proxy instead of feud and war. I also expect this to be dystopic in a way indistinguishable except for the rhetoric from your average kleptocracy, but I’m pretty sure I can manage to come down on the “rich” side of the divide so if this is really where you want to go…
@John Schilling
The model is one in which firms negotiate with one another to agree on rights for their respective customers relative to one another. So there will be one set of rights between customers of A and customers of B, another between customers of B and customers of C, and so on.
I don’t think the term ‘cartel’ is particularly applicable. The incentive they have to offer attractive rights and charge market rates is that negotiating for laws that people find appealing is how they get customers, and getting customers is how they make money. If they negotiate for and offer terms customers do not want, or charge higher than market rates, their customers and would-be customers will buy rights protection services from a competitor instead.
You could argue that the returns to slavery set a lower bound on the amount of money a security agency will charge its customers. But, the same argument applies much more strongly to territorial monopolies, i.e. states, as the costs of enslaving someone are much lower when you have a territorial monopoly than when you don’t.
The model is one in which firms negotiate with one another to agree on rights for their respective customers relative to one another. So there will be one set of rights between customers of A and customers of B, another between customers of B and customers of C, and so on.
That would seem to mean that before Ted can defend himself against Bob, who is trying to kill him for stealing his wife, he has to figure out which security firm Bob has contacted with and then check on the matrix of reciprocal contracted rights whether Bob’s rights in this affair take precedence over his own. Do they all wear armbands and carry cheat sheets or something? It’s a nice theory at the negotiating table, but I don’t see how it can be expected to work in the field.
And I’m pretty sure that when Bob paid extra for the contract that protects his interest in his wife’s fidelity and guarantees his right to defend that interest with lethal force, he meant “when I catch them in the act”, not after he’s had a chance to consult with his agent. More generally, people will value highly the rights they are confident they can always exercise, and not so much the “rights” that they need permission to exercise according to some complex formula that varies depending on who they are dealing with at any given time. Bob probably will pay extra for the security contract that says he can shoot the sonovabitch he catches sleeping with his wife, but not the one that says he can only do so if the violator is a customer of security services X, Y, or Z but not A, B, or C. Similarly, Ted will pay extra for the right to shoot back at anyone who is trying to shoot him, not so much if the “right” to self-defense has a web of exceptions like “…unless the aggrieved husband of a woman you slept with and who is a customer of Acme Security”.
If you model this as security companies negotiating amongst themselves for the most economical deal and then imposing it on their customers by fiat, that very nearly is a cartel from the outset and certainly will be by the time they realize there is no profit to them in allowing their customers anything more than serfdom. If customers are able to say “no, that deal is not good enough” and walk away, then customers with different priorities will drive competing firms with different priorities and that leads to an intractably complex web of who gets to shoot whom over what.
Security is a natural geographic monopoly, because geography is the one thing(*) that actually does solve the problem you recognize as requiring complex negotiation, in the field where negotiation is not possible. Is Bob allowed to kill Ted for sleeping with his wife? If Bob and Ted are in Pakistan, yes. If Bob and Ted are in California, no. The end. Eventually, the most powerful security agency or cartel in a region will impose that solution by force. Recognizing this allows you to implement all of the usual protections against abuse of monopoly power. Failing to recognize a market failure in the making, in a regime as critical as security, will be catastrophic.
* ED: To be fair, there’s a second thing that can do this, which is a simple one-axis class system where if Bob is a noble and Ted is a peasant Bob can kill Ted for sleeping with his wife, but not vice versa. An anarcho-capitalist network of competing security firms could well collapse to that stable system.
I think there are key differences between 1234 and 2016 that make that scenario irrelevant to policy today. Most importantly: the value of land today is an order of magnitude smaller than that of human capital. Anyone can acquire capital, not just a small aristocracy. The market for workers is highly competitive.
Perhaps we could compare the feudal lord to governments today. European social democracies take 40-50% of GDP in taxation. The lack of international labor mobility makes it hard to have a spiral toward low taxation as governments compete to attract workers. OTOH they do provide you with more than the feudal lord would. Again, the differences seem too large to make the feudal scenario relevant. But if “exit” is easy there’s no way this would happen.
“How does libertarianism stop this from happening?”
Sounds like a competitive market. If 50% is more than the market rent on the land, it will get competed down.
As I interpret the historical evidence, that’s what happened in response to the Black Death. The existing terms of serfdom represented the market equilibrium. But the terms were not continually renegotiated but set for the long term, possibly because that maintained the peasant’s incentive to keep up the value of his land.
That worked fine as long as economic conditions were not changing too much. But when population dropped a lot, the equilibrium value of labor went up, of land down, meaning that the lords were charging more than the market rent. So a new problem appeared–runaway serfs. They might run away to a city or to the next lord over, willing to offer them better terms in order to get some of his now vacant land back under cultivation. The lords tried to get the national government, i.e. the king, to prevent serfs from moving, thus giving them a monopoly, but with limited success.
To put my point differently, in your story don’t you have a competitive market for both land rent and rights enforcement? So why wouldn’t the price of both reflect cost and value as in any ordinary market? To push the cost above that, you need a cartel among rights enforcers or land owners, and some way of enforcing it–which, historically, means a government.
How does libertarianism stop this from happening?
The same way absolute monarchy stops the Red Queen from having your head lopped off. The same way Communism stops the commissar from deciding you have the means to work the fields twenty hours a day but your needs add up to a hundred grams of rice and beans. The same way democracy stops a majority of the voters from deciding to enslave everyone of your race and impeach any judge or civil servant who objects.
In any functional system of government, the buck has to stop somewhere. If the person or persons with ultimate buck-stopping authority uniformly decide to screw you over, you’re screwed.
There’s one king. The commissars all march in lockstep. The will of the majority of the voters is binding on all of them. But if one single free landowner out of thousands wants to give you a fair deal, you can get a fair deal. And if there’s more land than peasants, the ones who lost the last round of musical peasants will profit from offering you a fair deal.
If there’s not more land than peasants, some peasants are going to starve no matter how you organize things. The ideal solution there is to Be Not A Peasant. Would you guess your odds are better with a king, a commissar, a mass of mostly-satisfied-peasant voters, or a community of free men and women?
You’ll never get a real guarantee that the society you live in won’t kill you, enslave you, or starve you. All you can do is play the odds and keep your options open. Liberty has better odds and more options.
This interview with the founder of “Detroit Threat Management Center” seems to speak well of the possibility of private defense firms functioning in the absence of (effective) state-based policing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2IbjhV00as
It also goes to show just how much room there is for improvement over traditional policing methods, as there was in taxi services before Uber, etc.
We can theorize all day about all kinds of crazy scenarios which might come to pass, but all that isn’t worth even one real life example of the thing working in practice, imo.
Sometimes people say “X is true” when what they really mean is “there is a vast and complicated debate on the subject of X, and I happen to come down on the side that believes X is true.”
For example, if someone said “an increase in the minumum wage would have no significant impact on unemployment.” Some people genuinely believe it, and they can point to relevant evidence, but it is a controversial minority view.
I’d imagine that sometimes it is a dishonest debate tactic, and sometimes this is done in genuine ignorance of the controversy or when the speaker thinks that everyone he is talking to agrees with him. And of course often it’s just brevity. At any rate is is really really common.
Is there a term for this?
Isn’t that just basic begging the question, acting as if something that requires argument is true without making the argument?
I thought begging the question was when you assumed the CONCLUSION itself was true, not just one of the premises. E.g. ‘I know everything in the bible is true, because it says so in the bible and that must be true because everything in the bible is true’ (I don’t think this is a fair representation of many Christians, just an easy to find example in my head)
So it would only be begging the question if the issue under dispute was ‘does raising minimum wage cause unemployment’ – in practice it’s likely to be something like
“Would raising minimum wage be good for the poor”
“Would raising minimum wage be good for the economy”
or simply
“Should we raise minimum wage”
Well “X is true” is of course compatible with “there is a vast and complicated debate on the subject of X, and I happen to come down on the side that believes X is true.” In general people parse statements like “X is true/right/good/beautiful” as having an implicit ‘I believe’ before them…
I can recognise there’s a ‘vast and complicated debate’ about creationism and still have a position on it. Or climate change, or economic policy, or anything else.
If there’s a problem here, presumably it’s that people don’t just say ‘X is true’ but ‘everyone agrees X is true’, ‘it has been proved that X is true’ etc. I agree that if talking to people who aren’t exposed to the issue you should flag where the premises you’re relying on are heavily disputed (even in the creationist example) – is your problem that this isn’t happening?
By the way: you seem to be implicitly stating as a truth that the belief thatan increase in minimum wage would have no significant impact on unemployment is a ‘controversial minority view’. You haven’t however given evidence for that view being a minority view, or particularly controversial (though controversial could mean many things). So a non-expert observer might take it on trust that there’s some rigorous evidence showing only a minority of people hold that view, but I doubt you have such evidence.
“an increase in minimum wage would have no significant impact on unemployment is a ‘controversial minority view’. ”
If “unemployment” means “the measured national unemployment rate” and “significant” means “substantially more than the usual month to month fluctuation,” than I think the position is a pretty uncontroversial majority view.
The usual view of economists (with some notable exceptions) is that raising the minimum wage increases the unemployment rate of workers who were receiving minimum wage. About one percent of workers receive the minimum wage. So even if the increase resulted in a quarter of them becoming unemployed, that would be an increase in the national unemployment rate of only about .25 percentage points.
On the other hand, the view that a sizable increase in the minimum wage would not produce a significant increase in the unemployment rate of workers currently receiving minimum wage, or low wage/low skill workers more generally, is probably still a controversial minority view among economists.
the view that a sizable increase in the minimum wage would not produce a significant increase in the unemployment rate of workers currently receiving minimum wage, or low wage/low skill workers more generally, is probably still a controversial minority view among economists.
This is what I meant.
There’s also the question of whether, if raising the minimum wage does not increase short-term unemployment among people receiving the minimum wage, it will do something else bad.
For instance, will it lead employers to demand greater performance from their employees, in which case the wage gains come at the cost of a less pleasant working environment? Or will it lead them to cut employee hours in order to make them ineligible for benefits, in which case the wage gains come at the expense of workforce size efficiency?
Or will it lead to many low-skilled workers dropping out of the job market altogether, thus pushing down the official “unemployment rate”?
The main issue that it’s extremely difficult to see how the minimum wage could possibly do what its supporters want it to do, which is to transfer profits from employers to employees.
@Vox Imperatoris
I think that is an overly restrictive definition of what minimum wage supporters want. I think what they actually want is for it to transfer income to low wage employees from whoever. Ideally it would come from the rich business owners, but even if it comes from customers paying more per item, that’s fine too.
I agree with you that for it to actually have this effect would require an unbelievably implausible set of assumptions.
Perhaps it could be phrased “move more of the value of economic activity to those lowest in the hierarchy of production.”
It won’t do that, either, but the phrasing seems to be suitably all-encompassing. 🙂
That being said, I disagree with Anonymous: I think that the majority of people who want the minimum wage raised think that that is exactly what it will do – transfer surplus profits from employers to employees. Heck, most of them probably don’t even care if it’s profit as opposed to simply revenue.
“The main issue that it’s extremely difficult to see how the minimum wage could possibly do what its supporters want it to do, which is to transfer profits from employers to employees.”
Well, presumably, if we make it impossible to employ people who earn low wages, only more productive workers will be employed. (Or optimistically, more investment to make low paid workers more productive.) Since the real cost of production is workers’ time, stopping doing things that waste time for little value is to the workers’ advantage. (And if capitalists derive their profits from exploitation of workers, to their detriment.)
@ Mark – most of the truebelievers that I have spoken with would agree with you – raising the minimum wage means that the whole of the minimum-wage earning population would be earning more money. (This statement is often coupled with a statement to the effect that the employeer, company or corp is ‘rich’ and can afford it.)
This often goes hand in hand with the idea that paying the employees more will transform them into better workers.
(And they say Catholics believe in impossible miracles…)
I suppose, since I brought up the topic, I should say that my view is that the minimum wage at current levels is low enough that it probably doesn’t matter very much either way, and it gets *way* more attention than it deserves, probably because it’s superficially easy to understand compared to most policies. Also, that a very large minimum wage hike such as a national $15 wage would be net harmful.
@ Chalid:
I think the federal minimum wage is mostly harmless, but I am not so sure about local minimum wages in many states and cities.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily a problem. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. I think you have accurately noted the main case when it is a problem, that you can mislead people who are less familiar with the topic. (This did happen to me recently.) Also, by eliding the difference between “true” and “probably true” and “maybe true” you can fool yourself and others by constructing logical chains with weak links.
Anyway, something doesn’t need to be a problem to have a label.
Re: Survey: for the mental health questions, what should we answer if we were diagnosed but the diagnosis no longer applies?
On the nootropics survey:
The directions seem to confound two separate concepts:
– Does the substance have noticeable effects (i.e. obviously not a placebo), and
– Are the effects positive/useful
This made it difficult to answer for me. Specifically, for something with obvious, strong effects that were only situationally useful, and several side effects. Is that closer to 10, because the effects are strong and obvious (but not “life-changing” in the positive sense)? Or closer to 1, because the usefulness barely justifies the side effects (but it’s not at all placebo-like?).
I frankly had no idea where on the scale to score that, and could see an argument for any possible value. That tells me your survey results are likely to be hard to interpret. I think you need a “potency” axis and a “positivity” axis as separate questions.
What substance, out of curiosity and if you’re comfortable telling?
What is stupidity?
IMO, (everyday) stupidity has more to do with our attitude towards knowledge and words than our capacity to link those words. At least for understanding (perhaps conceiving of new ideas is different), limited working memory can be overcome with abstraction. (Though if you have to abstract too much (relations too complex for brain) you won’t feel as if the terms you are using are linked to anything in particular)
I once heard the statement: “stupidity is acting against one’s better knowledge as could have been recalled within 10 seconds before the stupid action.” I like it. Specifically, stupidity is not lack of knowledge, it is a failure to either (i) notice situations where relevant knowledge could be recalled or to (ii) act according to that knowledge.
Makes sense.
I think what I was thinking of above is a version of this – people forgetting how knowledge itself works (or acting against their knowledge of how knowledge works).
Someone with a really limited mental capacity could make entirely intelligent statements as long as they made sure that those statements were in keeping with their current knowledge.
There is nothing unintelligent about the statement “I like cheese” – intelligence isn’t related to true intelligibility.
Also, thinking about intelligence allowing you to manipulate your circumstances, I would say it depends more on how other people view intelligence, rather than intelligence itself. I think we see that – there is no real difference in life outcomes, except those related to the social structure.
If we consider intelligence to be a measure of precision and accuracy on pattern-matching, then stupidity is either over-pattern-matching to the detriment of accuracy, or failing to pattern-match from a lack of precision.
Risk aversion question: I’m a briton travelling to North America for two weeks in the early part of March. I’m spending a week with friends in Toronto and a week with friends in Princeton. Should I get travel insurance? (Are there good reasons above and beyond risk aversion to get travel insurance?)
Will the NHS pay your hospital bills if you’re injured or fall ill in the US? If not, travel medical insurance might not be a bad idea. You’re unlikely to need it but the pricing of medicine here assumes that nobody is actually paying the sticker price, which means it can be rather high for uninsured folks.
If by travel insurance you mean the little rider thing that will refund your ticket price if you have to cancel your trip at the last minute, it’s not the odds play, but given that it’s usually very cheap in an absolute sense (like thirty bucks on four or five hundred dollars worth of tickets) I usually buy it because I am a worrier and the peace of mind is valuable to me.
If you mean some other kind I have no opinion.
Relevant to stuff posted by onyomi, and the education realist piece Troy posted in response, but also to the “cuckservative” thing that seems to be getting discussed recently – this is something I’ve batted around before – but I have been thinking about it lately. The far-right people who use that portmanteau (not all who are far right use it, but all who use it are far right) seem to basically accuse mainstream conservatives of either being scared of the left, of trying to win over/impress the left, or both. I think it’s something different – I think it’s that, as things are right now, it is largely the far right that considers intellectual difference as something inherent and heavily biological – or at the very least, considers intellectual difference on a group level as inherent and heavily biological.
I think this is the cut-off point for far right: someone becomes toxic to the mainstream right when they start talking about race/ethnicity and intelligence. Compare, say, Breitbart (on the mainstream side of that line) to TakiMag (a little bit or so on the other side of that line). When mainstream conservatives talk about “culture” as determining things like school success, income, etc etc – they like talking about a “culture of poverty” for instance – I don’t think it’s a dog whistle. I think they really do believe that if everyone were to raise their kids right, not do drugs, work hard, stay in school, go to church, and vote Republican, most social problems would be solved. That is, they see ability to succeed in the relatively intellectual environment of a modern society as largely being about upbringing and personal virtue.
The mainstream right-winger, therefore, shares with most of the left the belief that most everyone can achieve success. Where they differ, then, is that they do what the left sees as blaming the victims: where the left will blame discrimination, an economic system that screws the poor, etc, the right will attribute the problems to communities, individuals, parents, teachers’ unions, etc. They are unlikely to opine that some people don’t have what it takes.
On the left, the split is between those who look for equality of opportunity (let’s call them liberals) and equality of outcome (let’s call them progressives – some of them call themselves radicals, but many of them don’t really seem to be arguing for a radical reformation of society). They both see the mainstream right as offensively wrong on what causes these social problems and how to fix them – but they share with the mainstream right the belief that these social problems can be fixed.
In comparison, the far right is fairly alone in taking the view that a fair number of people are never going to, and cannot, amount to much, at least intellectually speaking, with resulting social problems. As such, it’s not that the mainstream right deep down agrees with them but is too cowardly or weak to say so – it’s that the mainstream right has a completely different understanding of these issues.
Does this make sense at all?
The major names in IQ realism, HBD, or whatever, aren’t far right. Charles Murray, Razib Khan, Steve Sailer, Steve Hsu–none of them are far right. I’m not anything approaching far right–I’m a Trump supporter. What you call the “far right” is usually called the “alt right” these days.
I don’t disagree with your characterization of the “mainstream rightwinger”, but the alt-righters usually call them “the elites”. That is, there’s not much difference between the policy makers, academics, etc, of the right and left at the top.
The alt-right, if it’s who I think it is, isn’t really “right” at all. It’s made up of disillusioned leftists who have adopted some caricature of what they think the right is (and some of them know it is a caricature, but others do not appear to), along with a quasi-religion which tells them God is on the side of the left.
Beats me. I’m not alt right, either. Most people who acknowledge reality about IQ are pretty traditional, politically.
@Scott Alexander: Question. If I reply to the dog-whistle here, would I be violating the rule against race/gender in open threads?
On the one hand, the “no gender and race in the Open Thread” policy has been more of a “Tone it down, guys” than a strictly applied ban, particularly since there are no more alternative OTs to discuss the subject.
On the other hand, Reign of Terror.
If that was geared towards me, “reality” doesn’t mean “inferiority” or even “genetically based”.
That is the impression that I’ve gotten – that the alt-right is made up heavily of people who are not from a “traditional” right-wing (mainstream or far) background. They’re of “blue tribe” stock or however you want to put it. There’s also a strong streak of disaffected libertarianism.
But their political positions, such as they are, are those that would be associated more with the far right than any other group.
I guess this all depends on the circles you run in. My own circle is mostly based on conservative/Republican types who realized (I’m sure some might argue that “realize” should be in quotation marks) that the Republican Party, and mainstream conservatism in general, are not capable (and in many cases, quite unwilling) of defending our social institutions, our culture, our way of life.
A common refrain is “what are you actually conserving?” The answer is, of course, nothing; at a recent Republican debate, John Kasich claimed that conservatism was about “growing the economy and creating jobs”…and nothing else. This was not meaningfully challenged by anyone present.
I’m aware of the “blue tribe” alt-righters, but they’re largely not taken seriously, and in most cases objects of ridicule.
@ nyccine
(I’m sure some might argue that “realize” should be in quotation marks)
It usually should, everywhere, imo.
@nyccine:
The word “background” was a poor choice. Perhaps “context” is better. I get the impression that a lot of alt-right types aren’t coming from a traditional “red tribe” background.
Of course, it’s hardly like there’s a census or anything, especially given that internet-based stuff is pseudonymous.
The alt-right is full of people who noticed that God isn’t real and so decided to become Satanists.
Nice, I may steal.
The alt-right is a part of the far right, though, isn’t it?
Even if the guys you are naming are not themselves of the far right, those who favourably reference them often are. You’re not going to find left-wing or mainstream right sources favourably citing Steve Sailer, for instance.
As for Trump, his supporters are majority mainstream right, but he has a far-right following that is kind of a funhouse mirror version of how a lot of people quite to the left of the US norm (which admittedly is not that far left) took Obama as their champion, projected their hopes and dreams on him, and were baffled and disappointed when he turned out to be a fairly ordinary centrist Democrat.
>Does this make sense at all?
Seems completely on target to me. The only part I’m not 100% sure about is this:
>The far-right people who use that portmanteau (not all who are far right use it, but all who use it are far right) seem to basically accuse mainstream conservatives of either being scared of the left, of trying to win over/impress the left, or both.
I’m pretty sure there’s a racial element to it, too. The “cuckservatives” are selling out white interests letting, themselves get “cucked” by minorities by not being as anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim as they are. 4chan fascists came up with the term and they got it from a porn subgenre in which a (usually black) guy fucks a (usually white) guy’s wife.
That element is the strongest, but 1. I wanted this to be about a broader way of thinking, because comment rules, and 2. It seems different in degree rather than in kind.
In the same way that mainstream Republicans will insist that they are not racists, or against the poor – believing that the world is a place where everyone who works hard etc etc can become successful and hopefully a Republican voter, probably in 5 or 10 years or whenever they will be insisting they are not homophobes – having in mind a world where everyone who gets married and stays monogamous and has 2.5 kids and a golden lab in the suburbs (and hopefully votes Republican) will be accepted, regardless of sexuality. And so on.
The charge by the far right is that the mainstream right has adopted the left-wing values of yesteryear, out of fear or servility – not realizing that because they hold values that would have been left-wing in 1960, or 1980, or 2000, they will never placate or impress the left.
I don’t think it’s fear or servility – rather, the mainstream right has for a long time preached a certain “everyone is equally able to become respectable Republicans” message.
I’m pretty sure there’s a racial element to it, too. The “cuckservatives” are selling out white interests letting, themselves get “cucked” by minorities by not being as anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim as they are. 4chan fascists came up with the term and they got it from a porn subgenre in which a (usually black) guy fucks a (usually white) guy’s wife.
I’ve only ever seen this explanation for the origin of the term used in articles on left-leaning sites, which seem to have a vested interest in discrediting the term and anyone who uses it, and find it perplexing that anyone actually believes it.
The word “cuckold” has been a common part of the English language at least as far back as Chaucer, and the idea that they chose it specifically because a subgenre of porn often involves black men seems like grasping at straws, at best. Even if the earliest known use of the phrase referenced pornography, (which I haven’t seen any actual evidence for) it’s safe to say that the majority of the people who use the term have never actually seen the message board post where it presumably originated, so ascribing a racial element to the term still seems like a major stretch.
That isn’t to say you can’t find a racist element within the alt-right; you most certainly can, and a large one at that. But this push I’ve seen in some places to assign a racial motivation to a portmanteau of two common English words, which have no inherent racial connection on their own, strikes me as dishonest at worst and willfully ignorant at best.
Yeah, I doubt they’d have any less disdain for a dude jerking off watching a white guy fuck his wife. Maybe more, even.
There’s probably more race-based stuff in cuckold porn than porn in general, but I have no interest in doing a demographic analysis of cuckold porn.
However, I’m pretty sure that “cuck” as a shortened form of “cuckold” does derive from pornography. “Cuckold” is a relatively esoteric word these days. And the way that “cuckservative” gets used definitely seems to indicate a racial/ethnic angle. It could be used in regards to anything where the right is supposedly knuckling under, but mostly seems to be used about things like immigration.
This doesn’t match my experience. I’m okay with “HBD” ideas, but if somebody uses the word “cuckservative” I usually take that as a sign that it’s not worth listening to anything they have to say.
I think “ceding moral high ground to the Left” is a pretty fair description of this.
For example, take the standard conservative response to communism–“Great theory, but it doesn’t work in practice”–and compare it to the Objectivist response to communism–“A monstrous theory whose tragic real-world results are entirely predictable.” If one believes the latter (and I think most conservatives do, but probably only indirectly) wording it like the former seems pretty clearly done to avoid the fight over whether or not communism as a theory is monstrous or great. It’s also a practical mistake–if you don’t fight the dreamers being communist, that exerts cultural pressure, and pretending it’s “just engineering difficulties” instead of a fatally flawed foundation leads to engineers thinking “wait, I know how to solve engineering difficulties!”
I do think there’s a similar dynamic with the questions of individual and racial equality, where the alt right are serving as the Objectivists of human biodiversity, willing to not just say that racial equality doesn’t work in practice but that it doesn’t even work in theory.
I think there’s something to this.
I am definitely a “mainstream” Republican but I find myself disgusted when mainstream Republicans refuse to call out progressive dogmatics on their bologna. Bernie Sanders doesn’t have “unworkable” ideas (as Hillary Clinton might say), Bernie Sanders is morally repugnant (as Hillary Clinton probably actually believes).
One must actually make a MORAL case for one’s ideas, and not simply suggest that one’s own ideas are simply more “realistic.” Have some damn spine and fight for what you believe in.
Anything less is defeatism.
“Communism is good in theory but bad in practice” doesn’t necessarily mean that conservatives think that the motivation behind Communism is good, only that it’s sympathetic. In Moral Foundations terms, conservatives share the communists’ taste for fairness to a certain degree while acknowledging that it’s bad in other theoretical aspects. Also it’s intellectually easier to point to bad outcomes than to debate theory, so it’s a way of giving a good argument without committing to too much.
Does this make sense at all?
It does.
I’m not sure if I agree with it but I do think you might be on to something there.
The odd part of this is that, at least in my view, left-wing arguments for redistribution are far more convincing if they are accompanied by the claim that the poor are fundamentally incapable of ever providing for themselves.
Most of the reason I find true-believer left-wingers so annoying on this score is that they will not admit this.* “Redistribution” and “transfer payments” are exactly the same thing, logically speaking. But in my private classification system, I find the argument for transfer payments reasonable and the argument for redistribution irretrievably evil. If you want to help those who cannot help themselves, I’m listening. If you want to impose your version of economic fairness on the world because you are convinced it is correct, I oppose you and everything you stand for.
*Although “the poor” is a very large and heterogeneous group: some of them could doubtless provide for themselves under some circumstances. Assuming those circumstances do not apply in the context of this discussion yields the result above.
None of us “provide for ourselves” – we fit into the social structure in some way. You believe that society is meritocratic, so you are more likely to be sympathetic to the idea that the social structure might be unfair to those who are incapable.
Ho hum.
The (hard) left is more concerned with the fact that a society that reflects human values has to be driven by individual choice – are we being made to do things that are contrary to human nature? Can we redistribute power in such a way as to make it easier for people to say “no”?
Fairness implies conscious action in this context, in my private classification system. (You are under no obligation to respect my private classification system, I gladly concede.)
To the extent that the system (not individuals) discriminates against people for non-meritocratic reasons, it is unfair. We should work on that.
If your position is that it is “unfair” that some people are better at doing things that other people will pay them to do than other people, and hence any system where one’s abilities control one’s life outcomes is inherently unfair, I disagree. If it is likewise your position that it is “unfair” that we don’t all start at zero, I also disagree.
(My position on “fairness”)
If we’re playing football, and you win, I’m not going to start demanding the trophy.
At the same time, if I’m not particularly interested in playing football, I think I should have the right to not play, and the right to ignore your trophy.
I’m pretty sure I made the exact same argument you are giving here, in the context of a discussion on Charles Murray.
Yep, here it is:
One thing that’s interesting about Charles Murray is his tendency to “flip the script” on progressives. It is a fundamental progressive belief that things like crime, poverty, and drug abuse are caused by social factors out of the control of individuals, and therefore those individuals aren’t really morally responsible for what they do. It’s “there but for the grace of God go I”.
Now, Murray believes the same thing but with genetic factors instead of social factors. However, a curious thing is that many believers in the genetic superiority of one group moralize this. Like, they try to somehow make it an accomplishment of white people that they are genetically superior. Hence “white pride”. Where Murray seems to confuse progressives like those at the SPLC is that he doesn’t believe in “white pride” or anything like that. In his view (quite sensibly, given his premises), it’s not lesser races’ fault that they are lesser, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
For instance, take this quote on laziness:
See, most people implicitly believe in free will and hold that laziness is a moral flaw. You have a choice about whether to be lazy, and therefore it’s just if you’re punished for being lazy. Murray doesn’t accept this. It’s not poor people’s fault that they are lazy; it’s a matter of genetics. We shouldn’t blame them for it; we should accept it and treat it like a medical disease.
So in a sense, you might except people like Murray to be allied with the progressives on societal determinism, with it being a gentlemanly internal disagreement on what are the exact causes of this determinism.
But curiously, the social-economic determinists end up allied with the believers in free will because they share a common premise more relevant to politics: that it is possible for those who constitute the underclass to no longer be an underclass if only the right steps are taken. For one side, it’s individual responsibility; for the other, it’s government intervention.
However, the genetic determinists end up being the hated enemies of both because they believe that, essentially, little can be done to change society, as the deterministic factors are immutable, at least during one person’s lifespan.
But as Douglas Knight points out, Murray isn’t one-hundred percent faithful to this because to a large extent he’s also a cultural determinist. If we teach the poor better cultural values, this can help them deal compensate for their genetic inferiority. Yet progressives still dislike this intensely for a couple of reasons: a) they see it as victim-blaming, since the conventional view is that people are responsible for the cultural values they hold, making “black people have a culture of laziness” little better than “black people are poor because they choose to be lazy”; but perhaps more importantly b) the proposed cultural changes move in the exact opposite direction from what progressives think to be the way to make society less oppressive of the poor, and c) they see the cultural arguments rightly or wrongly as just a “code” for racial arguments, making “black people have a culture of laziness” a secret code for “black people are genetically lazy”.
While the far right does tend to claim moral superiority, this is pretty much it. The mainstream right, and the whole left, favours “soft” explanations. The differences between right and left are who they blame, while the differences within the left focus on how to measure the problem and how to fix it.
The question is, why is there not really a pocket of the left favouring “hard” explanations? I suppose the original Progressives were this, but they’re gone now.
Somewhat related to the above discussion of IQ, and also to the findings about how early life intervention shows an improvement in scores which fades over time:
I have an admittedly somewhat elitist notion that, if true, would explain a lot about education in general:
The amount of information/level of complexity that will “stick” in a person’s memory/cognitive ability is much lower and less responsive to change than the amount he/she may “learn” long enough to pass a test.
In other words, there may be some concepts or modes of thinking which you could teach say, an IQ 100 person to do long enough to pass a test, but which they would never retain or continue to practice on their own without constant external reinforcement.
What made me think about this is how the insane Chinese education system produces citizens who are, at best, marginally better educated than the much more lackadaisical American system produces (and this with a citizenry which probably has a slightly higher average IQ). Vast quantities of information get crammed down children’s throats long enough to past crazy tests, but, for most of them, most of it just evaporates.
This, to me, is a way of trying to explain these (admittedly heavily edited for humor’s sake, yet I have a very strong sense I could get similar results if I tried it myself) “man on the street” videos where you talk to college students and get them to express their feelings about the recent death of former president Franklin Roosevelt.
Everyone learned who FDR was in school, but not everyone remembered. To some extent this is a matter of interest, but to some extent, I feel like it’s just native intelligence acting as a kind of “sieve.” Smarter people have smaller holes in their sieves: some fine-grained distinctions will never stick in the minds of dumber people, but maybe more importantly, you can feel like you’ve filled the bowl of the dumber person and yet be frustrated over and over to realize that their “holes” are just too big to prevent certain levels of detail or abstraction from continually flowing out.
Put another way, I feel like there are two ways of “knowing” who FDR is: there’s “knowing” the name of some guy in a textbook who did some things at some point, and then there’s having a sense of some kind of historical flow and where this person fit into it.
Possible implication: people with IQ<100 derive no lasting benefit from going to high school; people with IQ<110 derive no lasting benefit from college; people with IQ<120 derive no lasting benefit from postgrad work, and so on (just as a rough estimate).
Relevant: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/the-myth-of-they-werent-ever-taught/
Wow, that is pretty much exactly what I’m talking about. And also my experience teaching.
For some students, it’s just like “oh, hmm, you seem to have forgotten this thing we practiced 1000 times last semester; lets go over it one more time. Okay, got it now? Yes? Okay, let’s just do a bunch of exercise to make sure it’s really firm in your memory? Got it? Yes? Okay, now let’s move on…” [one week later student makes exact same mistake as consistently as if the review, or, indeed, the original instruction never happened]
And this to me, far better than “there just aren’t enough educational opportunities!” explains all these examples of what seems like unfamothable ignorance on the part of otherwise totally functional and competent adults.
Remembering stuff has nothing to do with IQ, if I recall correctly.
A saw a video that, assuming it was accurate, demonstrated in a striking way the lack of education of highly schooled people. The interviewer asked a bunch of people the reason for the seasons. All or almost all answered that it was because the Earth was closer to the sun in the summer than in the winter. It apparently did not occur to them that, if that was the explanation, seasons would be the same in the northern and southern hemisphere–and they are not.
The people being interviewed were graduating Harvard students.
That sounds more like a test for quick thinking than education, unless your curriculum includes a class on celestial orbits.
“Remembering stuff has nothing to do with IQ, if I recall correctly.”
Based on my personal experience, at least, smart people tend to have much better memories, at least for facts and concepts, if not for “the look of the sky on that one summer day.” Of course, what we experience as “smart” in an everyday context is not perfectly correlated with IQ, but I think it’s close enough.
Also, having a good memory, I think, is part of what we mean when we colloquially say someone is “smart,” even if memory isn’t explicitly tested on an IQ test. It may be that the two types of “smartness” are more independent than we think, but I’ve never met someone who was dumb otherwise yet who had an amazing memory. And all the people with remarkable memories I’ve ever met have been otherwise smart and I’m sure would have done well on an IQ test.
Additional example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZZpk_9k8E
I know this is supposed to be funny, but it actually makes me really sad and even a little upset. Like, why, as a society, have we wasted and are we continuing to waste these peoples’ time and everyone else’s time and money keeping them in a classroom for 15+ years? I mean, they are obviously functional people who will probably grow up to have jobs and families and reasonably fulfilling lives, but clearly classroom-type learning just doesn’t work for them. (I also don’t want them voting, but then, I don’t want anyone voting).
To be fair, they could just be thinking of axial tilt making the hemisphere experiencing summer a little bit closer than when it is experiencing winter, at least near the poles, though I’m not sure that’s even true since the orbit isn’t circular and perihelion is in January. I guess that makes it true in the southern hemisphere.
The video David mentions is here. It includes not just Harvard students, but also faculty.
It is extremely different from Onyomi’s video. Many Texas Tech students admit that they don’t know and those that answer are obviously uncertain, while Harvard students confidently assert their answers.
Wow, that is really bad. When I first heard David describe the responses I thought, “well, that is a harder question than ‘who won the Civil War'” and also that there are at least two ways I can imagine someone being wrong about this:
The first, I think, more defensible position (though maybe I only think that since I held it before googling the question), is that the Earth’s tilt causes one hemisphere to be closer to the sun and one hemisphere to be farther away at any given time. Not knowing that the Northern hemisphere is technically closer to the sun during the winter but that the amount of sunlight is the key factor seems understandable to me (though I also am a humanities PhD who hasn’t taken a physics or astronomy class since high school, and if I had wrongly said that the Earth was closer to the sun during the northern hemisphere’s summer, I think I would at least have attributed the increased heat to an increase in sunlight).
The second way to be wrong about this question is to forget about the Earth’s tilt entirely and think it is just the distance of the entire Earth from the sun which is causing the seasons. This position seems like it should be much more vulnerable to common sense, since it makes no sense if you know that the seasons are reversed on opposite hemispheres (though I actually wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of Americans didn’t know it’s hotter in Australia in December than July).
When I heard about it, I assumed most of the students were making error 1, when it seems like a fair number of them are making error 2. What’s worse, some of them claim to have taken classes in physics and astronomy at Harvard.
Though my initial reaction was that the ignorance on display at Texas Tech was much worse since, at least from the perspective of a humanities PhD, the question of who won the Civil War seems easier than that of what causes the seasons, knowing the details of the Harvard case seems to make it more unfathomable, especially since these are not all philosophy majors and people who get into Harvard, by and large, have already proven themselves not to be the sort of person with a large-holed colander-like brain out of which basic facts seem to constantly leak.
Even scarier, as Douglas points out, the Harvard students assert their wrong answers with bold confidence.
Two points:
1. “Good memory” isn’t an unambiguous category. I am very bad at remembering people’s names, much worse than my wife at remembering details of a book we both read some time ago.
But I know a very large amount of poetry by heart.
2. The idea that the seasons are due to one hemisphere being closer to the sun because of axial tilt only makes sense for someone who has no idea at all of astronomical scale. The earth has a diameter of 8000 miles. The distance to the sun is about 92 million miles. So the effect would be a change in distance of something under one part in ten thousand.
“The idea that the seasons are due to one hemisphere being closer to the sun because of axial tilt only makes sense for someone who has no idea at all of astronomical scale.”
I don’t think I do have any idea of astronomical scale, though when you state the numbers it seems obvious, and, in my defense, I at least knew that the Earth had a tilt and that the seasons were reversed in either hemisphere (and also that they get more extreme toward the poles and disappear at the equator).
Also, had I been asked the question cold I do think I would at least have realized that the amount of sunlight reaching an area at any given time of year was the key factor, though I also would have guessed wrongly that the northern hemisphere was closer to the sun in July than in December.
“I am very bad at remembering people’s names…But I know a very large amount of poetry by heart.”
I think the variable nature of memory actually reveals something of the inextricable nature of memory and intelligence. I think much of what we mean when we say “he is good at math,” or “she is good at music” is actually “his brain has a good mathematical pattern recognizer” or “her brain has a good musical pattern recognizer.” After all, how many people do you know who are good at music yet who have a bad memory for tunes?
I, for example, am good at learning foreign languages, which one might attribute to my brain’s ability to easily pick up on patterns in grammar, phonology, etc. I also find these things interesting, but it may be because one tends to find more interest where one easily perceives patterns. This also translates into me having a “good memory for vocabulary,” which I think cannot be a coincidence.
I am less good at math, maybe because my brain doesn’t pick up on or hold on to mathematical patterns as well. To a math teacher I may seem to have the “colander brain” where I seemingly grasp a concept yet it also slips away easily. This might make it seem like I have a “bad memory for numbers,” but it may be that I am actually just not perceiving mathematical patterns in the same fullness as someone with a better math brain, making those patterns seem less significant to my memory. In fact, before I stopped taking math classes altogether after high school, I distinctly remember quite often having the experience of taking a test and thinking “well, it made sense when the teacher explained it or when I was reading the textbook, but now…”
Generally I find there is a loose correlation between strong pattern recognizers: it’s not too common to find someone amazing at math who can’t write a short essay, though the reverse seems to be a bit more common. But it can be very loose, as it’s also not at all uncommon to find someone very talented in one area and average or even below average in others.
Especially interesting is the case of the “idiot-savant,” for whom it seems like the pattern recognizer for one thing has almost strengthened itself at the expense of other areas. A weak version of this may be much more common: the stereotype that nerds are bad at picking up social cues, for example.
And this may help explain the seeming unfathomable ignorance of otherwise functional people: they simply don’t perceive patterns in physics, language, history, or whatever in enough fullness for those patterns to feel at all significant to their memories. These same people might have great memories for faces or names, because those things feel significant to them on a gut level.
The big question to me as an educator myself is: do we need more “triage” to determine who can get anything out of say, math class or history class and push students into training that will be useful to them earlier, or do we want to try to keep teaching the same knowledge set but with somehow improved methods? I think I could have learned more math and physics than I did had the instruction been more creative and interesting, but I also don’t think I’d ever be a good enough mathematician or physicist to contribute substantively to those fields. So maybe the only mistake was making me take as much math and physics as I did? Yet it also feels like a failure as a teacher to say, essentially, that some students are just incapable of learning the subject you’re supposed to teach.
Now that I’m thinking about the seasons, I’m not sure how much of the temperature difference is sunlight having to go through more atmosphere during the winter, and how much is shorter/longer days.
Are the seasons more extreme depending on which hemisphere you’re in? Do celestial bodies with little or no atmosphere have much in the way of seasons?
I would have answered the question about the cause of the seasons correctly, but that’s because that’s the sort of thing I can remember, not because I really understand the situation.
The reason for seasons is a difficult topic. I am not surprised that Harvard students do not know understand it. I am somewhat surprised that they do not know the “teacher’s password” that it is the “tilt of the earth,” but maybe it just isn’t in the curriculum. I remember it being covered in school once, in third grade.
No, the answer isn’t the length of days. The longest days are summers at the poles. Summers at the poles are warmer than winters at the poles, but they’re both colder than any season at the equator.
In theory, the seasons in the southern hemisphere should be more extreme than those in the northern hemisphere because the sun is closer in southern hemisphere summer than in northern hemisphere summer. But it’s only 1%, which is small compared to lots of other factors.
The sun is hotter at noon than at dawn or dusk. The sun is hotter when higher in the sky. It is higher in the sky at the equator than at the poles and it is higher in the sky in summer than in winter. But why does the height of the sun matter? No, it isn’t the atmosphere. Imagine that the world is flat. It isn’t, but the square mile you’re standing on is pretty close to a disk. How much energy does it absorb from the sun? Having detached the disk from the earth, we can talk about its shadow. The shadow is all the light that didn’t get past it, all the light that it absorbed. If it faces the sun, it catches a square mile of sunlight and has a square mile of shadow. If it tilts, the shadow is smaller, so more light is getting past, less is absorbed by the disk.
Seasons are more extreme in the northern hemisphere, but it’s because there’s much more land. Water has a moderating effect.
“Are the seasons more extreme depending on which hemisphere you’re in? Do celestial bodies with little or no atmosphere have much in the way of seasons?:
Yes.
An atmosphere makes seasons less extreme, not more, by way of convective heat transfer. Seasons are driven by the amount of sunlight per unit surface area, and it doesn’t much matter whether that light reaches the surface or is absorbed ten kilometers up. What does matter is that if you tilt the surface 45 degrees from the source of the light, you get 30% less sunlight per unit area by simple geometry. And with the Earth’s axial tilt of 23.4 degrees, that’s about the difference between summer and winter in the temperate zones.
So, I am going to give what I will affectionately call “the dieter’s model of the seasons.” Much like body fat, the seasons are completely described by the balance of energy in vs. energy out. For planets, this energy is light. (Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.)
Teachers in school tend to make a big deal about how the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, something something, Issac Newton is smarter than you. But it is actually pretty damn close to circular. The difference between the closets and farthest distance from the sun is around 3 million miles (which is about 75 times the circumference of the Earth) and sounds really big, but this is out of a distance of almost 100 million miles so the difference is only ~3%. If you tried drawing it, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a circle and such a really close to circular ellipse. The eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit only accounts for a couple percent difference in the light received throughout the year.
What does matter for the Earth, as Douglas Knight explained, is that when the surface is tipped w.r.t. the Sun, it receives a lot less light. The Earth is lying slightly on its side. During Northern winter, the North pole is tipped away from the sun, so the surface in the Northern hemisphere is receiving less light. At the same time, the South pole is tipped towards the sun, so the Southern hemisphere is receiving more light and is in summer.
So the teacher’s password for the reason for the seasons currently, and on Earth is “axial tilt.”
As a matter of coincidence, the South pole reaches the point where it points the most towards the Sun pretty close to the same time that the Earth makes its closets approach to the Sun. IIRC, early July and late June respectively. From this you would expect the Southern hemisphere is be (a tiny bit) hotter during the summer than the Northern. Likewise, the South pole points away from the Sun the about the same time the Earth is passing its farthest distance from the Sun, so you would expect Southern winters to be (a tiny bit) cooler than Northern. But the difference (if it actually exists) is, well, tiny.
Let’s spice things up a bit. Astronomers care an awful lot about albedo. This is basically how reflective a (part of a) planet is. Different materials reflect different amounts of light. Rocky planets like the moon reflect very little of the light that hits them. Icy planets–say, Enceladus–reflect almost all of the light that hit them. Think of the difference between a blacktop parking lot versus a field of freshly fallen snow. Whatever light that isn’t reflected is absorbed; this is why you’ll see a wet road on a cold-but-sunny day hot and steaming while the snow a few feet over is still thoroughly frozen. Albedo tells you how much of the light that hits a planet is actually absorbed.
If you’ve never noticed, the Earth is made out of different kinds of stuff in different places. Oceans, for example, absorb more light (has a lower albedo) than land. The Southern hemisphere has more water area than the Northern hemisphere, so we would expect it to be warmer.
But it turns out the Northern hemisphere is something like a degree C hotter than the Southern. What the hell?
This contradiction is basically because of climate. Like metabolism totally messing with the calories in/out model of dieting (Goddamn it! Burning calories by working out causes your body to conserve energy the rest of the day to hold the expenditure constant???) climate is made up of all kinds of crazy systems interacting in complex ways making trying to model it accurately a terrible way to spend your life.
It turns out that the land in the SH absorbs less light than that in the North (we’ll wave our hands and say
aliensclimate!), offsetting somewhat the difference in ocean area. The rest of the difference is made up with by cloud cover; the surface albedo doesn’t matter if the light never makes it that far. Again, climate. The end result is that when you actually measure the annual average albedo, the hemispheres are almost identical.This gets us to a point were we would expect the hemispheres to be almost identical in (average annual) temperature. We need another step in order to pump an extra degree into the Northern hemisphere. That step is ocean currents. Both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have surface currents that bring hot water North, and undercurrents that bring cold water South. These oceanic convection cells are… climate.
And we haven’t even gotten to anything interesting like weather patterns, atmospheric composition, and so on.
So we have a beautifully simple principle, energy in/out, which really, really does exactly describe the system, but if you try zooming in even the tiniest bit you’re basically screwed every way to Tuesday.
And because they are useless, we should remember that the classic teacher’s password implicitly assumes “Earth” and “now.”
It is trivial to construct a thought experiment for which “axial tilt” does not cause the seasons. Just image a planet that doesn’t have any. Then the seasons would be the result of orbital eccentricity. In fact, you don’t even need a thought experiment! Mercury’s axial tilt is only about 2 degrees (compared to Earth’s 23), and it has a noticeably eccentric orbit (of about 0.20 compared to Earth’s 0.017).
And axial tilt doesn’t necessarily describe the seasons on Earth over larger time scales. Earths orbit oscillates between “virtually circular” to “not as circular” with a period on the order of 100,000 years. We’re currently closer to the “virtually circular” end; consequently, the (relative lack of) eccentricity only describes a couple of percent different in incident light throughout the year. At the other end of the oscillation, the eccentricity describes (IIRC) a couple tens of percent difference. This is enough to start seriously influencing the seasons.
And the axis doesn’t always point the same direction. Over time, the axis slowly processes. Think of a spinning top whose axis is slightly tilted, the axis will slowly rotate in a circle. The Earth does kind of the same thing. While the North pole may lean away from the Sun near the closest approach now, over time the axis will slowly process until it leans towards the Sun at the closest approach. This procession has a period of like–I don’t remember, 50,000 years or something.
And the amount of axial tilt isn’t constant either. Okay, it only varies by a couple degrees, but still.
And those annoying climactic details can go all fun house mirror and dominate the orbital mechanics. Glaciation is a feedback loop. The more glacial cover you have, the less light actually gets absorbed, the colder the planet becomes, the more glacial cover you have. Or something something AGW something something Cambrian hot house.
When you put it all together, “axial tilt” isn’t always the sole or necessarily dominant reason for the season here on Earth.
Anyway… I forgot where I was going.
It upset Scott, too. See “SSC Gives A Graduation Speech”. And to be completely honest, I agree with the both of you.
Compulsory schooling K12 isn’t actually there to provide an education. It’s daycare so that both parents can participate in the workforce. Yes you’d save everyone time and money by doing away with it, but then you’re left with the problem of who watches the kids before they’re old enough to work. Ideally we’d live in a world where one of the parents could actually stay home and manage a child until it was old enough to manage on its own, but considering how many families are barely afloat financially even with both parents working, that’s not a scalable solution.
There may be some other benefits to that, but you aren’t going to be improving economic efficiency. Keeping 1/2 of the parents out of the work force for 18 years to watch 1-5 children is going to be a hell of lot more man-hours than the teacher and principal hours consumed by the current system.
Lots of smart people use spaced repetition to aid memorization, which is similar to that infuriating thing teachers do where they repeat themselves week after week (and then the next semester they review the thing *again* before moving on)
like you are some sort of moron incapable of remembering the first couple of times.
Turns out that method does work. It’s just that the teacher has lots of students and it’s hard to find a rhythm that works for both fast and slow students.
+1 for bringing up spaced repetition.
I wonder how many of the frustrated teachers who taught their students the same concepts over and over again actually bothered to introduce said students to spaced repetition programs.
“I wonder how many of the frustrated teachers who taught their students the same concepts over and over again actually bothered to introduce said students to spaced repetition programs.”
Most of them. In fact, it’s during spaced repetition that they don’t remember.
But go ahead and pretend teachers are stupid, and that you’d know better.
@ realist
You misunderstood my comment. I was asking about introducing students to, and teaching them how to use, spaced repetition programs, such as Anki (or some sort of a Leitner box, if the students don’t have access to a computer.) I wasn’t talking about teachers effectively trying to do spaced repetition in class themselves by reviewing the material with students. (Which would be hard for the reasons Saint Fiasco mentioned.)
If most teachers these days actually do teach students how to use SRS, then I didn’t know that. Do they? (And I’m not talking about you, because you’re clearly an outlier in many ways.)
Also, I wasn’t trying to suggest teachers who complain about this sort of thing were “stupid.” Just ineffective. And to be fair, I believe schools in general are ineffective, and I don’t blame individual teachers for it.
“introducing students to, and teaching them how to use, spaced repetition programs, such as Anki”
Getting students to do anything outside of class which is not directly evaluated, but which you merely suggest would help them do better (including more efficient ways to study for quizzes and tests they have to study for anyway), is well nigh impossible for all but the best, most motivated students, who don’t need that much help. It’s hard enough to get them just to do the graded homework and show up for class.
@ onyomi
I believe you. I’m sorry my original comment was phrased in such a way that it implied individual teachers were to blame.
I also wanted to mention that your original comment that started this whole thread was very interesting, very reasonable, and phrased very politely.
In addition to that link, which is relevant, I’ve written a lot about the near total disconnect between Asian test scores and Asian demonstrated abilities. It’s all anecdotal, but I’ve got a lot of data points–six years of working in Asian academies here.
Keep in mind that at a certain point, it’s hard to tell if they are just gaming the test by sending it all to declarative memory just long enough to regurgitate it, or if they are actually cheating (that’s a huge problem). But certainly, it’s not going into semantic memory. Here’s an overview of memory (from my own idiosyncratic viewpoint: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/memory-palace-for-thee-but-not-for-me/)
It doesn’t mean that high school is a waste of time, but it does suggest that in the HUGE skills vs. knowledge debate, we should be teaching smaller amounts of knowledge for longer, and integrating it with skills. And there’s absolutely no point in teaching kids higher math or science if they don’t have an IQ over, say, 110.
It also means that the new SAT is a puzzler, because I don’t know how they’re going to get away from making the achievement gap worse, but that’s a different story.
I mentioned here before that I used to be a test prep teacher as a part-time gig when I was in grad school. The school was in California but almost exclusively Korean and Chinese. We ran a comprehensive bootcamp for eight weeks in the summer that involved eight hours a day in classes plus homework and, well, it worked. It worked really well. One girl improved her score 624 points. A lot of that was writing, which is much less an intelligence test than the rest, but even on the verbal and math, there are clear tricks you can use when you know exactly what types of questions come up and drilling them constantly for hours a day weeks on end will raise your score.
I’m almost completely certain none of that stuck with them, of course, because why would it? We were teaching them to take a test. The skills were not useful outside of that one specific domain.
Could you elaborate on the “disconnect between Asian test scores and Asian demonstrated abilities”?
Pretty much every kid I taught had received the highest score on their end of year English tests (in a difficult state), yet their vocabulary was very weak and their writing skills usually pretty ordinary. There were talented exceptions, but not many. Any white, black, or Hispanic kids I’ve met with the highest possible scores had abilities to match.
Similarly, I ran into kids who got a 5 on the APUSh but knew relatively little about American history, a 5 on the BC Calc with basically average algebra skills, and so on. It’s incredibly common, and you start to realize why the discrimination against Asians exist in college admissions. It’s either cheating or gaming, but in any case, the skills don’t match the resume too often. I’ve met dozens of 2400 SAT kids whose abilities aren’t anything much above bright, but nothing special. (With the understanding that I know any number of genuinely bright, talented Chinese/Korean kids.)
On the other hand, I can’t think of any white, Hispanic, or black kids with outstanding test scores who aren’t exceptional people.
Interesting. So would you consider preparing for the test by taking many practice tests “gaming the system”? The kids work harder. I think it’s unfair to call it “gaming the system” because the rules are the same for everyone. No one is stopping other kids from prepping for the tests.
Also, American high school classes are really easy. I went to a very average high school in Europe, got accepted to an elite American university, and was shocked to find that most of my peers haven’t had any organic chemistry or mathematical analysis. All of those kids from my average high school would probably perform as well as Asians perform in America on all sorts of tests, not because they are good but because Americans are bad. Asian parents are managing to maintain a culture of academic excellence despite how bad American schools are, and your response is to suspect them of cheating?
If the college admissions policies discriminating against Asians were justified, we wouldn’t see Asian students outperforming everyone else in college. But we do. And not only when it comes to academics. Take music for example. Do you think those Asian kids who kick ass on the violin or the piano are gaming the system, too?
I taught at the college level for two years. I saw absolutely no sign of Asian kids knowing less than their test scores would suggest. Most of my top students were Asian.
I don’t know what’s going on, but my best guess is that your assessment of your students’ knowledge is off. Maybe there’s a cultural difference or something that makes you judge them as less capable than they actually are.
It’s “gaming the system” in the sense of making the test less indicative of actual knowledge. If you want your test to test for willingness to shove tons of hours at rote memorization that’s one thing, but sometimes we want to test for things other than that. You say “no one is stopping other kids from prepping for the tests” but in the end the best case scenario there is that every kid spends a huge amount of time doing useless cramming and the results end up exactly the same. The worst case scenario is that due to some kids being better or worse at useless cramming the “useless cramming” portion of the signal drowns out the “actual knowledge” portion and everyone wastes all this time and the test is still meaningless.
@suntzuanime
Oh, I see your point. That does make sense.
I just don’t think Asians are guilty of crazy amounts of useless cramming to the extent that would even come close to justifying the discrimination they face in college admissions, for the reasons I mentioned.
First of all, doing practice tests can be a good way to learn. Drills are useful. You learn to solve problems by solving problems. I don’t think there’s an epidemic of people actually cramming solutions without understanding them.
Also, American standardized tests are easy to people who went to high schools in many other countries. I just don’t see it would really take that much drilling for Asians to do better on these tests than the rest of American students.
If Asians were gaming the system by cramming at the high school level, presumably they would stop being able to game the system in college, where there are higher cognitive demands. But they keep doing well in college. Are they gaming college? Oh wait, they also keep doing well in professional schools and then keep doing well at work. Are they gaming life?
Nadja, violin and piano are two examples where practice, practice, practice is the way (and for most, even most of the gifted, the ONLY way) to succeed. So they’re not really counterexamples.
I don’t see any reason you can’t “game” college or professional schools the same way as high school. Certainly in mathematics and physics classes there’s often the option of either understanding the subject, or memorizing all the formulas.
Are they gaming life? Actually, I think it’s just the opposite. They’re the ones grinding through the hard way, and those who actually learn easier methods are “gaming” the system by finding shortcuts.
Nybbler, it sounds to me like we agree. Violin and piano were meant to be examples of things you get good at by practicing. The point being is that practicing and drilling is good, and it leads to higher ability. And with violin and piano you can’t easily deny the greater ability by saying things like “oh they score high on tests, but if you ask me, they don’t seem to know that much about history.”
I’m aware that the realist’s comments contained the disclaimer that it was all anecdotal about Asian kids’ test scores not matching their ability. My point is that data doesn’t confirm it. Asians continue doing better well past high school. Some of their success is due to them continuing to work hard, and some of it is due to the fact that practice practice practice does build competence.
Are there any professions where practice and hard work aren’t essential to success?
Great point on who is actually gaming the system. People with high IQs often don’t have to put in much effort to get into, idk, programming and to lead a comfortable upper middle class existence. At the same time, someone with the same IQ but with much better work ethic will likely end up much more successful.
Since we have no reason to think Asians have lower IQs on average and since we do have reasons to think they work harder, then I think it’s reasonable to assume they’ll end up more skilled and competent in the end.
I don’t think the first part is actually true, at least not if we are talking about East Asians and as compared to those with similar paper qualifications. Prejudice is a plausible explanation but so is false signaling.
Anonymous, why don’t you think the first part is actually true?
“I just don’t think Asians are guilty of crazy amounts of useless cramming to the extent that would even come close to justifying the discrimination they face in college admissions, for the reasons I mentioned. ”
Actually, it’s almost certainly the other way round. The useless cramming or cheating or whatever causes them (including high IQ) to get test scores is a large part of why they are discriminated against, although few will say so.
>dozens of 2400 SAT kids whose abilities aren’t anything much above bright, but nothing special.
No you didn’t. Its probably just a part of the very typical white person “So ching chang chongo plays 5 instruments, speaks 3 languages, and got a perfect SAT score and 7 5’s on the AP tests. But he is just a study grind. He didn’t play sports, didn’t start a club(which as an immigrant, probably has no idea how to start), didn’t count”
Its a very white person type of dismissal of accomplishments for people not of their race. I’m not Asian myself, but I would be pretty damned infuriated always reading that online. After say, 50 hours of studying for the test ( a very reasonable amount for something so important. A weeks worth of a full-time job.), the gains are very very minimal on the SAT. You can study an extra 300 hours after that and expect to see less than a third of the initial 50 hours improvement(which again, is very reasonable for the test. I don’t believe a great deal in pure raw aptitude tests. But a trained test that stops improving after some training? That’s very real-life ish, and should not really be critiqued)
https://menghublog.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/the-bell-curve-1994-herrnstein-and-murray-graph-p-401.jpg
I mean, a 5 on the AP calculus tests isn’t as impressive as it sounds. But that’s simply due to the probability distribution of talent and proportion of high school students that take the test.
>20.1 percent of public high school graduates in the class of 2013 earned a 3 or higher on an AP Exam
Assuming that AP calculus and AP biology and AP English are the most taken courses(judging roughly by what I took and what I saw others take…and its a standard progression)
http://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Service/2015-AP-Exam-Score-Distributions.php
Looking at that..it seems that about 30% of students took an AP course. Probably lower, but roughly.
Just by percentiles of abilities with a third of students taking the courses, and a typical amount of 20% getting scaled 5’s, theres quite a bit of 5’s. I don’t think its terrible though. The average college that isn’t top 30’s intro courses are not really more difficult then AP classes. And that’s basically what AP courses are for. If a student gets a 5 on enough of them, they can skip a year of college for most difficulty levels(and I think a 5 takes off non-major courses for top ones), since they know the material. Its a fair deal.
I do find it annoying that to locate top math talent, the AMC has to be known, and studied for, and its not part of the normal national testing. But most analysis show that the proportion of Asian americans *increase* in those very difficult tests of ability. What then?
> Its probably just a part of the very typical white person “So ching chang chongo plays 5 instruments, speaks 3 languages, and got a perfect SAT score and 7 5’s on the AP tests. But he is just a study grind. He didn’t play sports, didn’t start a club(which as an immigrant, probably has no idea how to start), didn’t count
See, this is the kind of nonsense which makes it difficult to discuss these issues. The question isn’t whether anyone played sports or started a club. It’s whether they speak 3 languages — really speak them, as in can read works written in those languages and understand them, and converse with a native speaker — or have just managed to learn enough by rote to pass a test on those 3 languages. As I said above, if they play 3 instruments that’s a different matter, because in that case “grinding” IS the only thing that matters.
A test is intended to determine a students mastery of a subject. But generally it cannot be a perfect metric. Which means there’s potentially multiple ways to pass the test. One, to achieve mastery of the subject. And two, to come up with a way to increase the test score without achieving mastery. The accusation here, if it is an accusation, is that your stereotypical Asian “study grind” is doing the latter.
“After say, 50 hours of studying for the test ( a very reasonable amount for something so important. A weeks worth of a full-time job.), the gains are very very minimal on the SAT. ”
See, you don’t know what you’re talking about. The *average* Asian immigrant kid spends 144 hours in class, 32 hours taking practice tests, and about 64 hours outside of class in drills. Over the summer. Then they have additional tutoring during the school year, or they go to a weekly class.
These are the average kids, the ones whose parents are just trying to get them a boost—and they are going to test prep 300 or 400% more than the average white kid (whites are the least likely to take test prep). That’s not counting the really heavy test prep places, where the hours go into the 400-600 range–and it’s not counting what they actually do in China and Korea, where the kids spend 8 hours a day for a year prepping for the SAT. That’s how they get scores in the high 700s despite not actually understanding English.
And yes to what the Nybbler says.
Your stats barely scratch the surface. There’s tons of data on Asian results. There’s also huge barrels of anecdotal evidence on the cheating, and if you actually talk to American teachers who work in 80% Asian schools, you’ll hear the same thing. This is not a place for an earnest white person to tip a toe in and think it’s all about racism. There’s close to 30 years of adjustments and problems that have been uncovered.
@ realist
Could you link to your sources on those numbers? I think some of the disagreement in this thread stems from the fact that other people’s experience with immigrant Asian kids is very different from yours. I have a good number of Asian immigrant friends, and none of them took even close to the number of hours of test prep you suggest. Moreover, these people grew up in various Asian communities across the country, so presumably they’d at least be aware of the scale of these things in their communities. Now, if you have some good data on the average number of hours of test prep for immigrant Asian kids, then that would be useful. (We might still end up disagreeing about other things, such as whether these kids end up more competent than kids of equal IQ who don’t drill, or whether these drills are in fact mindless cramming.)
Tangentially relevant to discussions of aptitude and noge_sako’s bizarre NPC naming schema: settle down, Chongo.
For those aspiring rationalists with android devices who’d like to try out a Belief Calibration game, I just published my first app to the Google Play store: Confidence Quiz. Check it out, and let me know what needs improving!
Nice! I’ve been meaning to try my hand on the app market at some point myself. The quiz itself is good, but you need to work on the “problem set complete” screen, which is surprising (no warning it’s coming), and poorly laid-out. The user really doesn’t know what they’re looking at there until they back-out to the main menu and check Player Stats. Why not just use the Player Stats screen AS the problem-set-complete screen, and add a button there for “Next Set”. (Probably replace the “Done” button with “Menu”)
Thanks for the feedback! That’s a good idea and I’ll get to work on implementing it!
I was thinking about the Jewish practice of “sitting shiva” (basically a bunch of rules for mourning a relative), and how well-designed and humane it is, and also about how part of what makes it humane is its basically non-optional (for the serious observer) nature (because it’s the sort of thing which, if chosen, could seem self-indulgent).
And it made me think that in general we are seriously lacking in rituals nowadays, even among the religious (curse you, Vatican II!). But I also feel like moves to artificially create rituals, especially among atheists, can’t help but seem forced and silly and lacking in the necessary gravitas (that said, I haven’t been to any Solstice ceremonies or made any attempt to be a ritualistic rationalist or anything, so maybe they succeed more than I know).
I peg myself as “spiritual but not religious” in that I am agnostic tending towards atheism on the question of a personal god, but still see value in practices like meditation, so I’m not invested in the idea of creating fully secular alternatives to religious rituals. At the same time, I think I’m too skeptical to really jump in headfirst to any particular religious community.
But I am not so much asking about what I should do personally as whether people have thoughts on ways for society in the 21st c. and on to recapture the benefits of ritual on a wider scale without necessarily retreating into full-on cultural reaction.
I went to one of the Solstice ceremonies. It didn’t really work for me; too silly, too nerdy, too heavy-handed. They Might Be Giants does not really speak to me on a spiritual level, you know?
The ritualism in traditional martial arts does work well for me, but a lot of it is borrowed from Shinto. In Japanese martial arts, at least; the Korean art I studied was more Americanized and its ritual was more military-flavored, and I haven’t studied Chinese ones but I assume they have their own stuff.
The german reformed church has found the optimal solution for that I think: Adapting (and even contributing) to cultural changes while sticking to what they perceive as the Christian core message That society should look out for the individual and in particular the weakest.
This lets you keep the natural framework in which you can have rituals and spiritual experience, but you also don’t have to do any mental yoga (in my experience no one really cares what you ‘actually’ believe, and when interpreting the bible, this mostly serves as a lead up to actual thoughtful reflections about everyday life).
This necessarily sounds a bit like advertising, but that is just my experience. I know in the US and even maybe many other communities than where I grew up things are way different.
The point of rituals in my book is supposed to be that they work. You have rituals to cleanse your hands and mouth before and after activities where cleanliness is a legitimate concern, rituals to supplicate one or more deities involved with good fortune, rituals of healing for the sick and dying, etc. People (probably) started doing them because they actually expect the ritual to help accomplish the tasks that they were associated with.
So why not make rituals that actually help accomplish some practical goal? You can have your morning calisthenics ritual, where following it means that you make sure to stretch beforehand and use proper form. Or a ritual purity standard for food which makes sure your diet isn’t bizarre and that you actually have to cook your own food from fresh ingredients. Ritualistic cants to memorize important bits of data like the ignition sequence of your aircraft. The important bit is that following the form of the ritual will contribute to the function of whatever it’s attached to.
That way the rituals aren’t silly or arbitrary, people have a reason to adopt them, and with shared symbolism you can make non-obvious connections between interrelated tasks or objects clearer.
I feel like Falun gong sort of did this in China–attach a bunch of mystical mumbo jumbo to what is basically just some relaxing, meditative calisthenic exercises that are probably mildly good for you. I think at least part of the key is that you need a group which is united in doing the practice. Reminds me a bit of that weird thing Scott described at some point about a religion where you’d periodically be required to put your life in the hands or save the life of another member, but maybe easier and more beneficial. Unfortunately, it seems to work better if you do attach some spiritual mumbo jumbo to it. Nihilism isn’t very motivating.
What about philosophical mumbo-jumbo instead?
I’ve got a major intellectual hard-on for Marcus Aurelius myself, not that the other Stoics weren’t great, and Stoic philosophy as articulated by him explicitly works under both nihilistic atomism and providential natural law. And they were huge on ritual.
I’d second this comment.
Though I’ve lapsed lately, I used to make a point of taking cold showers and jumping out of bed immediately on waking specifically because of things I read in the meditations.
“I am rising to do the work of a Roman and a Man” is a good mantra to start the day on. Certainly shames one out of staying in bed all day.
As a beginner, I enjoyed and (I believe) profited from Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy.
I almost mentioned this in a thread up-page, asking whether philosophy was obsolete. One of Irvine’s motivations was observing that modern philosophy seems curiously uninterested in questions like “how to live a good life”.
I think this is a good idea, but in fact we have this kind of practical rituals already. Think about cooking together, having an exercise regimen, etc.
Adding a spiritual layer on top is still arbitrary and artificial.
To avoid this I feel it really needs to come from some sort of established authority which does not have to justify itself rationally, be it tradition, the church, or even the state (I’m not saying that any of this would be over all desirable)
This is too limited a definition of “work”. Rituals that give one a sense of purpose “work”. Rituals that bring people together “work”. “Spiritual” stuff around, say, diet and exercise is not just the sugar that makes medicine go down.
Sarah Perry has written a lot on this that is worth reading: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/author/sarahperry/
An example of a created ritual that seems to work for some people.
The Society for Creative Anachronism does historical recreation from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It’s a hobby that for some people is a large part of their lives. Its largest event is a two week camping event in the summer which nowadays has over ten thousand people attending.
One evening of the second week, there is a ceremony in which a model viking ship is sent out to sea—actually a lake—and set afire. It has on it shields with the arms of people in the SCA who have died during the year.
Here’s a comment on Reddit from a garbageman, relevant to this old post about attempting to throw out a trash can…
So I wanted to use the survey to report excellent satisfaction with one well-known stimulant that gets prescribed a lot for ADHD, and total lack of experience with any other nootropic, and the absence of any question about methylphenidate made me doubt the value of my experience with this boring conventional totally non-hip substance to the scope of the survey.
Oh yeah I also drink reasonable amounts of coffee and have super negative experience with nicotine.
I haven’t used most of the substances on the list, either, and still responded for those I have. I think it’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s also worth noting that methylphenidate is not so common in the US, which may explain its absence in the survey.
What’s your negative experience with nicotine?
I’ve found the biggest “nootropic” effects from drugs/supplements to come from improving sleep duration and quality. I’m a regular melatonin user and also supplement with ZMA, which I’m surprised not to see mentioned more in nootropic communities as its quite common amongst strength sports participants, for whom its supposed to improve recovery.
The scientific evidence for ZMA is mixed but anecdotally it works very well, I’d go as far as saying its more effective than modafinil for me (which is great for forcing myself to sleep at a reasonable hour, but doesn’t seem to affect sleep quality as much and sometimes leaves me feeling groggy in the morning)
Anyone else have any experience with ZMA?
1) being drunk enough to accept a cigarette from a friend and feeling a bit numb, disoriented, and out of balance. In a way that’s completely different than alcohol alone.
2) accepting a cigarette while practicing a riff on the guitar and becoming really twitchy, nervous, unfocused, numb, and putting ash all over my pants.
I’ve puffed on an ecig a few times and felt basically nothing. The worse is that no I actually want to smoke cigarettes. Those things are _evil_
I’ve never moderated a WordPress blog, so maybe this is a silly question, but does the Report Comment function offer any degree of aggregation? Like, “comment #123 received 6 distinct reports, #234 received 3, #345 received 2”, etc. Or is it just an undifferentiated stream of “person X reported comment Y”?
How does someone like Scott find research in an area they aren’t intimately familiar with?
For example, if I have the hypothesis “shorter people are more likely to be discriminated against by the legal system”, what can I do to find evidence either for or against it, other than typing “height discrimination” into google scholar and following the citations?
EDIT: on reflection, that should probably read “shorter people are given harsher sentences by the legal system”, but the exact hypothesis is less interesting to me than the way it’s investigated
I can’t fully answer your general question. I would like to comment on the specific one.
You might want to split that up.
more likely to be arrested?
more likely to be charged?
more likely to be convicted?
harsher sentence when convicted?
sometimes high stats for one can be related to low stats for another. For example a group can be far less likely to be arrested/charged/convicted but if they are they can receive a far harsher punishment. Say for example if police ignore minor infractions from some group then those who do get arrested are more likely to have done something really fucked up so can end up with harsher sentences.
This can help a little with queries. If you can make your question more exact you’re more likely to get good results and the exercise of breaking down the question carefully can sometimes net you the correct terms.
Your “other than” example isn’t terrible. More specifically, many universities have libraries with many journals, and some have librarians who will assist you with a research topic by pointing you in the right direction.
There are also online resources that help you search multiple journals, or even tally up how many citations an article has received so you can get a first-approximation of impact before delving deeper.
An idle question: anybody here ever get LASIK/PRK? Thoughts, advice, concerns?
Yes! I’ve had LASIK. One of the best decisions in my life. Two of my closest friends had it, one recently and one 10 years ago, and they say the same thing. Two coworkers had it, they were both happy with it.
I only had it done on one eye, because I didn’t want to have to start wearing reading glasses at the tender age of 40. If you don’t mind slightly impaired spacial vision (I don’t notice the difference, to be honest), I’d recommend doing one eye only. You can always do the other eye later.
Not personally, but I used to be active duty military and pretty much anyone with poor eyesight did it since it was free. They all seemed very happy with the results. My ex did it and said the difference was immediate.
I did it about a year ago, and have no regrets. Waking up and being able to see clearly without contact lenses or glasses really is life-changing.
I had essentially perfect vision within a day, and dry eyes for about three or four months.
I went from 20/40 in one eye and 20/200 in the other to 20/15 in both. But even neater than the improved vision (which is very neat) is the sudden freeing-up of mental effort at not needing glasses! You don’t need to remember where you put them! You don’t have to schedule time to clean them! You don’t have to worry about breaking them! You can wear sunglasses!
On the minus side, dealing with the irritation in my eyes for the first day after the surgery was one of the most genuinely unpleasant experiences I’ve had to endure.
No LASIK here- but I got prescription sunglasses to supplement my normal glasses a few years back, and would heartily recommend anyone else not using LASIK to do so. Lounging in a pool with a glass of tequila and a book is a lot more fun when you’re not sun-blinded.
My understanding of Lasik is that shifts the distance your eyes focus at but does not affect the range of distances, which depends on the flexibility of the eyeball and decreases with age. So if you currently need glasses for driving but can read without them, Lasik might mean you no longer need glasses for driving but now need them for reading.
Is that correct? Anyone who has had Lasik who is old enough so that the limited range of distances is a serious issue?
Also, my understanding is that distance of focus is all it corrects, so if you wear glasses to correct for astigmatism you will still need them.
There’s at least one brand of contact lenses which you can leave in for a month at a time. (Doesn’t work for everyone.) I’ve been using them for years. Only having to think about having impaired vision a dozen times a year ends up being a great deal like having LASIK (as long as you are not e.g. an outdoor rock climber or surfer, or other things likely to get stuff in your eyes), except that I can still adjust my prescription.
meme:
https://imgflip.com/i/zapx8
citation:
http://www.aao.org/assets/c53ade92-e496-41a9-9689-4c682b9fe8b8/635110637373130000/extended-wear-of-contact-lenses-may-2013-pdf
The rate is around 0.2%, which is far lower than the rate of complications from Lasik. And it’s treatable.
Very strongly recommend these. Have been using them for like 10 years with no ill effects except when the contacts start to get blurry as they deteriorate eventually.
Thanks, all. Will consider surgery a bit more seriously. Can’t wear contacts of any kind comfortably for longer than ~16 hours, but an interesting idea nonetheless.
State of the Rationalist Blogosphere
I’ve got a couple of Rationalist-interest essays brewing. I don’t have an existing blog. In the world of years ago, I might have posted to Less Wrong, possibly in discussion. Now, that’s a wasteland. I’d say Medium is a reasonable fit, but coming from being not-particularly-a-voice in R-space, it seems like a good place to shout into a void. At best, a void, actually, and at worst, a community without the language and context to understand, care, and not bring down the hammer that dareth not etc.
How does one start to start, these days, when targeting the community formerly known as Less Wrong?
Is LW really worse than no audience?
I am actively attempting to renovate and recolonize Less Wrong, and this will only work if the sort of people who are turned off by LW as it is now post to it and encourage other people to post to it.
So post it there!
Traditional media or collect the essays into a book and try to get published?
For those in the thread who have not had an IQ test: What do you estimate your IQ to be, and based on what evidence?
For those who do know their IQ: How does your experience correlate with the evidence presented by the non-tested? Does the evidence require re-calibration?
I have some experiences I will not share here for fear of deanonymizing myself that let me doubt that IQ can be diagnosed in any meaningful way by anything short of an IQ test, especially not introspection or peer judgement by actually tested others.
Then again what I just said seems to be a very strong claim, so if there is research on this topic, falsifying me, I’d like to know about it, preferably before we conduct FooQuuxman’s experiment.
I went online and compared my high school test scores with the correlating IQ score. It seemed accurate to me but I should probably get it checked officially.
If you visit the websites of the major IQ societies (Mensa, Intertel, Triple Nine) you can get conversions from many standardized tests to at least their entry thresholds. They all employ professional psychologists/psychometricians whose job it is to make sure those conversions are reasonably accurate.
cui bono?
A point.
This is what I did as well, but I got different results depending on which conversion methods I used. One method resulted in an IQ of 103, and another resulted in an IQ of 110, so I’m guessing my real IQ is somewhere in between there.
If anyone wants to take a crack at estimating my real IQ, my SAT scores were:
Verbal: 720
Math: 540
I also have my SAT writing test score (720, same as my verbal), but I know that’s not included when converting to IQ scores. I also know the difficulty of the test has changed over time, so it may be relevant to mention that I took it in 2011.
Edit: I also took the ACT, so I just dug up my scores from there. They were:
Composite: 26
Math: 20
Reading: 30
Science: 26
English/Writing: 25
I don’t know how you’d convert those to IQ though, or which subsections are relevant.
Well, the big question is “when”. The time period when you took the test matters for the conversion.
And then a a google search will get you to some “back of the envelope” level conversions you can do on your own just by looking up in a table.
Edit: I’m not sure if you done that already? But if you have, I’m not sure what you are expecting?
The highest possible SAT result is 800,800. Checking a conversion site for pre 1974 exams, it shows the corresponding IQ as 147. That suggests that the approach cannot produce very high IQ’s, however well you do on the test. That presumably is even more true for later dates, since they renormed the test to produce higher scores.
The pages don’t take account of the age at which you took the test. I’m not sure if they should. At what age does the performance on an IQ test stop increasing with age?
>For those in the thread who have not had an IQ test: What do you estimate your IQ to be, and based on what evidence?
115 is one standard deviation above the mean, right? Then roughly around that.
>and based on what evidence?
What was the rationalist term for “Gut Feeling”?
There is this old joke along the lines of “do you know anyone who would self-report one sd below mean?”
And, I might add, if yes, would you see that as an probably accurate estimate or rather as somebody acting out Socratic humbleness and / or low self-esteem?
I don’t want to sound mean either. Self-reporting one sd above average on the basis of a gut feeling is probably a sign of mental health.
I’d expect most people who enjoy hanging around Scott’s blog to be 125+. I think you’d likely score higher than you think you would.
What is the blog for 145+ people? (Not that I would necessarily understand it.)
gowers.wordpress.com
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty sure we have a bunch of those around here, too. I lowballed it with the 125.
Among the commenters, 125 is likely too low a bound. Among the readers, it’s perhaps adequate. I think it’s probably about where I am and I rarely, if ever, have anything of value to add to the discussion.
No clue,
I scored in the 90+ percentile when I took the ASVAB for what that’s worth, but generally feel like an idiot most of the time.
I can vouch that having a 3sd IQ is no particular remedy for this problem and have met people who assured me that it was true at still higher levels. Don’t let that part affect your evaluation overmuch.
Sort of a Dunning-Kreuger effect.
Certainly a metaphorically related phenomenon. Perhaps the Meta-DKE. “If I’m so smart, how come [insanely difficult task/life outcome largely outside one’s actual control] doesn’t come easier for me? I must not be as smart as I think I am/everybody thinks I am.”
Maybe it’s what you’d get if the DKE and Imposter Syndrome had a baby. A really, really smart baby with no self-confidence.
How accurate/precise are those SAT/GRE to IQ conversion charts?
Depends on who made them and which test they are using. Some of the IQ societies will accept tests from some years and not from others, for just that reason. Some of them are reasonably accurate. Others, not so much.
The ones I’ve found seem way off. Why not just assume that SAT takers are the top 2/3 of the population (roughly the proportion that takes a college entrance exam) and then convert between percentiles?
I haven’t looked for a long time: how normal are the distributions of SAT scores relative to the distribution of IQ scores? Your algorithm seems pretty logical, but I’d be wary of confounders.
Somewhere between 120 and 140. For a long time I thought it was near the bottom of that range, but then I looked at one of those SAT-to-IQ equivalency charts, which told me that it was near 160. That, frankly, seems absurd to me, especially given everything I’ve heard about people who have actually tested at IQ 160. But I guess 140 isn’t absurd, especially since that’s where people at SSC often claim to be, and I seem to fit in pretty well around here.
Whatever.
This is meaningless without knowing the scale. 160 on a sd-15 scale, i. e. 4 sigma is as far as I know nearly impossible to even measure because the reference population is just that small. 160 on a sd-24 scale is impressive but not absurdly high.
What he said. Also/more specifically, standardized test conversions start to break down at that range. At the risk of devaluing my decoder rings, they arguably start to break down before that.
Also also, the scale itself starts to break down at the upper ranges, in practical terms. It loses a great deal of predictive power when you go from the”classical” level to the “relativistic” level, you might say. To strain an already iffy analogy, you can mathematically compare the impacts of two small projectiles traveling in the realm of hundreds of miles an hour, and the impact of two small projectiles both traveling near the speed of light. But you’re going to have a hard time doing the latter by physical comparison, because while the difference is mathematically large, the impact in both cases is going to be so catastrophic as to make precise comparison very difficult. In a practical sense, doubling the kinetic energy of a chemically propelled rifle bullet is a big deal and the results are obvious. Doubling the kinetic energy of a relativistic railgun projectile is probably not that important and unless you’re throwing it at large planetoids, it’ll be tough to tell the difference.
I don’t take this number seriously, because I assume self-estimates of IQ are inaccurate, but since you asked: 145
Evidence: the only IQ-ish test I ever took was the GRE. I got a 1510, which according to those GRE/IQ conversion sites would put my IQ around 152. I don’t really trust those sites, so I always kind of round down to be on the “safe” side, and 145 seems like a nice round number (I usually just think “eh, around +3 SD’s sounds about right”). And that number seems roughly consistent with how often I meet people who seem smarter than me.
But yeah, like I said I don’t take it seriously, and it’s just a number I keep in my head.
Very few people have had professionally administered adult IQ tests and almost everything else, including professionally administered childhood IQ tests, are not very useful. That’s especially true
at the 2 standard deviation plus level that people that like to talk about IQ online care about. Even professionally administered IQ tests have terrible error bars once you get beyond 2 sd.
Basically unless you’ve seen a score report you shouldn’t believe what anyone says about his IQ and if the score report uses the words “extended norms” or anything similar you should think carefully about what that means.
Tested at 142 on what I recall as being the WISC-IV by a professional psychologist when I was in high school (not through the school; it was a part of a battery of tests administered for other reasons).
The only other evidence other people are offering so far is performance on standardized tests. For what it’s worth, those match very well for me: perfect ACT and GRE scores (albeit on modern versions of those tests, i.e., the versions considered by Mensa not to correlate with IQ), very nearly perfect SAT score, etc. From this I’d guess that approximately perfect scores on standardized tests correspond very roughly to 145 IQ, which is +3ish standard deviations depending on the IQ test.
People are generally quite bad at this, mostly in a self-serving direction, but some groups are prone to the opposite.
If you have ADHD, an ASD, anxiety, or depression, and you’re evaluating yourself on the basis of life outcomes such as educational attainment, income, occupational prestige, or how witty you are in conversation, you’re very likely to be underestimating your intelligence, perhaps by a great deal. More generally, if people have told you you’re underconfident or have low self-esteem, that bias is going to carry over to this sort of evaluation as well.
If you’re generally confident, start here. Add or subtract as necessary according to your centile on the SAT. Add in other factors, then subtract 5 special snowflake points.
I would just like to add that subtracting five special snowflake points is probably a very valuable heuristic in most self-evaluations of whatever sort, absent the sort of situations nope describes. 🙂
The only standardized test I’ve taken is the GMAT. Apparently mensa will admit you if you score in the 95th percentile, I’m in the 99th. Not sure how strong the correlation between IQ and GMAT is though. I’d say +2.5-3sd?
I don’t know, frankly. I’m pretty sure I took an IQ test when I was 6 or so to get put into the GATE program, but I have no idea what the score was. Based on other tests I got to do some cool things like participate in sponsored science camps, go on a television quiz show, place but not win a regional spelling bee. I did my first year of high school at a private tech school and won an award from the school for having the highest admission test score and another for scoring highest on the state test. I got a perfect SAT score and 1570 GRE without doing any specific prep for either, so I’m guessing high, but as others have pointed out, any conversion tool gets pretty unreliable at the high end.
I was going to respond to this but am afraid of identifying myself. But I will ask a question if anyone wants to answer-does anyone think their abilities are kind of like this, with the analogy to the hard drive and the processor? Because I think mine are.
How would that affect an IQ score?
Long-term memory is not very g-loaded, so it shouldn’t really show up in an IQ test. Working memory most definitely will, and processing speed does on some tests.
I identify a lot with Temple Grandin. My first college experience was similar to hers, complete with the shaking fits and banging my head into things and even developing friendships with the local cattle, and some of this rings true. I definitely think I’m poor at multitasking but excel tremendously at anything that requires long bouts of uninterrupted concentration. It doesn’t seem to have been detrimental to me in taking tests. I’m not sure working memory is a good explanation for being bad at multitasking. I’m bad at splitting my attention and really, really hate being interrupted, but I’ve never taken a test that depended upon being good at those things.
Much the same for me, particularly the last part. I call it having narrow mental bandwidth.
(Sadly, my university had no cattle I could befriend.)
Above average, but not by enough to be impressive.
I’d guess around 130. My brother tested in that range, and there’s no reason to think one of us is smarter or dumber than the other, on the whole. Our father tested higher, but he’s probably got more brainpower than we do. Regression to the mean and all that.
Does anyone have any experience with this test?
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com
I seem to remember taking it once, thinking that the test wasn’t really trying, and not bothering to pay to find out my result.
I would say around 123 – everything I’ve experienced suggests to me that I’m towards the higher end of normal in terms of intelligence. Nothing to write home about – it certainly isn’t unusual for me to meet people who are more intelligent than me – but, then again, out in the wild, I have more going on mentally than most.
Maths results also somewhere around top 10%, obviously absolutely terrible compared to proper math people.
I’m actually really interested in this topic – I don’t feel that my intelligence will allow me to keep enough relationships in mind for mathematics to be anything but a procedural slog – but at the same time, I really do feel as if I have some pretty shit hot natural language reasoning powers. If the danger of natural language is poorly defined terms, then perhaps simplicity (of mind) is an advantage? Maybe not.
I wonder what it is like for really intelligent people when they talk to me.
Siblings are supposed to be within five points of each other, or at least that’s what I’ve heard, and my younger brother was tested at 127 in middle school. Given that he seems to be about as smart as I am and I was just accepted to a relatively elite biochem PhD program that sounds like it’s in roughly the right range.
(My standardized test scores are good too but I don’t trust the conversion sites I’ve seen. The numbers are way too high and disagree with each other by large amounts, once by a full standard deviation.)
That 122-132 range also puts me roughly in the middle of the SSC / LW pack which seems to make sense.
No idea how I’d go about estimating IQ. Best I can say is I seem more intelligent than average in some areas, and less than average in others.
IQ tests aren’t that great, partially because what they test tends to be rather narrow and there is the question as to what to define as intelligence. I have scores that run quite the range, from about 1 SD to between the 4th & 5th SD. I’m at least 2nd, but probably mid 3rd.
Before I had anything resembling a formal test, I didn’t think of myself as very smart. I knew I was at least a little smart, but I wouldn’t have put myself much above 1 SD. This was due to lack of understanding of how much other people lie, that my primary points of comparison (parents) were both Mensa level (one was an active member, other was eligible), and my secondary points were all UMC professionals and their kids (doctors, lawyers, judges, etc). I fought with (and still struggle with) understanding the social aspect of people. Like many people here can attest to, a lot of very smart people are people dumb for a long time.
After the tests, I only understood the results on an intellectual level until college, then I started to understand what it meant. I didn’t really grok it until I entered the workforce. Now that I’ve been in a while, I can quickly tier people into distinct layers. I would roughly describe them as below average, average, smart (about 1 in 4), very smart (about 1 in 20), roughly equal (too rare to ballpark). It is almost pointless attempting to communicate anything other than direct simple commands to anyone at the average level or lower. They can understand more, but it is rather time consuming to teach them and their resulting work will be very prone to errors in applying the underlying logic. The smart ones can be given some flexibility in execution and higher level understanding, but it is easy for them to run off the reservation if not fenced in with strict boundaries. The very smart ones can reliably work with little more than a framework and tend to make good interpreters between myself and others. The roughly equal tend to have almost no problem understanding me, pick up on conceptual shorthand, and we can generally finish each others thoughts with decent accuracy, even if we barely know each other. I would be curious to find out how well this meshes with other peoples’ experiences.
As far as the untested, if you have to tell people you are smart, you probably aren’t very. If you are, you radiate it. When I meet someone 1st SD or higher for the first time, they know. Sometimes they know before I’ve even said a word. People I’ve never met know by reputation. If people just call you quick or sharp, you are probably 1st SD. If they call you bright, talented, or gifted (as an adult) you are probably about 2nd SD. When the 1st & 2nd SD people start telling you things like: “I know I’m smart, but you are on another level”, you are probably 3rd SD or beyond.
Comes off shamefully arrogant, but your experience in the workplace roughly matches my own. People from -1SD and up usually have something to offer me in terms of work-product, but your descriptions of command translation and resultant errors is pretty close to what I’ve seen. A fair bit of the reason I’ve taught myself some basic programming is so that I could code tools and reports that do some of the “thinking” that I would expect a +1SD to do on their own, and then supply it to others as virtual augmentation. Most of the rest of the reason is to augment or multiply myself, so this approach helps more than just the below-average!
As for quickly determining the rough placement of others: Generally, yes, it’s obvious extremely early on. Sometimes, though I’ve been surprised- usually because of confounders like those mentioned by “nope” above, or more prosaic medical difficulties. The occasional ESL person might also fly under the radar when speaking in English.
You’ve built an elaborate superstructure on a base of shifting sand. Your confidence in your ability to sight read people’s IQ (or g or whatever you want to call it) with the kind of precision you claim is almost certainly wrong. This reads like the self confidence of scouts in the pre-moneyball era.
I hope you are under 30.
I’m not claiming to sight-read IQ. I’m claiming to quickly read coworker likely-aptitude-at-shared-work to within a standard deviation or so. That’s a much, much weaker claim- and one that I think should be based a little more firmly, since the overlap is higher and the focus narrower.
I suspect that if Jason K. is being honest – and I have no reason to suspect he is not – he is quite a bit smarter than I am. However, I can do what he can do from my level on down, to a reasonably reliable degree. He doesn’t appear to be claiming to be a lightning-IQ-calculator. He appears to be claiming that between his very high g level and experience, he can determine a person’s competence and what kind of tasks related to his field of work they can be relied upon to do, with what level of necessary oversight, quite quickly. I don’t find this unlikely at all. I find it eminently reasonable because, as I said, I can do it too. So, apparently, can Andrew.
He did sound a bit arrogant, but as someone observed, it’s not arrogance if you really are that good.
It seems like you two (Marc and Andrew) are retreating to the motte with rather undue haste.
The post was made in a thread about IQ and the uses SD language that doesn’t make much sense if it is only supposed to be about a telling quickly whether or not a co-worker or employee is going to be productive.
Also, see the entire last paragraph. It reads exactly like some silly, reductive analysis of how “nines” and “tens” act.
Fair enough, science2- I don’t really like getting slammed with the IQ-arrogance link. I try very hard in my day-to-day life to see the value (via comparative advantage or other means) in everyone’s contribution. Out here, I want to express something closer to the beliefs I hold with 50% probability, if that makes sense.
The last paragraph is nothing about how certain people act. It is an attempt to provide guidance towards judging your own level without an IQ test, based on what I’ve witnessed. As I noted in the very first paragraph, my scores run quite a range. Partly because of that, I don’t put too much stock in those kind of tests. The other part is that intelligence can be incredibly variable. There is at least one facet I score 98%+ and another that I score at 20%. The former is the core factor in many (if not most) IQ tests, the latter is not.
I’m certainly not saying that I can place someone at a glance. It is ‘quickly’, not ‘instantly’. I know it is fairly easy to fool yourself into seeing patterns that aren’t there, so I was trying to get calibrations for my own perceptions. I am a bit concerned that I might be over estimating myself and/or under estimating others. It is difficult to get good direct comparisons outside of a formal setting.
You object to the very definition of intelligence the scientific community has settled on, mostly because you think it under-scores your great genius. But despite admitting that you have your own idiosyncratic definition and don’t “put much stock in tests” you nonetheless wish to offer guidance to others in how to judge their own and others’ intelligence.
It’s perfectly fine to have problems with the IQ research, and the way scientists think about intelligence. I do myself. But you can’t just mention that fact and then continue on as if it isn’t critical to what comes after. Your paragraphs about the characteristics of other smart people are completely meaningless in the absence of a consensus on what intelligence is. The only consensus available is the one you reject, and without offering much to replace it other than your personal intuition.
Whatever your IQ or Jason-K’s-new-and-improved-IQ, I’m sure you aren’t dumb. So try using some of that brainpower for a bit of personal introspection. And for your own sake find something else to base your ego on or you are going to be in for a world of pain sooner or later. As I said, I hope you are under 30. If so the outlook is still pretty hopeful.
@ science2
I’m really interested in your views on intelligence. You seem to care very much about the subject. Why do some of these comments irk you so much? (I do see where you’re coming from in terms of your rational arguments, but I’m curious as to where your passion comes from.) What’s your background / experience? (Just In case it’s unclear, I’m being genuine. You seem like you know a lot, and I think I could learn a thing or two from you.)
@ Jason
For what it’s worth, you didn’t sound arrogant to me. That might be because I like certain types of arrogance, hard to say. So, a purely recreational question for you: do you classify people who comment on blogs similarly to how you classify them in real life (intelligence-wise)?
Thanks for the compliments but I don’t feel to comfortable going into biographical details publicly. Sorry.
PS the science2 is just because science stopped working …
Banned for multiple abrasive comments
Would you care to elaborate on how you recognize smart people by sight? Eric Raymond has suggested that rapid shifts between internal and external processing are a marker for intelligence.
Haven’t had an official certified IQ test that told me the result, but many online ones over the years, of which some were somewhat professional (e.g. in psychology studies, think “stressors at test-taking”). Based on these, I’m 90% confident I’m in the 140~146 IQ range.
That looks way too narrow for a 90% confidence interval. That far away from the mean even the best IQ tests we have couldn’t get you there, and online IQ tests have essentially no evidence of validity.
You have a point. On the other hand, several tests explicitly designed for the high end gave this result over the years and the scores on the same tests replicate well over time. The real question is whether what the IQ tests test is what you’re interested in.
To revise and update my statement: If you hand me an IQ test designed to differentiate well at the upper end, I’m 90% confident I can score between 134 and 149, whatever that means.
If I’ve convinced you to increased your 90% confidence interval by two and half times I’d say we are moving in the right direction!
I’d say we have arrived at the destination. And I’ve increased my confidence interval way more than 150%, since we are talking about the right tail of a normal distribution, assuming a random human as the reference case.
I’ve never wanted to know my IQ score, and have actively avoided testing. We’re all high-functioning here, so I’ll skip the dick-measuring recitation of bona fides.
In what way does an adult need to know, or derive direct benefit* from knowing, his or her IQ score?
I ask because there are a lot of numbers floating around, but who cares?
High intelligence is beneficial. It helps in the achievement of difficult goals. As more and more physical manipulation of the environment is done by tools (and systems of tools) rather than human muscles and reaction times, creating and manipulating those systems is increasingly important. This is pretty noncontroversial.
Moreover, there are obvious benefits–for a child or someone still involved in the formal educational system–to having a simple score that purports to show how smart you are. A high score can get you into a better school or other program you might not have access to otherwise.
But as a working adult, again, who cares? What benefit do you derive from knowing your score? Professions–including and especially high-status professions like law, medicine, finance, and academia–judge your worth by how quickly and well you can achieve the instrumental goals of that profession. That is, by what you can make happen. Test scores can function as gatekeepers on your way to a specific place within a profession, but they won’t keep you there once you are there, and that score (rather than the intelligence it purports to represent) certainly doesn’t achieve any goals in and of itself.
* I suppose you could argue that feeling good about a high score provides hedons, which would be a direct benefit. I’m talking a little more concrete.
tl;dr: How is asking about IQ score not the self-congratulatory, usually-fibbed, useless equivalent of “how much do you bench, bro?”
I think in some rare cases, it can be of value to know your own rough IQ. Namely, if you’re considering a mathematics major in college (for example), or in trying to estimate how long it will take you to learn a new skill on your own.
The value of sharing this estimated score with anyone else seems very dubious.
I was under the impression that deviation IQ wasn’t very useful for that, and that ratio IQ’s are usually only tested in children if at all.
Can you accurately say how much faster, for example, someone 3 sd out will pick up a skill than someone 1 sd out? By accurate I mean having it be less of a guess than just saying that the smarter one will pick it up faster.
I believe this is covered extensively in military research on the ASVAB, with the entirely predictable result that smarter people learn faster.
The value of sharing this estimated score with anyone else seems very dubious.
I think it’s just the circular-self-pleasuring aspect of this thread that’s gotten me riled up. It seems like we’ve hit upon an obvious-in-retrospect fail state of this particular commentariat: we’re all pretty darn smart, but there’s a lot of deeply-valued self-image wrapped in this particular number, which makes us want to trumpet it loudly and clearly. Professionally administered adult IQ scores are dubious enough, especially in terms of “yeah, but what have you done for us lately?” Self-estimated scores (whether ported over from the ASVAB or SAT or ACT, or on the basis of thinking you were the smartest kid in your high school) doubly so.
I prefer Deiseach’s approach. She has repeatedly (and annoyingly self-deprecatingly) claimed to have a bog-standard IQ, yet consistently displays a remarkable verbal facility as well as a refreshing insight into how humans work. Show, don’t tell.
I do occasionally wonder if everyone on this thread estimating at their 140+ IQ is simultaneously sitting on other threads on other sites talking about their estimated 10-inch penises and their estimated 400lb benches. 🙂
Or maybe I just fell asleep on the wrong side of the bed and woke up in the same crotchety place.
I concur. Just get yourself damn well tested. Mensa does it for cheap. Then at least you have a document you can take a timestamped webcam picture of to refute naysayers.
I think the OP actually had a very nice idea, to compare self-estimation to the experiences of those tested to get some insight into the quality of self-estimation.
But most people are missing the point.
Thank you very kindly for the lovely compliments, but I’m not being self-deprecating. I am thick as two short planks when it comes to anything maths-related, and it’s only thanks to the paternal line’s freaky reading ability (which has damn-all to do with actual intelligence, I am more and more convinced, plus comes packaged with free extra bonus emotional/psychological screwed-upness for that special feeling of family togetherness*) that I can skate ahead on verbal/written stuff 🙂
*At least one of the younger generation has an Official Diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum that I am aware of, and God knows how many of us have it or what used to be called Aspergers (high-functioning or not), since few of us actually get any diagnoses by psychologists/psychiatrists, though we do end up on all kinds of “pills for our nerves”. My sister tells me that when she went to work in a residential centre for people with intellectual disabilities and other kinds of special needs, she was immediately struck by the resemblance between living with me in our childhood and those on the autism spectrum, so she pretty much thinks I’m some variety of autistic 🙂
@Deiseach: Surely you’ve sometimes used words to figure out something that was useful for you to know? From what you write, it seems as if you have an unusual definition of “intelligence” as being the exact same thing as “math ability.” If that’s not actually how you define it, then how do you define it, and why can’t verbal ability be used for the same purpose?
Purposefully misestimating in a downwards direction is still misestimating. Or, worse, just lying.
Seems obvious the asker here is curious about how and how well people can estimate their own IQ without taking a test, and/or what it’s like to have an IQ in different ranges, and/or what people with IQs in different ranges sound like. I’m curious about those things too.
> Seems obvious the asker here is curious about how and how well people can estimate their own IQ without taking a test,
In my experience the answer is close to “not at all”.
It’s probably not limited to your experience either. This would be one of those things people are going to be most biased about, given how important intelligence is to most people’s identity. It’s also what you’re using to evaluate itself, and the accuracy of its own evaluation of itself, so you get interesting effects from that. Plus the whole quantifying thing is going to make people who otherwise could correctly surmise that they’re “very smart” or “kind of smart” wronger.
There are good reasons to suspect smarter people might be better at evaluating their own intelligence, and reasons to suspect reading about rationality might make people more rational, and people here tend to have optimistic ideas about the general intelligence level and rationality of the commentariat. So there’s that.
In any case, it’s always interesting to hear how other people think of themselves privately inside their heads, especially in the context of a question that allows you to make comparisons between different people.
I would actually argue that knowing one’s IQ could be helpful to certain underconfident people (in the same sense that some people might benefit from reading Ayn Rand). If it’s high it might give them “permission” to try something they would have otherwise felt unqualified to do.
“In what way does an adult need to know, or derive direct benefit* from knowing, his or her IQ score? ”
“Need” is too strong. But there are contexts where knowing about how large a fraction of those you deal with are likely to be about as smart as you are, considerably less smart, considerably more smart, is useful.
Per MENSA, I’m 135+. Prior to that, I estimated 120-130, based on various online tests. I did investigate how Raven’s matrices are made and what patterns they follow prior to testing, however, so my official score may be too high.
– Per MENSA, I’m 135+.
Same.
I estimate that I’m somewhere around one in ten thousand, e.g. somewhere in the 150s.
I went to a high school with roughly 2000 students per class, with competitive admissions and am quite confident that I, overall, I was the smartest person in that class. No one else was close in math or science classes. In “soft” subjects it is harder to judge but I would at least have been near the top, probably at the top. Given that the population of that high school was much smarter than average, one in 2000 is an absolute lower bound. I am not confident that I was the smartest person if you count “adjacent” classes, and I’m not sure to what extent really exceptional students might have ended up in small elite private schools, private tutoring, and the like. So call it one in 2000 or better.
At an elite university I did well, but not spectacularly so. I people with similar high school experiences to mine in that university, and I’d guesstimate I was perhaps in the top 20% or so of them. Most of them did not have quite as good a high school background (for example, they might have been the top of a smaller/less selective class), and sample size is very small. So multiply 1 in 2000 or better by 1 in 5 or worse, and you get roughly 1 in 10000.
Professionally I am seen as a high performer, but not truly exceptional, in environments where everyone has been very heavily filtered for intelligence.
I’ve never been tested.
I had an IQ test as part of gaining admission to the gifted program I was part of, and it was…let’s just say very high. The program in question had a threshold of 140, and I cleared it with a fair bit to spare. (Admittedly, it was a child IQ test.) I then had the opportunity to observe both the other kids in the program and those who were in the normal gifted program (I don’t know what the cutoff for that was, but I’d guess ~120) and later on, honors classes at a very good high school.
I’d say that I saw a couple of different bands (among the gifted/smart, I have little experience with normal people), along with my estimates on IQ for each:
Very high (180+). I have one friend who said that his IQ test was reported as 185+, and I have no trouble believing it. He’s about the only person I know who I’d put here.
High (160-180). This is the band I fall into. I usually saw one or two people a year who seemed to be in this band. There was a little bit of difference between them and people in the next band down.
Normal (140-160). This is normal for the program I was in, not society as a whole. Still very smart, and still pretty much peers to the High band, but they didn’t spend as much time doing recreational math or the like.
Regular Gifted (120-140): There was a visible difference between these and the next band up, although it faded some in high school. These are the normal denizens of a typical gifted program.
I’m not certain of my calibration on this, as I don’t have good IQ data on people besides those used in the creation of the model.
Childhood IQs are ratio IQs rather than deviation IQs. The two aren’t commensurable. In particular ratio IQ scales regularly produce numbers that are impossible to measure in adults and would be implausible given expected rarity. The fact that the gifted childhood community stubbornly insists on maintaining a separate system with the same name, despite the manifest confusion it causes including even among researchers who should no better is rather unfortunate IMO.
Even using deviation IQ, a test taken in childhood doesn’t particularly well predict adult IQ (parents’ average is a better predictor).
How good of a predictor is parents’ average?
Better than self-assessment 🙂
That’s funny, Alex. =) I was hoping science2 might actually know the answer, because I’m curious, but not curious enough to delve into the literature.
Not very good, especially if the kid in question wasn’t t raised by the parents.
The IQ test in question was WISC, which is deviation-based. And it wasn’t the only test. I think the requirements translated to something like an IQ of 200 in ratio terms.
As for prediction of adult IQ, I’d like to see cites. A quick google turns up reasonable correlations. Or to put it another way, my classmates in 4th grade all came from very smart parents and are all very smart today.
I can agree that you would see higher scores on childhood deviation tests because they have a broader range of sensitivity. I was about 8 when I took the test, and it was designed for those between the ages of 6 and 16. I think there’s some normalization by age, so it’s entirely possible that you’ll see an 8-year-old who puts in what would be an impressive performance for a 16-year-old get a score of 160+ that won’t recur when tested as an adult.
If someone tells you his test can tell a deviation score of +5.33 for a eight year olds, check your wallet. That’s 5 in 100 million. Just how many eight year olds do you think were in the validation study?
Childhood IQ tests are less sensitive (or to put it better less accurate further away from the mean) than adult tests because they are normed against smaller relevant populations. It seems like the opposite because the people selling the test make voodoo adjustments involving norms for older populations that they pull out of their collective rear ends.
There’s a ton of bad science surrounding childhood IQ but the whole apparatus is maintained by parents that looove hearing that little precious is one in a 10 million. Apparently they shut off whatever part of their brain should question how anyone could tell such a thing with any confidence.
I did not say that a childhood IQ test is 100% accurate, and acknowledged that you could get weird results at the upper end of the range. And my ranges are probably somewhat high, in that they’re based on said childhood IQ tests. But, at one of the best school districts in the state, every single one of the National Merit finalists for my year had been in the special gifted program in elementary school.
@science2:
They haven’t “pulled it out of their rear ends,” they’ve done their best to create theoretically sound extrapolations that are as accurate as possible. (However, it is starting to look like the real problem may be that the distribution of the underlying…thing the tests are trying to get at…is actually not normal. If that’s true, then extrapolations based on assuming a normal distribution will never, ever work quite right.)
“Childhood IQ tests are less sensitive (or to put it better less accurate further away from the mean) than adult tests because they are normed against smaller relevant populations.”
This is true as far as it goes, but you’re ignoring ceiling effects.
When someone has gotten every or almost every item on an IQ test correct, then their final score will be an underestimate–because the whole point of any IQ test is to *find out when the material becomes so difficult that they miss several items in a row*.
That’s a “ceiling effect,” and it shows up before you ever start looking at norm tables–before you ever start trying to turn the raw score into a standard score and percentile.
But when you’re confronted with a child for whom you know the test you just administered is going to be an underestimate…it’s entirely reasonable to want to see how they do on a more difficult test. An adult with an IQ of 85 and one with an IQ of 115 could both do extremely well on a test designed for 9-year-olds–but a 9-year-old who scores 85 on an adult IQ test needs schoolwork at a very different conceptual level than one who scores 115. (About middle school level vs. about college level.)
That’s the reason for “out of level testing”–such as the above example, or the now-common practice of giving the SAT to high-achieving 12-year-olds. But you’re not going to give the SAT to a sample of unselected 12-year-olds (or an adult IQ test to a sample of 9-year-olds). That would subject those unselected kids to far too much stress to be remotely ethical. So if you want to generate any kind of age-based score for that unusual child, you’re forced to use some kind of extrapolation.
Which is why they do it.
“There’s a ton of bad science surrounding childhood IQ but the whole apparatus is maintained by parents that looove hearing that little precious is one in a 10 million.”
I think most parents are frightened to hear such a thing, rather than enjoying it. What makes you think they enjoy it? Have you encountered some who seemed like they did?
“They haven’t “pulled it out of their rear ends,” they’ve done their best to create theoretically sound extrapolations that are as accurate as possible.”
That they’ve tried really hard is meaningless. The output is unsound. And they way they present it is dishonest–hiding the unsoundness deep in the heart of barely published validation studies, with score reports referring to authoritative sounding “extended norms”.
“This is true as far as it goes, but you’re ignoring ceiling effects.
…
That’s a “ceiling effect,” and it shows up before you ever start looking at norm tables–before you ever start trying to turn the raw score into a standard score and percentile.”
No it doesn’t come “before”. What comes before is the validation study. If you don’t have enough people in the validation study than you can’t say anything meaningful about the people that hit the ceiling. Even if there were many many more difficult question it wouldn’t matter, you’d have a higher raw score but it would still be meaningless.
Which is exactly the case with “out of level” tested children. You’ve found out the “interesting” fact about how they do on tests normed for higher ages, but that fact can’t be translated into an IQ. At least not by anyone with a shred of scientific integrity.
“So if you want to generate any kind of age-based score for that unusual child, you’re forced to use some kind of extrapolation.
Which is why they do it.”
Why do they need to generate an age-based “IQ” score? Give the raw testing data to whoever is designing the educational program for that unusual child. They generate the fake number not for a pedagogical reason (much less scientific) but to stroke egos.
“What makes you think they enjoy it? Have you encountered some who seemed like they did?”
Yes. And their kids that turn out like people in this subthread.
It’s not dishonest. The topic is just extremely complex, so it’s easy to misinterpret.
(Bottom line is that deviation IQ is constructed around a reasonable and sincere assumption that the target trait is distributed normally. It’s starting to look like that may not be true. If that’s the case then deviation IQ just does not work quite right at the extremes and never can. That would explain why every attempt to make it work right at the extremes has failed.)
That they hit the ceiling is meaningful. If you didn’t follow standard procedure in generating the raw score, then the raw score doesn’t actually correspond to the percentile assigned. This is true regardless of whether you got that percentile from the norm sample or from extrapolation.
And if they hit the ceiling, then the way you didn’t follow the standard procedure is that you didn’t “keep going until they missed enough questions.” Because you *couldn’t* because they *did too well*. It’s appropriate to call the resulting percentile an underestimate.
I’m getting the impression you just don’t believe in ever using any theoretical models for anything. Which is your choice, but really, the fact that someone else *is* willing to use a theoretical model does not mean they’re dishonest. Especially when they *openly publish exactly what they did*.
Initially it’s obviously more important to translate it into an approximate conceptual level (“mental age”) so you know what kind of schoolwork the kid needs right now. But once you’ve done that, the definition of ratio IQ means that you can easily generate an approximate one. Which is better than nothing–or more accurately, better than chronological age–for predicting the child’s future needs.
Or if you’re a researcher like the SMPY/SET group, you want to come up with an estimate of how rare is the population you’re studying–it’s a pretty basic question to ask about your subjects. But of course, the definition of deviation IQ means that once you have an estimate of rarity, you have a deviation IQ as well.
And SMPY/SET wanted to estimate their subjects’ IQs so that people could compare their findings to those of IQ-based studies, too. That’s why they chose a standard deviation of 16 instead of 15–they wanted their estimated scores to correspond with Pinneau-corrected Stanford-Binet scores. That way anyone who wanted to consult the research to figure out how to help a kid could easily form an idea of whether their study applied.
(Again, looks like it didn’t work because…the underlying distribution seems to maybe have a fat tail. But they didn’t know that.)
So they don’t have to put the kid through getting tested over and over again in the future.
(Especially since the very kids who do especially well the first time they’re tested, also tend to remember the test for years longer than is typical–and hence seem to remain vulnerable to test-retest effects much longer. Two years after the initial test, your IQ-based estimate of their mental age is probably less likely to be inflated than their actual score on a retest.)
…well, I’ve said before that I have a weak “arrogance detector”…but all I see the people in this subthread doing is discussing a topic they find interesting. If they’re interested, there’s nothing wrong with discussing it. Even if someone has issues around it, discussing it will help them work through those issues. So I’m not sure what the problem is–could you be more specific?
This is the apotheosis of the tail wagging the dog. There’s exactly zero evidence for this is the literature on adult IQ. Rather than acknolwedge that they’ve been wrong for forty years and that the 180 IQs they been handing out like candy make no sense, the juvenile “IQ” industry is doubling down on their bullshit numbers and claiming the distribution isn’t normal. Of course they don’t have sufficient evidence for that, that would require doing large scale studies. Why do large scale studies when there’s all that money to be made fleecing parents? No, they’ve got models, who needs data when you have models?
Theoretical models are great. For generating hypotheses which you can then test. You know, the whole scientific method thing?
Of course charlatan always want to jump the gun. Can’t wait for validation before starting to sell earthworm blood capsules or “extended IQ tests for profoundly gifted children, now only $2999!”
—
Sometimes I wish we had a science Pope. The institutional mechanism we have a fairly decent within a field, but when an entire field goes astray there’s very few tools from bringing them back. Peer review is actually harmful in that case because the peers in question are themselves all in thrall.
There is yet a third system, used in some of the SMPY/TIP literature, though not usually told to the students. This is to administer the SATs to children under the age of 13. This gives a test with a well understood mean and standard deviation, which can be converted the IQ scale linearly. The tail is not a bell curve and it yields pretty big numbers.
They did this at my middle school in 6th grade, took the four of us who scored highest on the CAT and sent us to UCI to take the SAT when we were 12. I think I got like 1360 or something? It’s hard to remember that far back but definitely between 1300 and 1400. We started an NTN club after that where we stayed after school and played against whoever was on the network and that was how I ended up on a television quiz show.
The fundamental problem is that just because an 8 year old has an usually early growth spurt doesn’t mean he’s going to end up 7′ tall. You can’t really fix that. It simply doesn’t make sense to use the same name and scale for what’s being measured in children as for what’s being measured in adults.
Either the people studying children should keep the name IQ or the people studying adults should, but not both. Arguably the child people have the better claim historically, but there’s better theoretical and empirical grounding for the adult version.
“The fundamental problem is that just because an 8 year old has an usually early growth spurt doesn’t mean he’s going to end up 7′ tall. You can’t really fix that.”
That’s a reasonable concern. Thing is, so is ceiling effect (which I described upthread).
IQ tests *really aren’t valid* when the subject never misses the required number of questions. They *really are underestimates* in that case. Check the manuals!
And it’s just easier to find material difficult enough to stump a child than it is to find material difficult enough to stump an equally-(un)usual adult.
So it’s in this sense that “out of level testing” *is* *more* accurate than age-based (or adult) testing: it’s more likely to *actually stump the subject as an IQ test is supposed to*, instead of lumping together those who easily got a perfect score with those who just barely managed it.
Studies like SMPY/SET (discussed here a few months ago) have tried to check for your “early ripe, early rot” / “developmental spurting” concern. Of course, they tend to be stymied by the issue described above: it’s harder to measure high performance in an adult. They do find that if you group people by childhood IQ or SAT score, then the higher a group’s mean childhood score, the “better” the group does on average. And this effect continues all the way up the SAT scale–there’s no score above which age-12 SAT score stops “mattering.” (IOW, it is really hard to check, but it sorta seems like maybe IQ-type measurements are more reliable at the very high end.)
Since that’s so, people reasonably conclude that telling apart those who easily got a perfect score from those who just barely managed it…is actually worth trying to do.
Personally, I care more about the developmental differences that tend to be associated with extreme IQ scores than I do about the scores themselves. I want these kids to get the kind of academic and social experiences that are the best fit for them given those developmental differences–I want them to grow up happy and healthy.
IMO identifying “the 9-year-old who needs 8th grade work” and “the 9-year-old who needs college work” is much more important and valuable than fussing over exactly which percentile each kid is in.
(OTOH, clearly percentiles are important if you’re trying to plan a district-wide program–so you can have some idea how many students you can expect to need the program.)
They aren’t underestimates because numbers higher than the test tests for are meaningless. What’s meaningless are numbers pulled out of the air rather than out of validation studies.
I’m just going to leave this here and ask you to refer to my handle.
Then you should convince the Gifted and Talented Industrial Complex to find a different name and quit screwing with the scientific literature.
Then you should keep them the hell away from the aforementioned G&TIC. They are interested in producing newspaper articles about child prodigies and they don’t care about how miserable the kids turn out to be as adults–once they get a Phd at 17 or win a putnum the G&T crowd don’t care what happens after that.
As I said in my other comment, if the standard procedure is to stump the subject, and you didn’t do that because you *couldn’t* stump them because they *did too well*…it’s appropriate to call the resulting number an “underestimate.” Also, extrapolations don’t come “out of the air,” they come out of the theoretical model the test is based on. If I still haven’t managed to convince you of that after two different attempts…I guess you’ll just have to keep being Wrong On The Internet. 😉
Well after they’ve won a Putnam they’ve proven their ability *did* continue into adulthood now haven’t they? 😉
…but IMX the people who are focused on “producing articles about child prodigies” are journalists. They’ve always been incentivized to sensationalize, but these days *especially* so (ever read Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying?). They will twist everything you say to make the best story, regardless of what it does to accuracy or your feelings or reputation (as Eliezer learned and frelkins explained the incentives around). That’s hard enough for an adult to deal with, let alone a child–especially a child who’s particularly sensitive and concerned about fairness, as high-IQ kids tend to be. Betty Meckstroth and Kathi Kearney agree:
So yeah. Avoid media attention.
…so…from an interview with Stephanie Tolan:
…it’s a developmental difference. Our best evidence is that it *doesn’t* go away. It can be really tempting to try to pretend like it did…but when you try, you generally find that wherever you go, there you still are. Same personality. Same traits. Traits of the same old developmental difference.
But it’s OK.
And for the kids…it will be difficult no matter what parents and teachers try. IMO Gross was right that it’s always “tough to be them,” no matter what; Terman was right that they have “one of the most difficult problems of social adjustment that any human being is ever called upon to meet”–no matter what. There is no magic bullet. But…I believe acceleration still is the “best of a bad bunch” of options.
Right, the best option for happiness just happens to be the one that strokes parental ego and gets the testing / enrichment industry money. And no, of course there’s no actual data on this — but don’t worry we’ve got theoretical models that say the kids will grow up to be happy, well adjusted adults.
And when our terrible, terrible developmental programs fuck up kids for life and produce miserable adults — well we’ll just claim that extreme intelligence is highly associated with mild autism, depression and other emotional problems. See it wasn’t our fault, they we fucked up to begin with.
Sometimes I really really wish there is a hell.
Now I’m wondering how many people in this subthread are former prodigies. *raises hand*
Professionally and financially, I’ve been a huge success, because I was lucky enough to have the proper connections. Socially and emotionally, I’m a wreck. But I don’t know how much of that is specifically linked to having been accelerated and how much is just innate to my personality. There’s no sharp boundary between nature and nurture here.
Edit window closed, but I’d like to add: I sometimes fall into an “atypical mind fallacy” – I assume that because I’m so unusual my experiences don’t map to anyone else’s.
“Now I’m wondering how many people in this subthread are former prodigies.”
Probably depends on your definition. I entered Harvard at sixteen; the first math course I took was an advanced calculus course open to both undergraduate and graduate students.
And I am, on the whole, happy at how my life has turned out. It’s possible that being a prodigy is easier when that’s the norm for the family.
@BBA
I hope socially and emotionally things will get better for you. Have you read this, BTW? Someone posted it on the SSC subreddit: http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM
Do you think this captures the problem pretty well? Or is something different for you?
@Nadja
That certainly reflects issues I had when I was younger. I feel like I’ve outgrown most of that but it’s left me with different issues.
I’m certainly in the “committed” group – I come from an upper-middle-class background (no Nobel laureates in my family though), attended prestigious colleges, and currently have a very good (and well-paying) job in the financial industry.
But due to my academic acceleration I had a very lonely childhood, with essentially no peers, and I think my social maladjustment may stem from that. Or it might be my natural personality, or borderline Asperger syndrome. I’m not sure.
What I do know is that I find social interaction tiring and unpleasant, even as I’ve gotten much better at it. I have no close friends outside of family and work ties and my romantic experience is next to nil. Usually I’m comfortable in my solitude but every so often I feel like I’ve completely missed the boat on a normal human experience and I’m doomed to die alone. Well, at least I have some money saved up and I’ll be able to travel, so it isn’t all bad.
Well, this is a lot more personal than I’d typically get in a blog comment. I’ve made minimal effort to hide my identity and it’s possible that someone who knows me in real life will find this and trace it back to me, in which case: I’m okay, really I am, I just have bad days every now and then and today was one of them.
@ BBA
Obviously, I don’t know enough about your situation, but I can imagine that the combination of being an introvert and being highly intelligent would make anyone’s social life difficult! So, you know, it might not be that there’s anything wrong with you.
First of all, if you’re unusually gifted, then I imagine it’s very unlikely for you to run into people who are at your intellectual level. And you need that for a good chance of a real connection. Because if people are not capable of understanding you, then your basic human need of feeling “felt” is not being met. And then the whole thing is just frustrating. So in the end no wonder you’re exhausted from regular social interactions!
Also, it sounds like you’re an introvert. I find the American culture particularly difficult for introverts. You have to be friendly towards everyone you talk to, but when you actually start enjoying your conversations with someone, you find that it’s almost impossible to get really close to them! (Terrible generalization, I know.) Here’s an interesting take on it: https://hbr.org/2014/05/one-reason-cross-cultural-small-talk-is-so-tricky/
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe all you need is to meet the right people. And if you don’t meet them around where you live right now, then you can always take all that money you’re saving and travel to a coconut culture country to see if it suits you better. =)
Wishing you as few as possible of those bad days!
Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates?
Morons.
Anyway, I vaguely recall my mum mentioning I scored around 150ish on a test taken as a child, but I could well be misremembering, and if I’m not then who knows what test it was (or even what language/country it was in – we traveled around a lot when I was little).
On correlated measures I’ve scored near or at the top with very light prep – 800/800 on the newer SAT and 170Q/169V on the GRE. My academic performance has been solid, too – top 3% GPA at a top 15 US-News undergrad with a double major in two sciences and way more credits than necessary (and the GPA couldda been higher, but it was already above the threshold for summa cum laude – which is all I was shooting for – and I had plenty of other things to occupy my time). I’m in a well regarded grad program now (let’s say top 5-10ish) and get awards, grants, scholarships, etc. pretty regularly (the latest big one being an NSF-GRF). I’ve been told I’m really smart by some rather accomplished people, too.
All that said, I’m not sure how I’d go about guesstimating my IQ – its literature is not one I’m too familiar with and I’ve no immediate intuitions on how IQ is distributed. For generic nerdy/bookish smartness, I’d put myself somewhere between the 80th and 98th percentile for most of the groups I’ve hung out or participated in, which themselves might be sampled from the, oh I dunno, top tercile of the general population?
At the risk of identifying myself, my childhood IQ test came back 180+. (Apparently that’s as high as it would specify, and my parents were told it was estimated at ~220.) The only IQ test I’ve taken as an adult was the Ravens test, which came back ~140. (That test was an infuriating guessing game at times. Yes, I see a pattern, I see two, but neither of them are very parsimonious, so is it a third I haven’t spotted yet, or…)
My experience with noticing the intelligence of other people matches Jason K and Andrew’s. You know, within a minute or two of talking with someone, whereabouts they are. There’s a lot that is going on at an unconscious level to process it, but the part I’m most aware of is something like the complexity of thoughts people are capable of, which comes across most obviously in terms of the complexity of ideas they can effectively express. The other side is something like… mental flexibility, which is generally only demonstrated in communication of difficult ideas; it can be demonstrated, for example, by switching through metaphors until one of them clicks. Lower-intelligence people will understand something in terms of one or maybe two metaphors – which is to say, they don’t really understand the subject, they understand the metaphor.
I don’t think I could tell somebody equal to me apart from somebody more intelligent than me; my own intelligence already exceeds the use I can extract out of it, as the problems commensurate tend to be highly domain-specific.
Pride is a sin. That said, let me try to estimate my IQ.
(I’ve always said that I would find out my IQ before I tried to determine whether IQ was a valid measure of intelligence; that way I know what side to be on ?)
Preliminary:
I know the mean IQ is 100, with a standard deviation of 20. Do I feel one standard deviation above the average person (in some hard-to-quantify intelligence domain)? Probably. 2? Maybe. 3? Hardly; that would imply I was in the top .3% of people, intellectually. I note that in my high school career I’ve been in, perhaps, the top 1%, but this doesn’t really feel like intelligence; that’s a portion, but I feel less remarkable in domains where I’ve felt I was relying more on intelligence than willingness to do pointless tasks…
I know the mean IQ of Less Wrong is 135, per a post Scott made on his tumblr.
When I saw this Raven’s Matrix (http://images.lesswrong.com/t3_lq3_2.png?v=430da704bcee8ed645e7133257b6de62) I was able to solve it pretty easily, with no great strain or disruption to my normal thinking pattern. It was followed in a Less Wrong post (http://lesswrong.com/lw/lq3/innate_mathematical_ability/) with the phrase “Most people can’t see the pattern in the above matrix”. However, I have no indication that I actually got the question *right*, as the answer was not listed anywhere…
Preliminary estimate: 140
Slight Investigation:
Pursuant other comments in this thread, I looked up how to convert from SAT scores to IQ, and found this website: http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/greiq.aspx
Several facts confronted me:
*IQ is, in fact, normalized with a standard deviation of 15, not 20 (though sometimes 16, because there is no god). My prediction above would be adjusted to 130. I’m not sure how I feel about this.
*I took the SAT after 1994, so Mensa does not consider it to correlate with IQ anymore.
*I had a little trouble following the procedure, which caused me to doubt my intellect entirely, but in my defense I was skimming at 1 AM in the morning.
*I don’t know what an “SAT I” is. I assume it’s the one I have. The other table on the site that I might use (which would give me an IQ of 159.07) leads me to believe that the non-I SAT is older, so I didn’t take it.
I scored a 770 in reading and a 780 in writing on the SAT. I don’t remember preparing much, but I think I tried to prepare a little. It was a tough week (?). This combines to a score of 1550, which, according to the table, is roughly 148.56 in IQ (normalized such that σ=15). I think I’ll take only two sig figs and call it 150 (lucky me).
This seems a little high, but perhaps Robin Hanson was right when he said that smart people overestimate the intelligence of others.
Estimate after Slight Investigation: 150
Taking a Test:
(In the meantime I read slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/14/ot43-roses-are-thread/#comment-326256 and its thread…)
I’ve been meaning to take an IQ test for some time. Someone in a past SSC thread recommended http://iqtest.dk/main.swf which appears to be designed by “Mensa Danmark” which appears to be an actual Mensa place. I’m pretty sure the background is a picture of some sort of genitalia. Anyhow, I decided to take it a couple days after my slight investigation.
The test is 39 Raven’s Matrices to be answered in 40 minutes. They got really tough by the end. The test gave me a calculated IQ of 138.
Estimate after Online Test: 138
Reflection:
I don’t plan on taking a real, in-person IQ test (can’t be bothered) so there we are. I feel pretty good about having estimated my IQ naively, notably while I misunderstood how IQ was normalized. I also feel pretty good about being 2-and-a-half standard deviations above the mean. I guess the SAT wasn’t a good test of IQ when I took it.
At every step I updated my estimate, but since I considered each step to produce much greater evidence than the previous, it was as though I threw out the previous steps for each estimate. If I had taken my adjusted-based-on-actual-σ gut feeling and averaged it with my result from the SAT table, I could also have gotten 140…
I took 2 significant figures in the first step because I didn’t have a basis for more and less would have been useless. I took 2 sf in the second step basically for the same reason. The guy who made the table noted that the numbers weren’t as precise as they seemed. I took 3 sf in the third step because that’s how many the results page gave me.
The SAT I is just the SAT, the reading + math + now writing (older versions have only reading and math) one. There is also a subject-specific SAT II that’s less commonly taken.
The SAT is the closest thing to an IQ test that college-bound American high school students take consistently, but SAT-to-IQ tables are unreliable without some research because the SAT has been renormalized a couple of times. You need to figure out what version of it you took and find a table for that version.
As best I could tell when I looked at it, the highest possible score (800,800, pre re-norming) corresponds to an only moderately high IQ, 140 something.
I was a child prodigy but I haven’t had my IQ tested as an adult. I suspect significant reversion.
I believe my score on a standardized test some years back would qualify me for Mensa without further testing, but I haven’t bothered going through the trouble of digging it up. Besides which, do I really want to join a club of people who think IQ matters?
Since people are mentioning the SAT, I feel obliged to give the standard leftist spiel about how the SAT was designed for elite WASP institutions and a large part of the “intelligence” it measures is inculcation in elite WASP culture, i.e., knowing what a regatta is. I don’t know if it’s even possible to measure IQ without cultural bias seeping in.
David Friedman makes the point that market failure is sometimes a problem with markets, but is usually the problem with politics. I’ve always thought this point was well-taken, and maybe the single best argument for anarcho-capitalism, but I never saw it so sort of concretely until now:
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/2/15/10995274/scalia-mcconnell-obama
That is, when I say that “market failure is common on the political market,” I mean that “most people don’t feel the good or bad effects of voting for a good or bad candidate, so they remain rationally ignorant about voting” or “most policies end up benefiting a concentrated minority at the expense of a diffuse majority since it isn’t in the interests of any individual in that majority to oppose the policy.”
But here we see it at work within a political party, within arguably the most powerful political body in the land. What is good for individual Republicans very clearly is not good for the Republican Party. Maybe this is too obvious, but this is the first time I noticed such a clear example.
Related, I feel like the Republicans have recently gone from “totally ignore our constituency because who are they going to vote for? Democrats?” to “loudly and obnoxiously signal that we are doing what our constituency wants even and especially if it can be used as a way to avoid actually doing anything they want.” The Democrats are mostly still riding a wave of “who else are you going to vote for? A Republican?,” but may regret it if Bernie wins the nomination.
Article, of course, assumes that a Trump nomination does endanger the senate. Which is certainly non-obvious.
True, but I doubt Mitch McConnell is playing some kind of masterful long game. Even if we assume Republican president and Republican Senate in 2017, I don’t see how he actually benefits by loudly announcing his intent to block any potential nominee, which seems only to hurt the bargaining position (how to claim that you have a good reason for rejecting someone who hasn’t even been suggested yet?)?
Like, let’s say you know your friend has terrible taste in restaurants and, if allowed to pick one, will pick a terrible one. What is the better strategy:
“Where do you want to go for dinner?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure I don’t want to go wherever you want to go.”
vs.
“Where do you want to go for dinner?”
“I have some ideas. Where do you want to go?”
“How about x.”
“Naah, x is not so great for reason y. What about z?”
McConnell doesn’t want to negotiate, he wants to stop Obama from appointing anyone at all and keep Scalia’s seat vacant as long as possible. This doesn’t make announcing it up front any better as a strategy.
Personally I think the Republicans best strategy would have been to tempt Obama into making an interim appointment. This would take all the pressure off confirming the nominee, so they’d trade 1 year of Obama’s choice on the court for deferring the lifetime appointment to the next President.
Is that even constitutional, Nybbler? I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of an interim SCOTUS justice.
“This doesn’t make announcing it up front any better as a strategy.”
That’s precisely my point.
Well, first of all, I’m genuinely curious as to what Mitch McConnell has done that makes you think this is gonna be bona fide obstruction of Obama on this issue, as opposed to just more failure theater, which I’m pretty sure it is.
But even assuming this is going to be a legit stand by Senate Republicans, why *not* get the outrage machine to go off too soon, before there’s even a nominee, with a record, that everyone can point to and lament about how he or she isn’t getting their fair shake due to partisan obstructionism? That, way it burns itself out ahead before Obama’s even had a chance to vet potential candidates.
If so, the media doesn’t seem to have taken the bait, that I can tell. Perhaps they’re cognizant of the hypocrisy of calling out Republicans for what Democrats did in Bush’s last t-no, sorry, I can’t even type that with a straight face.
Why summaries of research on psychological theories are often uninterpretable (pdf) is a rather long article which talks about some of the difficulties in soft science. Mainly focuses on psychology but I think it would be more broadly applicable. I don’t have too much to say about it just thought it might be of interest / spark discussion.
edit: I forgot, there was something of interest:
>Twenty years ago David Lykken and I conducted an exploratory study of the
crud factor which we never published but I shall summarize it briefly here. (I offer
it not as “empirical proof” — that H0 taken literally is quasi-always false hardly
needs proof and is generally admitted — but as a punchy and somewhat amusing
example of an insufficiently appreciated truth about soft correlational psychology.)
In 1966, the University of Minnesota Student Counseling Bureau’s Statewide
Testing Program administered a questionnaire to 57,000 high school seniors, the
items dealing with family facts, attitudes toward school, vocational and educational
plans, leisure time activities, school organizations, etc. We cross-tabulated a total of
15 (and then 45) variables including the following (the number of categories for
each variable given in parentheses): father’s occupation (7), father’s education (9),
mother’s education (9), number of siblings (10), birth order (only, oldest, youngest,
neither), educational plans after high school (3), family attitudes towards college
(3), do you like school (3), sex (2), college choice (7), occupational plan in ten
years (20), and religious preference (20). In addition, there were 22 “leisure time
activities” such as “acting,” “model building,” “cooking,” etc., which could be
treated either as a single 22-category variable or as 22 dichotomous variables.
There were also 10 “high school organizations” such as “school subject clubs,”
“farm youth groups,” “political clubs,” etc., which also could be treated either as a
single ten-category variable or as ten dichotomous variables. Considering the latter
two variables as multichotomies gives a total of 15 variables producing 105
different cross-tabulations. All values of χ2
for these 105 cross-tabulations were
statistically significant, and 101 (96%) of them were significant with a probability
of less than 10e–6.
If “leisure activity” and “high school organizations” are considered as
separate dichotomies, this gives a total of 45 variables and 990 different crosstabulations.
Of these, 92% were statistically significant and more than 78% were
significant with a probability less than 10–6. Looked at in another way, the median
number of significant relationships between a given variable and all the others was
41 out of a possible 44!
Basically everything is correlated with everything else and statistically significant.
Vaguely related: https://twitter.com/chrisdc77/status/699170307723153408
That was depressing to read
I’d like to point readers to something Eliezer Yudkowski wrote recently regarding central banking and a model of “the economy” called market monetarism. I’ve been following market monetarism and specifically Scott Sumner’s blog since before it was even called market monetarism. It seems to be the best model with both internally consistency and externally consistency with the major economic events of the past decade. This is the first I’ve seen Eli come out in favor of the market monetarism model (I very easily could have missed something earlier), and I must stay its validating to know we share a positive evaluation of the evidence towards MM ideas.
The article is on Facebook.
SUMMARY
It is written as a Q & A with central bankers asking why they consistently undershoot inflation targets and Eliezer answering above every objection: “JUST PRINT MORE MONEY!” But click the link because it’s a very well written presentation of the details and responses to common critiques to MM.
QUESTION
When explaining this model to others, I always run into the same argument: “Well if this explains everything, why doesn’t the central bank use the model to improve the economy?” It really is a good question that I have not answered satisfactorily to myself, so I thought I’d pose it to the community:
Running the risk of sounding arrogant: If I, a nobody undergraduate business econ major from a state school who doesn’t even work in economics can figure this stuff out sitting in my dorm room just by listening to the arguments, why can’t Janet Yellen or Ben Bernanke?
HYPOTHESIS
The answer I’ve come up with is that they have figured it out, but are just politically constrained from acknowledging it/acting on it/even hinting that they get it at all. But in that case, what exactly are those political constraints?
P.S. As an aside, this issue is imo a hugely underrated topic of discussion in effective altruism circles. Poor central banking is the #1 economic malady all over the world. It affects billions of people, wasting valuable productive capacity and resulting in much suffering that could all be alleviated for the low, low cost of printing more pieces of paper. It’s amazing when you think about it.
You could at least pretend to consider the possibility that Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke know something about macroeconomics that a nobody undergraduate business econ major from a state school who doesn’t even work in economics doesn’t.
On reflection, I guess I’ve considered that possibility and rejected it. That is truly how confident I am in the hypothesis that MM ideas are more correct than the model the Fed was using from 2006-2015 to guide policy. That’s why I moved on to potential political constraints.
Agreed. I have also been following Sumner’s blog since inception. The evidence in favor of Market Monetarism throughout the crisis and throughout advanced economies is overwhelming.
I am sure some higher-ups “know” something I don’t, in the sense they are focusing on some metric that has virtually no predictive value. For example, oil prices in 2008.
I am certain this is partly due to the Fed’s structure, which is financial, not academic. Financiers definitely know a lot about financial indicators and assume they “know” more about the state of economic health than they really do.
>The evidence in favor of Market Monetarism throughout the crisis and throughout advanced economies is overwhelming.
Given that this is a model of macroeconomics that’s an astonishing claim. Macroeconomic data are messy, confounded by everything in the universe, and not actually that numerous. Given these constraints, (and especially given the feedback from correct predictions to changing fundementals), I’d find it hard to give much weight even to a model that perfectly predicted reality.
Why is it that you’re so confident about this? Is it just that your prior supports it? Or do you think there’s more evidence here than I’m seeing?
@Adam
I thought much the same thing. Anybody that’s extremely confident in any macroeconomic model needs their head checked.
I don’t think that Japan is good evidence for MM. But he was definitely right during the “Great Austerity Debate” of 2013 where keynesians assured us that mild cuts in growth of government spending would doom us to another recession, only to deny this assertion when that didn’t happen.
You see some very similar criticisms of Yellen and Bernanke from economics experts (like Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong and their ilk). Indeed, my impression is that this is one of the areas where the difference is between the most politically connected experts who come up with excuses for tight money and a majority of other experts who say it isn’t working, which has to make one suspect that the people advocating tight money are doing it for reasons related more to politics than expertise.
Agreed. I think there is politics here. There is little evidence that moderate inflation does much manageable damage. But voters hate inflation. In large part due to money illusion dynamics — voters see rising prices, but forget that wages are rising symmetrically and that the shift in nominal prices does not reflect a rise in real prices.
Are wages rising symmetrically?
It’s a good question and I do think the answer was ‘no’ for many people for at least a while there. I’ve heard it said that in the long run wages have to keep pace with prices, which makes sense because people need money to spend money, but it hasn’t been true in the past few decades with consumption driven largely by debt rather than income, especially making mortgages and student loans so easy to get.
That’s somewhat of a different animal, though. Wages have mostly kept pace with core CPI. They haven’t kept pace with housing and education, or healthcare, which consumers mostly don’t pay for out of their own income, and inflation in those specific industries isn’t really the result of money supply effects.
If wages rose symmetrically, inflation wouldn’t work as a response to wage stickiness. So the opposition to inflation by wage-earners is rational.
@ Nybbler,
That’s pretty much what I was thinking.
Sumner’s review of Bernanke’s memoir offers some potential answers to “what constraints”: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/11/benankes_memoir.html
Very much this. The short of it is that whatever Bernanke’s personal views he was acting as the face of a committee and historically the Fed has been very averse to public disagreement. The only split vote in the Fed that I can recall actually happened during the recent depression with Bernanke being on dovish majority. Bernanke is an economist with a background in macro but that isn’t true of most of the board members. Most of the work the Fed does has to do with finance rather than macro and the board composition reflects that. And some of the board members are idiots. The head of the Dallas Fed made some remarks in 2008 about how he talked to some of his friends in business and they said they were doing fine so the economy can’t be in a recession that left me speechless.
I wrote a post about the topic of the Fed and institution design recently myself.
Thanks for the link anon. That was illuminating, and it was interesting to see some of the quotes from Bernanke lining up exactly with some of the questions from Eliezer’s Q&A.
Thanks for the insight Andrew. I have a hard time ever going on the assumption that “X are idiots,” but what I get from your comment and from your blog post is that bank regulation and monetary policy making are wound up in the same institution and this could possibly lead to conflicts of interest or people making decisions in one area who are actually only qualified to make decisions in the other area. A quick google of the ECB and BoJ show they also have bank regulatory responsibilities as well.
You don’t print more pieces of paper for the same reason you don’t allow private citizens with a printing press to print more pieces of paper in order to increase their available income to pay debts. It’s the same reason diamond supply is restricted; if diamonds are as common as pebbles, they become worth as much as pebbles.
Do you think inflation should always be as low as possible?
The point of Eliezer’s article is that current economic problems can be traced to the central bank is not printing the right number of pieces of paper (or creating the right number of 0s and 1s in a computer system). It happens that from 2007-2015 they created too little money. If we were talking about this topic in the 1970’s I would be saying “Why doesn’t the central bank just stop printing as much money?”
This. Printing(*) too much money can be catastrophically bad, and the catastrophe can creep up unexpectedly. Printing too little money can also be catastrophically bad; that was one of the drivers of the Great Depression. Figuring out the happy middle ground is a genuinely hard problem in economics, and you get no credit for pointing out the right answer in hindsight. For that matter, you get little credit for your foresight being right in one economic cycle; that’s no better than calling a coin toss.
Prudent central bankers tend to target low positive inflation rates for various secondary reasons, and to avoid radical changes in the money supply in any event. If 2007-2015 is the worst one can say about the effects of such prudence, I’ve studied enough economic history to consider that a win.
*Not actually accomplished with printing presses in the modern era, at least in the early stages.
Correct, but supply of money must increase if demand for money increases. During financial shocks like the 2008 meltdown, money demand skyrockets.
If demand for money increases while the supply of money does not, prices need to fluctuate rapidly, and most likely cannot adjust in a fashion that ensures full employment.
Yes, If the government expands the money supply to rapidly the resultant inflation will damage the ability of the currency to function as an effective medium of exchange. But if the government doesn’t expand it enough, the weak aggregate demand will damage the ability of the currency to function as an efficient medium of exchange. Recession either way.
The issue that Summer and others are illustrating is that the not expanding the money supply enough failure is what pretty much every major developed country is doing right now. Central banks have been much more paranoid about inflation than about weak agg demand. Which is about the opposite of how they should behave. It takes a lot of inflation to do the type of damage that a major demand driven recession does.
This is going to sound like a really dumb question, and I’m probably the only person on SSC who doesn’t understand it, but would anyone mind explaining in simple terms why inflation is good? It sounds like the general consensus among everyone who knows anything about economics is that it’s good to have about 2% inflation.
But why? Is it because it causes the real value of debts to slowly wither away, reducing the amount of money people have to spend on debt servicing? This is the only obvious good thing I could think of that inflation would cause.
And I’m also curious about the related question of why deflation is bad. In my naive, extremely uninformed view, it seems like it should be good for my money to be worth more tomorrow than it is today. Is it bad because it makes our exports more expensive for people in other countries to buy? And shouldn’t that be balanced by the fact that we can import things more cheaply due to our currency being worth more?
I’ll put the popcorn on.
If you don’t think that deflation is bad, I’m guessing you don’t have a mortage. Or were you thinking that deflation applies to everything that you buy, but somehow the stuff people buy from you (e.g. your labor for wages) will be unaffected?
Beyond that, the short (thus oversimplified) answer is that interest rates and inflation rates are closely correlated, with the prime rate typically being 1-2% above the real inflation rate. And low-rate short-term loans are vital to the functioning of a modern economy, e.g. Honda needs to buy a shipload of steel to make a shipload of cars, there is essentially no chance that they will fail to sell the cars in a few months for more than enough to pay for the steel, but they need to pay for the steel first and they don’t actually keep that much cash in the vaults.
Interest rates basically can’t go negative(*), because if they did the lenders would just hoard the cash instead. So if inflation is zero, you are a minor economic fluctuation away from having the prime interest rate go to zero or below, and then “hoard my cash in a vault” starts looking better than “let Honda use it for a few months”. Honda has to offer premium terms on secondary money markets, at the same time that it can no longer be certain that new cars will sell for their current target price in six months. And printing more money may not work as a solution if the rational move is for the recipients to just stash it in a vault and wait for it to appreciate.
Targeting 2% inflation gives central bankers enough margin that they can almost always prevent this from happening.
* Interest rates can go a little bit negative for a little while, at least, for logistical reasons like people not actually having Scrooge McDuckian money bins to hoard their cash in. Sweden, I believe, just dropped their prime rate a fraction of a percent below zero; Japan has done the same from time to time without major problems. But it’s a sign that they are cutting things close.
Switzerland has been at -0.75% for more than a year now in a desperate bid to devalue the Swiss Franc. It has a lot of fairly odd side effects, few of them particularly desirable.
As for Scrooge McDuck like cash hoarding, that only sort of works to counter it – count on the central bank simply outright banning cash if the hoarding starts to matter.
…count on the central bank simply outright banning cash if the hoarding starts to matter
The six other central banks with control over reserve currencies thank you for the increased influence and seigniorage profits. Likewise the local organized criminal community, and the gold industry. The local economy will not thank you for introducing them to the concept of “capital flight”.
Swiss bankers, in particular, are not going to do this.
This isn’t the only reason, but the answer you would see in an econ textbook is sticky prices. The economy needs real adjustments in wages and prices to happen. And at some point this means that someone will take a cut in their income. But people are very resistant to taking a nominal pay cut and businesses are quite resistant to cutting nominal prices. Therefore, about the only way to have real prices adjust is for there to be an inflationary environment where real prices can fall without nominal prices falling. See the following article, http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/09/why_dont_wages.html
Hah I like how we have 3 nearly simultaneous answers that say nearly the same thing. I even linked to that same article from Bryan Caplan.
So what you are basically saying is that inflation is a way of deceiving people into thinking that they aren’t making less (or at least shifting blame) so that more economically deserving recipients can make even more relative to them?
That’s the first time I heard it explained like that, and frankly it is remarkably persuasive. (Yes, it’s been awhile since I’ve read an economics textbook). Does still seem like the sort of balancing act I wouldn’t trust anyone to be able to hit without catastrophe, but then if it were predictable I suppose it wouldn’t work.
The Keynesian answer is price stickiness. Prices are inflexible, ESPECIALLY so in the downward direction. So general deflation would distort the economy, as the prices in the economy would no longer reflect actual information about costs and benefits.
In the modern debt-driven economy, deflation might as well be suicide. I have $550,000 in debt (number altered slightly for sake of privacy) between student loans, home, and cars: any systematic deflation over an extended period of time would destroy my standard of living.
EDIT: Well several other people already answered.
Here’s another way of looking at this. Quantity Theory of Money.
Simplified:
M=PY
The stock of money equals the Price of All goods times the GDP (Y in the economic world).
If you cut M in half, and hold P constant, Y must fall by half, too.
In the Real World, it is assumed P is inflexible in the short-run and so GDP falls, say(making this up), 70-80 cents for every dollar $1 in Money Supply.
In the Real World, when a financial crisis hits, people run to Safe Assets. This especially means Cash…think hiding cash under your mattress. M falls precipitously.
A major part of solving the Great Depression is attributed to the US leaving the Gold Standard and Roosevelt certifying the health of major banks during the Bank Holiday, which had the effect of increasing M.
Over the short-term, monetary effects drown everything else. You can have some rather crappy economic policy and still have increasing GDP as long as your Central Bank keeps printing money. At least for a while.
Prices are inflexible, ESPECIALLY so in the downward direction.
Half true. Prices of commodities are very flexible, even at the retail level. See, e.g., gasoline. Prices of non-commodity goods and services are reasonably flexible, even in the downward direction – though sometimes camouflaged (e.g. sales and discounts) to make it easier to bring them back up when practical.
Wages, are very sticky. In part because mortgages and other consumer debt would make it crippling for many wage-earners to accept a pay cut, in part because “…and no wage cuts EVER” is an effective Schelling point to anchor one end of a negotiation. At this point both that Schelling point and the home mortgage are so firmly established in Western economic tradition that it would be difficult to handle a period of substantial deflation.
Yep, that’s a fair addendum.
Though I would elaborate and say that this is largely applicable to the so-called “primary” labor market of full-time workers. For “secondary “workers (part-time, contract), employers regularly employ all sorts of “under-handed” tactics and this could easily lead to massive lay-off and re-hire at lower wages.
Employers shy away from driving a similar hard bargain with Full-Time workers, because that would destroy morale.
Econlog actually posted a book review that discussed this. There was a labor economist who included labor economic theory and actual interviews with real companies. I could not find that blog post with my google-fu.
Of course it might have actually been Marginal Revolution…
Agreed. Corollary: if we do get a prolonged period of deflation, say goodbye to traditional full-time employment.
A Definite Beta Guy: “Econlog actually posted a book review that discussed this.”
The post you mentioned is this one, in which Caplan discussed Truman Bewley’s Why Wages Don’t Fall During a Recession:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/09/why_dont_wages.html
Edit: Brian R also mentioned this post downthread.
Deflation is bad exactly for the reason you think you’d like it: if your money is worth more tomorrow, you’re less likely to spend it. Bad for the economy. Also liquidity traps.
Inflation is useful for two reasons: 1) increasing inflation decreases real interest rates which has a stimulative effect, and 2) nominal wages are “sticky” downwards (firms are reluctant to decrease them for various reasons) which means that labor markets don’t clear in recessions. We use inflation to decrease real wages, which decreases unemployment. It also gives you “head room” to avoid liquidity traps.
Not dumb, it’s a really good question actually. Market monetarists would probably favor targeting Nominal GDP for broadly similar reasons as I state below, but since the current paradigm is to think in terms of inflation, here is my best shot at defending a 2% inflation target for the central bank:
The short answer to why we should have low and stable inflation is money illusion. Money illusion is when economic actors fail to see money in “real” terms of what it can buy and instead view it in “nominal” terms of the face value of their holdings. Money Illusion is seeing a $10 bill and thinking “I have $10, which is less than if I had $11” instead of thinking “I have $10, and at the current price level this is equivalent to having $11 at a price level that is 10% above the current one.”
This type of thinking leads to wage stickiness, which a term for the observation that nominal wages rarely and begrudgingly decrease in the aggregate, either because workers refuse to take wage cuts (even if they are not “real” wage cuts-because of money illusion) or because employers are reluctant to cut wages due to fears of hurting morale (again, because of money illusion).
For evidence of downward wage stickiness, we this Paul Krugman post. For stories that can explain why we see wage stickiness, I suggest this post from Bryan Caplan on Truman Bewley’s book “Why Don’t Wages Fall During a Recession?”
The upshot of wage stickiness is that when the price of labor (all labor in aggregate) needs to adjust downward relative to the rest of the goods in the economy (for the same reasons of supply and demand that explain why the price of gas changes), we see unemployment rather than nominal wage decreases. Unemployment is unused productive capacity in the economy, which is bad because it decreases the thing we all really care about — making real things or services and then trading them for other real things or services.
Inflation mitigates this effect, because when prices (and everyones wages!) are increasing by 2% a year, a *real* cut in wages =/= a *nominal* cut in wages. Money illusion acts at the nominal level, and so with inflation it is possible to get the *real* value of wages to decrease while still increasing the nominal value of wages and avoiding problems stemming from money illusion. This is not possible with zero or negative inflation. A low and stable inflation rate allows for a much more flexible labor market, and prevents recessions that would otherwise occur at a 0% or negative inflation rate.
These guys have all given great answers. I’ll just add, as a child to this answer rather than top-level because it directly pertains, that there are plenty of more tangible reasons for price stickiness than just money illusion, too. The reality for most spenders of money is that quite a bit of their short-term future earnings are spoken for. The terms of your lease, mortgage payments, student loan payments, car payments, whatever it is, are stuck for at least some while at a prior contractually agreed-upon level. All of these are plenty good reasons from the employee perspective to not want to see a nominal wage decrease, because many of their short-term expenses are set in nominal dollar terms. The same is true from the business perspective. Their lease, installment terms on their inventory, employee contracts, even theoretical commodities that trade in a liquid market that may be fixed in price by futures contracts. The problem is very much that a whole lot of different prices would all need to drop at the same time for it to be practical for any of them to drop. The only way to drop a whole bunch of prices at the same time that are all nominally set by unrelated parties with no incentive or possibly even means of coordinating, is inflation.
Great addition.
Basically, it’s good for two reasons: Mild inflation helps spur investment, rather than sitting on useless cash, and because mild inflation is better than mild deflation, so you target 2% inflation so that if you miss it in either direction by a little, it’s not so bad.
Whoa, I got a ton of answers. Thanks a lot to everyone for explaining, I think I get it now. It’s because we need to incentivize people, businesses, and banks not to just sit on their cash (which is what they’d do if we had deflation) and because we sometimes need to have people take pay cuts without them realizing they’re taking a pay cut so that unemployment can go down.
Right?
Also, @ John Schilling, you were right, I don’t have a mortgage. I’m from the underclass, so no one in my immediate family has ever had a mortgage, or even a car loan (we buy cheap cars in cash). That makes it kind of hard to visualize. I do have student loans though, and I’d like to be able to afford a house (with a mortgage) someday.
You’ve got it. And +1 this not being a dumb question; it’s the type of thing that should be taught in high school but usually isn’t.
The divide between people with mortgages and people without on this can be huge. The Free Silver movement transformed the political landscape of the United States in the late 19th century. TL,DR, the plan was to back US currency with both silver and gold at a fixed ratio, meaning anyone with silver bullion (at the time just a useful shiny metal) could demand that the banks turn it into freshly-minted Real Money, roughly doubling the nation’s money supply for a one-shot 100% inflation. The status quo at the time was mild deflation as gold mining wasn’t quite keeping up with economic growth.
Farmers, with huge mortgages and incomes tied to the sale price of commodity goods, were violently in favor of this for the same reason they would be opposed to deflation. Make the same mortgage payments with the money you get selling wheat at twice last years’ price. Urban laborers figured (probably correctly) that their wages would be stickier than the price of food and they’d be left hungry by the inflationary spike. Business pragmatically understood that both mild deflation and 100% inflation were bad ideas, but better the devil you know.
Fortunately, people were pretty burned out on the idea of Civil Wars at the time, but the electoral politics were as interesting as what you’re watching now. Free Silver lost, and everybody muddled through.
Then there was the time FDR invalidated the inflation clause (via gold pegging) of every contract in the entire country by executive fiat.
If we need people to take a pay cut without realizing they’re taking a pay cut, teaching them that in high school seems a little counterproductive.
I think your folks are right that buying cheap cars in cash is a better value. But if you want a mortgage someday, you might want to get a car loan onto your credit record. (Having many different loan types improves your credit rating.) Have the money saved up before taking out the loan if that makes you more confident that you can repay it.
On the subject of deflation driving interest rates negative, this map seems timely. Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland are already there, the EU and Japan are on the edge.
As already noted, you can get away with this to a small extent for a little while because it is also costly to try to improvise non-central-bank ways of storing and moving large amounts of money, but as you get farther into the negative or stay there for longer periods people will start investing in the alternatives.
Endorsing the “wage stickiness” and “negative real interest rates” explanations above. I just want to note that lots of people think 2% is much too low, myself included.
Also, it is absolutely not a dumb question.
Thanks for thinking it’s not a dumb question. In my day-to-day life I mostly only encounter people who are less knowledgeable about pretty much everything than me (due to being underclass), but on SSC I feel dumb a lot. Everyone here is so smart.
Why do you think 2% is too low? Do you think people are still hoarding too much of their money at 2%?
Also, a related question for everyone, how do advocates of a 2% (or more) inflation rate square that away with the common advice that people should save money for retirement and for emergencies? If our money is going to be worth less each year, it doesn’t make sense to save (in fact, that’s the point of inflationary policy, or so I understand).
So how should people save? Or should they not save at all? I’m talking about regular people here, not banks or corporations. Should all of our savings be invested in the stock market or something so it earns money at a rate at least equal to or greater than inflation?
(I don’t have a retirement account, nor do I even know anyone who does, so sorry if this is a super dumb question.)
Long term real returns to diversified equities (i.e. after accounting for inflation) are thought to be 5% or better. So you still come out well ahead on, though that’s somewhat dependent on your temporal discount curve. Money you won’t need for decades should be mostly or all in equities (the stock market).
Short term emergency savings should not be in the stock market and may well lose value in real terms. That loss is kind of like an insurance premium. The small expected cost is seen as worth it to prevent a catastrophic loss if you had no savings.
Different asset classes are affected differently by inflation. Equities don’t care very much. Existing bonds would be hit by a permanent increase in inflation because they pay out in nominal terms, but prices would adjust to the same real rates (but – real expected bond returns can be negative). There are also bonds called TIPS that pay out depending on inflation (and from their prices we can back out the market’s inflation expectations: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/T10YIE the expected inflation for the next 10 years is only 1.18% right now).
You should definitely save.
Interest bearing demand deposit accounts (ie. savings accounts) for short term savings. Safe interest bearing financial assets like the I Series Treasury Savings Bonds (an inflation adjusted Treasury bond that households can buy) for long run savings. Riskier assets like stocks and real estate for very long term savings where the risk is acceptable.
@ all replies
Thanks everyone! I’ve learned a lot about economics today, and I now understand why a small amount of inflation is good and why it is still a good idea to save.
On 2% being too low: if inflation were higher, then it would be more effective at counteracting wage stickiness – if an economic shock happens that leads to people in a particular industry being 10% overpaid, then it’d take roughly five years for the economy to readjust at 2% inflation but less time if it were higher.
Also, it would expand the feasible range of “real” interest rates (interest rates minus inflation), such that real interest rates could be more negative. This would be valuable in recession-fighting, since negative interest rates are an incentive for people to spend money.
On saving – if you’ve got money in a savings account in the bank, and inflation rises, then the interest rate you’re earning on that savings account will rise too, so there is still an incentive to save. (I suspect that the incentive should be unchanged approximately, on average, in the long term, subject to various caveats, but I’m not certain).
How you “should” save? The advice from previous posters is kind of targeted at rich people. I don’t know your situation in detail, but my *guess* is that your top priority should be to get several months worth of money in a savings account at the bank in case of some emergency. After that, your top priority would probably be to pay down your loans as quickly as possible, highest-interest ones first.
And even after that I wouldn’t think about buying stocks/mutual funds/bonds/whatever until you were at the point where you had a large amount of money (off the cuff, >$10,000) to commit to the project in addition to your emergency fund.
1. Invest in your work 401k if you have one. Most companies match up to a certain percentage. That means you are automatically getting 25-100% return (depending on the matching rates).
2. PAY DOWN YOUR GODDAM CREDIT CARD DEBT! IF YOU ARE IN CREDIT CARD DEBT, YOU SHOULD EAT NOTHING BUT BOILED POTATOES UNTIL YOU ARE OUT OF CREDIT CARD DEBT!
3. Create Emergency Savings. You need 6 months of Emergency Savings, based on your expenses.
4. If your work offers Long-Term Disability Insurance, I would advise you take it.
5. Budget. You need to know how much money you spend to have any hope of controlling your spending. Mint is an excellent tool…I just started using it myself. My God I love Mint.
Do not get into the trap of thinking “if I make X income a year I never have to worry about money again.” You can easily burn through any income with enough imagination.
No Credit Card Debt. No Credit Card Debt. No Credit Card Debt.
Seriously.
I know some people from college who financed entire Dream Vacations on Credit Cards. DO NOT DO THAT. YOU WILL REGRET IT.
I like this piece of advice, and to reinforce it: no matter what income you think is “more than you could possibly spend” there is probably somebody at that level who’s freaking out about making payments at the end of the month. That’s not to say that it’s not better to be at that level, as they’re probably freaking out about their payments on a much nicer home, but remember that many lottery winners are bankrupt within 6 years. Or, as was in the news this weekend, Kanye West is $53,000,000 in debt.
I agree with Chalid and A Definite Beta Guy and add:
If you don’t have a work 401k, you can open an IRA. One relatively easy option is an index fund, such as is available from Vanguard. These let you invest in the whole market (or a subset of it), rather than in specific stocks. They also have index funds that are targeted for you to retire in a given year (these start out “riskier” and move to “safer” investments as your target year approaches). IIRC you need $1-3K to open an IRA through them. So step 1 is to save $3K (or however much it is). Step 2, go to their website and open an IRA. Step 3, you can set up automatic transfers from your bank account to your IRA if you want. (Only a good idea if your income is pretty predictable, of course.)
(Except I personally think the stock market is actually on a long term downward trend, so current adults might be better off “stashing money under the mattress” (as they used to say people did who had lived through the Depression). Or investing in other things, such as improving your skills and/or building your *own* business.)
improving your skills
This is would be the absolute best thing to do, except that, unfortunately, so very many of the ways to “improve your skills” are simply expensive scams.
Yes, you’re better off heading to the library and/or a friend who has the skill you want to learn.
I agree about paying off your credit card, or at least clearing the balance at the end of the month. The APR interest you pay is iniquitous and you really would be better off taking out a loan with Vinnie the Legbreaker instead.
Credit cards are hugely convenient, but there is no such thing as free money. Never mind “minimum monthly repayment”, how banks make their money is on the interest. Clear it all off and don’t go anywhere near spending up to your limit (unless something unavoidable happens like your house burns down).
The advice here is all solid. Bogleheads.org is the best place on the Internet to learn about saving and investing.
I’ll second the above financial advice first-hand.
A few years ago, I grew alarmed at noticing our debts were growing rather than shrinking, and irritated at monthly student loan payments. I made a spreadsheet of every expense and every dollar of income and tracked it every day, making sure that we could start putting most of it towards paying off the debts. This included moving to a cheaper apartment. We paid off two student loans, a car, and some minor credit card debt, prioritizing them in order of interest, and then kept on the same budget putting the excess into savings thereafter.
I was glad to have done so, as well as developed the habit enabling us to do so, as shortly later we had some rare medical problems, then some time under employed.
@ all additional replies
Thanks for all the savings advice! This is the kind of stuff you never, ever hear when you grow up in the underclass, so it’s super helpful! No one in my family knows anything about saving; they all just live off of Social Security when they get old. I’d like to do better than that.
I will focus on my credit card debt first, then. I don’t have a ton (probably about $1500 across two credit cards) and most of that was for an unavoidable car repair, so it shouldn’t take that long to pay down once I graduate from college and begin working full time. Right now I can only afford the minimum payments, but I’ll be graduating soon and getting a different job right after that.
If my “real job” (when I get one) offers a 401K option, I’ll use it. Otherwise I’ll start an IRA.
Regarding sticky wages: I’ve wondered before whether it would be possible to get a kind of Wage Lubricator going. That is, some kind of symbol you put on the corner of your CV/resumé, some kind of badge you wear to the interview, some code-word you say to your boss, that means: “I am choosing to opt-out of sticky wages. I recognize that a wage cut is better than losing my job, and so should an economic downturn cause you to consider firing me, please just cut my wages instead. Yes, really. No, I won’t complain. Yes, really.”
In other words, problems caused by cognitive errors, like having disproportionate concern for your nominal income to the point where you would rather get fired than take a pay cut, seem like they ought to be solvable in the same way that the problem “I want to go a long way away very quickly but can’t run that fast” was solved by the invention of the car.
Some industries, like finance, have heavily bonus-based pay, which you’d think would solve the sticky wage problem. But they still fire people all the time in downturns, largely because if you pay people too little they tend to leave anyway.
In a way, that badge is freelance and contract work where you sign a set contract to work x amount in the not too distant future and then renegotiate when the little more distant future comes. Freelance work is not prevalent in all industries though.
What Brad and Chalid both said. This problem is quite intractable. Good monetary policy is the reasonable solution.
To argue with ADBG and Chalid just a little- I do think heavily bonus-based pay is a partial solution. Using finance as the counter-example is a bit misleading, as finance is probably a lot more likely to fire people in a downturn for reasons other than making payroll (ie, an expectation that they should have made more money despite it- unlike a factory worker who’s never expected to “beat the market trend” in making widgets).
The one time I had to lay people off (back when the recession originally hit), I laid off 1/3 of my department. One of the hardest things I’ve done, and I did it because they were all flat-wage and we had to cut costs immediately to keep afloat. If half their salary was in bonuses (like mine was), then a bad downturn for the company would have meant no bonuses being paid, which would have been around a 30% total payroll cut on it’s own (less than half because of fringe/benefits). Probably no firings would have been needed- and these were working- and under-class kind of people that probably wouldn’t have left the job if the bonuses had been zeroed, especially not with the economy apparently burning down around them and no back-up job or major savings at the ready.
One point that I think gets obscured in some of the responses is the distinction between anticipated and unanticipated inflation (or deflation).
If I lend you money in a world where prices have been and are expected to remain stable and the government then prints lots of money and creates a 10% inflation rate, you benefit and I lose, since you pay back the loan in money worth much less than we expected. But in a world where inflation is 10% and was expected to be 10%, the interest rate we agree on allows for the fact that you will pay me back in less valuable money. The nominal interest rate is now i+10%, where i is the real interest rate.
So unanticipated inflation helps debtors, hurts creditors, anticipated inflation does neither.
That formula is a fairly good approximation for typical values of inflation and interest rates, but it isn’t quite right. Suppose I lend you $100 for one year and I want a real interest rate of 5%. If I charge you a nominal interest rate of 15%, I’ll get $115 in a year, but assuming 10% inflation that’s worth only $104.545 of today’s money (ignoring time preference), so that’s a 4.5% real interest rate.
Correct. I was being imprecise.
David Friedman, what are your thoughts on monetary policy in general?
We’ve had a whole sub-thread about how we’ve got to have currency inflation sufficient to produce 2% price inflation per year.
But presumably, you favor the abolition of government currencies and adoption of private currencies. And it would seem to me that everyone ought to prefer to be paid in a strong currency (i.e. little or no currency inflation) than a weak currency, such that private currencies would look a lot more like Bitcoin (very little currency inflation; huge price deflation) than what Scott Sumner wants for the dollar.
So it seems like you have to endorse one of three options:
a) The government really ought to be in charge of monetary policy, after all.
b) Price deflation, as opposed to currency deflation through the sudden and unexpected destruction of money, is not really bad. This, as far as I can tell, is the view of people like von Mises, Rothbard, and Reisman. If you endorse this (it’s what I lean toward), I would be interested to hear what you have to say about the wage-stickiness argument and the can’t-have-negative-interest-rates argument.
c) Price deflation is bad, but it’s a lesser evil than giving the government the power to control the money supply, since they won’t exercise it right. This is perhaps plausible, but it’s hard to argue if the consequences of price deflation are as bad as some people say.
I’m in favor of competing private issuers. If we ignore the operating costs of keeping a money in circulation, the competitive equilibrium is prices falling at about the real interest rate, giving a nominal interest rate near zero. That’s a straightforward implication of the usual zero profit condition.
It’s also the optimal behavior of the money supply, as per my father’s old essay on the optimum quantity of money. For reasons that have nothing to do with macro.
I expect that in an economy which had had such a system for a while, people would build the expectation of slow deflation into their expectations.
@ David Friedman:
Okay, that’s pretty much what I think. We’d have price deflation, but this wouldn’t be bad, wouldn’t favor creditors over debtors, etc.
What do you think the best argument for this is? Book/essay/etc.
I mean, I’ve read several, but I’m interested to know what your opinion is.
It seems that “market monetarist” libertarians like Scott Sumner disagree. Or at least, that’s the message I’m getting (am I misunderstanding?). I guess the real problem is that I understand your point of view, but I don’t really understand where he disagrees with people like you.
@Vox Imp:
I’ve pretty much stayed out of macro, for two reasons:
1. I don’t have good intuition for it.
2. I don’t want to spend my life primarily identified as my father’s son, much as I loved and admired my father. I gave up on staying out of economics after concluding that I was a considerably better economist than physicist, but I at least avoid the area where he made his main contribution.
Both my father’s optimal supply of money piece and my analysis of competing private issuers are straightforward price theory, aka micro, which I feel much more comfortable with.
I don’t know if there is an analysis of the equilibrium of competing issuers in print, but the argument is straightforward.
Not a popular answer, but it is an aspect of inflation that hasn’t been mentioned. When new money is created, it shifts real resources to whoever gets the money first. Having a target of X% inflation to be met by printing Y$ in money gives Y$ in money to influence the economy. This Y$ can be used to fund government programs or help private companies that need it without having to tax and redistribute.
It’s a Y$ tax with some interesting properties, because it effectively comes out of each dollar and dollar denominated asset (like bonds). It’s based on liquid capital rather than fixed capital. It hits net creditors worse and net debtors less. It hits people with fixed income worse. I’m not sure if it’s good, but this could be seen as desirable.
“because it effectively comes out of each dollar and dollar denominated asset (like bonds).”
Not quite right. If the inflation is anticipated, the interest rate on bonds will take it into account. So fully anticipated inflation is a tax on currency, which can’t pay interest. Unanticipated inflation is a tax on currency plus a transfer from people who hold a positive amount of assets defined in nominal terms (such as bonds) to people who hold a negative amount of such assets (such as the company that issued the bonds and must eventually redeem them). The latter effect provides income to the government only to the extent that the government is a net nominal debtor—which, of course, it usually is.
Is there any way to read this if I don’t have a Facebook account? In the past I have been able to follow links to EY’s posts on Facebook, but this one asks me to log in.
Given the general outlines of the class analysis presented in the other thread, to what extent can we say that Communism was simply the gentry-underclass alliance taken to an extreme, while Fascism was simply the elite-labor alliance taken to an extreme?
As far as I know, mainstream communism was outright hostile to the underclass (even inventing a special nasty name for it), and actively cooperating with labor (or shamelessly manipulating labor, if you will). So — nope, we really can’t?
In theory, yes, but in practice, no industrialized nation has gone communist in the way Marx predicted (an alliance of industrial labor with thought leaders); it’s always been poor, rural farmers uniting with urban elites against the urban middle class (bourgeoisie).
it’s always been poor, rural farmers uniting with urban elites against the urban middle class (bourgeoisie).
And the kulaks. I tend to think that – particularly based on the writings of the time – that the least wealthy farmers could give a fig about the urban merchants – it was their (comparatively) wealthier neighbors that they cared about.
(And the constantly drifting definition of kulak is one of the reason I refuse to engage in “1%” demonizing. I might not be first up against the wall when the revolution comes, but I’ll probably make the third or fourth round.)
Sorry, what? Oh, now I understand. You think that “working class” means “the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker” — but that’s not how communists define it.
To them, “working class” and “bourgeoisie” are two different classes. The quintessential proletarian is a factory worker, the next-best-thing is a poor farmer (i.e., ex-serf), and then various service and workshop workers. The urban middle class contains too many small business owners — basically, small-time or wannabe capitalists — to fit into the working class bracket.
But why you’re conflating rural farmers with the underclass is still a mystery to me.
In the US the two are largely the same.
Itinerant farm workers are almost entirely illegal immigrants or their descendants, and rural whites are generally seen as “white trash” by those of us in the cities and suburbs. The days of Jeffersonian yeoman farmers, antebellum planter gentry or western homesteaders are long over. We take a very Greek view of manual labor these days.
@ Dr Dealgood
Ah, thanks.
Well, as you can imagine, the fields of Russia were not tilled by illegal immigrants. And the fruits of their labor were the main source of food for the entire country at the time, so, although they were not yeomen or gentry, they weren’t “white trash” either.
“Rural farmers” =/= “itinerant farm laborers”, and haven’t been for some time.
It’s an error to conflate the two, but it’s also an error to think that the rural/urban divide is just ‘farm laborers’ vs city folk.
The portion of farm work which includes heavy manual labor has greatly shrunk. That which is *just* heavy manual labor is smaller still. The distinguishing difficulty of farm labor is more weather/environment than physical effort anymore.
It’s arguable that the R/U divide is more based on property owner/independent contractor vs salaryman/factory worker, because the rural population’s low-level manual laborers largely all moved to the city and became factory workers.
This is complex and needs more thought.
As the grand-daughter of a farm labourer in rural Ireland, I can tell you that an itinerant (or even settled) farm labourer is NOT the same thing as a farmer, even a small farmer.
The farmer owns the land and hires on the labour. The labourer has no land of his own and works for wages. It’s that old “owning the means of production” thing again 🙂
In American usage, I believe “farmer” almost always refers to people who own and/or manage farms, or can reasonably aspire to do so by the end of their career. The rest are “farmhands”, “farm workers”, or the like.
There are approximately 2 million farms in the US, most owned by individuals or families. About half are either hobby or subsistence farms, with negligible sales but likely feeding a household whose head occasionally does outside labor for cash. See “Dukes of Hazzard” for an idealized version, “Winter’s Bone” for one less so. The other half fall are profitable small businesses with generally middle-class owners, see Norman Rockwell or any traditional version of Superman’s childhood. And there are thousands of giant agricultural corporations, many of whom hire ex-family-farmers as skilled labor or low-tier management.
Farm work is also dangerous.
Oops, I missed a point.
Industrial labor was definitely involved in Russia — strikes and demonstrations by workers precipitated the regime change.
And communists were not the “elite” at the time (that would be the aristocracy, and perhaps the largest capitalists), so I guess they pass for “thought leaders”.
“And communists were not the “elite” at the time (that would be the aristocracy, and perhaps the largest capitalists), so I guess they pass for “thought leaders””
Yeah, that’s how I said it didn’t go. The communist leaders have generally come from the gentry.
Given that the elite-labor alliance is identified with the right, and the gentry-underclass one with the left, is this any different from saying that fascists are far-right and commies are far-left?
Well, to me at least, an explanation for why fascists are considered far-right is inherently interesting, even though most people forget about the “socialism” aspect of “national socialism.” That is, from a libertarian’s perspective they both seem to be on the same end of some “government-liberty” spectrum–i. e. totalitarianism based on “the working class” or else totalitarianism based on the ethno-nation state.
But to the extent the real difference between left and right is less substantive and more about differing yet predictable alliances between certain groups in society, that helps explain to me the fascism=far-right, communism=far-left association. As to why we can’t have a non-totalitarian extremism…
I think the ‘nazis are actually socialists’ argument is weak http://pseudoerasmus.com/2015/05/03/fascism-left-or-right/
However, I think looking at the political spectrum in this was as composed of alliances between multiple groups is interesting. Fascism/far right as the extreme alliance between labour and communism as the extreme alliance between gentry and underclass helps clarify a lot of the confusion with ‘far right’ that occurs when people also talk about right wing libertarians.
I guess the classical liberal/libertarian position is therefore an alliance between gentry and elites. I’m not sure what an extreme alliance between the underclass and labour would look like, and I suspect it doesn’t exist.
I suppose if we’re going to divide things up into quadrants, the gentry are mainly concerned with social liberalism, and usually team up with the underclass who are concerned with government support for themselves. Both of these together gives us mainstream progressivism.
Labour are concerned with patriotism and tradition, and stopping the underclass getting out of hand, so are social conservatives. Elites are concerned with money, so are economic conservatives. Both together gives mainstream fusionist conservatism.
So gentry liberalism plus elite conservatism gives libertarianism.
Underclass welfarism plus labour conservatism gives us something that looks like an even more populist and pro-government version of Donald Trump.
This seems to make a lot of sense, but if libertarianism is an alliance between arguably the two most powerful segments of society, then why isn’t it more successful? Maybe elite+gentry is still too small a segment of society? And, of course, most of the gentry are already too wed to the gentry+underclass alliance to join the gentry+elite alliance (which is also, perhaps, weakened by what seems to be the general antipathy of a group for the group one rung above them).
If we want libertarianism to be more successful, is the most logical way to convince more of the gentry to ally with the elite? Looking at it this way makes it seem less likely that libertarianism will ever be a populist philosophy, given the difficulty of getting three different segments of society to agree on anything.
@boottle
I just wanted to say that I really like this analysis and it feels essentially correct to me.
@onyomi
I think libertarianism hasn’t been very successful because the elites view the gentry as being provincial at best. Gentry is just too close to labor for their aesthetics. You see the same kind of thing with labor’s refusal to team up with the underclass.
Gentry also isn’t entirely sure that libertarianism is in their best interests (it is for some of them, and it isn’t for others, depending on how exactly they’re earning their income).
@onyomi & @Anon –
There are a few other reasons libertarianism has been unsuccessful. One of these is that under a democracy, elites and gentry are far outnumbered.
Another is that it actually has been pretty successful. Explicit libertarianism not so much, but the US and the UK (where I’m from) have generally over the last 50 years moved in both a more socially liberal direction and in a more marketised direction. Rothbard types are just the fringe weirdos, they’re to this general liberalising trend what communists are to bernie sanders. This is in spite of most of these policies not having much support from the vast majority of the popn (underclass and labour).
I was also going to say that it seems to me that libertarianism largely has been successful, if you compare the US to virtually any other OECD nation. We’ve certainly had opener borders and freer trade for much of our history than most places, lowest taxes of any developed country other than small islands and oil autocracies, pretty decent and continually increasing levels of social permissiveness and acceptance of alternative lifestyles, freedom of religion. We’re not all the way there because an overwhelmingly huge majority of politically active people don’t want us to be along one axis or another, and the things we’re worst at (drug war, prison population, overseas military adventurism, local regulations and crony corporatism that kill small business) are things that would benefit either comparatively powerless people that no one cares about or foreigners.
@boottle
You’re right, society has been moving in a more marketized direction. That’s interesting, given that it’s a move that is strongly supported by the elites but is despised by the underclass and labor (who typically support economic protectionism).
I don’t know how gentry usually feel about this. Do they like free markets (in the sense of globalized free markets with no tariffs on foreign goods)? And what about free movement of labor (de facto open borders)? I only recently started associating with people who could be termed “gentry,” so I don’t have a great understanding of their opinions yet.
Since a lot of them support the socialist Bernie Sanders, I’d guess they’re ambivalent about free markets at best, but they also seem to hate the most protectionist and anti-open-borders presidential candidate, Donald Trump.
Virtually no one is for open borders in the broad sense. The five people that are, all economists, are a huge propaganda boon for all those that are strictly against immigration and like to paint all advocates of any immigration as open border advocates.
That said on issues of immigration and free trade generally the “gentry” is divided. The important thing to fit in isn’t a particular position but how you go about explaining your position. If you are for free trade / immigration you need to argue that it is good for most everyone involved (e.g. immigrants, home countries, and US). If you are against it it is better if you argue that it is bad for everyone involved, or at least most people. Making a very particular-ist argument (it’s good or bad for me or people like me) would be taboo in a gentry setting.
@Anonymous
Maybe not, but a very large number of people are in favor of the total open borders of the EU. No, it’s not total open borders to the whole world, but it’s still quite significant.
I was under the impression that the EU is a project to create a federation in europe similar to what the US is in america, and open borders in such a state is a given. I don’t think Mexico is slated to become a new state.
@Anonymous:
I am pretty sure I have heard more than five people, some of whom were not economists, vigorously agree with the sentiment that “no human being is illegal.” This sentiment is, for all practical purposes, an endorsement of open borders.
No there aren’t. Thinking countries should take in an unlimited number of refugees (per the international law definition) is not the same as being for open borders.
You are just proving my point re: propaganda.
I feel pretty firmly planted in the gentry at this point and I’d say no, they don’t support any of those things. They really do basically support the Bernie Sanders platform.
Personally, I’m all for open borders and free trade (which I realize is an extremely unpopular opinion around these parts). I fully admit it will hurt people, including many American voters, but I don’t care. It will help more people and the people it will help are currently worse off than the people it will hurt and I feel no particular reason to care about Americans more than non-Americans. Of course, I’m not a person it will hurt, so easy thing for me to say, I guess. My also I’m sure very unpopular opinion on income inequality is basically the same as this. Sure, opening up trade, shipping jobs overseas, busting up unions and tariffs, are all things that hurt American workers and the middle class. It also brought tremendous increases in prosperity to parts of the world that previously still suffered from cretinism on large scales, and sorry American middle class, but those people count too.
To me, Sanders and Trump are close to equivalent in this arena. It’s just that Trump is much more of an asshole about it. I imagine David Friedman and onyomi are about the only people here who would agree with me about any of this. Only one of the three of us is an economist.
“I’m all for open borders and free trade (which I realize is an extremely unpopular opinion around these parts).”
It is?
Maybe I’m mistaking the loudest people with the most common, but the ‘we really really badly need to keep the country as white as possible’ crowd sure seems like it makes up a hefty majority here.
@Adam: Doubtful. I would think the majority here are either mild reformers one way or the other, or open borders on utilitarian grounds types. No hard numbers – was this in the poll?
@Adam
I don’t see that. I’m a free trade supporter who wants more immigration and I’m sympathetic to the idea of open borders if enacted gradually. I think supporting free trade comes along with a good understanding of economic theory.
I’m probably mistaking the loudest for common. Plus, this is the only place at all I get any exposure to the whole alt-right sphere that I would otherwise not know exists, so its size in the general commentariat probably gets exaggerated in my psyche.
I’m another pro-open borders person.
I’m also in favor of open borders.
I believe that any human or human institution, including but not limited to sovereign nations, has the right to own property and put up a fence with a big red “no trespassing” sign. But in most cases it is best to leave it at “no solicitors”.
I am in favor of open borders in theory.
So many other incentive structures would have to be changed to make them a net positive that I am not in favor of them in practice.
@Marc Whipple
I take that slogan to be an objection to the dehumanizing terminology of immigration opponents. Surely it signals support for some sort of amnesty, but I don’t think it is reasonable to suppose it signals support for Caplan-esque open borders, even with the caveat about practical purposes.
The general community here is pretty pro more immigration. From last year’s LW survey (which scott said elsewhere was very similar) http://lesswrong.com/lw/lhg/2014_survey_results/ average support for immigration on scale of 1-5 is 4.
Asking a question about “immigration” is a sure fire way of getting pro-immigration results. Opposing “immigration” is a rare position; opposing particular categories of immigration and opposing unlimited immigration are more common positions.
Before we go too far into this analysis, do we have numbers to confirm that the Fascists were supported by labor and not the underclass and vice-versa for the Communists?
There is a difference between an political system and a political program to bring about that system. If communism and fascism were identical in final practice, but one co-opted the elites, while the other replaced them, then you should expect them to have different supporters and maybe a different left-right label. (Maybe that’s your point, but I’m not sure.)
Going back to Church’s model, the Gentry can’t simply replace the Elites because they are socialized differently. Eliminating the Elites either produces a truly different system, or the Gentry turn into Elites, perhaps via massive purges of people who can’t adapt.
It’s worth noting that Mussolini, who invented fascism, was a prominent Italian socialist who broke with the socialist movement over his support for Italy’s involvement in WWI.
To expand on something brought up re. “stealing” other people’s girlfriends, but which I think has a broader applicability:
What do people think about the economics/ethics/practice of blaming people for providing a better option? That is, let’s say you’re a taxi driver and you’ve invested tens of thousands of your own money plus years of training into getting a sweet gig but then along comes Uber and basically undercuts you. Or to remove the complication of government restrictions, just imagine you’re running a successful family business and Wal Mart moves in next door, providing the same stuff for less. The dating scenario, of course, is you have a girlfriend who likes you until some jerk at her work place who’s handsomer, smarter, and funnier than you starts to hit on her. And for first world blue collar laborers, of course, the obvious culprit is third world and immigrant labor.
On the one hand, the plumb line libertarian stance is basically to say “too bad” or “do better” or “that really sucks, but you can’t expect everyone else to suffer inferior, overpriced tax service so you can keep your artificially sweet gig.” And for the most part, that makes a lot of sense to me.
At the same time, as David Friedman pointed out in the thread on dating, there is a sense, in the romantic context, at least, in which the “tempter” is culpable insofar as no one has infinite willpower (celebrity marriages are tested in this way because of the near infinite number of hot people who throw themselves at celebrities; we see how well they last, though, arguably, maybe the lasting celebrity marriages are the “best” marriages because they can withstand such a test). But let’s imagine that tempter isn’t even actively pursuing your girlfriend. Let’s just imagine that he is just not actively pushing your girlfriend away, yet is being in her presence (at her workplace, say), and being more handsome, smart, and funny than you. Is he not still harming you in some way? If dating worked like business could you sue him to redistribute some of his hotness to you?
So the logically consistent stance is to say, basically, if your employer/customers/girlfriend leave you for a better option then you can’t really blame the better option for existing. Yet there are entire institutions (unions) designed to prevent this sort of thing (in a way of which I mostly disapprove). Is it ever reasonable or just for people to try to maintain their current position not by getting better themselves, but by keeping out better options? My gut-level, plumb-line libertarian reaction is “no,” yet it seems like there may also be limits to this (as in David’s example of how there’s only so much temptation any given relationship can withstand).
It’s short term vs long term benefits, and distributed vs localized cost/benefit analysis.
Societies seem to be set up to allow people to compete within limits – in the pre-bigboxstore era, the mom&pop computer store competed with the twobrothers computer store, and that was fine, so long as one of the brothers didn’t put out a hit on pops in order to get a larger share of the market. That kind of competition would have been outside of the accepted limits. Like wise, mom&pop were generally not allowed to “find” a stack of computers on the town hall loading dock and sell them in their store.
While no governance policy is going to provide ideal progress towards better human conditions (*) we tend to agree that letting people pick their own conditions and methods of progress is best. When there are competing interests, and the ideal solution is not apparent (**), majority gets to pick the solution they think is best.
So (getting back around to your question re:tempting coworkers) in the American culture, you as boring dad-bod husband have to deal with your wife working with, oh, George Clooney, on a daily basis, because the majority has decided that husbands dealing with the harm of a tempted wife is worth the upsides to society.
Saudi Arabia, OTOH, has not agreed to this same situation.
IMO, there is a difference between “this has no downsides” and “we have decided that the downsides of this are worth putting up with” and we should not pretend that the people who see only upsides in a given situation are the only morally righteous people in a situation.
(*) not least because we don’t agree on what is “better conditions”
(**) that college students at midnight coffee shops find a solution “ideal” doesn’t actually make it so
The difficulty you encounter comes with conflating (what used to be) lifelong commitments to a spouse or to a profession with mercenary deals such as which baker to buy bread from.
Trade guilds and traditional marriages served the same legitimate purpose: they provide stability to your professional and personal lives beyond the momentary whims of the market or dating scene, stability which is essential psychologically and for raising a family. Divorcees and the unemployed are much more likely to commit suicide for a reason. People thrive on order and cannot tolerate disorder.
My pet peeve in this department is Amazon competing the hell out of anyone else in everything they touch and thereby drawing a lot of flak, at least in my country, in a way that google does not because google made up a new business out of thin air, so in peoples minds no existing business got hurt.
But Amazon does not only compete on price. Their customer experience as a whole is just so much better than any alternative that not buying at Amazon is increasingly becoming a non-option for me. And having left several thousand Dollar-equivalents at their doorstep over the years and them knowing that in a way that the local salesman does not keep track of, if there is a problem they are very generous. And other than with local salespeople I can take that with me, should I move It is a business relationship meant for eternity.
So what’s not to like? It seems to drive people mad to watch Amazon knowing what they are doing. In contrast it drives me mad to see local salespeople having no freaking idea what they are doing. There’s that.
But, there are many shops in my street and 80% of them are empty, due to a mix of Amazon-like phenomena (the local closes equivalent to Wal-Mart does not help either) and incompetent political reaction. A sad state of affairs. The few shops that are left have in common that they are relatively expensive and sufficiently specialised to outcompete jack of all trades Amazon in their respective business. I buy in these shops with the explicit purpose of keeping them in business because I like having them around.
So being less of a libertarian and more of a demanding customer I do indeed pride myself of having a fairly consistent stance in that I condone Amazons competiveness while at the same time actively doing something against the dying of local shops that I deem worthwhile. But this is a upper middle class ideal. The other people in my street are either to poor to follow that strategy, which coincidentally is the main reason I’m not an economic libertarian, I need them to be wealthier than they would become left to their own devices so that they can sustain the shops I like, or to stupid to grasp even such simple connections, i. e. the guy buying at Wal-Mart to save a few cents while complaining how Wal-Mart killed the local high street.
And if you insist to apply the same economics to relationships, despite this being a unromantic thing to do, the same logic seems to apply. From my safe position well within the upper middle class of lovers I can draw confidence from the fact that were my girlfriend to sleep around she’d most likely come back all the more convinced of my relative merits. And I can take pride in the logical consistence of my stance that I do not condemn the “provider of the better”, convineiently ignoring that I can afford this stance only on the grouds of it being very unlikely that such a person really shows up. But this would not work as a recipe for everyone to follow in the same way as “well be more like Amazon then” would be a useless advice for failing local businesspeople.
As a non-Amazon eCommerce guy- part of the reason Amazon catches flak is because they *don’t* have as good customer service as they initially appear, and their prices *aren’t* necessarily any better. They can trash big-box behemoths that should have evolved a decade ago, but when they’re stealing my cheaper, higher-quality pie-slice it’s easy to get irrational.
Surely its also about trust. With Amazon I’m in an iterated prisoners dilemma that has going on for, I don’t know, maybe 15 years, i. e. it dates back to the days when Amazon was basically the only player. With you, I’m not.
Do you think it is irrational of me to put a price on that?
And like I said, not only did Amazon never defect in all the years. Amazon knows that I did not defect either, as in: their business intelligence tool obviously tells their hotline drones to be patient and generous with me if something does go wrong.
Admittedly, being “known” in this way as a person to what used to be faceless corporations scares off a lot of people.
No, I don’t think you’re being irrational. The iterated prisoner’s dilemma is *exactly* what’s going on, and you’re almost certainly right that it’s better off to stick with the person you know cooperates than to try a new person that might or might not, even if they have a bigger reward when cooperating. Our customers will end up being a mixture of the ones who Amazon burned (not many, as a percentage), or those customers that spent the additional nontrivial effort to research us / talk to us / etc., and otherwise get confidence that we’ll cooperate.
That’s why in my initial reply I described myself (standing in for all non-Amazon eCommerce) as irrational- you have perfectly good reasons to stick with them, it’s just frustrating to the rest of us.
I misread you. Thanks for clarifying.
In amazon’s case, I think what some people are reasonably not a fan of is the use of brick and mortar stores to provide some of the value of the transaction while amazon captures all of the income. Namely, the reason b&m stores have higher costs is because they provide the additional service of letting you physically interact with the item before purchase, which is valuable in a wide variety of product categories. Pre-internet, this was practically inseparable from the purchase decision (few people would browse a store, decide on a product ID, and then drive around town looking for a cheaper version of the identical product). The Internet caused a shift in the landscape whereby the assumption that that service can be coupled with the purchase was violated.
This wouldn’t be a knock against amazon as much as an unfortunate state of affairs if it weren’t for the fact that they exploit it pretty cynically (for example, with their marketing that explicitly encourages “showrooming”)
“Namely, the reason b&m stores have higher costs is because they provide the additional service of letting you physically interact with the item before purchase, which is valuable in a wide variety of product categories.”
Three comments:
1. One market solution to that problem is for the producer to restrict discounting of their product by contract, thus giving retailers an incentive to compete on non-price dimensions. That has to varying degrees been treated as illegal under antitrust laws.
2. A different market solution would be to separately sell the service of letting you try out products. I’ve long wondered why there are not firms targeting people who want to buy (say) a minivan. The firm wouldn’t sell minivans. It would charge you a per hour price to test drive each of the most popular models, making it easy to compare them, provide you with reference material, perhaps offer expert advice. It would then point you at the least expensive online source for actually buying a car.
3. In my experience, free riding on physical stores isn’t an issue for Amazon–if anything it’s the other way around. Amazon reviews give me more information about most products than I could get by going to a store, looking at the product and talking to the sales clerk. I wouldn’t be surprised of some people free ride on the reviews when there are advantages to buying from a physical store.
I used to do that when I wanted something quickly, but at this point, Amazon will deliver many things within two hours in Dallas. They’re going to win. As soon as Amazon fresh becomes available here, I’m not sure what I’ll ever still leave the house to buy. A car, I guess, but thanks to Uber and living downtown, I’m not sure I still need one.
I’ve long wondered why there are not firms targeting people who want to buy (say) a minivan. The firm wouldn’t sell minivans. It would charge you a per hour price to test drive each of the most popular models
Some prices are stickier than others, and “free” is among the stickiest of all. Nice, defensible Schelling point, “free” is.
The American consumer is accustomed to the fair market price of a test drive being “free”.
> A different market solution would be to separately sell the service of letting you try out products.
I heard that “pay for buying advice, get a refund if you actually buy in the same shop” is increasingly being done. Never experienced it myself though.
I can remember exactly one occasion in which I realy got advice in a physical store and the bought at Amazon. I felt dirty. But the price difference was around $300. I’d happily split the difference in a resonable way, like paying $30 (10%) for the ten minutes of advice, if given the opprtunity. But a $300 premium for a 10 minutes chat on a piece of retail electronics, I don’t think so.
The thing that always impresses me is that most consumers (like Alex above, I’m guessing) don’t know that almost all big-box stores will match Amazon pricing. I’ve bought a few things at Best Buy at well below their sticker price by show-rooming then just showing the cashier my phone.
Im unsure what a big-box-store is (although I have a mental image of Best Buy, im unsure about its accuracy). In my example the other shop was really small. Also my country has little to no tradition in point of sale price negotiation. Funnily, this goes so far that I don’t even know the English term. Is it “bargaining”?
You’re looking for “haggling”.
Paying for advice has the problem that the type of advice which maximizes the store’s income from selling the advice is probably not the same as the type of advice which is best for making consumer decisions, and in fact may be farther from it than the free advice you can get now. Even though the free advice you get now is still designed to sell product, it’s not going to be the same as when the advice itself is the product. (For instance, imagine a store which lets you browse 90% of movies, but charges you extra to browse the last 10%. Or imagine a store that optimizes its advice for sounding useful rather than being useful; the less direct connection between the advice and the purchase would make it harder for the stores to suffer for giving bad advice.)
I’ve honestly thought that David’s model would work very well for electronics, specifically cameras. Pay an annual subscription, come into the nice looking shop, test the product, hear an expert explain how to select between camera and lens models, teach photography, even track and show people where online to find the best prices from non-ripoff shops.
@Jiro
On this, along with many other problems of a similar kind, what seems to me the most appealing solution is a contract. You buy a good or service. It comes with a set of conditions: “Statement X will be true of the product. If Statement X is not true, we will pay you $Y.” You sign the contract – perhaps implicitly, just by buying the product. It does or does not fit the stated terms. You collect the compensation money applicable to the broken terms. Make the sets of conditions into products themselves – as in, pay SuperRegulaCorp $500/year and you can put their logo on your products, with the legal meaning that this product will abide by SuperRegulaCorp’s terms, and customers can rinse you for cash if your product breaks the terms. Then let the market sort out the rest: what terms, what compensation, what eye-catching logos.
Actually, this probably works better for objective terms – “this food item will not contain this ingredient” – than for more subjective issues. On the other hand, a more cut-down form has existed for subjective claims for a long time: “Guaranteed satisfaction, or your money back!”.
When it comes to this kind of thing I try to also factor in the people who don’t yet exist because of the status quo or can’t easily be pointed to.
When a highly automated factory making cooking pots opens up it’s easy for a reporter to line up a hundred traditional cooking pot makers who are going to be driven out of business and have their lives ruined when campaigning to have the factory blocked or closed.
It’s basically impossible to line up the million people who don’t exist yet who’s lives are going to be just a little bit worse because they have to pay over the odds for expensive cooking pots.
[repeat with any other good or service, blankets, bread, clean water]
It’s easy to line up some deeply-angry people who’ve had a partner leave them for someone else.
Indeed they’ll often line themselves up.
It’s a bit harder to line up lots of people who just felt a bit sad for a long time in a relationship which they just sort of went with before they met someone who really made them happy.
On average we almost all get to be far better off if everyone can choose better options but each individual would really really like it if everyone else had no choice but themselves.
Most people would want make sure their child is free to walk out on a lazy bum they happened to have settled with while also sort of wanting their own partner to be locked into not leaving.
Everyone wants to be able to choose the best/cheapest goods and services themselves but if an individual is running a local store they really sort of want to force others to keep patronizing their business even when someone else moves in and offers something better.
“Is it ever reasonable or just for people to try to maintain their current position not by getting better themselves, but by keeping out better options?”
Reasonable in the sense of “that’s probably their best option to achieve their desired [presumably selfish] ends” sure.
But “reasonable” in the sense of “morally acceptable” I’d say probably not. The reason we generally tolerate some degree of this in relationships is because we’re taught to treat relationships as a uniquely emotional situation and we discourage the use of logic and reason in analyzing them.
However, it troubles me that people form this kind of uniquely emotional relationship with local businesspeople. 🙂
[Do we even do emoticons around here? On reflection, SSC appears strangely emoticon-free. I fear I commited a bluder]
Perma-banned
Vive le Codex!
Vive la Terreur!
😛
Emoticons?
absolutelyharam.jpg
Anime avatars?
I shig the diggy electric
In the situation you described with a hot man working at your girlfriend’s workplace who isn’t actively pushing her away but also isn’t pursuing her, I also have the gut-level libertarian response that he’s not doing anything wrong. He’s just there to make his paycheck, and he’s not trying to incentivize her to cheat by hitting or her or anything. Of course, the argument could be made (somewhat legitimately) that his mere presence is an incentive for her to cheat, so I’m not sure what to think about it.
On a funnier note, Saudi Arabia seems to think that he would be doing something wrong.
I’d take it a step further and say that even if he IS pursuing her, he’s still doing nothing wrong. He is not a party to your relationship and has no particular obligation to honor it.
When Wal-Mart moves in to a neighborhood, we don’t expect them to NOT advertise and attempt to win customers away from local businesses.
I would make that conditional on not being aware of the relationship. If you don’t have that as a limit, then you end up with something that boils down to ‘might makes right’.
Do you? I feel like you just end up with “people are responsible for their own promises, not the promises of others”.
This seems to me to be conflating two quite different situations:
1. You have a girlfriend. You are not married. You have made no promise equivalent to being married. A more attractive man makes advances to her. She leaves you for him.
I don’t think he has done anything wrong.
2. You have a wife, or a girlfriend in an explicitly monogamous relation. The more attractive man knows it, has an affair with your wife/girlfriend anyway.
In that case I think he has acted wrongly by persuading her to violate her obligation to you for his benefit. That would not be the case if your relationship with her includes an exit option and she invokes it before sleeping with him.
Although even in that case, he might have acted badly in a weaker sense–done something that produces a minor benefit for himself and perhaps her at a large cost for you. Not, in my terms, a violation of your rights but an act he should not have taken.
@Anon
It basically boils down to respect. The other guy isn’t doing anything wrong ethically, but he is disrespecting you and typically that goes to a competition. Presumably the winner takes the spoils if you ignore that the woman will make her own choices regardless of the results of your silly man conflicts.
Knowing this is a challenge, however, makes this weird. Because people generally hold the party who did the provoking negatively if they choose to take sides at all.
David/Loyle,
Is it somehow disrespectful or wrong of a newly opened Wal-Mart to take out an advertisement in the local paper showcasing their low prices on hardware, knowing full well that current town residents have a standing arrangement that they buy their hardware from Mom & Pop’s Hardware Store?
No-fault divorce is now very common. ALL personal relationships have an “exit option” for any and all reasons, up to and including “I’ve found someone better.”
@Matt M
Was just explaining what “might makes right” means in this context.
Everything Walmart does is disrespectful. Even hypothetical proxy-for-guy Walmart.
And to the slighted party, I imagine it feels more like hanging those advertisements on the doors of the Mom & Pop’s, and handing out flyers right outside.
Not even comfortable discussing this analogy.
Again, it’s two different situations.
In one scenario, Wal-Mart goes to the supplier used by the mom-and-pop stores and makes an under-the-table deal with them to sell to Wal-Mart while still ostensibly being under an exclusive contract with the mom-and-pop stores. That’s dishonest and wrong.
In the other scenario, Wal-Mart offers up a big bonus to the suppliers, enough to convince them to take the hit of breaking the contract and paying the damages. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
In fact, Verizon has a radio ad out I heard just the other day, saying that they will pay you to break your contract with the mobile phone company you currently have. In other words, they buy out your contract. So here we have a literal example of this.
To move this back into the sphere of relationships, I do see something wrong with cheating with a married person behind his or her spouse’s back. Or doing the same with someone in a long-term relationship.
But I don’t see anything wrong with going up to that married person and saying that, if for any reason things don’t work out, you still love him or her, and you’ll be there. That is, basically the lyrics to “Take a Chance on Me”. Now, this is unlikely to be a good idea: the suggestion that things won’t work out is likely to be taken as offensive by the person you are propositioning. However, I don’t think you’re somehow infringing on their spouse’s rights.
And this is different from “indecent proposal” type stuff where you offer someone $10 million to break up with their spouse. The problem there is not that you are legitimately saying that you would make a better spouse; rather, you are using money to tempt them into doing something that is most likely unwise in the long run.
[responding to the last paragraph] How so? It is still their choice to take the money over the relationship, isn’t it? Maybe the expected lifetime earnings of their partner was <$10 million split two ways.
“Do you? I feel like you just end up with “people are responsible for their own promises, not the promises of others”.”
Yes, you do.
Most relationships involve some amount of investment on both parties. To knowingly pursue someone in a relationship is to intentionally try to destroy that investment. It becomes “I win, you lose” against someone who likely doesn’t even know something’s afoot. I would be curious as to what serious defense you can muster for knowingly causing harm to someone else for your own benefit. The only people that tend to support those kind of interactions are ones who are confident that they are always going to win and that it is theirs to take by the virtue of their ability to take it. That because you were able to convince the other person to leave, that excuses the harm caused. Hence ‘might makes right’.
If we apply reciprocity to that idea, then the only people that don’t lose out are the ones at the very peak of desirability. Everyone else has to expend significantly more effort on mate guarding. You have a system that benefits a select few at the cost of everyone else. This is generally a good indicator that what you propose isn’t ethical.
We are generally okay with competition in commerce because:
1: You are generally always assumed to be competing.
2: Investment in any given customer is typically insignificant.
3: One customer typically does not have a significant impact.
4: The competitors can be easily identified.
As you see those conditions cease to be, you will see more and more animosity between competitors and anti-competition agreements will flourish.
Holistically, the idea that it is fine to poach someone else’s partner is extremely toxic to modern society, however that is a very long proof to write.
Besides, you should never take a woman that goes for that seriously, because if she’ll do it to him, she’ll do it to you too.
@ RandyM:
There’s more to life than money, right?
If the only reason that person stuck to his or her partner in the first place was the money, then there would be nothing wrong with it. But I take it the general idea is that there is supposed to be something more to it.
A general point I don’t think I’ve seen made– is having a secret relationship with someone whose partner doesn’t consent a bad idea for the unpartnered person because of the chance of the secret getting out and resulting in conflict and misery? Even if the brunt falls on the person who was cheating, at least some of this is going to affect the person who didn’t break any promises.
There’s the issue of why you can’t compete.
For example, think of the companies that put plastic into their pet food so it would test as having more protein than it actually had. If your company can’t compete because you aren’t doing that…
You could generalize that as, “…because your company is being responsible” or “isn’t cheating” or “is more principled.”
IOW, is the competitor undercutting you because they are offering, at the same price, an actually worse product that is simply difficult to detect as worse?
The cool guy, in most possible views (excluding criticisms of heteronormativity, artificial beauty/coolness standards etc) can’t and needn’t share his coolness, and more pragmatically, his contextual advantages over you are not enforced by the state.
Walmart’s wealth, privileged position (including the US government subsidizing its workers, who otherwise couldn’t reproduce their labor-power at minimum wage with few hours and no benefits) and other advantages are all to some extent based to arbitrary social relations, and in any case NEED to be enforced.
Redistributing Walmart’s wealth, or altering the relative balance of enforcement of its rights vs. the rights of those threatened by it, etc, etc are a very different class of proposition from “Hey you, the fuck you doing around my girlfriend?”.
Why does Wal-Mart’s position “need” to be enforced by anything more than the Walton family having a Giant Money Bin from which they can chose to pay people valuable money for doing the things they like and not if they don’t? Including but not limited to guarding their money bin from thieves and managing a more convenient payment system than bags of cash handed out at the Money Bin.
If it’s about enforcing the value of money, I’m pretty sure Wal-Mart’s business model would survive with bitcoin, Kruggerands, or goats as the medium of exchange. The Giant Money Bin would need a bit more managing in the latter case.
Interpretation of “NEED” 1: Unique tax breaks, interstate highways, eminent domain findings, welfare for walmart employees, and all the little things that make Just in Time Inventories possible are all things that wouldn’t happen without repeated (either continuous or periodic) reinforcement. Without a body maintaining that enforcement, they go away.
Interpretation 2: All of the above things are things Wal-Mart benefits from that “need” to be enforced because they service some local, non-Wal-Mart need, and thus can’t be canceled.
As an aside: Someone working for Wal-Mart once said that without the significant government investment in the company’s stores they would not be able to support a national presence, even on the seemingly huge money supply they have access to. There are too many Wal-Marts to make that kind of maintenance feasible, so you’d see them shrink back down to a Central-Southern US territory.
+ cops
” (including the US government subsidizing its workers, who otherwise couldn’t reproduce their labor-power at minimum wage with few hours and no benefits) ”
1. Back when the iron law of wages, which is what you are referring to, was originated, the real wage of the mass of the English population was a fraction of the current minimum wage. They nonetheless managed to more than reproduce themselves. It’s possible that the workers wouldn’t choose to reproduce their labor power at minimum wage—Ricardo’s improvement on Smith and Malthus—but not that they couldn’t.
2. One could as easily claim that the existence of welfare, unemployment insurance, and the like makes labor more expensive for Walmart, since it means that unemployment doesn’t lead to starvation.
3. In any case, your basic argument is that anything the government does that makes labor less expensive for Walmart counts as subsidizing them. One thing the government does is to restrict immigration. That makes low end labor less available, hence more expensive, the opposite of the result you are arguing for. A much more direct link than your population theory.
4. Malthus’ version of the iron law led to a prediction—that real wages for the mass of the population could never be very much above their then current level. It was an ingenious argument–and the conclusion turned out to be wildly false.
Seriously. How can anyone think that Wal-Mart is paying literally the lowest possible wages above the starvation line?
Yes, I suppose it’s true that starvation wages are a hard limiter on how low wages can go. If you’re going to starve, you’d rather starve working zero hours a week than starve working a hundred hours a week. But this is just as irrelevant to the actual determination of wages as is the fact that, if you wanted to move to NYC and had to sell your car, you’d be willing to pay someone to take it off your hands if you had to.
Namely, it’s irrelevant because in both cases, there exist buyers willing to bid up the price of what you’re selling against one another.
This would be the logical result of the “market power” type arguments, which say that labor markets don’t work well because workers can’t afford to change jobs. Eliminating this welfare would make it even more difficult to change jobs.
The only halfway reasonable way I can see to interpret the “welfare subsidizes Wal-Mart” argument is like this: people have a right to some kind of universal basic income. Therefore, any level of welfare spending below this is equivalent to subsidizing business at the expense of labor. In the basic income world, changing jobs would be relatively costless; thus, not having one enhances employer power and effectively subsidizes them.
Namely, it’s irrelevant because in both cases, there exist buyers willing to bid up the price of what you’re selling against one another.
Well, *self-evidently* the market price would be still considerably below the US minimum wage.
It is not in fact self-evident because of the path-dependent nature of the overall problem. There is no way to know what the clearing wage would be absent minimum wage and the vast regulatory overhead involved in hiring an employee.
I’ll grant you that it’s a reasonable first-order assumption. And if we basically say “all the regulatory overhead involved in hiring an employee is part of their wages,” then it’s pretty straightforward. But doing that brings a whole other set of policy preferences into question.
@ multiheaded:
Obviously, to the extent that the minimum wage is causing unemployment, it means that the market wage for those people is below the minimum wage.
However, in addition to Marc Whipple‘s arguments about eliminating overhead, there is the fact that this says nothing about real wages.
If a significant number of people are put out of work by the minimum wage and have to subsist on welfare and/or support from their families, by eliminating the minimum wage we put those people back to productive work. Meaning that we are producing more than we were before. And fairly soon, in such an environment of full employment, though the lowest nominal wage will be lower than the old minimum nominal wage, that money will actually purchase more in terms of goods and services.
Studies on how tiny the wage share of prices in e.g. Walmart is aside, you forgot the part where most of the things consumed by poor people are manufactured in SE Asia.
@ multiheaded:
Except the part where a large percentage of the “value added” comes from the labor costs of workers in America to load it on the shelves, clean and maintain the store, staff the register, etc. Even the labor in building the store in the first place.
This is the reason that, if you visit Russia or China, everything is cheaper. Or the reason things are cheaper in Alabama than in San Francisco.
Many things aren’t any cheaper in Russia.
I’ve never been to Russia, but I have been to a couple of less-developed countries in Southeast Asia. Locally produced goods are cheaper, gas and lodging are cheaper, and basic necessities like food are amazingly cheap to my American eyes, but a lot of things aren’t — I paid as much for stuff like deodorant and razor blades in Manila as I would in San Francisco, and media and computer stuff were actually more expensive.
I suspect this is being driven by cheap local labor and fewer (or less consistently enforced?) consumption taxes on the one hand, and a more isolated position in the global supply graph on the other.
A few studies have indicated that when a new Walmart opens in a geographically isolated area, the number of people on government assistance goes up even if population remains constant. This seems to suggest that Walmart causes people to have less wealth than before the Walmart was built, instead of providing jobs to people who previously weren’t working at all either at that location or who moved.
Anechdota: Most of the people I worked with when I worked at a Walmart had been full time employees at businesses that had failed, who claimed they had been able to buy more stuff from that Walmart before working there. However only one guy claimed that Walmart had actually had any effect on his employer going out of business.
Maybe there was so little to buy around there before that people didn’t bother as much. Maybe Walmart has a tendency to put up flyers about how to get government assistance. Maybe the population remains constant numerically, but changes demographically. How few studies where there, how big were they, and how were they conducted?
Dear Prof. Friedman, the “reproduction of labor power” refers to much more than childrearing. If you come into work half-starved* and exhausted and utterly demotivated and have to be watched and coerced a lot, that’s already a chunk of potential labor power that you have failed to reproduce due to your circumstances.
*or with poor nutrition due to relying on low quality pre-processed food and not having the resources or time to cook. As the frequent complaint goes.
Anyone got thoughts on Scalia? I’m going to miss that guy. Whatever you thought of his decisions his shear intelectual horsepower and clearness of purpose is impressive.
That said, the political scramble to replace him reminds me how glad I am to be under the UK’s constitution.
Not my field, so I can not well assess his expertise, nor the quality of his work.
However, I think many here would feel that The Notorious RBG would be a qualified judge.
We disagreed now and then, but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation.
This seems to me to be among the best of complements. And their friendship gives me hope that the best of us may continue to disagree without divisiveness.
This Althouse column might also be interesting to some.
(Edited to fix first link)
I have a less sanguine interpretation of Scalia and Ginsberg’s friendship: the aristocracy takes care of its own. No matter how a court case turns out, none of the justices are going to have their pizza shop shut down for wrongthink. They can afford to be gracious, because they won’t face the consequences of their decisions.
You see this writ large in the olden days, where one noble would raise up an army against another, killing who-cares-how-many little people. In the end, the victorious noble simply exiles the loser, rather than executing them. After all, the fates might turn against them at some later time; this puts an acceptable floor on the bad consequences to themselves.
As for the peasants? Meh.
I was actually just thinking to post something on the ethics of mourning/celebrating the deaths of major political figures.
My facebook feed is currently at war with itself over whether to celebrate the death of Scalia (because he made the US a less just place from the perspective of my mostly blue friends), mourn his death (because he seemed like a good guy, personally), or, as the consensus seems to be, simultaneously praise him personally and condemn his public career. We saw this, of course, with Thatcher and, to some extent, any time any big political figure dies.
I have mixed feelings on the ethical appraisal of the life of a political figure, as well as on the question of whether we should keep separate a person’s personal legacy and political legacy in our minds.
On the one hand, doing so seems a vital component of maintaining a level of civility: if we called every president whose actions resulted in deaths a “murderer,” for example, well, then every president would be a murderer. If we held all our facebook friends responsible for what we perceive as the negative consequences of whatever bad policies they support, well, then, we wouldn’t have many facebook friends (or real friends).
On the other, there is a sense in which, for example, Lyndon Johnson is more worthy of condemnation than Osama bin Laden. I mean, his decision to escalate the Vietnam War cost more American lives than Osama ever did, and the disastrous (from my perspective) social programs he initiated have destroyed even more lives on an economic level. Had I been alive and politically aware when Lyndon Johnson died I would have said “rot in hell,” basically. And I was one of the people who felt uncomfortable with all the celebrating over the death of bin Laden (not because I don’t think he deserved to die, but because the euphoric party atmosphere attending his death struck me as a creepy reaction to have to any death).
But that decision is made easier because I’m pretty sure LBJ was a horrible person in his personal life too. But what about somebody who was a nice guy but had a bad effect–and being a bad president necessarily involves having a very big overall negative impact? Like Bush Jr, say? He seems like a mostly nice, well-meaning sort of guy, but his actions have resulted in tremendous loss of life and waste of resources. When he dies should we celebrate? Or say “bad president, okay guy?”
The most ethical thing would seem to be rather difficult – praise only which is praiseworthy about a person, criticize only that which is in need of critique, and do both to all humans, whether it benefits you or not. Oh, and accept with good grace and humility any praise or criticism you receive from others.
However, you don’t get invited to many dinner parties with a rep for pointing out the flaws of your friends and family. One’s work prospects are even more impacted.
(I struggle with this myself – I viewed Saddam’s death with satisfaction, not joy, as an acceptable end to a bad business. However I was really freaking elated when Uday and Qusay were killed. OTOH – I was chastised for cheering at the death of Uday by people who were chortling and singing ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ at Thatcher’s death in 2013.)
people who were chortling and singing ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ at Thatcher’s death in 2013
Tramp the Dirt Down was released in 1989.
…not entirely following. I didn’t/don’t know Elvis Costello, and wasn’t sharing internet space with him between 2002-2013.
Unpack, please?
Mostly being a smartass, not really much of a coherent point in there.
It makes sense and seems the most obvious, if difficult course to enact (to praise what is praiseworthy and blame what is blameworthy), but to steelman the “personally condemn politicians who had a terrible political effect even if they were nice guys in their personal life position”:
Arguably, running for an office like president or accepting an appointment like Supreme Court justice, implies a level of confidence–that you know what the hell you’re doing and are sure you are going to do more harm than good. If you’re not confident you can do more harm than good as president, then you shouldn’t run for president.
So, if you are a nice guy who turns out to be a bad president, then we can say that you were, at best, disastrously overconfident in a way that hurt a lot of people. Being disastrously overconfident in a way that hurts a lot of people seems like a pretty negative character trait even in an otherwise kind, empathetic person.
Of course, no president can predict the future, so to the extent intent matters, anybody who became president genuinely thinking he would do a good job is blameless. But to the extent consequences matter (and I expect people around here to think they do), just meaning well is not enough. You need to have good reason to believe that your actions will have good consequences. Does this mean no one can ethically assume the role of president or Supreme Court justice since no one can guess the effects of policies and decisions with enough accuracy to justify taking on that level of authority? Maybe it does. Certainly I think too much power rests with them relative to the population they’re ruling.
But anyway, since when is “he meant well” a good excuse if the predictable result was millions of deaths, billions in lost productivity, etc.?
Put another way, if holding the politically powerful personally ethically responsible for the results of their choices involves holding the powerful to a seemingly unreasonable or at least very high standard, might that not be a good thing, given that these are the people, after all, who have judged themselves fit to rule us?
Hi, my name is Ender Wiggin, and I have a religion you may be interested in.
I feel bad whenever a sovereign is deposed and executed. That should not be done.
Celebrations of the deaths of public figures (Scalia and Thatcher being the most salient of recent years) always bring to the fore for me the question of moral disagreement. I’m assuming that everyone thinks that some rational moral disagreement is possible. The question that interests me is what it takes to consider someone a “bad” person, and thus have the natural reaction to be somewhat satisfied at their death (being justified in gloating about their death or broadcasting your glee in their death is somewhat different).
Can a person who you rationally disagree with (on moral issues, from here on out) be considered a bad person? Or is it only those who hold disagreeable moral propositions for non-rational reasons? Maybe rationality doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s only the type of moral proposition that matters. For example, prejudice seems to be about the worst possible thing for someone on the left (even worse than murder, probably; rape is probably tied with prejudice). I don’t know what the right equivalent is (deviance of some sort?). Perhaps you can’t be a good person if you are prejudiced in any way (clearly problematic, since we’re all prejudiced in one way or another). Perhaps it’s assumed that you can’t rationally be prejudiced, and thus it is assumed that you hold that belief irrationally.
This all seems like a muddle, I know, and maybe the categories of “bad” and “good” person should just be jettisoned (maybe I was wrong to find some sort of satisfaction when I heard of the death of Bin Laden, for example). And I know that probably most of the people that are celebrating the death of Scalia aren’t thinking that deeply about it; they just view him as the enemy, and so it’s good that the enemy is now gone. Still, it’s an interesting question. When can two people rationally disagree on a moral issue? And how does that relate to that person’s moral character?
I’ll suggest a heuristic: If you think it would be okay to kill someone for performing the acts they are known for, you can celebrate their death. That would cover Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It would not mean you could celebrate the death of Scalia, Thatcher, or Mary Whitehouse, although you are also not required to mourn their passing or refrain from criticizing them using less strident language than “I’m glad they died”.
That’s basically the heuristic, I already use.
Would I have pulled the trigger on them myself had I the chance? If yes, it’s ding dong the witch is dead. In not I say, pay your respects to the dead, or at the very least offer your condolences to those who are.
I think your muddle is mainly caused by your desire to collapse the value of someone’s life to a singular, binary state. At the very least you have to qualify ‘good and bad’ as ‘good and bad for whom’, as ultimately all actions benefit or harm actual people rather than ‘humanity as a whole’. It’s very easy for people to rationally disagree on moral issues if they value who benefits and who suffers from a policy differently.
‘Margaret Thatcher was bad for organized labour because she broke the power of unions, and terrible for specialized industrial workers in particular because she accelerated the decline of manufacturing and closed over a hundred coal mines’ is far more interesting than ‘Margaret Thatcher was bad’. It also opens the door to a ‘why did she do that, and who ultimately benefitted from this’ discussion, which allows you to judge political figures more fairly. At the very least people who condemn Thatcher should understand that she did this with the aim of reducing inflation and unemployment and fostering future growth—which she did.
Agreed. But you can’t just look at what they DO – a lot of the response to Thatcher isn’t just the practical results of her policy, it’s that she’s regarded as seeing miners, trade unionists etc. with callousness at best and actively regarding them as enemies to crush at the best. No idea if this is accurate: I’m not old enough to remember her period in power. But I think this often matters with public figures.
For intuitive (though I think fairly rational) reasons we often care more about the apparent motivation/attitude than the policy.
See also: people don’t just blame Blair because of deaths and instability from Iraq, it’s because they see him as ‘doing what God said’ or ‘doing what America said’ or ‘just caring about oil’.
Part of the problem is that most of us are massively unjust to people we don’t know whose views or policies we disagree with. It’s easier to assume bad motives than to seriously look at why other people believe different things than you do.
Quote from a celebrator:
“Not usually one for celebrating someone’s death, but as many people pointed out on Twitter last night, I’m merely giving Scalia the same amount of respect in death that he gave to people like me during his life.”
Can’t say I can really fault them.
I can.
I have seen no evidence whatsoever that Scalia thought any particular group of people deserved to be treated badly. I have only seen evidence that he did not think their policy preferences were in accord with the law. If you have evidence that he thought that, for instance, homosexuals were less deserving of love and happiness simply because they were homosexual, kindly produce it.
Such attitudes – by which I mean mostly theirs, and yours to the extent you actively support it as opposed to being sympathetic – to me smack of children who come home and complain that the teacher hates them because she makes them, you know, learn stuff and do stuff. Boring stuff. Stuff about bad people. Stuff that’s not fun. And if they don’t do it right, they get punished. One benefit of the breakdown of our educational system, I suppose, is that at least that sort of whining has probably diminished greatly.
Second. “Approves of my actions and my priorities” does not mean “respect”, particularly in the sense of ‘respect for human dignity’.
I myself would far rather a rigid system that can be modified only by a majority (or a motivated minority) than an overly flexible system that can ‘adjusted’ by the whims of any non-elected judge.
I can’t say I fault those whose quality of life were impacted by those validated by Scalia’s statements. The man is dead. He’s not hurt by their celebrations on social media. So long as they don’t go overboard and going after his family/friends as well, (or shame mourning supporters) I think there’s leeway for people who have actual shitty lives to complain some.
I share some of the same relevant demographics as that celebrator, but I have a good life, not so impacted by Scalia-era Supreme Court decisions, so I don’t think I can get away with celebrating Scalia’s death.
A child who comes home complaining isn’t a problem until they convince their parents to talk to the administration, or try to get revenge via disrupting the class, etc. Some of them grumble for the sake of grumbling, and then do their homework anyways. Remarks on public figures are rarely the entirety of someone’s emotions, or the tabloid industry wouldn’t exist in its current form.
And wrt gay marriage, isn’t then Scalia representing the whims of a judge opposing a majority approval of a desire of a motivated minority?
@ Keranih
I myself would far rather a rigid system that can be modified only by a majority (or a motivated minority) than an overly flexible system that can ‘adjusted’ by the whims of any non-elected judge.
Dunno how many elections or appointments by elected people (and possible recall attempts) a SC justice has to rise through to get near the SC; but once near, there’s nomination by an elected President and approval by elected Senators.
The SC is like Nutty Putty, not like a toothbrush.
In theory the SC could twist like … Nutty Putty, but like Nutty Putty it has to bend slowly. It’s not like a toothbrush that can flipflopflipflop fast but in a limited range. The only chance you have for a noticeable bend of 1/9th of its membership is when a vacancy coincides with a President with a cooperative Senate.
@Arbitrary_greay:
And wrt gay marriage, isn’t then Scalia representing the whims of a judge opposing a majority approval of a desire of a motivated minority?
No, because a majority of people in any given state may generally approve of or at least not care about gay marriage, but a majority of people are not known to want it enshrined as a Constitutional right.
Also no, because Scalia’s doctrine was to interpret the laws as written; not to change them according to his or the majority sentiment, but according to the written procedures for doing so.
(edit: as was said prior by mercrono below)
@Marc Whipple, Randy M
The comment was in response to keranih’s specific wording, which was not Constitution specific, nor about state vs. federal level.
I’m personally too close to the issue to discuss the validity of judicial activism, but again wrt keranih’s decribed system, the judicial branch was conceived as a means of a motivated minority to not be overrun by the majority, and so I still find that gay marriage would apply to that.
I fault them. Scalia thought that the Constitution said some things and not others. When people say he “opposed” gay rights, for example, they make it sound like he hated gays, and thus pursued a political agenda opposing same-sex marriage and supporting anti-sodomy laws. But Scalia’s theory of jurisprudence was basically “well, the Constitution doesn’t specifically address these issues, and they’ve long been practiced in our country’s history, so the Constitution permits political disagreement on this kind of question.” There are reasonable disagreements with this kind of jurisprudence, but the idea that it’s morally beyond the pale seems pretty silly.
So this is one step removed from the Thatcher situation, where the one says “this person held object-level political beliefs that ended up hurting me; therefore, they do not deserve respect, and I should celebrate their death.” It’s more like “this person held meta-level jurisprudential beliefs that resulted in not finding unconstitutional object-level political proposals that ended up hurting me; therefore, they do not deserve respect, and I should celebrate their death.” I dub that position: Not Defensible.
I know essentially zero about Scalia, so can ask this question with a genuinely open mind. But
a) are you sure, and
b) do you think people making those comments are sure
that Scalia’s meta-level jurisprudential principles actually came first, not (subconsciously) as ways to back his object-level positions.
If the main issue is on gay marriage, I guess the question here is whether he had also upheld that principle (that the Constitution should be assumed to be taken to permit disagreement in the light of history) in other contexts. Ideally ones that seemed more left than right!
The death-celebrators don’t care about Scalia’s intentions or morality. They see someone who made their life shittier, by upholding law and validating views that enable discrimination against them.
Some of the “SimCity” complaints are along the lines of “Why are you fucking up my life when you don’t even care about me, leave me alone.”
If someone’s life is so bad that their main priority is object-level, hang the meta-level (extension of Vimes’ Boots Theory), I don’t find something as relatively harmless as celebrating a removed figure’s death something to poo-poo over.
As I said above, I have little sympathy for people whose lives aren’t all that bad (no macroaggressions) doing celebrating.
@DavidS
I’m an attorney and former appellate law clerk. I personally spoke with Justice Scalia on several occasions, heard him speak on several others, have read all of his books, most of his major opinions, and personally and professionally know around a dozen or so people who either clerked for him or worked with him as a professor or judge. I don’t have a magic window into his mind, but I’m about as sure as I could possibly be that he did genuinely have meta-level jurisprudential principles, and that they were not simply a cover for advancing conservative political positions. Scalia’s advocacy of textualism, both on and off the bench, is largely responsible for shifting the entire enterprise of statutory interpretation in this country. So if it was all just a three-decade long smokescreen for hating on gays, it was arguably the most brilliant long con in human, and he accidentally earned a pretty major legacy. At the very least, he tricked Ruth Bader Ginsburg, his closest friend and colleague for about twenty years.
Now, if your question is, did his political views *ever* seep in and influence close cases one way or another? Well, I would be shocked if any judge in the world could serve for 34 years without that happening. There are certainly plenty of cases that I think Scalia got wrong, and some where you could argue that he’s getting away from his jurisprudence. But I highly doubt he ever wrote in his secret diary “mwa ha ha, pulled a fast one today and reached the wrong result to really stick it to the homosexual agenda” (pun masterstroke). More likely, he was subject to the same kinds of biases, motivated reasoning, etc. that we all face, and sometimes succumbed (although less than others, I would wager).
As for examples of Scalia’s jurisprudence leading to more traditionally leftist results, I posted a long comment to this effect below, in response to HeelBearCub. But specifically with respect to equal protection/due process issues where he thought the Constitution was silent in a manner that favored the left, Scalia was quite hostile to Lochner v. New York, and other cases holding that the Constitution limits the ability of states to favor certain economic interest groups over others. Many libertarian-leaning conservatives think that Lochner and its progeny were rightly decided, and that courts should more actively protect economic liberty, but Scalia never went for this.
A point that occurs to me: it is often argued, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that an advantage of protectionism is that it allows human biases to be avoided. Presumably, government actors think really hard and carefully about their choices, and working within the mechanism of government means they don’t make the same kinds of cognitive error that individuals making decisions for themselves tend to make. If you think Scalia’s human biases impaired his judgement, that is some reason to doubt that having the government make decisions avoids the influence of human bias.
He did call Obergefell v. Hodges “… a threat to American Democracy.” and in his dissent for Romer v. Evans he compared homosexuals and polygamists, intentionally or not, to murderers and dog kickers.
About Lawrence v. Texas, the “right to decide what you do to which which consenting who” gay/privacy rights decision, he said ““State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise … called into question by today’s decision.”
In a 2012 speech at Princeton, he was asked to clarify his comments comparing homosexuals to murderers and he said “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder?”
Justice Scalia may have born a professional character that prevented his obviously vehement beliefs that consensual homosexual sex was comparable to murder from influencing his opinion on matters of law concerning opposition to hate crimes legislation, marriage law, and discriminatory hiring in the military, and if so held an admirable professional character. But I don’t think you could accuse someone who said he hated homosexuals as a demographic of exaggeration. So sure, he was a legitimate enemy, an active combatant in the culture war.
But nevertheless…
> He did call Obergefell v. Hodges “… a threat to American Democracy.”
Right. His concern is that since we’re letting five judges totally muck up fundamental rights jurisprudence and add stuff to the Constitution, it’s a threat to the Constitution… which is the essence of American Democracy. This is pretty standard rhetoric whenever a justice thinks that others are straying from the Constitution… that doesn’t require any reference to gays – just Constitutional interpretation.
> in his dissent for Romer v. Evans he compared homosexuals and polygamists, intentionally or not, to murderers and dog kickers.
…for the purpose of what? Let’s put it this way. Suppose I said, “For the purposes of the Third Amendment, all of those groups you just mentioned are in the same category.” If you can’t see my point, ask, and I’ll spell it out in more detail.
> “State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise … called into question by today’s decision.”
Weren’t they?! Lawrence eliminated laws based on moral disapproval. All of those things are primarily or entirely based on moral disapproval, so they’re definitely called into question. Which ones can survive is (literally) a question for the future. I tend to think we can come up with better distinctions that fix the problem, but it’s pretty ridiculous to think that he wasn’t pointing at a legitimate matter.
> If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder?
View the “we” here as “society”. The point is exactly as I had mentioned for Lawrence. Look, I know he came down on the side you didn’t like for the gay quadrilogy cases, but his positions are very explainable in terms of meta-level jurisprudential considerations.
This was discussed in https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
Speaking of which, can someone please give me a few examples of left-leaning political figures who the red tribe has given a similar “ding-dong, the witch is dead” treatment to? The only examples I can think of off the top of my head, and which I’ve seen referenced so far here, are people like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, who seem to be in a completely different class altogether.
I’m not asking this to score some kind of political point, or anything, really. I’m sure there WILL be some examples that people can think of. But all the “ding-dong the witch is dead” posts I’ve seen on Facebook over the last couple days have gotten me really upset, and I think it would help restore my faith in humanity just a bit to hear that it’s not JUST the Other Side that does this.
Well, a lot is going to depend on how many celebrating reds it will take to count.
There was a certain grim satisfaction when Ted Kennedy died that at last justice would be done, but always in reference to Chappaquiddick.
Ah, yes, Ted Kennedy is a pretty good example. Thanks!
This website and 4chan are my primary exposure to Right-Wing perspectives. I know 4chan is happy when the police kill black people, and when liberal politicians die. But 4chan has an ongoing meme where they write Jeb Bush’s suicide note one paragraph at a time, about once a week.
Directing me to 4chan is probably not going to do much to restore my faith in humanity. :op
To be fair to 4chan, they also are happy when (ex)policemen kill (or attempt to) white people too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner_shootings_and_manhunt
I am watching the development of minor conspiracy theories about his death with interest; I think it’s got the legs to still be around a decade or two from now.
(I drew a couple short straws in the lottery of fascinations).
I continue to be horrified by a legal system that effectively determines supreme court cases via the timing of the last nine deaths/retirements on the court. But maybe I shouldn’t be; it’s mostly random and that at least sets a floor on how terrible it’s likely to be.
When I studied Constitutional Law in school, Scalia was consistently the most challenging conservative justice for liberals to argue against. He was just so damn principled. Even when you disagreed with his result, none of the other justices were as talented at building a conceptual framework as he was, so it was hard to refute any of his claims. At best, you could accuse him of adopting constitutional principles that furthered his ends.
If you look at each opinion in isolation perhaps, but once you’ve seen enough of his opinions the conclusion that his vaunted “principles” are merely adopted instrumentally to reach the conclusions he favored is inescapable.
“Inescapable,” you say? I dunno, I managed to escape it, so there’s an existence proof that your thesis is incorrect.
He lost some of that in his later years sadly, but pre-2000 Scalia was great as a way to test your own beliefs.
Scalia’s principles had a limit. His opinion in Gonzales v. Raich was essentially rationalizing his policy views as an exception to his principles, which would have led him to strike down the drug war. Notably, Clarence Thomas – by far the most principled justice on the Supreme Court, who wholesale rejects stare decisis – went the other way.
I agree with you on Raich but his concurrence in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which Stevens joined, had to have been pretty strongly against his policy preferences.
Am I the only one who read his concurrence in Raich and thought, “That’s clever… and very not obviously incorrect.” Frankly, I think it makes more sense than the majority opinion, involves surprisingly minimal use of the Commerce Clause, and in doing so, makes plenty of sense in context of the last two decades of CC case history (everything from Lopez to NFIB).
Hell, I thought something pretty similar about Roberts’ opinion in NFIB. Going into it, I was mostly on board with the idea that it was unconstitutional, but I think his opinion handed the CC issue well and was clever enough with the tax issue that it’s not obviously incorrect.
What about Robert’s spending clause argument (i.e. striking down the medicaid expansion)? I remember thinking that was pretty weak and was torn to shreds by the Ginsburg opinion.
I think Roberts went off on unnecessary tangents that Ginburg picked apart well. However, the dissenters pointed out the single important issue – is coercion via the spending power possible or permissible? Ginsburg’s only reply was even if it is possible/impermissible, it can’t be evaluated by the judiciary. I’m not nearly as convinced of this.
When it comes to balance of powers/federalism issues that aren’t enumerated in the Constitution, I’m usually very quick to mostly say, “Political question; just let the appropriate gov’t bodies fight it out; courts can’t do it.” However, this particular type of balance of powers/federalism issue (federal gov’t infringing on state gov’t) is going to come up in a post-17th Amendment world. In a pre-17A world, I would have accepted, “State governments have recourse via the Senate,” in an instant. (There are multiple other “structure of the Constitution protects state government sovereignty” cases that would exhibit this.) But to the extent that state governments have no political recourse to protect themselves from potentially clever infringement by the federal government, it’s going to keep happening. At some point, someone is going to have to say stop.
So, to the extent we’re willing to say, “The structure of the Constitution protects federalism, and thus protects state governments from the federal government,” we’re probably stuck with seven justices signing off on sketchy coercion arguments. Unfortunately, the most correct result is to say, “The post-17th Amendment Constitution has different (read: no) protections for state governments on political questions, so tough shit. When things get really bad, the people are going to have to be the ones to say stop and pass a new amendment.” I think the biggest issue is that nobody has the balls to say this out loud. If they had, I really wonder if Scalia would have considered it. As much as he cared about protecting State governments and federalism, I think he might have gone for it. (I’d tell him to take it to the extreme – an amendment that merged the Legislature and Executive branches.. clearly trashes the original “structure of the Constitution”, but if the people really want it enough to amend it….)
Thanks for the detailed reply. I guess I’d answer that even if one felt a line had to be drawn somewhere on spending power coercion Roberts didn’t do a good job explaining why it had to be drawn in that case or distinguishing prior cases where courts hadn’t drawn the line.
I don’t remember in any sort of detail what joint dissent had to say about the medicaid expansion. I’d have to go back and reread it. Maybe I’ll do that and reread the Scalia Raich opinion this weekend.
Yea, I’m not sure how convincing any of them can really be on whether it counts as coercion, because there just aren’t good principles or bright lines available. But anyway, don’t listen to me… at all. I didn’t even go to law school. I just like reading supreme court opinions! So, uh, definitely do that this weekend!
@Bill G:
I know Scalia had an originalist hammer in his hand, and he pounded everything as if it were a nail, but can you show me how principled he was?
His vote on the Bush v. Gore and a number of other things seemed to line up with ideology far more than principle. But I am no constitutional scholar, so if you wanted to point me at something that made this point well, I would appreciate it.
Bush v Gore and Raich are the two that are used against him all of the time. I have trouble justifying Raich, Bush v Gore I see as an unwinnable case for every justice.
On the good side, Scalia was consistently a defender of first, fourth and sixth amendment protections, even when it made him stand against many of his conservative counterparts and his own conservative beliefs. Regarding the First Amendment, Brown v EMA is a good example where he wrote the majority against a California law that restricted the sale of certain video games to minors. Regarding the fourth, in Florida v Jardines he wrote in a very mixed majority that the use of drug sniffing dogs used outside of a home to determine whether there were drugs on the inside was a search.
I’m no judicial scholar, but I don’t remember any modern justices in con law without a questionable case. Maybe Thomas, as stated above, but he is so unconvincing as a writer that his decisions never sway anyone. Scalia had that power, whether you agreed with him or not.
An interesting thing about his, and everyone else’s, First Amendment jurisprudence is that there’s essentially no originalism in it. You never saw Scalia or even Thomas say something like “the founders only intended to prevent prior restraints”.
@Bill G:
I’m not sure how Bush v. Gore was unwinnable for an originalist? “Stay out of it” seems like the appropriate originalist position. I don’t find the originalist position to be particularly convincing, so I’m not even saying it is the right one. As was pointed out elsewhere, if a state decided to forgo the popular vote for President, it would seem appropriate to me for the USOC to step in.
“On the good side, Scalia was consistently a defender of first, fourth and sixth amendment protections”
But, is that the principled position? Is it really clear that the framers meant 1,4 and 6 more than other amendments? Or other text in the constitution?
@HeelBearCub
“But, is that the principled position? Is it really clear that the framers meant 1,4 and 6 more than other amendments? Or other text in the constitution?”
Of course it wouldn’t be principled to say “these amendments count, these other ones don’t.” And of course, Scalia never said anything of the sort — he would have said, he would follow the text of the Constitution wherever it led, and interpret every word and every provision as faithfully as possible (which some institutional complications like stare decisis, political question doctrine, etc.).
When people hail Scalia as a “defender” of the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments, I think what they’re trying to say is, “these are examples of where he followed a textualist/originalist jurisprudence, even where it might seem to diverge from conservative political preferences.” In Texas v. Johnson, Scalia joined the opinion holding that an anti-flag burning statute violated the First Amendment, even though this ban was favored by conservatives. In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, Scalia wrote the majority opinion striking down a ban on violent video games as against the First Amendment. In Kyllo v. United States, he wrote the majority opinion holding that a thermal image search of someone’s home violated the Fourth Amendment. In Crawford v. Washington, he wrote the majority opinion saying that criminal defendants had an absolute right to cross-examine witnesses giving testimonial statements, based on the clear text of the Sixth Amendment. In United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, he wrote the majority opinion holding that denial of a defendant’s right to choice of counsel was a structural error, warranting automatic reversal (i.e., no analysis of whether the denial caused any harm). In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, his dissent (joined by liberal icon John Paul Stevens) stated that the President lacked the constitutional authority to detain a citizen without trial unless Congress suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
Most of the above cases were 5-4 decisions, with the more traditionally “conservative” Justices often in dissent, especially in the criminal context. Scalia was the “darling of the criminal defense bar,” not because he had a soft spot for criminals, but because he just, you know, applied the crime-related Amendments how they were written — and it turns out they often protect criminal defendants!
Can you quibble with the particular outcomes in any of the above? Sure. Can you find examples where Scalia arguably didn’t follow a textualist/originalist interpretation. Sure. He wasn’t perfect, and didn’t always get it right (and also, constitutional interpretation is often really, really hard, even if you’re completely honest). But over the course of his career, the evidence is quite clear that he *did* have a principled jurisprudence, and he *did* seek to apply it honestly, regardless of political preferences.
@mercrono
Well said.
If someone condemns the Bush v. Gore decision, I always ask them what issues were before the Court, and how the Justices actually voted on those questions. If your theory is “this was obviously just politics, and the Justices just voted for the guy they wanted,” then I’m pretty confident that you don’t know what was actually going on in that case.
There were two primary questions briefed in Bush v. Gore. First, whether the Florida Supreme Court’s state-wide recount order violated Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the Constitution, which states that “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . .” In essence, the argument was that the Florida Supreme Court’s order was so at odds with Florida law that it deprived the Florida legislature of their constitutional authority to select the manner in which Electors would be appointed. Without getting into the details, the state-wide recount is *very* hard to defend, legally. To wit, the Florida Supreme Court was then composed of seven hardcore Democrats, and the vote in favor of the recount was still only 4-3.
An entirely separate question was whether the manner of the recount violated the Equal Protection Clause, because effectively identical ballots were being accepted by some counters but rejected by others (often even within the same county). This became the issue that decided the case, but was originally seen as secondary to the Article II question. A related issue was the question of remedy: if there *were* an Equal Protection violation, should the case be remanded to the Florida Supreme Court?
So how did all these issues get resolved? Bush v. Gore is sometimes called a 5-4 case, in terms of the bare result, but really it’s more like a 2-3-2-2 result, and all of the individual Justices’ votes actually make quite a bit of a sense given their traditional legal perspectives. Somebody (probably Kennedy) wrote a per curiam opinion finding an Equal Protection Clause violation — this result was 7-2 (only Ginsburg and Stevens dissenting). The per curiam also found, 5-4, that Florida’s safe-harbor deadline for certifying Electors had already passed, so there was no possibility of a recount. Breyer and Souter dissented from this portion, saying that this was a question of state law, and so not properly before the Court.
But Rehnquist wrote a concurrence, joined by Scalia and Thomas, separately finding for Bush on the Article II ground. Based on the way this opinion is written, and how the dissenters responded to it, legal commentators largely agree that it was, at one point, the majority opinion. This is an eminently reasonable decision, and moreover, perfectly consistent with the textualism/originalism of the conservative Justices: the Constitution clearly assigns the the manner of selecting Electors to the state legislatures, and the Florida Supreme Court’s order was manifestly at odds with what the legislature had commanded. There are reasonable ways to disagree with this opinion, but you can’t credibly claim that it’s bad faith reasoning.
But nobody remembers the Article II concurrence. Instead, they just see that Scalia and Thomas joined a per curiam opinion expressing a view of the Equal Protection Clause that, realistically, Scalia and Thomas would not have been likely to endorse. That’s a fair criticism, and it’s widely believed that Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas joined the per curiam because it would have appeared awkward for Bush to win, but without a majority as to *why* he won. Supposing this narrative is correct, then the conservatives made a kind of *institutional* political decision (i.e., this is a super sensitive case, and the Court will look better with more unity). But it wasn’t a *results-oriented* decision, because they were already finding for Bush under the Article II theory!
So ultimately, you have the three Justices (Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas) finding for Bush under a textualist interpretation of Article II; two Justices (O’Connor and Kennedy) finding for Bush under the Equal Protection Clause, and denying a remand (with the conservatives nominally joining this opinion); two Justices (Souter and Breyer) finding for Bush under the Equal Protection Clause, but saying the Court should have remanded; and two Justices (Stevens and Ginsburg) voting to affirm the Florida Supreme Court entirely. That is far, far removed from the “oh it was all just politics” narrative that most people seem to embrace.
You are giving way to much credit to the article II argument. It is very weak.
It is not the job of the US Supreme Court to decide that the Florida Supreme Court got Florida law wrong. The “as the Legislature thereof may direct” language doesn’t change that analysis at all. The Florida constitution allows for jurisdiction stripping and jurisdiction shaping. If the legislature didn’t want the state courts to have a role in the election process they had the power to prevent that from happening. The choose not to, in fact Florida election law specifically outlined a role for the judiciary. The system as a whole, including the court’s involvement was as the legislature directed.
Furthermore, inasmuch as there is any role for the US Supreme Court in determining that the Florida Supreme Court got Florida law wrong, the precedents for it all come from the liberal wing of the Supreme Court — specifically those arising from the civil rights era Court. One doesn’t expect a Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas opinion to be relying on a Brennan majority opinion where Black, Harlan and White dissented (Bouie v. City of Columbia).
The Court never should have granted cert.
Very informative, thank you.
@brad
“It is not the job of the US Supreme Court to decide that the Florida Supreme Court got Florida law wrong. The ‘as the Legislature thereof may direct’ language doesn’t change that analysis at all.”
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Normally, no, it is not the job of any federal court to challenge a state supreme court’s interpretation of state law. But the argument is that this is different, because the Constitution here specifically refers not just to “States,” but to a particular *branch* of the state government. That’s unusual, and it’s what made the difference in this case.
Now, I do think you’re making the best arguments against this position. The Florida legislature *also* provided a role for the courts, they could have stripped jurisdiction, but chose not to, etc. Maybe that means that the Florida Supreme Court’s erroneous order was still the “manner” selected by the legislature, even if the legislature itself disagreed. Maybe that order so far transgressed the bounds of reasonable interpretation that it could not be said to comply with Florida law. I lean toward supporting the Rehnquist concurrence, but there’s reasonable disagreement on the matter.
My point wasn’t to say “here’s the Article II theory, and it’s definitely, obviously correct.” My point was to say “here’s this plausible theory, it’s the main theory that the conservatives accepted, and that’s perfectly consistent with textualism/originalism.” I think the conservatives can be justly criticized for joining a per curiam they didn’t agree with, paradoxically losing credibility precisely by attempting to keep it. But I don’t think they can be criticized for reaching a bad faith *result*, simply because they wanted Bush to win.
> It is not the job of the US Supreme Court to decide that the Florida Supreme Court got Florida law wrong.
If I may inject one more case that was bitterly fought (and then disappeared, unlike Bush v. Gore), Hollingsworth v. Perry is another example of what I call “judicial federalism”. If we’re considering this the only real core question and just counting up ‘hypocrisy votes’ for who thinks the federal judiciary can tell a state judiciary that they got state law wrong, I see hypocrisy tallies for essentially everyone who was on both courts… except Scalia. This is a surprising feature to me, especially because he’s on the side of, “Yes, we can tell state courts that they’re wrong about state law,” in both cases.
Of course, I think both cases were actually more complicated than this one core question, but whatever.
I think that case is somewhat different. It’s true that the CA courts had answered the certified question regarding the interests of initiative proponents per state law. That is surely relevant to the standing question, but ultimately standing is a federal doctrine whose boundries and definitions are properly decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Bush v Gore there was no real federal issue at all.
Maybr Perry was wrongly decided but as I said above they never should have granted cert in Bush v Gore.
I agree that they were somewhat different, but let’s put it this way. If the core question in Bush v. Gore is who is appropriately wielding the Legislature’s power (as defined in Article II), the question in Perry is who is appropriately wielding the State’s power of attorney (as defined in Article III… only, more tangentially so). In Perry, the Court said, “No, California Supreme Court; you’re wrong about California law because (mumble mumble agency).” I actually prefer the dissenters’ position here. Rather than say, “Oh, you didn’t really mean what you said, because maybe you’d like to avoid letting them settle a case for you in a hypothetical future,” I’d have said, “Ok, Cali, if that’s what you want, that’s what you’re stuck with. Sucks to be you if they do something really stupid on your behalf. Don’t even think about trying to get out of it.”
Really, it’s kind of how you say:
> If the legislature didn’t want the state courts to have a role in the election process they had the power to prevent that from happening. The choose not to, in fact Florida election law specifically outlined a role for the judiciary. The system as a whole, including the court’s involvement was as the legislature directed.
Similarly, the federal courts looked to the California Supreme Court, who they believed was designated by the State of California to be able to make determinations about who could represent them in federal court. I wouldn’t care how they came up with that determination or what they actually thought it meant for state government. They made that bed; they should lay in it.
At least Article II specifically names a state body. I still think it’s entirely up to the state to work out its own business and say, “Here is where the Legislature (and the authority of the Legislature) lies.” The State of California can give Joe on the Docks the authority to represent them in court (maybe even give him a title Attorney Specific); The State of Florida can give Jim on the Bayou the power to be involved in the legislature’s election powers (hell, they could just make Jim-Bob the legislator).
As an occasional reader of Supreme Court opinions for pleasure, I will miss him.
LOL’d at “UK’s constitution” 😉
>LOL’d at “UK’s constitution” ?
It’s possible for things to not be written down and still exist. =p
It’s possible for things to not be written down and still exist. =p
…this is true. It’s also true that outside of durable written records, “what we’ve always done” morphs into “what we feel like doing now” instead of “what we will do now” being driven by “what we’ve always done.”
The UK’s claim to a constitution is…doubtful. A group of documents which have come over time to represent “the” governing principles for ruling that society? Yeap. A singular document with codified priorities and limitations on the powers of the various parts of government? NSM.
(It appears to be working for the UK, and as to my eyes the UK government appears to be *exactly* what would happen if a watery sword-dispensing tart had babies with an autonomous collective’s working committee three days out of five, that’s fairly impressive.)
>It’s also true that outside of durable written records, “what we’ve always done” morphs into “what we feel like doing now” instead of “what we will do now” being driven by “what we’ve always done.”
Something that doesn’t happen in the case of a written constitution. As the majority in Roe v Wade, Obergefell v. Hodges, and West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish can well attest….
I’ll agree there’s no singular document in the UK, or anything like it. There are however fixed principles that have lasted a very long time. I’d call those fixed principles a constitution, and suggest ours is quite secure. The right of brits not to be taxed without the consent of the House of Commons seems to me more secure than right of Americans to keep and bear arms.
There are major unwritten parts of the US Constitution too. Nowhere is it said that the Electoral College must be chosen by popular vote, and indeed it took a few decades for this to become the national norm. Yet now the norm is so strong that there would be rioting in the streets if the legislature of, say, Michigan decided to disregard the election results and appoint its own slate to the EC. (I think that would have been a more sensible resolution to Florida 2000 than the one we got, but I’m probably alone in this.)
And now we’re seeing relatively recent legislative conventions like the “Thurmond Rule” elevated to near-constitutional status. Perhaps I’m cynical, but I expect Congress to consider breaching another constitutional norm – reducing the size of the Supreme Court in order to prevent a Democrat from replacing Scalia, in a reversal of FDR’s court-packing plan.
“in a reversal of FDR’s court-packing plan.”
FDR proposed packing the court. Lincoln did it.
The norm until the Civil War was one justice per circuit, out of administrative necessity more than anything else – the original structure of the trial courts meant that the justices spent much of the year hearing cases within their circuits, since a district judge could act alone only in limited matters. Lincoln didn’t breach that norm – the tenth seat came with a new 10th Circuit of the Pacific states.
UK constitution is definitely interesting. Regarding taxation without the consent of the House of Commons – that’s an interesting one. It really depends on if you require said consent to be direct. I haven’t really thought about it before, but as far as I know, Parliament hasn’t given the executive any power to tax independently (and I’d be surprised if they did so lightly, except perhaps in marginal cases involving levies on specific industries or somesuch)
But Parliament HAS given increasing powers to devolved administrations to tax, as well as the longer-running money raising powers in local government. So if I live in Scotland or Wales I can have taxes raised without the consent of the Commons, unless you mean that they could technically overrule the devolved administrations (which they definitely legally could).
Of possibleSscott-ish interest:
https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/nick-middleton/an-atlas-of-countries-that-don-t-exist
My mom sent me that book. Still haven’t gotten around to reading it.
“New rule for the subreddit – to keep it from getting bogged down in culture war related links, there will be one “Culture War Roundup” thread every week. If you have interesting culture war related links, please put them on that thread instead of starting a new one. I’ll trust you all to use your judgment about what is or isn’t culture war.”
There are a number of other topics that come up perennially, including gun control, libertarianism, and moral realism. Would it be a good idea for these to have their own perennial threads or subreddits?
No, because I’m less worried that those will grow and grow and take over everything toxoplasma-style.
I hope this doesn’t go the way of other subreddits that have tried to prune content or funnel content. The content and groups posting such content are muted and their ideological opponents end up outnumbering them. Uneven selection pressures ensure that the unfettered side turns to low effort posting in bulk amounts.
SRD is the prime example, but that was partially due to runaway growth and unaccountable moderators, both problems I hope that SSC will avoid.
The reddit system (i.e. voting with reordering) has a strong tendency to pathology. It’s flaws can be compensated for with extreme moderation effort but I can’t think of any reason to bother when almost any other platform is better.
I watched and am currently recommending my little brother watch the Norwegian documentary series Hjernevask (or Brainwash). To me, it seems good, neither making positive claims nor ruling possibilities out with more confidence than is warranted. And it’s certainly watchable. (I’m quite fond of the presenter.) But I’m not well-versed enough in the topics it covers to know how accurate it is. So for those who do know about these sorts of things: how good is it? Does it make any glaring mistakes?
I’ve watched it, and it doesn’t appear to have any glaring problems. What it presents does appear to be selected for defensibility.
For those who have an ‘entertainment’ space in their budget –
May I suggest you consider supporting JourneyQuest as it raises funds for filming S3?
The kickstarter campaign is here, the previous two seasons are on youtube here. I’ve very much enjoyed it, and find it a bit of a subversion of RPG fantasy games. Even if it doesn’t get funded, watching Glorion use “logic” to solve the first season dungeon is worth watching.
Your youtube link is wrong.
Dadnabit. Sorry about that. Thanks for letting me know.
JourneyQuest Season 1 Ep 1.
Career advice question. I have a law license, but have worked my entire career in a highly regulated niche industry. So far I’ve been successful in this and have advanced to a mid-level management role in which I have a large group of ~200 under me, reporting to a team of managers who report to me directly.
The work that led me to this point was consistently interesting and challenging. The work since then has been consistently stressful and focused on questions that are not interesting to me (e.g., HR processes, whether someone is feeling overworked, etc). Some of this is a temporary shortage of support to take some of that work off of my plate, but I’m starting to fear some of it will never be avoidable.
My current fear is that this sort of management role seems to be the “essential next step” to get to higher level roles. It’s been stressful and consuming enough for me to consider dropping in salary/role to have more time for life.
Has anyone ever dealt with this before? Any advice on how to approach?
The work since then has been consistently stressful and focused on questions that are not interesting to me (e.g., HR processes, whether someone is feeling overworked, etc).
This is management. It involves not actually knowing the technical code/machine/environment/law/tree/ship/etc interfacing parts of your career focus, but in knowing how to best manage people who are interfacing with the code/machine/environment/etc. IMO, effective people management is a skill set that is much rarer than many assume – and more’s the pity, some people don’t recognize it as a skill set that needs to be nurtured and practiced like any other.
You’re likely not going to be able to stay at your present position and not do the annoying parts of management. Before making a decision, look at your company.
1 – is this an “up or out” company? If not, your choices are largely to lump it or find someplace else to work.
2 – what are the upsides to your manager position? (yes, there are some – look carefully!) Are you prepared to do without those upsides in return for less work stress? Be aware that some of these upsides might not be “official” but cultural, and so if you rejected the advanced position, you’ll have to police yourself into rejecting those perks, too.
3 – If you’re in an organization that will let you stay in that organization without moving up in authority/responsibility levels, have a frank talk with your supervisor about a lateral/downward move into a non-advancing role. Be aware you may have changed (permanently) your chances for pay increase and your retention capability if the company downsizes.
Good luck.
How would you got about therapy for someone with +3sd IQ? Past experiences with shrinks were mostly a waste of time, they either told me obvious cbt stuff (which is in the water supply either way) or flat out failed too counter my well rationalized issues.
Issues are a mix of dysthymia, social anxiety and related avoidance behavior (with the highest impact on relationships, I can route around it in professional life for the most part) plus potentially being on the spectrum.
+1 for interest. I think even +2 SD in intelligence disqualifies one from help from the vast majority of talk therapists.
Of note, there is no IQ ceiling on any profession, and there do exist plumbers with 150 IQs (I’ll try to dig up the citation if anyone is interested). It stands to reason that there are a number of +3 SD and higher therapists in the world, although they may not be easy to find.
Also, consider a psychiatrist rather than a therapist. There are a great many problems one can fix for oneself if given a little chemical push.
I would mostly be looking a psychiatrist as every single psychology major I ever met had a lot more screws loose than I do (also, they cannot prescribe medication where I live).
Even so, finding a proper psychiatrist who is actually able to relate on that level seems hard, to say the least.
In all sincerity, I was telling the truth: it’s not as important as you might think if your therapist is a good therapist. A good therapist is way more important than a smart therapist. Of course, if a little chemical push improves your life to the point where you can go easy on the psychotherapy, that’s an efficient and beneficial outcome. By all means discuss that with a psychiatrist and see if it’s a good option.
The CBT method involves actually doing stuff, not just hearing about it.
This is the hidden (not so well hidden, to be honest) problem with most rejections of CBT. In the words of Uatu, “Talking is not acting.” They’re right, it is pretty obvious to a smart person. That doesn’t mean they’ll do it. If implementing obvious solutions were that simple they probably wouldn’t need a therapist in the first place.
See below about contests/trickery, which is a pretty significant problem with trying to use CBT with Schmott peoplez.
+1 to everything Marc says.
Most people are pretty damn lazy to the kind of boring tasks CBT demands, and Smart People (TM) aren’t immune. If you’re the kind of person who leaves dirty dishes in the sink (IE, every human I’ve met besides my Mom), you are also the kind of person who just might shirk your CBT homework.
That’s not meant to cast aspersions. I spent a lot of time in absolute mental depression. And I knew about the CBT practices, too…but I never actually used any of them until I was 25 or so.
They really do work. But I still have to remind myself to do them, for the same reason I still have to yell at myself to get on the treadmill.
I’m +2sd. I received free therapy through my college from a graduate student, rather than an established expert. They seemed more willing to explore unusual ideas and approaches than I suspect an entrenched professional would be. A lot of our sessions were almost free form brainstorming.
Also, you should try keeping a journal.
Try to find a therapist who works less with challenging ways of thinking and more with helping walk you through action-based solutions… like a gentle form of exposure therapy for the social anxiety / avoidance.
The common CBT format of countering rationalizations doesn’t work on me and has paradoxically made things a little worse in some cases. I’m not sure if IQ is part of that or not; it’s a possibility, since it’s extremely difficult for me to trick myself into believing things. Some people might just be more susceptible to the backfire effect, too, where challenging a belief can make it stronger – if that outpaces the positive effects then this type of CBT is likely a poor match. I’ve gotten better results out of slow exposure – putting myself in social situations that trigger a manageable amount of anxiety, beginning with little stuff like making a bit of small talk with store clerks in stores that are a bit out of my usual route (so they’re not people I see regularly, reducing the feared consequences of “messing up”), and working up from there. There are therapists who can help with that sort of treatment and don’t get as much into analyzing and challenging the specific thoughts.
I have seen a very helpful therapeutic relationship between a therapist who was probably Mensa level, if that, and a patient who was three-sigma smart. It depends, leaving aside your specific issues for a moment, on the therapist and the problem. Please note that all references to “you” in this post are generic-smart-patient-you’s, not the original poster you’s.
The main block to progress, in this context, is exactly the same as if the therapist or the patient are intellectual equals or the therapist is smarter: if the patient approaches the therapy as a contest which they mean to win, the therapy will very likely not be helpful. If the therapist participates in the contest, it will almost certainly not be helpful. The therapist doesn’t have to be smart enough to win: they just have to be smart enough not to play. (Note that this means they may have to be smart enough to know that CBT, as usually implemented, is not going to be an effective approach with this patient. And that means they have to be smart enough to have more arrows in their quiver.) If they can get the patient to stop trying to win as well, there is a chance for a good therapeutic outcome. If not, it doesn’t really matter what the relative intelligence levels are.
By “mean to win,” I mean that the patient wants to argue about why the behaviors which are making them unhappy are rational. You know what? If you’re that smart, they probably are rational, at least in some light. The world can be an awful place and the grave awaits us all. Congratulations, your beliefs are justified and your therapist is a powerless charlatan.
That being stipulated, the question is, do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? In this context, you can’t do both. You get to decide: nobody else can decide for you. And you’re too smart to be tricked into making a different decision, even if your therapist is as smart or smarter than you are and despite all her book-learnin’. You can decide to change your behaviors and your outlook: I don’t care how smart you are and how rational your objections, you can. If you won’t, you won’t, and a six-sigma therapist will be exactly as ineffective as the one who got his degree from a Crackerjack box.
Note that that last bit sounds like I am denigrating somebody’s willpower. I am not. I mean that it is physically and logically possible. I don’t mean that everybody just wakes up and casually chooses whether to be happy or miserable every day. I don’t believe that. I mean that either your outlook and behaviors are amenable to change, or they aren’t. If they aren’t, and I mean this with complete sincerity, regretful sympathy, and zero snark, it sucks to be you. Psychotherapy, psychiatric medicine, and neurosurgery are pretty much your options. If none of them work, well, try to make your peace in whatever way you can.
No offense-I think that is the best answer here-but how smart are you?
None taken, and triple sigma. Wanna see my cards?
Thanks, very good comment.
I actually vividly remember the contest situation with my first shrink more than a decade ago (during my initial episode of full blown major depression). Only my contest was to try and get him to assign a different diagnosis each session. Safe to say, the sessions didn’t help the least but the Venlafaxine and a change of majors eventually did (at the price of nasty side effects).
That’s the tough part. You (generic “you” here) have to change, you have to do it yourself (nobody else can do it for you, even if they can suggest helpful ways), and you have to want to do it, otherwise all the therapy in the world won’t make a shred of difference.
If there were such a thing as “willpower-in-a-bottle”, I’d take it in the morning. I don’t know why I’m so resistant to change and at this stage I don’t know if it’s because I can’t or because I won’t, and I’m so tired of trying to figure it out that I can’t do it anymore.
I also know there’s no such thing as “willpower-in-a-bottle”, no magic pill, no quick instant fix; there’s only deciding to change and then doing it. Which leaves me where it found me – that’s why I didn’t find CBT helpful and why I pulled out of counselling after one session; I know myself well enough to know my “people-pleasing” would kick in and I’d find some way to bullshit to the therapist, after a couple of sessions, that gosh gee wow it’s tough but y’know I am finding the exercises to be applicable and maybe I’m imagining it but there is something like a slight bit of improvement and yeah, I don’t feel so down as I did when I started… rinse and repeat till we come to the end of the series, I smile and say thanks for everything and I know I have a lot of work still to do but I can see a path forward now, and meanwhile I’m lying through my teeth because everything is the same and I’m not actually changing or doing any of the suggestions.
I know what I should be doing and what I have to do, but doing it is the problem and one I don’t know how to solve.
Why does it have to be therapy? My wife is 3sd and has mostly successfully countered otherwise debilitating problems with medication. The warning of course is it took years to finally find the right combinations and dosages, but that just means the longer you wait to even get started, the further into the future you push any hope of overcoming.
I would actually prefer medication (most of therapy has a strong sense of bunk to me) but how do you find a psychiatrist that will let you try the less common stuff.
I can get mood improvements from Fluoxetine just fine. It’s just not all that helpful to replace mildly bad mood and anhedonia by happy-zombie-dont-give-a-damn state and sexual dysfunction (I am somewhat fine doing that trade-off for major depression)… So personally I would try the next best thing but nobody wants to prescribe me dopaminergics, MAOIs or, for that matter, try and see what straight up testosterone supplementation would do.
Read up on therapy methods, apply them to yourself. (I speak from experience.)
And what Nita said–actually *do* the CBT stuff, it really can work. For example, use the CBT technique of *sincerely* asking yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Don’t leave it as a rhetorical question with which to shame yourself for even being worried. 😉 Instead, literally try to answer it. “If I [go to this party | call Customer Service | whatever other anxiety-producing social situation], what *is* the worst possible result?” Then, actually sit down and make a plan for how you would deal with that result.
You might remember that scene in Ender’s Game where Ender tells Bean that he can’t lose *any* games, “Because if I lose *any*…” He trails off…because he doesn’t know the answer. He doesn’t know what will happen if he loses any games. He just knows it will be the end of the world. He’s attached the idea of losing to a nameless dread. So name that dread. When you know what might happen and have a plan to mitigate it, you will have demystified it. This can work surprisingly well in reducing anxiety. If you actually do it. 😉
That said…
The IQ may be causing some of the social problems which you’ve implied may underlie the social anxiety. If that’s the case, you won’t be able to solve either the anxiety or the underlying social problems without facing that. And neither will a therapist. (Because if you simply reduce the anxiety with medication, you will continue to have the social problems. In fact, you may find yourself blundering into additional social errors, because it may be that the anxiety had been warning you of social errors you were about to make.)
You may want to try reading Miraca Gross’ work. If you’ve researched IQ testing in depth, then you already know that +3 sd kind of looks like it probably is an approximate match to the “childhood ratio IQ over 160” of Gross’ subjects. She’s human, and her work is imperfect…but she provides a valuable outside view.
Then when you’re ready to be really triggered hard, read this. Seriously, TW.
Piracetam (as “Nootropil”) seems to be surprisingly widespread among the Russian academic community, to the point where my (economic emigrant from the same) parents had me take it for a while in childhood. The description I remember being given was just “these pills are supposed to make you smarter, lots of good people in my department swore by them”, and I don’t think I ever got any indication that they or their colleagues knew more than what was captured by that blurb; if my parents’ department was typical, the set of users of that type might also well dwarf the grey tribe community interested in them in the West in size.
I decided to only reference the latter when answering the “compared to the average user” question in the questionnaire.
“If you use … nootropics” intended to include past users or only current users?
Past too.
Hi! Has anyone studied implications of PNP for moral philosophy? If PNP, it’s (exponentially hard) impossible to make rational decision about allocation of resources that would maximize utility function. If PNP, it’s even (very difficult) impossible to guarantee that utility function of some choice is positive.
It’s similarly impossible to come up with best way to reach economical balance, and therefore the “Economist’s paradise” belongs to the domain of perpetuum mobiles. Moreover, inability to allocate the optimum is not some flaw of weak and passion-ridden human mind, but is ingrained into the physical universe all the way from quarks and gluons to cells to brains to societies.
I first encountered pervasiveness of NP-complete tasks thinking about Levintal’s paradox: how do proteins sample through 10^143 conformations in a matter of milliseconds to find the one with minimum energy? Is it miraculous quantum computational stuff or other protein magic to solve particular instances of NP-complete problems in a very short time? The answer was obvious and cruel: there was no quantum fairy, protein don’t generally fold into optimal conformation and there is no guarantee that some prion molecule in my brain wouldn’t discover a slightly more favorable conformation by pure chance.
So, if there is no way to guarantee that certain actions would lead to positive utility, let alone maximum utility, what our scientific knowledge about NP-complete problems adds to the null hypothesis that in the presence of upper bound on rationality agents behave in a totally irrational and chaotic way?
It’s only mathematicians that expect to get guarantees, the rest of us just muddle along. It works well enough.
AFAIK, In some (but not all) NP-complete problems, there is an efficient way to find an approximation that is guaranteed to be within a small distance of the optimum. I’m not sure if this is relevant to utilitarian calculations. Also some problems that are not solvable in general can be made solvable under certain constraints, or good solutions may be able to be found with high probability even if there is no absolute guarantee.
Nonetheless if it’s impossible to get good results doing things one way, we ought to do something else rather than persist. The existence of human civilization seems like an existence proof that we can do better than total chaos.
What’s your definition of “totally irrational”? I think it would be pretty difficult to even define a (not perfectly random itself) problem domain where it would be impossible to do better than random in expectation with a single bit of memory and some way of defining “arbitrarily low computational power” (“you can only observe a \varepsilon fraction of inputs/outcomes”?).
P\neq NP certainly does suggest natural constructions where the utility gap between a computationally arbitrarily powerful agent and one who is restricted to polynomial-time algorithms grows fast with the size of the problem, but that does not say that “rationality can’t help the restricted agent”; to conclude that would be like saying that in the presence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, humans can’t do better than living in hunter-gatherer bands.
It is often misunderstood what it means for a problem to be NP-complete: Not all instances of an NPC problem are hard to solve, we only know that some hard instances must exist. Many NPC problems (such as 3-SAT) are easy for instances arising in practice (e.g. integrated circuit design), and therefore widely used.
When thinking of Levinthals paradox you must keep in mind that sampling at random in the search space is a terrible algorithm, the last resort when you are faced with a completely unstructured search problem. If it is amazing that a protein “finds” a good configuration from a huge number of possibilities then it must also be amazing that I can find a specific definition in a dictionary containing 50000 definitions in under a minute. The structure of the search space matters a lot.
While folding an arbitrary protein is probably really hard, I assume that the proteins actually occuring in organisms fold pretty reliably (i.e. they belong to some easy subset of the protein folding problem). If that wasn’t the case complex lifeforms wouldn’t exist.
Quite a few NP hard problems that I know of have solutions to the actual answer within 1% with a good approximation quickly. The Traveling Salesman Problem is a good example.
There’s certain math NP hard questions which need exact solutions that are used in cryptography, but a lot of NP hard problems have very good *fast* approximations that almost make me laugh off a good deal of NP hard problems.
Why philosophers should care about computational complexity by Scott Aaronson, has some thoughts.
Exactly! I wonder, if implications of P != NP have already percolated into philosophers domain.
I have a question for the polyamorists here.
There are a bunch of social benefits to monogamy, not for individuals but for societies as a whole, making monogamy one of the most widespread and successful of all human social technologies. These include achieving a more equitable mate distribution, thus reducing the number of sexually frustrated and disenfranchised young men who can cause trouble; reducing the amount of time spent pursuing mates, thus freeing up time and energy for other things; and increasing confidence in paternity, giving men a much stronger incentive to invest in their wife’s children and in the long-term health of society as a whole.
I have never seen any discussion of polyamory which attempted to explain how it was supposed to replicate these benefits, nor much discussion that even acknowledged that there was a problem here to be solved. Most polyamory apologetics that I’ve seen have focused on the issue of sexual jealousy, as if managing sexual jealousy was the primary reason that monogamy dominates in all known civilizations. That said, I haven’t read much by way of smart, recent polyamory apologetics. Is there a decent body of argument here that discusses polyamory in the context of progeny and social structures that I’m not aware of?
Firstly, I’m not convinced that sexual jealousy *isn’t* the reason monogamy dominates in most known cultures. Humans are naturally monogamous.
With that said, some ad-hoc answers from a hypothetical polyamourist:
-achieving a more equitable mate distribution, thus reducing the number of sexually frustrated and disenfranchised young men who can cause trouble
Granting this fungible market-driven model of sexuality: polyamory allows people to acquire some fraction of a traditional relationship – which is both “cheaper” (because smaller) and more numerous (because people are able to provide as much “relationship” as they can, rather than being cut-off at a limit of 1 relationship/person.)
It seems unlikely that both increasing the supply and lowering the price would make people *less* likely to get their hands on something.
-reducing the amount of time spent pursuing mates, thus freeing up time and energy for other things
This benefit seems to come largely from stable, reliable relationships – which *is* something polyamorists devote a lot of effort to arguing they provide.
Polyamory is also often associated with the idea that relationships should be frank and easily-created, which seems like it would help with this (although it’s not strictly a part of polyamory.)
-increasing confidence in paternity, giving men a much stronger incentive to invest in their wife’s children and in the long-term health of society as a whole
This isn’t how humans, societies, brains and bonding in general, or evolution work.
So why does sexual jealousy exist? Emotional responses evolved for a reason, and ubiquitous emotions have the strongest claim to being adaptive. Humans being monogamish (more like mildly polygamous) is a result of sexual jealousy the same way a person not putting their hand in a fire is the result of pain.
I don’t always agree with evo psych just so explanations on everything, particularly in the case of mating, but the very strong hold monogamy (and sometimes polygyny) has had on human history shouldn’t be so easily brushed aside by polyamorists. A few of them, to their credit, are more in the vein of “this is varsity level relationship stuff and probably shouldn’t be attempted by a lot of people, but it can be nice if you work really really hard at it”, rather that the irritating “we’re enlightened and this is how everyone will be in the future”.
>Granting this fungible market-driven model of sexuality: polyamory allows people to acquire some fraction of a traditional relationship – which is both “cheaper” (because smaller) and more numerous (because people are able to provide as much “relationship” as they can, rather than being cut-off at a limit of 1 relationship/person.)
Unlikely to work in larger society in practice. Humans are only *mildly* polygynous because we’re explicitly monogamous. When you break down that barrier, high status men start accumulating all the women who were locked out by monogamy and low status men get left out, as has always happened in these sorts of arrangements.
>This benefit seems to come largely from stable, reliable relationships – which *is* something polyamorists devote a lot of effort to arguing they provide.
Most polyamorists I’ve read on the subject are pretty adamant that (ethical) polyamory is a lot of work and way more complicated than monogamy. This makes sense unless you’re a really staunch relationship anarchist. Romantic relationships are inherently more complicated and require more work than non-romantic friendships, and each new dyad adds another layer of complexity.
>This isn’t how humans, societies, brains and bonding in general, or evolution work.
This is exactly how most evolutionary psychologists think humans work. Contradiction without argument isn’t very convincing.
Yeah, I want to hear your (edit: I mean MugaSofer’s) response to the last point, because that’s actually the point I’m most confident about. In those societies where something like “responsible polyamory” has a long history (e.g.), men make very little investment in their own children, but invest rather in their sister’s children as part of a matrilineal family.
This obviously can work (for certain values of “work”), but it doesn’t seem like a very commonly-encountered solution, which suggests that it has hidden downsides.
“Polyamory” is a huge umbrella, and this sort of thing also fits under it, but other sorts of relationships — “triads”, “vees”, “quads”, primary/secondary structures — are usually preferred for raising children.
If the distribution of status and wealth between genders is severely unequal, this inequality will be reflected in relationship styles, even in nominally monogamous societies (see: the popular wife-and-mistress arrangement).
On the other hand, when a woman can gain sufficient financial stability and social status by herself, the incentive to become some dude’s 10th concubine is much reduced.
The highest levels of status in most cases are still disproportionately occupied by men, and I think this is unlikely to change in the near future. So yes, if men and women were/were treated exactly the same, then reproductive outcomes would be more similar. But they aren’t.
It may be true that her incentive to become “some dude’s 10th concubine” is much reduced, but at least for some women, the incentive to become “some dude’s secondary partner” (or some other gal’s secondary partner, if bisexual or lesbian) increases, at least in some cases. Because she doesn’t NEED her partner to provide financial stability, and she has more freedom to pursue social relationships through work, hobbies, etc., it’s safe for her to accept an arrangement that is less likely to be permanent and isn’t exclusive. And she often has less time available to accept an arrangement that makes all the demands on her time and energy that being someone’s monogamous partner makes.
Given the choice between “settling” for someone to be their only partner, or being the secondary partner of someone they’d much rather be with, there are some women for whom financial equality is more likely, not less likely, to make them opt for the second arrangement. So full equality isn’t going to eliminate polyamorous tendencies in women entirely, even if the population-wide effect is to reduce it somewhat.
@ Cadie
I certainly wasn’t trying to argue that equality would make women monogamous — only that polygyny and polyandry (and other relationships with an uneven gender split) would be more balanced in a more equal society, resulting in better prospects for men.
I don’t think the distribution of status and wealth between genders matters so much as the distribution between individuals. Even if the number of millionaire men is the same as the number of millionaire women, in a society with legal plural marriage, there’s nothing to stop every millionaire man from marrying two non-millionaire models, leaving all the millionaire women and non-millionaire men in the cold.
“On the other hand, when a woman can gain sufficient financial stability and social status by herself, the incentive to become some dude’s 10th concubine is much reduced.” Sure, but in a society where women can support themselves, they can just spend all their time hooking up with the hottest guys and not worry about finding someone to support them. So if you’re a guy but you’re not one of the hottest guys that women want to hook up with on a casual basis, you’re not getting any. So it’s not clear which way the effect goes.
I think the hypothetical that results in the best marriages is a society where women need a man to support them, and all men are approximately equal in desirability and each capable of supporting about one women.
I think the hypothetical that results in the best marriages is a society where women need a man to support them, and all men are approximately equal in desirability and each capable of supporting about one women.
The best marriages in what sense? That reads to me like motivated reasoning.
@ curtains
…because the only possible marriages are between a man and a model?
Well, in practice, some of them do spend some of their time doing that. But most of them still prefer to settle down and raise children with someone, not on their own.
@Nita
I’m not entirely sure that women (in general) do want to settle down with someone. Or rather, in my experience as a woman raised in a lower-class environment, the women I am familiar with seem to prefer being single mothers.
Of course, some of them are doing it out of necessity because the father of the children refuses to participate in raising them (or he is in prison or something).
But some of them do seem to choose it, at least insofar as you consider purposefully reproducing with a man who they know will not help out with the kids to be “choosing it”. I consider it to be basically the same as consciously making that choice (in a “revealed preferences” sense), but you may not.
My mother made this choice, and she seemed quite pleased with it throughout my childhood. I never once heard her complain about my father not being involved with raising me. We were very poor (by American standards) and he never sent child support despite being legally required to do so, but she still didn’t seem bothered by it in the least.
I think we ought to be careful about generalizing what women want, because women from lower class environments have (in my experience) very different desires for their sexual and reproductive relationships than middle class women. Namely, they don’t seem to expect or want nearly as much investment from the father of their children in said children as middle-class women do. They also don’t seem to experience as much sexual jealousy. I’ve known many lower-class women who voluntarily participated in open relationships (though these were not what we would usually call “polyamorous”, since they almost always adhered to the one-penis policy). They don’t seem to mind their men having other girlfriends to the same extent as middle-class women do. Note that I’m not saying they like it, I’m just saying they don’t dislike it as strongly as middle-class women seem to.
I think a transition to a more polygynous society would benefit lower-class women and most of them would enjoy it on net, because it would give them sexual access to high-status men who they are currently unable to have sexual relations with due to those men already being in a monogamous marriage. They would not gain much paternal investment in their children since they’d be second or third mistresses, but they already don’t get much of that anyway and they seem fine with it as it is.
But middle-class women would not benefit from this and would probably not enjoy it. They would lose the ability to keep their middle-class husbands from taking lower-class women as mistresses, causing sexual jealousy for them. They would also experience more intra-female sexual competition to be the “first wife,” something they do not have to worry about in a monogamous society. I also think that middle-class women genuinely want their husbands to participate in child-rearing, and when those husbands are no longer bound to one woman, the chance that they will participate in child-rearing to the extent that middle-class women expect and desire is low.
I’m not sure how upper-class women would feel about this as I do not know any, but I imagine it would also be bad for them, and probably even worse than for middle-class women. Upper-class women generally marry upper-class men due to the increasing prevalence of assortive mating, and upper-class men are usually financially capable of supporting and attracting many mistresses. While middle-class men might only have 1-3 mistresses in addition to their wife, upper-class men could easily have 20 or more. That sounds like a very undesirable situation for upper-class women to be in.
Ultimately, I think upper-class women and lower-class men would be the biggest losers in a transition to a polygynous society. (And I think that a polyamorous society would inevitably degrade into a de-facto polygynous society due to differing incentives and desires for men and women. Real polyamory is probably only possible among extremely intelligent people who score extremely low on the sexual jealousy scale. The vast majority of people in any society do not meet both or either of those qualifications.)
(Please note that I am not advocating a transition to societal polygyny. I think we need to be very careful about large-scale societal transitions like that, and I also think that our current status quo of serial monogamy is probably better [or at least, I prefer it due to being high on the sexual jealousy scale]. If anything, I’d prefer we transition back to absolute monogamy, or at least get as close to it as possible, though I recognize that this too has its downsides.)
@ Anon
Thanks! That’s outside my realm of experience, for sure.
My simplistic armchair theory is that, in the recent decades, a working-class husband could easily end up being a liability instead of an asset, and that changed the women’s strategies, which were transmitted to the next generation.
On the other hand…
I have a friend who was raised by a single mother, and she also expressed a cheerful willingness to raise children on her own. But now she’s happily married to the kid’s father — it seems that her plans were changed pretty easily. So, perhaps the guys expressing concerns in this thread have a good chance to change someone’s plans, too.
@ Nita
I think you’re right about working class men often not being an asset in the modern day economic environment. In the recent past, such men could bring in paychecks large enough to make a woman feel that it was worth sacrificing her autonomy (which working-class women very strongly value) to gain access to that paycheck.
But with the destruction of the working-class’s ability to make decent wages, that incentive simply isn’t there. For many working-class women, it’s not possible for them to attract a man who makes a decent amount of money and is willing to spend it on her and their children. So their only choices are:
-Men who are nice (not in the “nice guys” sense, but genuinely nice) but very poor and only sporadically employed. These men tend to have better economic prospects than the following two groups, but their paychecks are still usually very small. These men sadly have the worst prospects for getting girlfriends among the three groups I’m outlining, because lower-class women consider them to be “pussies.”
-Men who have “alpha” personality traits, which lower-class women tend to love, but who are also usually very poor and sporadically employed. They aren’t temperamentally suited for modern-day work life, but they are better at it than the third group of men. These men tend to get the most girlfriends out of the three groups.
-Men who are extremely violent and who will inevitably end up in jail very soon. These men are usually the poorest of all and almost always have no work record whatsoever because they are too violent to take orders from a boss. Their main source of income is usually something gang-related. They get the second-most number of girlfriends out of the three groups, and they often wind up in jail for abusing their girlfriends. Sometimes women mistake men like this for being members of the second group, which is part of the reason they get girlfriends.
None of these three groups of men would really be beneficial for a working-class woman to marry. None of them will bring in much income, if any, and the second two groups won’t engage in any child-rearing. The third group of men won’t even be free on the streets for very long due to their criminal nature.
I would marry a man from the first group if I had to choose (and in fact I may end up doing so someday), but I can understand why a lot of women in this situation would rather do it by themselves. The calculations probably did work out differently in the past when the first and second groups could bring in good incomes, but that day is past and I don’t think it’ll be coming back.
(The existence of welfare also changes the calculations a lot. My mother probably would have latched on to any man she could who had any income whatsoever if she had not gotten welfare, and I expect many lower-class single mothers would do the same out of desperation. They’d be a lot less happy in this arrangement, though, because they do seem to enjoy being single moms, and for most of them it is only financially possible to do so with the additional income welfare brings in.)
The irony is that in the past, the high status man had to support his concubines. The modern concubine supports herself.
Heck, the modern concubine can support herself and her concubinator.
@Anon
I would marry a man from the first group if I had to choose (and in fact I may end up doing so someday)
From the way you wrote it, it’s not clear to me whether you have a specific man in mind that you like and might decide to marry, or you think that because you consider yourself “working class” your options are limited to the three types described.
If it’s the former, then best of luck to both of you.
If the latter, then maybe it’s not so bad.
First, a middle or upper class man would absolutely consider dating and marrying a woman with lower economic status if he considered her his equal in ways other than financial. Which in your case he very well might, since it’s evident from your writing that you are very smart and you communicate well.
Second, I know nothing about you, and I’m sorry that what I’m about to write is kind of presumptive, but unless there are some extraordinary circumstances, you won’t stay poor your whole life. Smart people who communicate well are a hot commodity in the job market. It may not seem like that to you now but it’s true. For example, you can train to become a paralegal or a legal secretary. (College education is not necessary; I know a girl who went from working factory floor to pulling six figures at a law firm, had just a hight school diploma to her name.) This is just an example. There are other possibilities. For example, if you are one of the lucky people who can learn to code (and if you haven’t tried then you don’t know whether you are or not), that’s probably the best choice, degree also optional.
Anyway, I hope you do well, you have written some very interesting stuff in this thread.
@Nonnamous
Thank you very much for saying so many nice things about me!
I don’t have a specific man in mind to marry. I know that men aren’t as concerned with women’s earning ability as women are with men’s, so it’s certainly possible that I could get a middle class man to marry me, but among the underclass, most of the women who were attractive enough to convince a middle class man to marry them have already done so, and their children (including their similarly beautiful daughters) get born into the middle class, leaving only the relatively unattractive women and their similarly unattractive daughters in the underclass. This is why most lower-class women don’t have good marriage prospects.
I got kind of lucky in that my mom was not in the underclass because she was too unattractive to marry out; rather, she was stuck there because she has schizophrenia, which I managed to avoid inheriting. (Her disability checks were what allowed us to live solely off of welfare, which I have heard is neigh impossible to do if you’re not getting disability.) So her decent-looking genes got passed on to me. But both of my parents are fat now, and I am too, which lowers my attractiveness below what it would otherwise be. ):
I’d like it if my good communication skills could land me a middle class husband, but I’ve always been under the impression that most men (though certainly not all) are primarily concerned with women’s looks, and I’m not sure my intelligence could outweigh my being fat in a middle class man’s internal calculations.
I really hope your prediction of my future earning ability is true! So far, the most I was able to make at any job was $13/hour working part time with no benefits doing physical labor. ): And that’s not even my current job. I’m in college right now, and I’ll be graduating after next semester, so I’m hoping to have better prospects then.
Being a paralegal or a legal secretary sounds like it would be right up my ally. My IQ is highly skewed toward the verbal end, so I tend to sound smarter when I’m writing than I would seem if I were doing math problems. I’ve considered going to law school, but I probably won’t, since I’ve heard the market is too flooded with lawyers right now. I’m also not conscientious enough to work 14-hour days like lawyers do.
Coding might be a good option. I kind of wish I had majored in computer science (or maybe it’s IT? not sure which one is the one where you learn to code). I took a high school class in which we learned some basic coding, mostly HTML, and I enjoyed it and found it quite easy, but I’m not sure how well I’d do with harder computing languages.
Once again, thanks for being so nice to me! 🙂
@Anon:
1) You just think he was being nice to you. This is what it looks like when someone is really being nice to you:
DO NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL.
You’re welcome. 🙂
2) If you found HTML coding easy and fun, it is quite likely that you could learn a more involved coding language without much difficulty. Give me someone with a half-decent memory and the ability to think logically, and I’ll teach them any coding language you care to name.
3) There is fat, and there is morbidly obese. If you are just fat, while that certainly doesn’t help as you probably know it is by no means a dealbreaker for many men, especially if you have a pretty face. (I don’t make the news, I just report it.)
On the other hand, people who are morbidly obese should be more worried about what that means for them than for what it means for potential romantic partners, in my opinion.
>So why does sexual jealousy exist? Emotional responses evolved for a reason
And that reason is not “to build a more perfect society”.
>Unlikely to work in larger society in practice.
While – as I’ve indicated – I believe that our naturally monogamoous instincts probably make implementing a large-scale polyamorous society unlikely, that doesn’t actually refute my point there.
EDIT: of course, my hypothetical polyamorist would just return to the arguments that sexual jealousy ain’t all that which Mai was arguing against in the first place.
Harems and the polyamory movement are not the same thing – they are, if anything, more exclusive than the current standard of monogamy. If the harem-doors were opened to others, the result would be an increase in total sexual activity, not a reduction.
>Most polyamorists I’ve read on the subject are pretty adamant that (ethical) polyamory is a lot of work and way more complicated than monogamy.
This doesn’t imply that they’re unusually unstable; rather, it implies that there are selection effects making them more stable.
>This is exactly how most evolutionary psychologists think humans work.
No, they don’t. Humans are not designed to determine whether a child has more or less genetic measure in common with them; rather, babies are cute, and people become attached to them.
Yes, this leads to suboptimal evolutionary strategies, like adoption, but it’s also vastly easier to implement and rarely goes wrong (especially in relatively isolated hunter-gatherer tribes); whereas explicitly programming in knowledge of genetics would be a biological nightmare.
In point of fact, there have been quite a few perfectly stable societies that didn’t understand genetics or parentage at all.
EDIT: of course, if people *did* care about ensuring paternity – rather than sexual jealousy – they could simply take a paternity test, no?
Erm, it doesn’t take knowledge of genetics to tell whether a child does or does not look like its father.
If all people cared about was that babies are cute, why do hospitals work so hard to ensure that the right baby goes home with the right mother? If genes don’t matter to the mother emotionally, she should be fine with any random baby the hospital chooses to give to her, right?
But we don’t do this, because people do care whether their children are related to them or not. Both mothers and fathers care, and they care very deeply. That’s why men think that being cuckholded is one of the worst things that could happen to them. That’s why women who are given the wrong baby to take home from the hospital are devastated when they find out.
I would be absolutely furious and devastated and heartbroken and [insert all the other synonyms for mad and sad here] if I gave birth in a hospital and then found out that the baby they sent home with me was not mine. I would instantly want to trade that baby for my actual, genetically-related child. The fact that the kid they sent home with me is cute would not matter. Sure, I wouldn’t mistreat it or anything (I’m not some kind of psychopath), but I would never ever be able to love it as my own child once I knew that it was not.
The stereotypes about evil stepmothers and stepfathers exist for a reason. It’s because people who aren’t related to a kid don’t care as much about that kid as its genetically related biological parents.
See here for a study on this, which also references other studies on this topic that you (generic you) could look up if you were so inclined.
(Throughout this post I’m using “it” simply as a gender-neutral pronoun for babies and kids. I’m not intending to imply that they are inanimate objects, I just didn’t want to use the singular “they” for this because it felt weird to.)
Nevertheless, some societies have managed to thoroughly much up this simple deduction, for one reason or another.
@Anon
The bad part of cuckoldry is the deception. It is perfectly possible to care about children that aren’t biologically yours, hence why adoption exists.
@ sweeneyrod
Sure, it’s possible, and I’d say it’s probably a lot easier to love an unrelated child if no one tricked you into taking care of that child (like in a voluntary adoption). But there’s a reason adoption is unusual. There’s a reason it’s usually a back-up plan for when people find out they cannot have biological children. There’s a reason many cultures do not consider adopted children to be a part of their adoptive family in the same way as a biological child.
For example, in Arab Muslim culture, adoptive children take their biological father’s surname, not their adoptive father’s. And they are not “adopted,” in the Western sense. When they are adopted it ends up being much more similar to Western foster care than true adoption. See here for more information.
In Japan, most adoptions are of adult men, for business or financial purposes; adoption of children is rare. See here and here. There’s also this interesting study about Korea.
The point of all of these links and cultural examples is that the West (particularly Northwestern Europeans and their descendants) are kind of unusual in accepting adopted children as full and equal members of the family, the same as a biological child. This isn’t the case all over the world, and I think there’s a biological, evolutionary reason why humans generally don’t adopt unrelated children (note that this is rare even among Northwestern Europeans and tends to only be done by infertile people).
It’s because it results in your genes dying out.
Even if you have some of your own biological children too, the resources you spend on an adopted child could have been going towards a child of your own, which means you will be outcompeted in the long run by people who spent all of their resources on their own kids.
(I should probably note here that I don’t actually have anything against adoption. And I’m not saying it’s impossible to love an adopted child. If you (generic you) want to adopt, that’s wonderful. I’m glad that a child will get a good home. All I’m saying is that there’s real reasons adoption isn’t most people’s first choice and that parents really do care whether their kids are genetically related to them.)
Sigh. Humans are not automatically strategic, trivial inconveniences matter…
“Men actually don’t mind being cucked (because they don’t take paternity tests)” is just as offensive, and pretty much the same logic, as “women actually don’t mind being raped (because they sometimes walk in a dark street)”. But it’s okay, because offending men is okay.
(Or you could use the same logic against Anon@4:32, because most mothers also don’t take maternity tests to make double-sure that the doctors didn’t exchange their babies with someone else.)
Humans are naturally monogamous.
[Citation needed.]
I’m currently reading a book called Sex at Dawn which argues that humans are absolutely not “naturally monogamous.” As Wikipedia points out, the book’s scholarship is questionable, and I’m not sure I buy all of the arguments. But on the other hand, the prevalence of infidelity and divorce throughout the ages certainly draws into question the idea that all humans everywhere are “naturally monogamous.”
I take “naturally monogamous” to mean “naturally desire monogamy from their mates more than they desire polyamory for themselves”. Given competing desires, strong competitors (or foolish ones) will consistently try to satisfy both.
My belief is that hunter-gatherers engaged in serial monogamy, of maybe 3 years duration. Is this more or less monogamous than Sex at Dawn claims? I don’t remember how I reached that conclusion, but it seems pretty close to what Robin Hanson said the day after he endorsed the book. A couple years later, he seems to backpedal. I think his conclusion is formally monogamous with a lot of cheating.
>There are a bunch of social benefits to monogamy, not for individuals but for societies as a whole, making monogamy one of the most widespread and successful of all human social technologies. These include achieving a more equitable mate distribution, thus reducing the number of sexually frustrated and disenfranchised young men who can cause trouble;
You really should differentiate between classical “until dead parts us”-monogamy and today’s standard “serial”-monogamy. I grew up in a rather small village (by european standards) and the generation of now 40yo indeed seems to have simply solved in their teens the matching problem with whatever marriage material the village had produced and stuck with that solution. Up to this day there is a lot of envy going on because naturally some came out at the short end of that lottery and, I suspect, a lot of within-group adultery to mitigate such troubles. But in principle, I agree, the solution has the feature you name. Let’s say it kindof works although it is bewildering for me to look at it.
For me, being younger and, for reasons unrelated, connected to the outside world, i. e. “the city”, the world worked very differently. Once you move into circles that are selected for criteria other than “the village youth”, the matching problem no longer has a satisfying solution for a number of reasons, the most basic of which are that groups are no longer practically guaranteed to have gender-parity and, in whatever group you are, people will have options outside the group. Personally I’ve never seen serial-monogamy to bear the blessing you name. More specifically, there never was a lack of sexually frustrated people and, unlike you say, they were of both genders.
> reducing the amount of time spent pursuing mates, thus freeing up time and energy for other things;
This is an advantage of stable relationships, no matter if monogamous or polyamorous. Moreover it is not a social benefit in the way the first point, if it were true, is. The first point in so far as I understand it, is about negative external effects of monopolizing more than one potential partner. This point is about an individual benefit for the so inclined — depending on personality it might as well never happen or not be seen as a benefit. The individual benefit might aggregate for the good of society but little more in the way of externalities.
>and increasing confidence in paternity, giving men a much stronger incentive to invest in their wife’s children and in the long-term health of society as a whole.
I believe this was way more important historically than your first two points combined. But with working cotraceptives and paternity tests (I recall having given the same argument in the other thread), it lost its importance. An so did classical monogamy for the better or worse.
>nor much discussion that even acknowledged that there was a problem here to be solved.
So what is the problem one should acknowledge? You compare polyamory to a form of monogamy that IMO has not been a real thing for the better part of at least 20 years, at least in social groups that are open to polyamory. Even if your historical fiction of monogamy comes out on top of that comparison that says nothing about the real advantages or disadvantages.
You seem to envision monogamy as an ideal of faithfulness, which we all know it isn’t, and polyamory as some “hub”-players monopolizing more than one potential partner, which, if true, would be little different from serial-monogamy as it is.
The way I see it, society, by means of upbringing, makes the big mistake to tie emotional security to sexual exclusivity for reasons that technically have become non issues.
I think you’re right about this. “Monogamy” as practiced by Blue-tribe people under the age of about 50 is not really monogamy as I was thinking of it, and might not have any substantial advantages over polyamory. This probably explains a lot.
(Of course I would probably describe this the other way around, ie. “serial monogamy is no better than a poly cuddle pile”, but the point stands.)
I wonder how true it is that traditional monogamy has not been an option for a long time. I’m on my second marriage–but it’s been going for thirty years or so and I expect it to continue until one of us dies. How uncommon is that sort of pattern?
Traditional monogamy has always and will always be an option: it’s a question of whether it’s a legally recognized and supported option. Not to mention whether it is a socially supported and sanctioned option.
Among young people, which is virtually 100% Blue-Tribe, marriage is desired. The vast majority of young men and women are trying to pair off, for life.
Marriage is an Upper Middle Class aspirational good, and Blue-Tribe still lives in the UMC. I believe Charles Murray made the point that upper middle class people still act like boring Conservatives despite professing “progressive” values.
Why do you think there’s a contradiction between professing progressive values and pairing off for marriage?
@blacktrance
Because marriage is associated with all kinds of icky old Red Tribe ideas. Wife submitting to husband. Til death do us part i.e. you can’t just leave when you want i.e. trapped in marriage. Expectation of monogamy i.e. an expectation to not have certain kinds of sex i.e. sexual repression. Man works, woman stays at home. Man and woman just like God intended. Taking his surname. Woman having babies and ending her career. Chain, pregnant, barefoot, stove.
Obviously, most of these no longer literally apply, but it seems to me relatively uncontroversial that the concept of marriage is very much unprogressive, Red Tribe, conservative.
In the minds of Blue Tribers, marriage has lost most of those associations. They expect the marriage to be a dissoluble partnership between equals. Given that, is it still weird that they’re pairing off? And they’re usually monogamous and think of non-monogamy as weird – I don’t know where this idea of Blues considering monogamy “boilerplate” or repressive comes from, as it’s very much a minority position.
And while some Red Tribers may have different expectations of their own marriages, they would hardly describe an egalitarian liberal opposite-sex marriage as “not marriage”.
Multiple high-income earners joining to make one even higher income is still the best way to ensure a more secure life when you’re not super rich. If anything, I think this is a more blue than red thing. The fact that the Army detailed me to armor branch when I first commissioned was a culturally illuminating experience. Tankers are almost universally good old country boys who married their high school sweetheart when she was 18 and had two kids on an E4 salary, which breaks him when they inevitably divorce after she finds out being married to a Soldier kind of sucks, but it probably made sense to her because what the fuck else are you going to do when you get pregnant at 18, live in the middle of Kansas, and probably aren’t going to college and have no idea what you would even try to do if you did?
The point of each marriage is miles apart even if they’re both ‘marriage.’ I don’t see very much of what Anonymous said in my own marriage. My wife didn’t give up her career. Neither of us wants kids. We didn’t stop having weird sex. I mean, the expectation is certainly that we’re a team and we’ve committed to each other and neither will up and leave for no good reason. Is that anti-progressive? It just seems smart. We’re stronger together than we were apart. We can afford a nicer condo, save more for retirement, if one of us gets sick or becomes unemployed, the other can support and we don’t need to move back in with our parents. It’s a damn good deal.
I think DBG is at least a little wrong with the ‘guys with access to hot sex won’t marry thing,’ not only for these other reasons that marriage is advantageous, but because that’s only true of a very small and select group of high-status men like pro athletes and movie stars who are constantly at parties surrounded by women, and even then usually only when they’re young. For the rest of us, even if we easily could find attractive sex partners, having to actually do that all the time gets tiresome when you have a really good sex partner that does all the things you like already living with you. The only downside is the potential for future alimony, but that doesn’t apply if she makes really good money, too.
@Anonymous:
I’m not strictly speaking Blue Tribe, what with not being American, but those are not the associations I have with marriage, and a number of my quite left-of-centre and social-justice-inclined friends have gotten married or are considering marriage without appearing to believe that that’s associated with women being submissive.
Maybe the two different tribes have different views about what marriage is; I find the “We can’t /really/ get married any more” viewpoint somewhere between bizarre and incomprehensible, and I’ve seen plenty from red people about how ‘gay marriage’ is an oxymoron.
There’s a difference between pairing off and marrying. The first one is something most humans will do regardless of political affiliation. A culture of short-term pairing could maybe become popular, but that culture isn’t blue tribe (even for them the goal of the whole partner hopping ultimately has the purpose of finding a long-term partner).
Marrying is a layer on top of simply moving in together for life, and while there’s been a move away from it, I don’t think it’s only done for tax reasons even among blues.
Like, they want to have marriage, but they also try to strip it of all the things that make it marriage. Why do they bother in the first place as opposed to just..not marrying?
This is referring to a different thread.
Yes, certain high-powered men will still get married because marriage is an aspirational good. This is true even today. Slick Willie needs to get married to be President.
Yes, the number of super-attractive guys is minimal. Most guys will struggle to increase N by 1.
To the thread in general:
There really isn’t one. Marriage is a class good, not a tribe good. Family is a class good, not a tribe good. Blue Tribe acts like Upper Class Red Tribe because Blue Tribe and Upper Class Red Tribe are both Upper Middle Class.
That’s actually my point, monogamy and marriage are still on the table and still demanded by Blue Tribe youngsters. They always wanted to get married, they just wanted the marriage contract to be watered down.
Again, this is my point re: polyamory. It is not that Blue Tribe youngsters want to not get married. That’s ridiculous. They want to still be “married” and sleep with other people.
@anon (6:11):
It is not enough that they succeed: everyone else must fail.
While that’s probably true to an extent, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as you claim. From how I see it, the problem is, if anything, worse with the Red Tribe. They, as Scott once put it, marry early and divorce early. They follow the old rules for marriage – pair up with someone in the village you kinda like, explicitly trade sex for resources – but don’t stick at it. Blue Tribe types on the other hand seem to have a number of flings, short-to-medium term relationships, and one-night stands throughout their twenties, before getting married and staying married in their late twenties or early thirties.
The libertarian in me wants to say that the solution is obviously a liberalizing of the marriage contract. Let those Red Tribe folks who are serious and want to commit to an old-style marriage, but can’t because divorce is so easy to get now, marry on a contract under which divorce is not easy to get – or at least involves incurring some cost. Let the Blue Tribers who solve this problem by finding someone who is just right for them and bilaterally monopolizing one another keep their easy-come, easy-go marriage contract, because apparently they don’t need anything stronger.
Gonna need to see your numbers for that one. Most studies I’ve seen which aimed to support that point did bad things like designate states as “red” or “blue” and try to draw conclusions from that. Any real attempt will need to actually define “Red Tribe” and “Blue Tribe” and make sure to decide where/if to include black people in those groupings. And then make sure that most of the work in your divorce rate isn’t being done by that fact that it’s measured against the whole population, not against the married population.
From what I’ve seen, education level, income, church attendance, and race are the major predictors of marital stability. Some of those are probably just proxies for the others. Political allegiance doesn’t seem to have a significant impact.
Remember that tribe is not just political allegiance, it’s that plus a whole bunch of other things. Lots of the risk factors for divorce I’ve seen do correlate with Red Tribe traits. Age of woman at marriage (younger = higher divorce rates) is one. Joint income level (lower = higher divorce rates) is another. One interesting one that perhaps runs in the other direction is percentage of the joint income earned by the woman: higher = higher divorce rates.
I can dig up the citations for these if you’d like. Regarding the post in general, it’s mostly based on my observations and conjectures rather than any enormously solid evidence. But I would be surprised if, having found some reasonable proxy for tribe and run the numbers, you didn’t find that Red Tribers marry younger and divorce more often.
My own experience would be way too heavily influenced by my time in the military. Commissioned officers were the Blue Tribe, who met their wives in college, were financially stable and generally stayed married. Enlisted, the Red Tribe, married their high school sweethearts, had kids way before they had any money, their wives were clearly not ready for the demands of raising a kid with very little income while your husband is off fighting wars, and they almost always seemed to end in divorce, at least the first marriage.
But if we’re going on politics alone, both these groups are Red Tribe. Which is part of the problem with these terms, because the way they’re used seems to constantly jump back and forth from social class to political alignment, which are not the same thing.
Lots of the risk factors for divorce I’ve seen do correlate with Red Tribe traits. Age of woman at marriage (younger = higher divorce rates) is one. Joint income level (lower = higher divorce rates) is another.
Yes. These are confounders, and in order to compare for two groups, you have to control for them. If you don’t control for them, you can end up finding a positive correlation that is actually negative.
There are more divorces per capita in “red” states vs “blue” states – but there are also more marriages.
The paper I saw – not finding at the mo – that controlled for education, age, and race found that religion and political conservatism had a higher marriage rate (vs single/living together) and a lower rate of divorce among those who were married than among atheists and political liberals.
People who married young had lower divorce rates if they were red tribe than if they were blue – but had higher divorce rates than older people.
People who were older when they married had lower divorce rates if they were red tribe than if they were blue, but had lower divorce rates than younger people.
As you said, monogamy dominates — and yet “sexually frustrated and disenfranchised young men” still exist. Polyandrous relationships could help alleviate the problem — for instance, the “beta orbiters” redpillers love to sneer at could be getting at least some of their needs met.
Of course, there’s a subset of these frustrated men that no woman wants even on a part-time basis, but you can’t solve that with monogamy alone — you’d have to institute some sort of mandatory mating scheme.
A poly world would not be different from the current world in this regard — people who want to do something other than looking for more partners could still do that.
Poly people generally don’t seem to be in favour of leaving their reproductive outcomes up to God. So, conceiving children would tend to be intentional, giving a higher confidence in paternity.
Another approach is, e.g., a closed poly marriage — of course, men who are incapable of adopting another’s man’s children would not choose to share a marriage with another man, either.
I know eugenics/dysgenics is kind of a touchy topic, but do we really need more people who care about society only insofar it benefits their biological offspring?
You shouldn’t darkly hint at eugenics stuff, not because it’s a touchy topic or whatever, but because if you actually came out and said what you meant you might realize how stupid it sounds.
I meant that “let’s make sure that the people who only care about their children, and don’t care about society, can find a mate and reproduce” doesn’t seem like an obviously good idea. Perhaps if failing to appease this group would certainly result in terrible consequences — but even that feels like “negotiating with terrorists”.
you’re missing a comma between “people” and “who” which might help the goodness of the idea become a little more obvious
the nice thing about people knowing who their children are is that you can threaten to kill them if they get out of line, how’s that for negotiating with terrorists
Eh, I think I’m going to keep considering Scott a person, and supporting the continued existence of a society where killing someone’s children “if they get out of line” is not a thing.
Edit: Just for clarity, let’s replace “not a thing” with “not usually done or condoned by the average individual, despite being technically possible”.
No, the society we have now is the one where we can threaten to kill your children, you want the free love society where we can’t threaten people’s children because they don’t know who they are. At least keep track of what side you’re on, for goodness sake.
> you’d have to institute some sort of mandatory mating scheme.
You say this as rhetorics, I assume, but like I said, I know an example were this was a de facto standard as in every youth from the village has to marry someone and everybody knows that. I doubt that it is different in other closed groups. It is only that closed groups of that sort are on the retreat since invetion of railroad.
> but do we really need more people who care about society only insofar it benefits their biological offspring?
Perhaps we (as in the commenters, not as in society) should try to reach a consensus on the question whether that is “just how it works” or not.
Provocatively: Are humans capable of caring about anything other than their biological offspring?
Of course. But moving the entire Western society into that state would require some drastic measures — comparable to what I suggested, I think.
Are humans capable of caring about anything other than their biological offspring?
The real question is “is there a reason to care?”, and to me answer is obviously “no” unless you want to get into all the race and culture shit.
@ Nita
Like a reversion to early 20th century cultural norms where someone who wasn’t married by the age of 30 was some sort of deviant?
Yes. Imagine the amount of social change needed to actually keep those norms effective and stable.
The “beta orbiters” problem IS that no one wants them — or at least, the woman they’re pining for doesn’t want them. Giving that woman permission to have a little on the side doesn’t really help them out. At the margin I suppose there’s some number of men who are being kept out of their crush’s arms just by the fact that she’s faithfully monogamous, but I would be surprised if this were really the common case.
But monogamy functions… not quite like that, but close.
Well, considering that neither of us has data, and I have at least some anecdotal experience in this matter…
Umm… no? What used to work like that was not monogamy alone, but a combination of things, most of which we neither can nor should bring back.
>Umm… no? What used to work like that was not monogamy alone, but a combination of things, most of which we neither can nor should bring back.
Seconded. The takeaway from $blue tribe hasn’t been that much into monogamy lately anyways$ as discussed above, is that monogamy for everyone is not a self sustaining equilibrium.
“Of course, there’s a subset of these frustrated men that no woman wants even on a part-time basis, but you can’t solve that with monogamy alone — you’d have to institute some sort of mandatory mating scheme.”
Not necessarily. That subset would be further shrunk by tolerance of paid sex work. Historically, sex workers were held in somewhat greater esteem than today – maybe low status and only very grudgingly tolerated, or high status and fully accepted, or somewhere in between depending on the culture, but most societies didn’t outright criminalize sex work or make as giant a stink about it as now until the last couple of centuries. Even if those “frustrated” men have great difficulty finding a partner, most of them are not so loathsome that they couldn’t find someone willing to be their partner for a fee. And all but the poorest can afford to pay a fee at least once in awhile. So the number of men who really couldn’t ever find a companion, not even for an hour or two a few times a year, is limited to those who are so poor they can’t scrape together a few hundred dollars (or equivalent) despite being entirely single, or who have serious personal objections to paying someone for sexual and/or companionship services, or are so thoroughly awful in every way that nobody will put up with them even for money. And if the issue is no money or that they’re too awful for professionals to do business with, they’ve got bigger and more immediate problems than not having a partner.
I doubt that lack of supply would be much of an issue, given that it’s challenging to find a society that doesn’t have some adult women doing paid sex work in some form, even societies that make it illegal and severely punish it.
And that’s at least somewhat polyamory-ish. Most workers have multiple partners/clients. The few who have only one are very similar to mistresses anyway. In any case, sex work is bound to be less objectionable to most people than mandatory mating setups, and would solve the problem nearly as well while not introducing downsides that we’re not already dealing with.
I’m adding “providing an outlet for sexually frustrated men” to my list of the advantages of legal sex work.
I would think that one would be near the top of the list. However, maybe not so good. I suspect a lot of undatable men would be unable to engage the services of a sex worker, for some of the same reasons.
People don’t work that way. Part of the stabilizing force is love, not just sex. The pair-bonded love. Being some woman’s sidebro to be dumped when she needs new thrills, or to be ignored and used for your ability to provide for her isn’t a solution.
Right, love and stability tend to be very important to human beings. Perhaps that’s why the behaviors you mention — dumping someone for new thrills, ignoring a partner’s needs — are looked down upon by poly people as well.
“Of course, there’s a subset of these frustrated men that no woman wants even on a part-time basis, but you can’t solve that with monogamy alone — you’d have to institute some sort of mandatory mating scheme.”
In theory, you could have mandatory(?) training to make young men more attractive mates. This has its failure modes, but it’s at least good enough for science fiction.
State-sponsored PUA seminars?
State-sponsored “sensitivity” seminars.
The last thing we need.
Could be a setting for a nice dystopian story.
Each year, on Valentine’s day (which is renamed Valerie’s day, in memory of Valerie Solanas) each man must provide a written statement by their partner, proving that they are someone’s primary or secondary sexual partner. Those who fail to provide the statement, must attend the mandatory sensitivity training. Which will mostly consist of being yelled at for being a horrible sexist and racist; plus a written test.
Uhm… the obvious loophole here is that single men could provide cover for each other by signing statements that they are gay lovers. How to fix this? A few quick ideas: (1) The society may be hypocritical; gays may be tolerated de jure, but discriminated against de facto. A straight guy pretending to be gay would face some inconvenient consequences; the statements would be publicly accessible in a public database, maybe even integrated with Facebook, which would be also mandatory. (2) It could a society with advanced SJW mindset that throws gays under the bus, because they are privileged males; gays could be officially discriminated against. (3) For gays, it would be necessary to provide a video of sex with the statement.
I was thinking in terms of learning couples dancing, getting treated for social anxiety, and possibly a modest amount of weight training. You know, stuff that’s a lot less intrusive than expecting women to marry and stay with men they aren’t enthusiastic about.
We had square dancing when I was in public middle school in the 80s in a NYC suburb. Don’t know if anyone still does that.
brad, last I heard they still do. It usually doesn’t take, so to speak, and I suppose that’s how any program of this sort would turn out.
Long ago I read a story in a men’s magazine in which men were socialized from birth to find one of a limited number of female phenotypes attractive, and women were literally molded into one of those phenotypes when it was time for them to attract a mate. Which is pretty close. 🙂
I would actually like that. Assuming it would be at least moderately efficient, it would a) lift the stigma of men actively trying to raise their attractiveness and b) I can’t bring myself to do most things that don’t pay off immediately unless they’re mandatory.
…Goddamnit.
Now I’m thinking about Red Queen’s Race effects, where one group of men start becoming hyper-competitive and massively raising the bar in what is considered attractive…
While another group declines to meaningfully participate, but since this government training is mandatory, you can’t just fail the no-hopers. So the institute does what institutes in this position has done since the dawn of time; cheat like mad.
Thus would begin the Wingman Program, in which the top performers were given mandatory socialization and party time with the no-hopers, such that the school could declare “Look, the demographic of ugly people is now going to fancy parties with lots of girls. Problem solved!”
Thus would begin the epic buddy comedy tour through Sex Appeal High School.
Damn, I may have to write that now.
I like the idea in abstract, but I can’t imagine it being done correctly. At least assuming that some information that the young men need may be politically incorrect (which I believe is the case).
The objective is not to provide undateable young men(*) with the information they need. The objective is to satisfy everyone else that Something Is Being Done. Everyone else (datable men, women) knows approximately what is required to successfully court women, and most of them have a poor model of the undateable male mind. Teach the undateables the sanitized, politically correct, utterly obvious stuff in the mandatory classes, poof, mission accomplished. Everybody else sees that Something Had Been Done, is assured by the experts that it is the Right Thing, and gets to feel smugly superior that the undateables didn’t even know the obvious stuff. The undateables go away frustrated by the entire process, being “taught” what they already knew and still not getting any dates, but they were frustrated from the start so no loss there.
* Presumably there will be a parallel program for undateable women?
Are there any undateable women?
(Yes, I know my implied answer to this question says more about men than women.)
@Anonymouse
If we’re talking about dating that is remotely reproductive in purpose, not a couple of senior citizens attending a widows and widowers meetup, I’d really struggle to imagine one. She would have to be a considerable combination of handicappedness, obesity and physical deformity. And even then, I would imagine that someone would think that “a pussy’s a pussy” and make a go for it anyway.
Whats your estimate probability that women matching your description would be content to let men who think “pussy is pussy” “go for it anyway”?
She would have to be very drunk.
What exactly even makes an undateable man? Doesn’t Maury Povich still exist? There are plenty of examples of dregs of the earth unemployed trailer trash meth heads with the 50/50 prison/death by 25 thing going on with five kids by three mothers. They’re not exactly pulling cream of the crop, but if you’re willing to date down to the level of person willing to date you, it’s hard to believe anyone out there is honestly undateable.
Maybe the problem is you’re undateable within your social circle, in which case it’s like the problem of ex-factory workers being unemployable when the factory shuts down. They’re not really. It’s just the types of job they can do aren’t available where they live. We need better programs to aid labor mobility for people like that. Maybe we need programs to transfer romantically frustrated young men into rural Iowa where the women aren’t so picky.
This is a ridiculous double standard. The guys considered undatable are in no way, shape, or form looking at the entire pool of woman. In context it means he can’t get a date from within a narrow band of local woman from his class/tribe/what-have-you. Then when you turn around and look at undatable woman it’s could she get anyone in the world to fuck her? Using the same definition as is used for men there are certainly undatable women, albeit the rate is probably lower.
Of course not.
1. On the relevant narrative, undateable men’s being undatable is their fault. Undateable women’s being undatable is men’s fault for not dating them.
2. Under plausible assumptions about what people care about in a mate, a lot of male undatability is caused by behaviour (and people recognise this), while female undatability is more likely to be caused by unalterable physical characteristics.
Are there any undateable women?
Well, that blew up in a hurry. Yes. Yes there are undateable women, for any reasonable definition of the term, and quite a few of them for the definition of “undateable” that is probably being used for the guys.
Example?
Your Mo… ehm, I think you could probably find a few in the archives of some place like fatpeoplehate (if such a thing exists).
Just to drop a gratuitous anime reference where it’s unneeded – when you say “undateable women” my mind instantly jumps to Tomoko Kuroki. Granted, I don’t know anyone like her, but that’s kind of the point.
Who’s Tomoko Kuroki? I’d Google it, but I’m at work and that might not be such a good idea.
The lead character in No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular!, otherwise known by its Japanese abbreviation WataMote. The title pretty much sums it up.
Example?
Katherine Minola.
Creutzer @ February 16, 2016 at 3:27 pm:
I realize you’re being somewhat satirical, but Hot and Heavy may be of interest since some people in this thread have suggested that obesity is part of undatability for women.
The book is a bunch of accounts by fat women, and they cover the whole range from can’t find anybody to finding true love fast, not to mention some who have a number of different partners. As far as I can tell, the only thing that’s unique to fat women is that they run into men who want sex with them but don’t want to be seen with them in public.
Uh, actually, the group I had in mind were people so violently bad-tempered that even the bravest jerk-lover would stay away.
But on the attractive presentation front — well, many men don’t even seem to realize that they should put flattering photos in their online dating profiles, so there might indeed be some low-hanging fruit.
In my experience, many men have no clue what would make a photo of them more or less flattering. For example, I had one photo of me that I liked before age ~22, and it was taken by a friend while I was focused on something else.
(Turns out me focused on something looks way more impressive than me awkwardly smiling at a camera.)
You don’t think women are born knowing that, do you? Experiment, search the web for advice, reason from general principles, get feedback! Argh!
Sorry. It’s just — so — frustrating. Also, none of this is aimed at you personally, of course.
> online dating … Sorry. It’s just — so — frustrating.
I’ve heard many a story from women about what men apparently regarded promising strategies and while it was funny but harmless, I was always grateful for not having to put up with that kind of nonesense.
However you surely do not select a partner for his ability to look good on “flattering” photographs. So how does the demonstration of this ability on an online dating site help you?
@Nita
I don’t quite know why this is, but according to an OKCupid analysis, men rate female looks with the mean in the center of the scale, while women rate male looks with the mean considerably towards the lower end of the scale.
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
It seems like it’s a solid case for the theory that women know how to look pretty, and men don’t.
Nita,
Can you elaborate on your frustrations with online dating? I am honestly curious to gather some more anecdata.
My last female friend who dated online extensively went on a lot of first dates that simply had no chemistry. She used most platforms, but by the end almost exclusively used Tinder.
I disagree. The OKCupid staff also disagrees, in jest. They posted pictures of decent-looking men who were rated as atrocious by women.
Here’s what OKCupid says:
I surely would — among many other criteria, of course.
1. If their absolute best look is not good enough for you, it’s not going to work out.
2. If it does work out, the best-angle, best-lighting version is close enough to how you’re going to see them in your mind.
Sub-par photos interfere with both of those heuristics, and signal a lack of effort on top of that. It’s the graphic equivalent to submitting “i dunno lol” as your self-description.
@ADBG
If females think that these photos look horrible, what exactly is the basis on saying that they’re not horrible? They explicitly fail to do their job, which is to show one’s good side to potentially interested females.
@Nita:
But doesn’t this sort of circle around the “performance” argument?
Women are (for various reasons) expected to perform as “feminine”. Men are mostly expected to perform as “masculine”. The masculine performance does not include “primping” and is actively frowned on. One frequent complaint is that the expectation of primping has an intrinsically degrading element to it.
Yes, yes. When the rubber meats the road, do what you have to get traction. But it seems odd to not understand why men don’t know how to primp effectively and women do.
You don’t even need to know. The OKTrends blog used to publish stats on what kinds of photos got rated highest. Photos where you’re looking at something else not in the field of view did indeed tend to get rated highest. All you had to do was read reports on what empirically worked and didn’t work and go with that. They even told you the ideal message length, key words to avoid.
Nita:
>1. If their absolute best look is not good enough for you, it’s not going to work out.
Not knowing anything about the candidate at this stage, why not place the cutoff at “his average looks are not good enough fo you”? Is there any specific reason to hunt within the $looks sub-par on an average photography but ok on a flattering one$-demographics?
>2. If it does work out, the best-angle, best-lighting version is close enough to how you’re going to see them in your mind.
Interesting.
> It’s the graphic equivalent to submitting “i dunno lol” as your self-description.
How about the corner case: sub-par photograph but eloquent self-description?
@ Anonymous and ADBG
I haven’t seen the raw data myself, but I have heard that they counted “skip” as 0 — although it could also mean “can’t judge, not my type”, “incompatible, so my opinion doesn’t matter” or “can’t decide, next question please”. And since there are many more men than women, at least some women end up hitting “skip” a lot.
Oh, and don’t users get notified if you rate them 4 or 5? That (again, due to the gender imbalance) gives women an incentive to use those very sparingly — basically, only if they’re sure they want to talk to the man ASAP.
Also, as I said, many photos are terribad in a technical sense, and who’s going to spend more time on rating something than the author spent on creating it?
My point is that men can learn — it’s not rocket surgery. But some of them don’t seem to even bother, despite claiming to care a lot about the outcome.
Luckily, my own frustrations are mostly abstract and second-hand: I think many potentially good partners remain unnoticed, and the people who could notice them also miss the chance for more happiness. That means I’m guilty of treating the personal lives of numerous strangers like “a game of fucking sim city”, I suppose 🙂
>Oh, and don’t users get notified if you rate them 4 or 5? That (again, due to the gender imbalance) gives women an incentive to use those very sparingly — basically, only if they’re sure they want to talk to the man ASAP.
AFAIK, that results in a notification, but no positive ID of who rated you that. It’s like a suspect line-up, and you’ll get connected only if you also rate them back as 4-5.
>My point is that men can learn — it’s not rocket surgery.
Divining how the opposite sex thinks, and improving both photography and make-up skills actually does sound like something very difficult, especially given little useful feedback.
>But some of them don’t seem to even bother, despite claiming to care a lot about the outcome.
It takes a certain scientific mind, like one of those guys who wrote automated scripts to optimize his compatibility rating with clumps of female profiles. Everyone else might as well be a chimp poking at a black box that dispenses bananas completely at random. You might get a banana sometimes, but it makes no sense to you how (or if) your behaviour actually caused its dispensation.
They’ve allowed you to pay for A-list and see who rates you highly without having to rate them back for a few years but god knows who actually does that. ‘Free’ is a pretty big part of the draw.
>gender imbalance
There are two obvious hypotheses to explain this.
1) Women have no problems getting laid so why would they online date.
2) Some men monopolize more than one woman thereby skewing the distribution.
I always accepted this in the most non-rational shrugging dude-ish way without using my brain.
But, please don’t laugh, on reflection I realize that I have very little data to support these hypotheses. On the contrary they conflict with the great monogamy theory(tm) as found elsewhere in the coments and the intuition that there should be no double standards when defining “undatable”. Also data gathered by speaking to actual women seems to counter 1). Data gathered from speaking to actual men seems to confirm 2) but certainly has to be taken with a grain of salt.
So, what’s really going on here?
Yes, and I would support the claim “Men are less able to take sexually attractive photographs of themselves than women.”
Which is utterly unremarkable because they are appealing to different attraction functions.
I can take a crappy little snapshot of lilies on my phone and it will look better to most people than a professionally staged photograph of cow manure.
Men are taking utterly unremarkable pictures of themselves and are rated “disgusting” while women are taking utterly unremarkable pictures of themselves and are rated “average.” This supports a difference in sexes, not a difference in selfie-ability. Agree/Disagree?
I agree with this, with the caveat “rejection is depressing” and therefore people place all sorts of buffers to prevent any negative feed-back.
Which obviously does not help the discovery process.
@ HBC
I’m not talking about “primping”, I’m talking about the very basics of taking a photo — lighting, positioning, taking a bunch of different shots and choosing the best one. A 12-year-old boy can try poses and faces in front of a mirror. Don’t tell me a 20-year-old man can’t.
@ Alex
Because many people will put up their very best photos? You only get to choose the cutoff, not the type of picture they upload.
Sure, I’d read it — but why handicap yourself? Some people would probably notice Scott’s blog even if hee typd lik dys — but should he?
@ Adam
Thanks — at least one person gets what I’m on about.
@Alex
I don’t believe the gender imbalance of who is a registered user of the site is that big. Most recent I could find from quantcast was 53/47. Where there is a huge imbalance is number of messages sent. Men flood women, whereas women hardly ever initiate with men.
Which I always found interesting. It definitely matches intuition. Men are expected to be the aggressors in dating, but it’s interesting to me in particular because I was one of the site’s first ever users and kept a profile there for a really long time, even through many long-term monogamous relationships where I was neither dating nor trying to find dates, mostly because I was pretty active in the small blogging community there. Over a span of 12 years, I sent plenty of messages and had plenty of one-off, maybe three-off dates, but one four-year relationship that lasted through college as well as my current wife, and they both messaged me first.
For the record, I pretty much never took a picture of myself and never looked at the camera. That wasn’t calculated, but lucky, I guess.
They might have changed the interface since I last used it, which was a couple years ago. But at that time, it wasn’t hard to figure out. Half the time it was just a matter of matching who’d looked at your profile lately with the mugshots they sent you (the Hot or Not-esque feature didn’t count as a profile view, but a lot of people checked your full profile out anyway). The other half the time, you’d get a pretty good hit rate just by filtering out anyone that was obviously horribly incompatible with you.
@Nita:
Spending time thinking about how you look, and actively trying to look better, is one of those things that (for whatever reason) men are expected not to do. And if you are trying to look better, it’s trying to present as a higher class.
Look at popular depictions of men spending time on their appearance, especially low status/lower class men. That guy is almost universally portrayed as a jerk, or pathetic, etc.
So, taking photos over and over, trying to find the best angle, best lighting, etc. should be expected to be foreign territory for a bunch of men.
This is one of the things I loved about OkCupid. It was so easy just by virtue of being a minor contrast to so many who did it so horribly wrong. There used to be this guy who was huge on the forums there, Roger something or other, who posted these long detailed advice posts geared toward ignoring what women say they want, even ignoring what they honestly think they want, and just doing what the evidence suggests they actually respond to. And OkCupid gave you the evidence.
Women want you to look good. Forget what you think past social pressure has told you. Past social pressure was wrong.
@HeelBearCub:
There is a generally accepted way for men to improve their appearance – it’s getting buffer. A man who diets and lifts weights to look better is going to be viewed more favourably than a man who gets his nails done and uses concealer.
Even then, a man who spends too much time in the gym is viewed as having something wrong with him.
re: gender imbalance or lack thereof.
Recall that in the aftermath of the Ashley Madison hack, the ridiculous majority of the female profiles were found to be a) bots/otherwise fake, b) sex workers or c) profiles that has signed up and sent either very few or no messages at all.
Dating sites have some incentive not to look too hard when what they’re selling is opportunity.
OKCupid’s business model is different from Ashley Madison’s or even from those hookup sites that pop up occasionally on the sketchier parts of the Internet. I never got the impression that OKCupid had any bots to speak of, nor many sex workers looking for trade. There were a lot of inactive or minimally active accounts, though, and I’m not sure how they’re being counted in the stats.
(Lots of inactive accounts for guys, too. The usual scenario is that some dude signs up, realizes that actually making a connection is a huge amount of work, and gives up.)
@ HBC
Men of all epochs and classes have cleaned up and dressed up when they wanted to make a good first impression — including when women were the ones to impress. Sure, their ideas of what constitutes “dressing up” can be quite divergent, but “real men pay literally zero attention to their appearance” is some sort of neo-caveman myth.
People deride teenage girls and young women online and offline for spending so much time in front of the mirror, taking selfies, finding “Myspace angles” — but the girls keep doing it anyway, and they get better at it.
@Nita:
I feel like if you were to read me charitably, you would understand where I am coming from, instead of trying to shoot it down.
Yes, men get dressed up, shave, etc. when going on a date. I am not saying men pay zero attention to their appearance. But note how when men really dress to impress (suits and ties) how very uniform their appearance is. I don’t think this is an accident.
If you were to ask a man what season he was, how many would know what that meant, and how many could correctly name their own?
You are noting a set of empirical facts that seem ridiculous to you (the number of men who have hideous online profile pics) and I am offering a hypothesis for why this is so. What’s your hypothesis?
@ HBC
I apologize for being so snappy with you in this thread. To be honest, I really don’t understand what your hypothesis is.
For instance — technically, I know what season I “am” (something something summer — thanks, mom!), but I don’t use this “fact” for anything in practice.
To me, this looks like saying, “How can you expect girls to debug their own code? They don’t even know which side of the vi/emacs divide they’re on! And other girls might judge them for doing boy stuff!”
Sure, there are factors at work on a broad, cultural level. But on an individual level, does anyone actually think “I want to write good code, but trying to do so is not feminine”, or “I want to look good, but trying to do so is not manly”? If you’re going to publish code/photos anyway, you might as well start caring about the quality.
My own hypothesis is that they’re trying not to think about their own looks at all, and that’s a correctable bias — which is why I mentioned it in the first place.
Good point about the uniformity, though — I’ve noticed that even r/MaleFashionAdvice, an reddit community focused on men’s style, is close to advocating the same “look” for all men. Any ideas why that might be?
@Nita:
My guess on the uniform fashion advice would be because it’s a lowest common denominator. If you are going to fashion advice, I’m assuming it’s because you don’t know where to start. Perhaps it’s better to state it as the modal person receiving advice doesn’t know where to start.
If you watch men’s sports, you will note that the black commentators (and many of the black players) will talk about “suit game” and will dress in colors other than black, grey or blue. This seems like a fair indication that something socially mediated is happening. Of course, mustard yellow on a pasty white guy isn’t likely to look very good either.
So, yes, men certainly could stand to learn how to think about their looks. But it’s not part of the standard toolkit most men are given (in the U.S.). It’s far more expected for women, so much so that those who don’t think about it really stand out. Men who don’t think about it (very much) are more the norm.
I suspect that, like with most skills/talents, there are those who take to it like a fish takes to water, and those who don’t. Given that, we shouldn’t be surprised that many men, when they think about whether this is the photo they should post, don’t begin to approach it correctly.
Oh, and no apology necessary. I just knew we weren’t communicating well.
@Nita,
In the last few years I did more or less exactly what you recommend guys to do, and it definitely did work.
But it wasn’t quite as simple as you seem to think either. Even if you know that you don’t look good that doesn’t necessarily mean that you know which parts of your appearance are the problem or what to do about that. The resources available for men’s fashion in particular are better now then they were just a few years ago but they’re still awful.
Plus there is a lot of stigma. In the city you’ll never take crap for being fit and well dressed, but upstate it makes you look metrosexual. Which means that while you’re getting more attention from women, you’re also getting more unwanted attention from men and exposing yourself to a fair bit of ridicule. I can certainly see guys with more pride than me abandoning the idea in the face of that.
MFA does that in its tutorial content because its core audience is young guys who just graduated college and want to look like a grownup but don’t know how, or even younger guys who want to step up from anime T-shirts and oversized cargo shorts. It recommends stuff that’s boring but safe, because difficult but interesting will go over the heads of most of its readers. More interesting stuff comes up in the “show your outfit” threads sometimes, but if you want a more fashion-oriented and less dadcore-oriented subreddit, you’re probably looking for the likes of /r/menswear or /r/malefashion.
That said, women’s fashion does have a broader scope than even those. Maybe catwalk fashion approaches parity, but no one wears that.
@ Nornagest
Oh no, my impression is not that it’s boring or “dadcore” — that I could understand. What I’m seeing is an interesting, but very specific style, which seems unlikely to fit a very broad range of men:
one
two
three
“Dadcore”, apparently, is this.
“Generic adult man” might be something like this or this.
@Nita:
That looks like urban hipster to me. Well the first one might be more whatever that forest/bearded man look is called.
@Nita — Ah! I misunderstood, sorry. When I hear this sort of thing about MFA, it’s usually people reading the tutorial threads and noticing that the same dozen or so pieces come up over and over. Dadcore is an exaggeration, but it’s not too far off; I’m talking about safe stuff on the casual end of business casual that can easily be dressed up or down and doesn’t show too much personality. Brown crepe-soled boots, dark jeans or flat-front khakis, Oxford button-downs in white or blue, and so forth. That’s not such a good match to your “dadcore” pic, but it is a good match to “generic adult man” (maybe minus the striped cardigan in the second photo).
Instead, you seem to be looking at the personal style of the contributors — not the ones reading the tutorial threads, but the ones brave enough to stick their necks out and post photos. That does have a hivemind effect going on, but it’s a different kind of hivemind, less driven by safety and more by the social-proof effects that happen whenever you get a group of people together that vaguely care about social signaling.
If those first three photos are anything to go by, I think you’re mainly picking up on the workwear thing that was trendy on MFA last year. It’s still popular (I like it myself), but seems to be losing ground to streetwear and a more rocker-type aesthetic.
I think the season thing (a theory of which colors look good on which people) has gone out of fashion, but is it unusual for men to have some idea of which colors look good or bad on them?
I’m not poly, but it seems like from what I’ve seen of them your concerns and theirs have little to no overlap. A lot of the benefits of monogamy that you point out would be classified as problems caused by monogamy according to their mindset.
They don’t think of mates as something to be distributed and thus any system that distributes mates equitably would seem like institutionalized sex slavery. There’s some truth to that, inasmuch as women’s revealed preferences do show that half of a 10 is worth a lot more than a 5 to them.
As for reducing the number of disgruntled men and the likelihood of cuckoldry, they firmly believe that a man shouldn’t be upset because of a lack of willing partners or that he was tricked into raising other men’s children. So they would place the fault on said men for their reactions, which in their view are freely chosen and morally indefensible, and laud the destruction of a system which enabled them.
Personally, I agree with you here on the benefits of monogamy. If you want to have a stable healthy society you need something akin to marriage as practiced by the Amish or Haredi. Then again, we haven’t had that for more than a century at least and it’s explicitly the opposite of the kind of society that polyamorists want.
I feel like you’re equivocating on the word “distributed” here. Things will have a distribution whether or not you put someone in charge of distributing them.
Your comment basically reads as “who cares about the losers of society? If high status people can’t have everything they want then that’s slavery!”. I think I finally understand the appeal of socialism.
You shouldn’t expect a strawman to be persuasive. The entire purpose of Dealgood’s post was to inspire hatred and disgust for the people whose views he is making up.
Believe it or not, I’m not actually a Captain Planet villain.
If your best explanation for why I wrote something depends on me sitting back and going “how best might I inspire hatred today?” then you should reevaluate your mental model of me. Such as by asking me why I wrote it.
Do share. Why did you feel the need to put words in other people’s mouths?
Because they’re words I’ve heard come out of their mouths. The bit about men reacting unreasonably is something that I heard several times from Veronica D on Ozy’s blog, for one example.
If you think I’m ill informed I would appreciate any corrections you can offer.
Hey, we have the “alternative right”, why not the alternative left?
Potential slogans:
“Nationalize the means of (re)production!”
“Peace! Bread! Wives!”
You mean “Kinder, Küche, Kirche”?
The usual understanding is that that’s not the alternative left.
It’s not called national SOCIALISM for nothing!
To be fair, these aren’t my views (my first and last paragraphs explicitly state this) and thus I could be misrepresenting poly people.
The slavery argument was always the one which seemed most convincing to me out of the poly arguments I heard but that doesn’t mean it’s particularly common.
This specific bit seems like misrepresentation, at least to the extent that I’m representative of polyamorists. My relationship has been open for as long as I can remember, which is not quite the same thing but close enough. I reject both of those positions and suspect most polyamorists would do the same. Loneliness is bad and cuckoldry is grossly dishonest. I just don’t think enforced monogamy is an acceptable solution to either.
For lonely men, I think legalizing prostitution would go a long way; for cuckoldry I’m not so sure what to suggest. Invent better birth control options for men, perhaps. I want a male equivalent of the IUD.
You mean sex-starved men. Prostitution does not in any way or form solve the problem of loneliness.
Porn has already solved the sex starvation thing, despite being just images on a screen. In the same way, prostitution applies to loneliness, despite being paid human contact and not “real” human contact.
“Porn has already solved the sex starvation thing, despite being just images on a screen.” No, it hasn’t. Reduced? Softened? Yes. Solved? Not by a long shot.
“for cuckoldry I’m not so sure what to suggest.”
Perhaps someone could invent a paternity test?
That only helps after the fact.
@Jason K.
Sure. Still, masturbation helps (a lot) with sex-starvation, and prostitution by association seems likely to help with loneliness.
I think it is important to distinguish between prostitutes you can convince to move in with you if you sustain a sufficient money shower, and the kind you negotiate by the hour.
I was more thinking of stuff like this – http://abcnews.go.com/International/men-pay-cuddle-sex-slapping-staring-extra/story?id=17553913
I’m pretty sure I once read an interview with a real prostitute saying she sometimes get that kind of request (aka its not just a weird thing in one place in japan). I guess if you’re lonely enough even a couple hours help?
@anon:
There is a reason why prostitutes often denote one of the services they offer as being “the girlfriend experience.” 🙂 Some also offer, according to documentaries at least, “the porn star experience.” No word on whether there is a combo where your girlfriend is a porn star.
Strippers often have “regular” customers who visit them on a periodic basis and get some of the benefits of a “real” girlfriend as well. Sometimes this turns stalkery (and, rarely, even murdery) but by and large these kinds of customers are viewed as highly desirable.
GFE these days only means BBJ. It’s somewhat more likely that DFK and DATY are available but by no means guaranteed.
Things like cuddling and emotional companionship don’t have a standard term and isn’t generally advertised. It’s a case by care basis thing. You may be able to glean the likelihood from reviews.
@AFOR:
Well, then, I sit corrected. My mistake. Thank you for the clarification. 🙂
Can you clarify those acronyms? I’m not familiar with this sort of lingo and guessing most of us here aren’t either.
Oddly appropriately, I’m only able to reply so quickly today because Jack Frost decided to cancel my planned date. So feel free to edit your own comment rather than having to add to this huge chain.
…what?
This must be people who aren’t good at tech feel like when someone starts talking about the network stack. You’re following it for half a sentence and then you’re in Acronym Hell and someone’s sticking you with a pitchfork.
PSE = porn star experience. A marketing term, can mean anything or nothing, but usually intended to suggest a greater variety of sexual services.
GFE = girlfriend experience. Another marketing term, can mean different things in different places, or when used by different people. Sometimes means more friendly, intimate atmosphere, but as a marketing term it can mean anything, and so sometimes also means a greater variety of sexual services, as AFOR says (usually not as great a variety as PSE)
BBJ or BBBJ = bare-back blow job
DFK = deep french kissing
DATY = dining at the Y = cunnilingus
And another common acronym on the sex worker review boards that hasn’t come up yet but is very relevant to many particular cases: YMMV, your mileage may vary. Services provided may vary greatly depending on what the sex worker thinks of the client (and perhaps how their day is going).
So bareback blowjob means bareback sex + blowjob, or does that mean that you normally have to wear a condom for oral sex?
If the latter, wow is that a raw deal.
@Dr Dealgood
Quite the opposite, surely?
@Dr. Dealgood, The latter; BBBJ is pretty common, but there are definitely significant numbers of sex workers who insist on condoms for blow-jobs. Bare back sex does have an acronym (BBFS, bare back full service), but in the scenes I’m familiar with it is never advertised (except on rare occasions by scammers) and almost never available. There’s a reason research on sex worker STD rates usually finds them to be lower than the general population.
Maggie McNeill is a fairly well-known advocate for decriminalization (note: not legalization, it’s a completely different thing) of prostitution. Her blog’s a good place to start when talking about sex work, since she does have first-hand experience.
She also wrote up a couple of posts on terminology specific to the field, here and here, if you’re interested in being able to read escort ads.
@Leit: seconded, with the caveat that her older work is more useful than the newer stuff insofar as understanding the profession goes. At some point she went from writing about the sexual profession to writing about the politics of same, with the usual mindkilling results.
“they firmly believe that a man shouldn’t be upset because … he was tricked into raising other men’s children.”
Is this something people actually think?
Yes. I have heard people say it in the context of discussions about child support. How many people actually believe it, I couldn’t say. But there are people who actually believe it.
Absolutely. The claim that what makes someone a parent is their relationship with the child, not their shared genes, is one I’ve seen a lot.
Actually, isn’t this claim even made in HPMOR?
I am sympathetic to this point of view, while simultaneously believing that it is quite reasonable to be angry at the deception. It would be highly contextual as to which was more “important,” if that’s the right word.
I know plenty of people who say this, mostly adoptive parents who still like to think of themselves as parents, but that’s rather unrelated to trickery.
Seconding Marc, I think. It’s the deception that’s bad, not having someone else’s children.
What I find odd is seeing this view endorsed by biodeterminists. I’ve never got on hugely well with my parents, but the fact that they are each built from 50% of my genes (or the other way around, I suppose) makes quite a difference to how well I can empathize with them. I can’t imagine having adoptive parents would be quite the same, no matter what my relationship with them was like.
To everyone else here: do you really feel you share nothing with your parents other than your relationship? The fact that you are so closely genetically related to them does nothing to aid your understanding of their experiences?
do you really feel you share nothing with your parents other than your relationship?
Yes and do. I mean, I definitely have one parent’s anxiety and the other parent’s sperginess, but idk how much this really affects my relationships with them.
@Anonymous
I don’t think it affects my relationship with them, but it means I have an easier time understanding them, their actions and their thought processes, than I do others.
@Marc Whipple and everyone else,
I’ve never really understood the idea that cheating / cuckoldry / [third bad thing] is only or primarily wrong because of the lie. Can you expand on that?
I mean, if having sex outside of the marriage or being impregnated by other men isn’t in-and-of-itself a big deal then it seems weird to complain about not being consulted. Would you be upset if your wife didn’t ask you before she rearranged the furniture or lied about what brand of coffee she brews in the morning?
From my side of things, I care much more about the actual act of infidelity and the resulting changeling. The dishonesty doesn’t help but it’s fairly far down the list of reasons to be furious.
@Anonymous #1
I don’t know how much of my relationship with my parents is due to genetics, but the fact that I feel very little connection with other family members who I share large amounts of my genes with suggests that it isn’t much. As far as I know, adopted children who later meet a birth parent don’t necessarily feel an instant strong bond. I expect that most of the effect of genetics on how close you are to your parents that genetics makes you look like them.
@Dr. Dealgood:
Would you be upset if your wife didn’t ask you before she rearranged the furniture or lied about what brand of coffee she brews in the morning?
No, but I’d be somewhat peeved if she told my doctor to lie about my requiring castration because she suspected I wouldn’t be diligent about having regular testicular cancer screenings. Even if she was right.
I’d be mad if my wife managed to somehow have my own kid in spite of the vasectomy (say, she froze some of my sperm and never told me), let alone someone else’s kid.
@Marc Whipple
But do you also hold that castration is really no big deal? If not then I don’t think the analogy quite fits.
@Marc
That’s actually a great example, in fact it could have stood in for my [third bad thing]. It even starts with C.
Castration is a big deal all on it’s own. It’s the sort of thing people refuse to do unless there is potentially lethal cancer involved.
So was the lie really worse than the loss itself?
Anonymous:
No, beyond IQ I don’t have much in common with my parents.
Dr Dealgood:
If I really cared about what brand of coffee my wife drinks, and she’d lie to me about that, that would be bad even though it’d be a really weird preference. Being honest with one’s partner is vitally important, even if from the outside the subject matter seems unimportant. I actually would be temporarily displeased about furniture being rearranged without me being consulted. But an important difference between paternity and furniture arrangement is that the furniture can simply be put back, while presumably in the paternity scenario one’s partner is unwilling to end the pregnancy or has already given birth. If instead she says that another man got her pregnant but she’s willing to get an abortion, then there’s no problem.
@Anonymous and Dr. Dealgood:
I never said that it was no big deal: I explicitly said that it was highly contextual which part would be the bigger deal. If my wife and I lovingly raise a child to adulthood and then I find out by accident that I was not the biological father, I suspect that I would completely consider the child my own, and that I was its parent in a very reasonable and real sense, but I would still be very angry about having been deceived.
Contrariwise, if I married my wife because I thought I had impregnated her, and two months after the child was born I found out it wasn’t mine and she had only married me so she’d have financial support, I suspect that I’d be quite a bit angrier, wouldn’t consider myself the parent of the child in any sense, and would highly resent being forced to bear the cost of raising it to adulthood. Take all of that and square it if upon my leaving the marriage, my wife hooked back up with the actual father while I was still required to make child support payments for the next twenty-two years. Which is a real thing that really happens and I have really heard people say that the not-really-the-father’s feelings are immaterial.
(Also, please note that in my example nobody knows that I have testicular cancer. I may or may not actually have it. The extended analogy, if you need it more specific, is that it would be highly relevant as to whether a) she knew I had it, and b) if she thought I would refuse to be rational about it if I did.)
@Marc Whipple
You’ve lost me. Is ‘refusing to be rational’ about the testicular cancer meant to amount to not getting treatment and dying, which in your analogy is leaving your wife because you don’t want to bring up someone else’s child?
@Anonymous:
Yes. If she knew I had it, and reasonably believed I wouldn’t be rational about treating it, assuming I could be rational at all I’d be a lot less upset about it than if she did it because she figured I was too irresponsible to even watch for the problem and it would be easier for her to address it proactively.
@Marc Whipple
That depends on the assumption that leaving a woman who has become pregnant with another man’s child, and intends to conceal this and have you raise it as your own, is irrational. I would contend that it is not.
On the question of the lie vs the infidelity.
Suppose I had to go out of town for several months and my wife, in what was supposed to be a monogamous relation, told me when I got back that she was pregnant by another man. She didn’t lie to me, but she did betray me—violate a commitment that was important to me.
In that case there are fairly immediate consequences, since I either stay married to her and rear someone else’s child or end the marriage—particularly a problem if we have children. But it would still be a problem even if she wasn’t pregnant, had been sleeping with someone else in my absence, had never denied it–but had done it in clear violation of the terms of our marriage.
I’ve seen the claim that, in Athenian law, seduction was treated as a more serious crime than rape, although I gather some scholars disagree. In both cases it was viewed as a crime against the husband. Rape results in some small chance of the wife getting pregnant by another man. Seduction results in the husband knowing that he cannot trust his wife to be faithful.
If I went to my friend’s house, ate a delicious meal, and then after the meal he told me that he’d spat in it, I don’t think the first thing that would come to *my* mind would be “well, it did taste nice, so that doesn’t matter.”
The meal might have tasted nice, but I’m not going to look back on it with fond memories once the insult has been revealed.
People can convince themselves a lot of things with enough incentive. I was surprised reading it too, because the strong incentives for holding such views that I can think of aren’t/shouldn’t be a factor in poly.
Tricking anyone into anything is not part of what polyamorous people defend, so I guess the useful answer is “no”. (Although the technically correct answer is that even the unlikeliest beliefs have at least one believer with nonzero probability.)
While I second the “what makes someone a parent is their relationship with the child, not their shared genes” position, whether there’s deception makes a difference. If a woman tells a man that the child is definitely biologically his (or this is a default that is never contradicted) and this is something he cares about, that’s bad. But if instead the man knows that this is a possibility and the woman tells him that a child she bears might not be biologically his, then he has no room to complain.
@ EyeballFrog
I can’t speak for how common it is, but it is a position that I have encountered both on the internet and IRL.
I’m going to go ahead and invoke Robert’s Law.
For any group of non-trivial size:
1: The answer to “Are there really member of this group which hold this wacky, shameful, and/or evil belief?” is yes.
2: This is a singularly unfruitful question to ask to learn anything at all about said group.
I am adding this to my fortune file.
All right, let me make my question more precise, since apparently we’re being super pedantic now. Is this a mainstream belief within a particular group of interest, or is it a fringe belief and can be discounted as noise?
I have heard that opinion expressed, more than once. If I remember correctly, it was expressed by women.
It feels stupid to write yet another “me too” comment, but I’m doing it anyway because of Robert Liguori’s comment, which seems to suggest that people expressing such opinion are very rare, and thus talking about them is dishonest. They cannot be that rare, if so many people have met them.
There is an entire AU worth of daylight between ‘rare’ and ‘representative’.
It is entirely unreasonable for someone to scoff at the existence of one or even several polyamorists who believe, or profess to believe for ideological reasons, that men shouldn’t be upset about getting stuck with the costs, time, and responsibilities of raising someone else’s children.
It is likewise entirely unreasonable to assume that the presence of such people tells you anything significant about polyamorists.
I cheerfully decline to profess an opinion on which position is more dishonest in this case. Hell, I haven’t surveyed the polyamorist community myself; maybe this is an uncannily popular belief there.
Will be interesting to follow this thread.
The impression I always get from polys is that they don’t even consider the family formation aspects. They seem overwhelmingly childless, and just haven’t run up against the real questions sex poses yet.
I think monogamy is extremely likely to be a better default for society as a whole, but that doesn’t invalidate specific people’s choice to be polyamorous. As far as I have perceived, we are talking about changes at the margin, nothing extreme.
Where is the stable equilibrium between less monogamy and more though? The polyamorists aren’t just practicing a different lifestyle, many are advocating for change. And at the current rate, it definitely seems like society is moving in the direction polyamorists want.
The idea is that most people would not want an openly polyamorous relationship anyway. So, acceptance of poly relationships would be similar to acceptance of same-sex relationships in terms of impact.
Homosexuality is not appealing to most heterosexuals. Multiple sexual partners is biologically tempting to most men.
Would the primary partners of “most men” be willing to share them with others? Probably not. Therefore, their relationships would stay closed.
>Would the primary partners of “most men” be willing to share them with others? Probably not. Therefore, their relationships would stay closed.
To the extent that this is a conscious decision and expression of will, as opposed to the way God/Nature/… intended things to be, why is this so?
@ Alex
I’d like to answer your question, but you’ll have to explain what “this” is.
That women experience sexual jealousy?
That people consider their partner’s opinions before switching to open non-monogamy?
Lack of willingness to share the partner in whatever sense you meant it.
Wrong Species:
The reality being that it’s more likely the woman has the multiple sexual partners, while the man struggles to find even one. Women tend to be the more enthusiastic boosters of polyamory, because it provides more benefit to them. A man who can pull multiple women tends not to commit in the first place.
@ Alex
I suppose it helps them feel sure that their partner really loves them and won’t abandon them? Judging by the typical escapist literature written and consumed by women, this is an extremely widespread sentiment.
“Polyamory for people who want polyamory. No polyamory for people who don’t want polyamory.”
I would call that the appropriate place to aim for.
Emphasis on this. The actual RedPill concern is not that men will be able to sleep with dozens of women and run soft harems: this has already happened. Any serious Red Pill commenter has already written this fight off. It’s a lost battle.
The actual concern is that mainstream marriage will be redefined to eliminate sexual monogamy, and instead encourage “open relationships.” Which will not actually benefit husbands.
The Red Pill View would be:
The polyamory movement is a complete sideshow to this. Or, more correctly, the polyamory movement is a wedge used by FI to weaken the confines of traditional marriage. Most women are not interested in actual polyamory anymore than they are interested in becoming rocket scientists. However, the polyamorous, much like women in tech, are fantastic tools to encourage other things some women might want, like “equal” pay for equal work or still being allowed to have sex with hot men while being legally pair-bonded.
Apologies for cynicism.
The actual concern is that mainstream marriage will be redefined to eliminate sexual monogamy, and instead encourage “open relationships.” Which will not actually benefit husbands.
How will it not-benefit them?
@Anonymous:
Can’t speak for them, but I would assume the justification for that claim is that it is much more likely that women will get more extramarital action than men will, especially as compared to a situation in which both parties were expected to be monogamous. If the husbands were the sort who could/would have multiple relationships, it’s much less likely that they’d have ever gotten married at all. So, on the whole, husbands will get less attention from their wives than they would have otherwise, while being expected to provide the same level of resources. It’s that whole hypergamy thing.
What this man said.
Men who can regularly have hot sex with no commitment are not men who get married.
I am sure someone will convince men that this amazing new paradigm will be awesome for them. Yep, you will have all that amazing hot sex you had while you were single!
While simultaneously shaming men who wish to control their wives’ sexuality. “What you won’t let your wife have sex with other men” will simply become the new “what, you won’t let your wife have male friends.”
Noooooooooooo one gives a crap about the small section of polyamorous folk. But your norms will infect our culture, which is a different story entirely.
@ Anonymous,
What exactly do you think marriage is?
I mean is wedding just a party where everyone dresses funny, acts awkward, and talks about how infatuated the couple (or more) are? Or is it there something more to it?
Because If you actually take all that starting a family stuff even moderately seriously I would expect the answer to be painfully obvious.
@ hlynkacg
Marriage is different things to different people. Just a handful of examples:
To me, it’s a relationship framework suitable for cooperative endeavors that require long-term commitment, such as buying or building a house, or raising children.
To some people, it’s a way to show that their love is True Love.
To others, it’s a way to fulfill St Paul’s commandment: “if you can’t be an awesome celibate person like me, the next best thing is to get married and sleep only with your spouse”.
To others, it’s the way you enter the next stage of life, with a corresponding change in social status, no more optional than coming of age.
To others, it’s a way to optimize their taxes.
Any man with a high paying job and no moral objections to prostitution can regularly have hot sex with no commitment. And everything that I’ve read indicates that, at least in the “high end” market, a large majority of Johns are married. So this statement appears to be empirically wrong.
There is also no shortage of examples of married man cheating on their wives with “amateur” mistresses.
I don’t think society is really moving in a polyamorous direction, except among tiny and atypical communities like the rationalist community. I think it’s moving in a polygynous direction. I’m not sure if polyamorous people would consider this to be better or worse than the status quo of serial monogomy. I’m guessing they’d consider it to be better insofar as some people (high-status men) are increasingly allowed to have more than one partner, but it’s also not gender equitable, which polyamorous people usually strongly want.
Poly people, I’d be interested to hear your answer on this. Do you think a serially monogamous society or a polygynous society would be better, if you had to choose between those two? For the purpose of this thought experiment, assume that you are still free to live a polyamourous lifestyle, but that serial monogamy or polygyny will be the default status quo for society as a whole.
>I think it’s moving in a polygynous direction.
Huh. Why? Serial monogamy has been just as serial for women as men thus far.
Under this rubric, the really bad thing would be to advocate for polyamory, or practice it in a visible way.
The conservative would always prefer the hypocrite to the advocate.
It depends on what you mean by “prefer”.
I don’t think conservatives are different from the usual view, which is that consistent advocates of harmful ideas are more principled and respectable, but hypocrites are better in fact to have around.
You know, the idea that consistency and integrity are two of those virtues that are only good when you’re right.
Conservative in this case meaning “one who wishes to maintain the status quo.” I should have clarified, but was shooting for pithy.
With the caveat that I don’t reach much polyamory philosophy, what I have read was mostly with the thread of thought that polyamory is good but only for a narrow set of people. As in, it won’t become as common as serial monogamy is now, and if it does it probably won’t be in the nice positive jealousy-free form it is claimed to have now (unless everyone somehow becomes a lot smarter, more open etcetc).
So if we believe that polyamory for a few select people is great but widespread polyamory would be bad, then we agree that polyamory on a scale where it can be called is a “social structure” is bad.
Is there evidence for all of these wonderful benefits to monogamy for society or is it just post hoc ergo propter hoc?
Well, societies that are currently and historically monogamous (or at least serially monogamous) tend to have higher GDPs per capita than societies that are currently and historically polygamous (usually polygynous). Compare Europe, Euro-descended countries, and East Asia to the Middle East and Africa. Now, there are of course many other reasons for the GDP per capita disparity and I’m absolutely not saying it’s all due to monogamy, but I do think monogamy has some economic benefit insofar as it incentivizes low-status men to try hard to get and keep a job so that they can marry.
Obviously some exceptions exist (like Saudi Arabia), but in general the pattern holds.
Polygyny was legal in China until the early 20th century. It was rare, but it’s rare in most of the Middle East too — I gather less so in some African regions but I don’t know as much about them.
In communities with extremely lopsided sex rations this benefit of monogamy does not work: “, thus reducing the number of sexually frustrated and disenfranchised young men.” In fact the opposite probably holds and polyamory serves this purpose better.
You seem to be assuming that (some) men will have several partners where as most women will have one. This has been the historical norm but it does not seem to reflect the current rationalist community.
The rationalist community is weird. What happens when society adopts polyamory is probably going to be vastly different than it’s practiced now.
Society has adopted polyamory. Everybody but rationalists calls it “fooling around”. Or sometimes “cheating”, but with a nod-and-wink towards the bailey of the ruleset. The rules are informal and somewhat hypocritical, which can be frustrating for the nerdy, but they seem to work reasonably well.
Where I come from, i. e. not the rationalist community, the term polyamoury goes behind the rules you state in that it is shorthand for “I wish I could let my spouse, whom I love, partake in the deep emotional experiences and the satisfaction I get from fucking other people. Sharing such things is what couples are supposed to do, isn’t it?”
In a broarder sense it can also mean “I wish there was a socially accepted way to brag with my adventures without coming across as a chauvinist”.
It’s called cheating because you aren’t supposed to do it. A polyamorous society would not only be ok with having sexual relationships besides your primary partner, it would be considered normal. Our society is definitely not even close to that right now.
It is decriminalized. There is a social norm against “cheating” but an actual pro-marriage culture would carry legal penalties for those that forsake their vows.
This is why I am not legally married to my wife, no matter what the state says. I am in a legal partnership that the State calls “marriage” which has no resemblance to actual marriage as historically understood.
@A Definite Beta Guy
I have some sympathy with your views on this topic, as I understand them.
But only some. What limitations do you think there should be on the possible terms for marriage contracts?
Won’t speak for him, but my first response is simple: people should be allowed to enter into marriage contracts which provide for either unilateral dissolution (what we now consider no-fault divorces) or unanimous dissolution.
If you enter into the latter, you may still unilaterally ask to be released from the marriage, but what you get is a legal annulment: your children are the responsibility of the other party only if they are proven to be their biological issue or they accept such responsibility willingly. If either of those things is true, responsibility for costs and custody is split right down the middle absent mutual agreement to the contrary. You yourself have no right whatsoever to anything from the other party. All marital assets are divided according to the actual financial input of each party as described on their income tax forms. We’d probably want some kind of asset summary filed with the marriage license form to provide for pre-existing assets.
I suspect that this form of marriage would be very unpopular. But I think people should have the right to enter into it and I think it should be enforced. Knowing it exists might do some very interesting things to the dynamics of marriage in our society.
@Anon
At the moment I really don’t have any ambitious or concrete suggestions. I am single individual and not well-versed enough to confidently say “This will work.”
And “will this work” is definitely a salient position in my mind.
My current inclination is that our civil marriage system is entirely nonsense. My marriage comes from Papal Authority, not American authority, and no American court should have the right to dissolve it or regulate it.
At the moment, my current concern is just rebuffing some of the more noxious Blue and Grey Tribe moralities undermining sexual and family relations. I do not feel this is at all inconsistent with Modern Life: I am a Yuppie with an organic garden, reel lawn-mower, and a Doctor for Wife.
I even use a computer!
But in this household, it’s still my way (and there is no highway).
EDIT:
I should also add that I am not so arrogant as to believe my way is the right way for all couples. We have close friends who hyphenated their last-names.
If it works for them, it works for them.
I am, however, uninterested in a culture where “Happy Wife, Happy Life” is in the water supply.
re: Marc Whipple
“I suspect that this form of marriage would be very unpopular. But I think people should have the right to enter into it and I think it should be enforced. Knowing it exists might do some very interesting things to the dynamics of marriage in our society.”
This exists in an (somewhat watered down) form in Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana under the name “covenant marriage.” It is, indeed, not popular–the wiki page says at most 1% of the marriages in those states take that form.
Psychologically, I imagine it faces the same barriers as pre-nups (“we don’t need that because our love is pure”)–except pre-nups are nonetheless encouraged by both self-interest and, in some cases, sound legal advice, and a covenant marriage lacks even that.
Definite Beta Guy, what do you mean by “But in this household, it’s still my way (and there is no highway).”?
I object to the notion that ‘benefiting society’ should be the main concern when adopting social policy, or even that it shiuld be brought up in any situation short of “we are definitely all going to die if we do this”.
Well, yes. Most reasonable people would object to the notion. The people who do bring it up do so because it supports the preferences they would have had anyway.
Maybe in wider contexts, but often around here people seem to use it more in the sense of “I do this/I think this is ok, but I don’t think it would be good if a lot of people did it.”
You spend too much time around people who think like you do, I’m pretty sure. Lots of reasonable people think that the correct meta-principle should be that we should have norms which are good for society first. It is not only uncharitable to assume they’re purely self-serving, it’s flat wrong.
I’m not so sure. I see the people who use society-first arguments use them inconsistently.
(In terms of the people I’m in proximity to, who disagree with me, they usually argue from a deontological perspective.)
That seems rather optimistic.
What rubric would you adopt? Most that I’m aware of accept the importance of benefiting society; utilitarianism makes it explicit but is hardly alone here. Is there a scalable way to benefit individuals at the expense of society?
Why only social policy? Why not economic policy? Why not environmental policy?
Because managing the utilization of common resources seems like a rather less repressive act than, say, dragging someone off to some dark dungeon because they decided to have fun by putting the wrong chemical in their body.
I happen to agree, but that’s entirely besides the point. You are suggesting that social policy, uniquely among all policies, should not have “the public good” as a policy goal.
That’s entirely unrelated to the specific punishments.
As an example: I support keeping our air clean, but I do not support executing people who burn leaves in their backyards.
> for the polyamorists here
I doubt many around here will care, but for what it’s worth the use of “polyamorists” instead of “poly[amorous] people” comes of as being deliberately provocative, like asking a question of “sodomites” instead of “gay people”: it’s 100% accurate, except insofar as it refers to people who engage in the behavior rather than merely those who would given the opportunity, but it’s a very rarely-used term, and it’s not the term poly people use for themselves.
> achieving a more equitable mate distribution
As mentioned elsewhere, a priori there’s nothing to distinguish polyamory and monogamy here. A posteriori, it certainly seems like there are at least some communities where men who would not otherwise be having any intimacy get to because of the presence of women who are inclined to be promiscuous and are in open & poly relationships. This matters more in gender-biased communities, but since humans moved into cities and started separating into professions, there are a lot of gender-biased communities. I’m not sure even non-serial monogamy would achieve this benefit in society arranged as it currently is. (Japan provides some evidence for this last claim.)
> reducing the amount of time spent pursuing mates, thus freeing up time and energy for other things
a) It is commonly understood that “monogamy” includes men getting some on the side, which takes effort; since it involves considerable discretion, it arguably takes more. b.) Poly people do actually have a solution to this one, namely, also changing norms of communication towards more openness and honesty, which makes getting into relationships lower overhead. c.) I think most time spent “pursuing mates” is actually spent on self-improvement towards the end of being attractive to mates, like going to the gym and running and etc. This requires exactly the same amount of time for monogamous people and polyamorous people.
> increasing confidence in paternity
Nowhere near as much as paternity tests, which are common among most poly people I know considering children. Arguably, insofar as it is less offensive for a father-to-be to ask a mother-to-be for a paternity test if they are poly vs monogamous, poly should increase confidence in paternity. You mentioned upthread that this seems the strongest point, but it seems like the one where there is the strongest case that traditional benefits of monogamy no longer require monogamy to achieve.
> I have never seen any discussion of polyamory which attempted to explain how it was supposed to replicate these benefits
I’d guess that this is because most poly people do not ever expect to be more than a small percentage of the population, so societal effects matter much less. (Gay relationships would also collapse civilization if they became universal, just on child-bearing grounds, but no one really worries about that either.) If I am being totally honest, it’s also probably because left-leaning people tend to put more weight on direct harms to individuals and less weight on hypothetical harms to civilization.
> Is there a decent body of argument here that discusses polyamory in the context of progeny and social structures that I’m not aware of?
No idea, but you might try asking in places where poly is more of a main topic of discussion. Many people here are poly, but I doubt many of us spend that much time reading about it. I’d suggest maybe pervocracy, off the top of my head? Ozy would also be an obvious choice.
>c.) I think most time spent “pursuing mates” is actually spent on self-improvement towards the end of being attractive to mates, like going to the gym and running and etc. This requires exactly the same amount of time for monogamous people and polyamorous people.
The obvious performance indicator being “mates persued per hours spent at the gym” 🙂
Second-to-last point seems most salient to me. I’m not poly, but I am childless by choice, which is obviously a thing that would result in near-term human extinction if adopted universally. So what? It isn’t going to be adopted universally and the absolute size of the human population seems bounded above more by food-producing and distribution technology than anyone’s personal choices, even a huge subset of people’s personal choices.
Similarly, the absolute level of violence perpetrated by society’s least desirable men taking to the streets to burn shit specifically because they can’t find suitable mates with which to engage in the productive activity of child-rearing and community-building, which is what they really want to be doing, because those mates became George Clooney’s tertiary instead seems like it would be ridiculously low compared to pretty much any other cause of violence.
Please do not equate “having regular sexual intercourse or at least being optimistic that sexual intercourse will be available” with “engaging in the productive activity of child-rearing and community-building.” They are correlated but they are not the same thing and they do not produce the same motivations. I quite agree with you that riots in the streets by a significant number of men denied the latter seem pretty unlikely, but that is not the problem.
If such an experiment were feasible in any sense, it would be very interesting to know if easy and sanctioned access to prostitutes in a society which also featured polygamy available to successful men had a positive effect on unrest among young men. It is not feasible, and even if it were I would have ethical qualms, but it’s pretty much the only way you could test the base hypothesis that lack of hope for sexual intercourse is a significant factor in antisocial behavior.
This sounds like you’re in the same polygamy bubble Scott’s in when he posted that monogamy promises are just boilerplate.
Among most people, monogamy is only “commonly understood” to include cheating in the same sense that it’s commonly understood that if you have money, sometimes you might get mugged. People understand that it happens, but consider it to be a violation of the rules; they don’t think it is okay to do.
At some point you have to look at what people are doing rather than what they are saying. Forget those evil, decadent, degraded Blue Tribe types, the infidelity rates in supposedly god-fearing places are really high too.
It looks a lot less like mugging and more like underage drinking.
There is a distinction here between monogamous marriage, and monogamy in the broader sense. There is and always has been a finite social tolerance for “cheating” in both contexts, but where there are formal marriage vows involved that tolerance is extremely limited.
I did not intend to imply that it was considered OK, merely that people know it happens. Since the purported benefit of monogamy was less time spent pursuing mates, the fact that many men are apparently pursuing mates while nominally monogamous is relevant. Whether it is societally acceptable is less so.
That’s still a benefit. Most cheating spouses aren’t really spending much time ‘pursuing’ mates so much as taking advantage of opportunities that come up while doing things they’d already be doing anyway.
Of course, that’s also how a lot of dating happens in the first place, so even single people who don’t want to be single any more aren’t necessarily going out of their way and losing half their calendars to the art of courtship. And marriage can also be time-consuming.
The problem with this analogy is that only a small percentage of people have any desire to engage in any form of gay relationship at all, and there are reasons to believe that this is fixed in early childhood and not subject to massive variation with changing social norms. In other words, something like 3% of all men are going to be sexually attracted to other men instead of women, and whether we persecute them or accept them, this won’t change much. (Opportunistic homosexuality in prisons, military ships, etc. is a different issue.)
On the other hand, there are a lot of men who might like the idea of having more sexual variety. As currently structured, our society values monogamous relationships, even if these do not always last a lifetime as they were once supposed to. Currently, most affluent men follow society’s guidance to only have one mate at a time, but if that guidance goes away, there is every reason to believe that wealthy and famous men would create harems of women. This, in turn, would mean that a substantial number of men who are currently able to find mates would be unable to do so, and would have little prospect of ever being able to do so.
The historical examples of Ancient Greece, Feudal Japan, and Islamic Spain, just to name a few, the modern example of Afghanistan, and the statistics that show an increase in the rate of homosexual behavior/identifying as bisexual among Western women in recent years would all seem to be significant evidence against the idea that homosexual behavior is not significantly influenced by social norms.
On the other hand, those examples are mostly of homosexual relationships on the side, with a heterosexual relationship still expected, so it may still be the case that exclusive desire for homosexual relationships is highly resistant to social norms.
But do they cause trouble? My understanding is almost the opposite: that in monogamous societies a sex ratio skewed towards females leads to young men causing trouble, while a sex ratio skewed towards males leads to civil order (and maybe organized war with neighboring countries).
I don’t have links immediately at hand but pretty much everything I’ve read indicated the opposite. A high male to female ratio increases civil unrest until someone starts a war and the surplus males get themselves killed off, or find themselves some foreign girls.
@Douglas Knight
Could you elaborate on that?
I also think the opposite viewpoint seems much more obvious.
I’ve been reading up on English criminal matters in the 18th century for a chapter of my current book project. It seems to have been generally agreed that when a war started, crime rates went down, due to lots of young men going into the army and navy, and when the war ended they went up.
“Polyamorist” here. To give a short answer:
First, I question a lot of the assumptions behind the supposed social benefits of monogamy. It’s a mistake to judge polyamory in an egalitarian society by the effects of polygamy under patriarchy. Specifically, why should polyamory result in a “number of sexually frustrated and disenfranchised young men”? When men are wealthy and have all the power and women are culturally encouraged to marry them, that has bad consequences regardless of whether the standard is monogamy or polygamy. But why should we expect that to hold now? Observably, in more egalitarian subcultures, men have been happy to date women with more partners than them. Something similar goes for the assurance of paternity. It’s not even necessarily the case that men have to care about paternity, but paternity testing is available for those who do care. As for time pursuing mates, I don’t see why people spending more time doing that is a bad thing, if that’s what they prefer. In short, monogamy is a solution in search of a problem.
Second, even in the inconvenient case that none of those things hold, one’s relationships aren’t up for redistribution. For example, the benefits to me of being polyamorous outweigh whatever social benefits to monogamy there might be, so I wouldn’t agree to be monogamous if others restricted themselves in the same way. Besides, it’s prima facie good to do things for oneself instead of “the good of society”, and that usually results in not only personal but social benefit.
I doubt this is just an arbitrary cultural factor.
It’s not arbitrary, of course. Men are, on average, bigger and stronger than women. In the absence of an effective justice system, a culture that proclaims that the weak must submit to the strong will be more stable.
I doubt women being attracted to power/success/etc in men, and men not really being attracted to these characteristics in women, is arbitrary, or only exists because of the absence of an effective justice system.
Even then, if you’re a secondary-priority partner of a high-status person, you’ll likely want someone who will give you more attention and with whom you can build a closer relationship. Observably, most women aren’t interested in high-status guys to such a degree that they exclude everyone else.
How fascinating.
@ Anonymous
In spotted hyenas, females are larger and more aggressive than males. If they evolved into a sapient species, what do you think their gender dynamics would be like?
@anonymous
I don’t know about you, but I am disinclined to believe claims along the lines “this factor that exists almost universally across humans, in all different times and cultures, is just an arbitrary cultural trend” unless some justification is given.
I didn’t say it was arbitrary. Given the reproductive differences and that men are on average stronger than women, it’s not hugely surprising that different cultures had developed similarly in this aspect. But there’s quite a gap between “this is what cultures with pre-modern levels of technology tend towards” and “this is what we’d get now”.
Barring the invention artificial wombs or actual sex changes, we will continue to operate under the same sexual/reproductive constraints that pre-modern societies are.
Not necessarily.. For one thing, we have reliable contraception and abortion. For another, men and women are much closer substitutes in the modern job market, both because physical strength is less important and because technology has made homemaking easier, which changes reproductive patterns.
Abortion/infanticide and contraception aren’t qualitatively better than they were pre-modernity. The difference is that now they’re actually widely used.
“The difference is that now they’re actually widely used.”
What makes you think they were not widely used in the past?
Bits of evidence … . Casanova uses interruptus, and seems to view it as a familiar precaution. Also, occasionally, condoms. Boswell also uses condoms (both 18th century).
In 18th century England, infanticide by unmarried women seems to have been common enough that there was a legal presumption that if the baby was dead and there was no witness to a stillbirth, the mother was charged with infanticide.
In Greece, and I think also in Rome, abandonment of unwanted infants was an accepted practice.
No objection to classical Romans using infanticide abundantly.
Do you have sources for widespread (similar level to current times) use of primitive (but effective) contraception in post-Roman Europe? Same for infanticide?
AFAIK, these things were some combination of illegal and socially unthinkable, which tends to put a damper on usage.
“Primitive but effective” means of preventing women from getting pregnant from the physical activity which was designed to get women pregnant didn’t really exist. Interruptus was the most widely used, along with a technique called “between the thighs”. Reportedly, a physical barrier/spermicide was occasionally used by means of a patty of crocodile manure in Egypt and Rome. Chemical means of aborting an otherwise viable baby tended to really jack up the mother’s health.
(And we’re forgetting that children used to be something valuable and wealth-increasing. The pimps of whores were the people most interested in controlling the bearing of children.)
Animal intestine prophylactics were used before the rubber ones were in wide use.
We really have no perspective on how much the Pill changed the world.
They’re illegal and socially unthinkable now. The nonchalant way these matters were discussed, as recently as the 1800s implies that this “social unthinkablity” is a recent development.
@Karanih:
There seems to be some evidence for the use of rhythm in antiquity. How good I’m not sure.
As best I can estimate it, unprotected sex with random timing has about a three percent chance of producing pregnancy. I don’t know how much interruptus cuts that, but my guess would be to well under one percent.
Maybe you believe it’s ok to benefit when it directly makes people miserable but most people disagree with you.
If there’s causality at all it looks rather indirect to me. You can’t even point to the particular person that blacktrance is supposedly making miserable.
You could say the same about pollution.
Which is why it often wouldn’t make sense to refer to polluters as “directly mak[ing] people miserable”. This shouldn’t be a tough point to grasp.
But if the polluters believed that they were making everyone worse off while profiting from what they were doing(and they simply didn’t care), we would consider them bad people. At the very least, it would be something that almost everyone agrees shouldn’t be promoted.
Maybe it’s not like a direct effect like I originally said but the point still stands.
Polyamorists are predominantly liberals or libertarians, they believe consenting adults should have the right to engage in any kind of relationships with one another they please. For them, negative societal consequences are an unfortunate externality, but not one that justifies restricting the individual’s sexual freedom.
The successful applicant will be better than the previous Pareto Fellow in at least one way, and no worse in any other way.
Nice.
>The last time I logged into my comment reports panel I had almost a thousand different reports I had to go through
This is simultaneously very hilarious and kinda depressing.
Yeah, had the impression that this place was pretty tolerant in general. I’ve reported one or two severe violations of order, but always felt guilty about it. It’s sad to think that’s not really the case.
Could still be pretty tolerant in general, just a handful of people responsible for reporting a lot of comments.
This blog’s ban history etches a hilarious re-enactment of the evolution of law, much like bitcoin’s history makes a miniature re-enactment of historical financial swindles.
At what point was it a working feud system?
Alternatively, how do you think legal systems start?
What I meant was that the following sequence took place:
1) No rules on new blog, the king’s (Scott’s) word is law (hypothetical – I wasn’t here around the time that the Comments page was instated in 2014).
2) The king finds it necessary to instate written rules, due to some dispute or other, and formal bans follow according to them. (Also hypothetical.)
3) Bans slowly accumulate, the king largely following the rules he himself wrote.
4) Readership and commentariat grows, there emerge commenters who are at odds with the king’s purposes, who know the rules and follow them to the letter, avoiding bans.
5) Reign of tyranny begins, the king declaring that all who displease him, following the written law or not, will be banned. De facto law is now back to the king’s word.
6) Purges begin. (We are here).
I’m not sure what the next step is.
David’s point is that Kings powerful enough that their word is law is a fairly late development in most real legal traditions, and your sequence is starting after most of the interesting stuff is done with.
Obviously, somewhere down the line we’re going to end up with an intricate law code that spans libraries and several bureaucratic institutions interacting in complicated ways under a fully-formed legal system. Comments policy is decided by a legislature. You’d need a lawyer to appeal a ban, and 743 out of 100 000 commenters will be on the ban registers.
I remember Scott once telling he was looking for a method of learning languages that doesn’t make the students learn grammar and lots of rules. I don’t know if he found it, but there is one of such methods: Ilya Frank’s reading method.
I’ve never tried this with any degree of consistency, but Latin and other classical languages used to be taught largely by having their students translate big chunks of text (with a dictionary and other suitable tools available). From what I heard it worked pretty well.
That’s how Latin & Greek were taught when I tried to learn them in school. I think it’s a lousy method. I passed the exam, but I never even got as far as actually being able to read Latin; best I could do was slowly decipher parts of it and guess at the rest. Greek was even worse.
One can gradually absorb a new language a few words at the time, eventually rooting thousands of words in meaningful memories, but skipping the grammar is like skipping leg day at the gym. Don’t do it or you will sound like a moron. I’ve been speaking a lousy pidgin of Japanese for a long time and have begun to get used to the sound of my own speech, and my SO imitates me so I’ll probably never learn to sound like an adult until I put some serious study time into grammar and rules.
Xyz speaks a close approximation of the truth. If you do not pay attention to grammar you will end up sounding like an idiot.
That doesn’t mean you need to actually learn the rules. Lots of correct input works as well, as does correcting what you say that’s wrong. Shadowing is less boring than learning grammar and will improve basically all aspects of your language learning. Watch a video or listen to audio that is above your level and repeat what they’re saying as fast as possible, i.e. try to keep up. Or find the subtitles for something. Look up all the words you don’t know. Put every sentence into anki or other SRS surrounded by context. Learn.
For all this and more go to http://www.ajatt.com
But learning grammar is the best part of learning a language.
True. Everything else is boring memorization.
Learning grammar is also the easiest part, most of the time. The hard part is acquiring vocabulary and collocations (i.e. memorisation) and getting the grammar into procedural memory, which requires practice, practice, and more practice. Since learning grammar explicitly is very cheap, at least for smart people, I think it’s sensible to do that because it probably helps with practicing when you know what you’re practicing and can spot your own mistakes some of the time.
You’re probably right. On the other hand my main goal when learning a language is to be able to understand texts. I guess this method may be quite useful for that while much less useful for talking.
From memory: Tim Ferriss recommends starting by learning the most useful short sentences.
There is an amazing book about how to learn foreign languages called Fluent Forever. I’ve always loved learning languages, and over the years I’ve picked up some ideas on how to do it effectively. It took me 6 years to become proficient in English (my first foreign language) but only 2 months to be able to learn enough Spanish to interview and get a job using it (Spanish was my 5th foreign language.) I’ve also noticed that many polyglots have picked up the same ideas independently. The more languages you study, the easier it is to learn them. Fluent Forever covers all of the methods successful polyglots use, and more. It’s unbelievably good. It’s the one book I wish I had written.
Here’s a summary of the Fluent Forever method:
* Start by learning the sound system properly. You know that factoid about how Japanese babies lose the ability to differentiate between r and l so they’re doomed to have an accent when they learn to speak English? Only partially true. Yes, they do lose the ability, but there is a reliable method called minimal pair testing for regaining it. If you train yourself to hear the sounds of your target foreign language at the start, any future time spent studying the language will be much more productive. You’ll learn vocabulary more easily because words won’t sound foreign. Listening to native speakers will reinforce your knowledge because you’ll be able to recognize sound patterns.
* Also, learn to pronounce the sounds of the language properly. Use international phonetic alphabet. Working on it later, as you become more advanced, is inefficient because you will have already spent hundreds of hours reinforcing bad pronunciation habits.
* Learn the most frequently used 625 words using spaced repetition and Google Image. There are vocabulary lists out there that combine words in a way to make them easy to remember. Hint: learning vocabulary thematically (i.e., all colors or all numbers at once) is one of the worst possible methods. Also, use Google Image to see what the word *actually* means in the target language (translations are approximate) and because images make the words easier to remember. Finally, use visual mnemonics for things like noun genders.
* Sentence play. Learn grammar by memorizing sentences illustrating the most important grammar points.
* Learn the top 1000 words. Switch to using a monolingual dictionary.
* Start working with native material. Read a book while listening to an audiobook. Watch a TV show you’ve already seen dubbed in your target language.
* Use websites that can pair you with a native speaker to practice speaking and to have native speakers correct your writing. At this point you should start producing short essays in your target language. Trying to get the language out that way and having someone correct your mistakes is one of the most effective way to learn.
Learning a language to the level where you can use it independently is ultimately about familiarizing yourself with many thousands of different sentences. In comparison, grammars have very few rules to learn (what are twenty rules compared to ten thousand sentences?). Of course you also have to learn auxiliary stuff like tense forms for verbs, but that’s again more about going through a lot of input frequently enough that you can recreate it on demand, not about memorizing lists of word transformations.
By the time I’ve processed enough input to be able to conjure up all the words I need on demand, I’ve also gotten enough grasp on the spoken, if not on the formal, grammar as well, without going out of my way for it. For the few languages that I have learned in this way at least, it was more about going out and reading/listening/speaking than it was about sitting in front of a book and trying to make sense of rules.
Add a third superforecaster to that roster. (That should actually be “former superforecaster” maybe, I retired from active duty after the third season owing to changes in the rules that made the game less interesting to me, as well as increased time demands from work. I wrote up my experiences on LW: http://lesswrong.com/lw/eup/raising_the_forecasting_waterline_part_1/)
Hey, it *was* Morendil earlier!
I have a question for you. I joined the Good Judgement Project and I’m unsure of what probability I should give to Trump winning. Status quo says he doesn’t have a chance but he’s been doing really well so far and I’m not sure what can stop him. My gut says he probably won’t win but I’m also pretty biased against him. My current estimates are 40% Rubio, 30% Trump and 30% between the rest. How does that sound?
Trump winning the nomination seems pretty likely at this point, I’d place it closer to 80% (maybe higher, because for him not to get the nomination, someone else has to win, and I have no idea who that would be), but I’d be pretty surprised if he won the general, considering how contentious he is even among conservatives.
Two interesting questions: (1) % chance that Republicans nominate someone not using strict primary/caucus result-based delegate counts, due to >=50% unfavorables for Trump among conservatives and (2) % chance of a 3rd party campaign by Trump or Sanders if they lose their nomination. Jeb Bush seems to have the cash for a 3rd party bid but I suspect that won’t happen — same for Clinton.
My current estimates are 40% Rubio, 30% Trump and 30% between the rest. How does that sound?
If by “the rest”, you mean Ted Cruz, it sounds pretty good.
Each new primary/caucus shakes out another Republican wannabe, and eyeballing the polls, the only one whose votes generally go to Trump are Carson’s. Trump is persistently stuck at 30-40% of the voters, Carson’s remaining 5% or so doesn’t give Trump a clear win, so winds up as a three-way race. Trump, almost certainly Cruz, probably Rubio.
Whichever one drops out first probably gets to decide which of the others wins, unless possibly they wait too long to drop out. And “too long to be the kingmaker” is in most scenarios past the “cannot win” point, so someone will drop out(*).
This gets into unguessable psychology territory, but I lean towards Rubio being the “if I can’t win, he’s the least objectionable alternative” choice for both Cruz and Trump.
* Unless not-dropping-out is their kingmaking move, which works in some scenarios but doesn’t change anything
Actually, the I only gave 15% to Cruz. 15% is divided between Bush and Kasich. Cruz is setting himself up as the anti-Trump and that’s the only plausible path to victory for him. But Rubio is obviously better suited to the task because of his perceived electability, while still being acceptable to conservatives. Radical social conservatives simply don’t win republican nominations these days and I don’t expect him to be the first. Now maybe my estimates for Bush and Kasich are too high but if I lowered them, the remaining percentage would go to Rubio or Trump, not Cruz.
Here’s a brief analysis of the indefinite ban register.
http://pastebin.com/0nyeBGRj
(Dunno what about it makes it autospam, but it does.)
I question some of your judgments. Echo was banned for saying that somebody insulting my ex-girlfriend was “delightful”. Dublin’s immediate cause of ban was a nasty comment, but I also strongly suspect they were impersonating me under my real name in various places. Timothy and Ghan were banned for personal attacks on another commenter. You have all of them down as being banned just because they’re conservative.
Also, a lot of the lese majeste really really REALLY doubles as idiocy.
PS: It’s autospam because some of those people were banned by autospamming any post with their name in it. That usually just prevents them from posting, but I guess it also prevents other people from mentioning them.
>Regulus Black was banned for saying that somebody insulting my ex-girlfriend was “delightful”.
Right. That would make it “idiocy”, inasmuch you are not one-flesh anymore. 😉
>Barty Crouch’s immediate cause of ban was a nasty comment, but I also strongly suspect they were impersonating me under my real name in various places.
I know nothing about that. That would make it “idiocy” or “lese majeste”.
>Igor Karkaroff and Beatrix Lestrange were banned for personal attacks on another commenter.
Their comments were to the effect “we don’t want this person in our country, especially if he would use shady means to get in”. Your banpost was:
This reads to me as “you’re being slightly impolite and I really hate your views, so you are banned”. You are welcome to see it differently.
>Also, a lot of the lese majeste really really REALLY doubles as idiocy.
Sure, lese majeste is a strict subset of idiocy.
… Why are you using Harry Potter codenames for banned commenters?
Also, it’s Bellatrix not Beatrix, please don’t muck up one of my favorite names
Because spamfilter. If you mention them, your post gets spammed, but it’s not clear *which* names are banned.
“I’ve been looking for an excuse to ban you for a while”
…Scott, this is another example of “not rattling before you bite.”
This really does have a chilling effect on discussion from commenters of *all* opinions. No one can be sure *their* opinion won’t be one you’ll turn out to be silently offended by, quietly seething and “looking for an excuse,” until eventually, without them even knowing they were ever on notice, you decide something they said was *enough* of “an excuse.”
I stand by what I said before. I don’t like seeing you doing to others what was done to you. You’re better than that.
Counterpoint: I would not be willing or able to continue to participate in this community if people were not banned for the kinds of things which people on that list were banned for. And I don’t think there’s ever been sufficient ambiguity about what’s ban-worthy to worry the vast majority* of commenters, who are never really getting anywhere that line. If the people who are toeing the line become a little more reluctant to do so, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
*Remember, there have been 30 bans out of thousands of posts per thread.
I do. The line is where the most interesting stuff is, we want to toe it as hard as possible.
This sounds irritatingly like what a foot-fetishist would say.
Bans apply to posters, not posts, so thousands of posts per thread is the wrong comparison.
“The line is where the most interesting stuff is, we want to toe it as hard as possible.”
The most interesting stuff is the stuff that approaches meanness, falsehood, and frivolity?
The most interesting stuff is surprising. That makes it less likely to be adjudicated as “true” by our unfortunately fallible host. Surprising stuff is also often unkind. As Chesterton said, “reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of ‘touching’ a man’s heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.”
You can toe the line of relevance without fear, I guess. Sometimes things are connected in surprising ways, but I have yet to see our host bring the hammer down on anybody on the grounds of relevance for stringing together a conspiracy theory in the comments.
Humans are pretty bad at distinguishing between “offensive” and “does not comport with my beliefs.”
Meh, for me, the line is often where the people who confuse being edgy with being truthful are (i.e, someone whose discourse is something like this: “I will say for the 50th times that the difference of condition between black and white people is purely due to their genes, and I don’t need a proof because if you don’t think I am right, you are a sheep lolilol”).
Truth has no obligation of being mean, surprising, interesting, or contrary to Scott’s bias (I would go as far as saying that if it’s interesting, it’s probably false).
It seems like the line is relatively clear, per the Anon posting at 12:54am above. For those that fear it’s position, or want to toe the line, it seems like they could simply ask Scott in a post-script of the comment “Hey, was this ok? I’m worried it wasn’t really meeting the blog’s standards”.
My guess is that if he *would* have silently tallied that comment as fuel towards an eventual ban, he’d let you know since you asked nicely!
That runs the risk that you’re not going to be banned, except that now that you called attention to yourself, Scott’s going to look more closely at what you wrote and is more likely to find excuses to ban you.
t’s not clear to me. Maybe it would be if I were a “regular regular” instead of a “sporadic regular,” I dunno. But…what’s tended to happen lately is
* permanent ban
* no warning
* no explanation beyond “I have so many reasons to ban you” or “I’ve been looking for an excuse to ban you.”
The register of bans says its purpose is to help people learn what behavior Scott considers banworthy. But when I see a comment associated with “I have so many reasons to ban you,” this does not teach me anything at all about the behavior required to avoid being banned. IOW, there is greater inferential distance here than you seem to be assuming.
It’s not random.
The “chilling effect” on the sort of people who get banned is intentional.
What sort of people would that be?
Basically, it’s people who are excessively hostile, derail threads, troll (i.e. deliberately post something needlessly inflammatory to get a rise out of people) and especially people who do so while expressing highly sexist or racist opinions in an insensitive way. Especially if you do all of these things while constantly bringing up “culture war” topics.
In other words, I don’t think you’re in trouble.
Let me take the last five banned people, in reverse order:
1. Persistent trolling.
2. Extremely sexist, trolling comment.
3. Sexist comment insulting Scott himself; also a persistent thread derailer, racist, and very uncharitable arguer.
4. Trolling.
5. Deeply personal insult against Scott himself. As above, also very uncharitable and a thread derailer in general.
Let me remind you that you have in the past mistakenly believed I was trolling.
I’m with Jiro. I’ve been hung out to dry by a mod before; I’m not likely to assume “it can’t happen to me.”
What do folks who worry about being banned think of Eric Raymond’s Armed and Dangerous? Eric is extremely reluctant to ban for content (I don’t think he’s ever done it), though I believe he bans for nastiness to other commenters.
What’s the difference between ‘infidel’ and ‘heretic’?
Red and blue tribe, respectively.
Theologically? An infidel is a non-believer in your particular belief (it could merely be that they are not of your religion, or they may not believe in any religion whatsoever). A heretic is someone who shares, or claims to share, your faith but has an incorrect (from your point of view; from their point of view they are correct) understanding of a particular doctrine or dogma (possibly up to the entire basis of that faith, not merely one part of it).
If I’m not using the terms dreadfully incorrectly, an infidel is out-group and a heretic is in-group.
Hence the expression, “For the infidel, there may be mercy. For the heretic, there is only the stake.”
Aw, The Dividualist got banned? That guy was fun.
Banned for saying mean things about Scott in the comments of a post full of mean things said about Scott, what a way to go.
Wait, what?
…going back and reading the whole mess, I’m not even seeing the insult.
His views might not have gelled well with some others, but he at least gave the impression of conviction in his views rather than justification for them, which made his responses interesting to read.
Given that he literally said “I 100% agree with” one of the things Scott listed in his post full of mean things, it’s hard to understand not understanding that as a mean thing, even if we’re all definitely good progressives who wouldn’t see anything unkind about saying someone’s brain is incompletely masculinized.
I’m not even close to progressive, and I still don’t see what’s unkind about that. Maybe it’s an American thing? Monster trucks and bikini sluts, yee-haw?
Anyway, some of the post’s discussion revolved around criticisms coming from the speaker’s value system, which was what made a lot of them quite funny to read from outside. That gives ample reason to suspect how insulting Scott would have found them, and I didn’t see him clarify between the explanations being put forth.
Of course, discussing this probably isn’t earning us any favour, given the Reign of Terror™ in process.
I believe Scott has posted in other venues that he has a list of people he’d like to ban, and is only waiting on the slightest provocation.
@suntzuanime
keeping in mind that many of the replies were people saying things like “lots of them are completely true but are also why I love this blog” or otherwise implying that they view some as true but not-negative things.
I’m honestly surprised since The Dividualist generally didn’t come across as a dick and even the comment he got banned for came across as mild joshing to me.
Yes, in a tragic error, The Dividualist forgot to put an “and that’s exactly why I love you Scott” at the end of his post. And that’s exactly why I love you, Scott.
@Murphy
Like I said, the process for regulars goes like “Scott wants someone banned” -> “someone posts something debatably against the rules” -> “someone is banned”. People whom Scott does not want banned don’t get banned, at least not indefinitely.
For newbies, the nominal system of “don’t be a jerk or you’ll be banned” gets applied.
To be completely fair, we’re all like that to some degree. I mean, the biggest victim of the Reign of Terror barely got discussed, mostly due to the fact that we all found him super annoying.
I did not mean to imply that Scott is special in this behaviour.
My post keeps getting spamfiltered for some reason—very annoying.
Anyway, I’ll phrase it differently: I didn’t like him, and I’m glad he’s gone.
Maybe you hit that filter that prevents you from saying the names of the exiled ones?
Damnatio memoriae!
Vox: It’s because your post included his name. I got past the filter by putting a space in the name.
“Banned for saying mean things about Scott in the comments of a post full of mean things said about Scott, what a way to go.”
Apparently we’ve moved past the Reign of Terror, and have reached the Hundred Flowers Campaign.
Yeah, I think I’ll slightly miss that guy.
I agree. I haven’t been here long, but I’ve noticed the guy and liked him. I wish Scott would reconsider this one. Scott, please, would you reconsider?
Edit: I interpreted his comment as affectionate mockery. AND that comment came after you signaled that you’re fine making fun of yourself by doing that whole post.
Also, if what someone mentioned about you having a list of people you are waiting to ban is true, then that’s just passive aggressive. Why not talk to them and tell them they are bothering you? Especially that you’re the one in the position of power (that is, you can ban them from a social circle that might be important to them.)
If talking to individual commenters that you perhaps perceive as hostile is not something you want to be doing, then maybe at least publish a list of people who annoy you? Then at least they can see it, think about what they might be doing wrong and reach out to you to apologize/start the dialog themselves.
“C’est mon seul baryton!”
Our only Central European ethno-nationalist monarchist ex-nerd testosterone fan, gone at the click of a button 🙁
Well, at least we managed to have the Epic Nationalism vs Objectivism Showdown while he was still here.
>Our only Central European ethno-nationalist monarchist ex-nerd testosterone fan
I’m fair sure that intersection has more than one person in it in this comment section.
Nita: “Well, at least we managed to have the Epic Nationalism vs Objectivism Showdown while he was still here.”
That was epic, thanks for the hat tip.
…wait a minute, I don’t see a single one of Vox’s trademark walls of text in this comment section either.
Right, that’s why we’re not even at 750 comments yet.
I just want to say, I was fairly angry when I wrote those comments. I don’t really disagree with them, but if I wrote them again I would tone down the language.
And the number of hyphenated phrases. 😉
Also, someone who read them out of context could get the wrong idea about my opinion of non-Western cultures. That is the part where substantive revisions might be necessary. The essential point of the comparison was: if these races and everything they produce really are inferior, why do you want to be more like them?
I did not mean to suggest that European culture actually is perfect, or that other cultures have produced nothing of value.
I got what you were saying and think it’s one of the best series of comments I’ve ever seen on this blog.
@ Adam:
Well, I appreciate that. In my opinion, I think I’ve had better exchanges. For instance, the ones on dualism vs. materialism, ethics, the orthogonality thesis, free will, religion, colors, and even one on feminism.
In this one, I’m a lot heavier on invective and just laying out where I disagree (and how much), rather than making really detailed arguments.
I might try to find links to some of those others if I get a chance.
@Vox Imperatoris
I think at least two of those were with me. You’re fun to argue with.
Watching Vox argue with others is a delight. I think the comments section has greatly improved since he showed up.
(This reminds me, I would enjoy going back through the archives and noting who the most prominent commenters are on each post, and how that has evolved over the last three years. I feel like there’s been significant turnover, but it’s happened over such a long period of time that I’m not at all certain.)
Good riddance. The guy was impervious to evidence and counterargument and had serious problems with not knowing what he didn’t know.
Personally, I won’t miss him. He was one of the less pleasant regulars here.
I disagreed with almost everything he said, but I loved the way he said it.
I’m mildly concerned that with him and Echo gone, the most right-wing person here is… John Schilling? David Friedman? Deiseach?
It would be a shame if this place lost its ideological diversity.
Define “right wing.” I’m probably as extreme a libertarian as anyone here. In other senses of right wing I don’t qualify—I am, for instance, in favor of free immigration, and have been for something over forty years. Also drug legalization.
What David said, for a more conventional definition of libertarian. Not sure if that makes me more or less right-wing. And there are more than the two of us.
Dividualist, I found to be annoyingly tone-deaf and reluctant to engage in real dialogue, and usually right on the edge of kind, necessary, and/or true. At times I wished he would go away but never quite reached the level where I wanted him banned. But then, he never insulted me even a little bit, and that probably would have pushed me over the edge.
Having extreme ideological views seems to be correlated with aggressive posting styles, so banning aggressive posters reduces diversity.
(Obligatory disclaimer that there are very many exceptions, David Friedman seems like a lovely person, etc)
I’d also nominate Mai La Dreapta, Jaskologist and jaimeastorga2000 for most-rightest, from the pool of non-anonymous regulars. And there’s at least 1+ Unspeakable Ones among the anonymi.
You’re missing Dr Dealgood, who seems to be sort of Dividualist Lite.
Nah, I’m not nearly europäisch enough to qualify as Dividualist’s successor. His shtick was basically being the anti-Multiheaded: boisterous style, overly confident proclamations about American culture from a hemisphere away, extremist yet very continental views.
As for right wingers, most of the old Death Eaters are still here just quiet. Anissimov even made a comment recently. But it seems currently that the vocal SSC right is more mainstream Republican type conservatives and Sailorites anyway. We actually have a reasonable number of people who have farmed, own guns, go to church regularly etc. It has been great for my education: a conservative New Yorker is still in a deep Blue bubble, so my perspective gets warped in odd ways.
Yep. People talk about how there aren’t any mainstream conservative Republicans here, but you’ve got at least one in me. I’m socially conservative, my libertarian sympathies basically boil down to fiscal conservativism, and I’m not a disciple of Moldbug. The “right-wingers” mentioned up-thread are higher quality posters, though.
What bothers me about Dividualist’s ban is that it seemed like it came out of nowhere. I feel like there should have been a warning, or at least short-term ban as a warning. As it is, I’m not sure if I’m on thin ice or not. I’ve certainly said conservative things in the past.
But maybe there was a warning and I just missed it. Bakkot to implement an aggro meter, plz.
Now I have visions of a 5-man SSC dungeon where someone has to tank through scott’s “reign of terror” animation. If they get banned or lose agro the whole party wipes…
It was funnier in my head.
You’ve always been a high quality poster to me, Jaskologist.
PS-Is there a lot of space between “death-eater” and “Sailorite”? Other than perhaps focus.
Can somebody tell me what the heck a ‘death eater’ is. This has been coming up and I tried to look it up and apparently it was something from Harry Potter and then Anonymous hacktivists that set out to uncover the identities of child molesters called themselves that. That can’t possibly be what this refers to.
You know, The-Internet-Political-Faction-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. Likes Lovecraft and hierarchy and sometimes chivalric romance; dislikes democracy and entryism and the French Revolution. Weirdly obsessed with race and gender. Alt-rightists that follow the likes of Nick Land, Michael Anissimov, and that San Franciscan dude with the Cthulhu metaphor.
It’s the a nickname for an alt-right group that has a lot of members in rationalist spaces. Their preferred denomination is spamfiltered here, so they’re referred to in other ways: “Death Eaters”, “Yarvin-Landists”, “Those That Belong To The Emperor”, etc.
@ Adam:
Scott decided that he was going to put the term n-e-o-r-e-a-c-t-i-o-n-a-r-y on the spam filter because people were using it too broadly. He wanted to “taboo” it so that people would “replace the symbol with the substance”, i.e. what specific views are you praising or criticizing?
This didn’t work at all. Since almost everyone here has read Harry Potter, and in that series people are afraid to say “Voldemort” and call him He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, people have applied analogous terms to that movement. “Death Eaters” are followers of Voldemort. The joke/irony is that people haven’t replaced the symbol with the substance: they’ve replaced the symbol with a different symbol.
Other terms you might see are You-Know-Who (also a Harry Potter reference), Yarvin-Landism, or “novo-regressivism”.
@Adam
The euphemisms are far more amusing than the tabooed term. Myself, I like “novo-regressivism.”
Just want to note that alt-right and they-who-must-not-be-named is not the same thing. A couple of weeks ago Land called alt-right “a late-stage leftist aberration made peculiarly toxic by its comparative practicality”.
Not all alt-rightists are Death Eaters, but all Death Eaters are alt-rightists, broadly defined. Even Land, whatever he says about them. Maybe especially Land.
Okay, these new terms are more amusing. Good work, Scott. I guess this is what I get for not reading your blog for like what? A whole two months?
@HeelBearCub
I’m picturing Leroy Jenkins, running around yelling about how blacks have lower average IQ and women love to submit.
@Jaskologist:
[snort]
@Jaskologist
There are at least two of us! Your presence makes me not feel so lonely. (I have quietly lurked in every thread for the past two years but I basically never post).
There used to be a fellow, Troy I believe, who was one of the more prominent theists around that also made me feel a bit less like an odd duck. I haven’t seen him in a while, though.
Vox Imperatus@February 16, 2016 at 2:43 pm
This should be a lesson to us all about the limits of what can be accomplished with rules when you don’t have consent to your actual goal.
> right-wing person here is… John Schilling? David Friedman? Deiseach?
Again I have to conclude that SSC comment section is the only place I frequent, where “right-wing” is associated with high quality content. It still disturbs me.
It disturbs you that it occurs here, or it disturbs you that it only occurs here? It’s hard to have a useful discussion when everyone already agrees. Intelligent disagreement is the only way you’re going to improve.
Mary? Jiro?
I’m more right wing than a lot of people here, but I’m still closer to libertarian than Republican.
And one reason I’m not convinced by “it can’t happen to you” is that it *did* happen to me; I was banned at Thing of Things.
@Jiro
ToT is not SSC. Ozy’s comment policy is explicitly don’t annoy Ozy.
Mary I think is a pretty conventional conservative. Her style is a bit abrasive at times (heavy reliance on drive-by snark), but maybe because she’s on “my side” I find her more amusing than annoying.
Unfortunately, Scott’s policy seems to be “don’t annoy Scott”. Scott has pretty much admitted that if he wants to ban someone he’ll look for an excuse to ban them and they’ll be banned for something which is technically against the rules but which lots of other people do without banning. That’s as good as not having rules and banning at a whim.
One data point, for what it’s worth, Jiro; in general, when Scott has banned people, I’ve thought they deserved it. On the other hand, I do not think you deserve to be banned (here; no comment on ToT, which has different policies for reasons of being different). So if past patterns hold, you’re probably safe.
@ Jiro
Seconding Protagoras — I’ve never seen you say anything that might annoy Scott. In fact, my own score is probably higher than yours.
On the whole, though, I agree with everyone who said that warnings, either individual or general (in open thread posts?) might be healthier for the community.
@ Nita
For a while Scott gave warnings, and even second warnings, and kept track of who had had how many. Now there are a lot more comments and commentors, and some people have been piling on ‘report comment’ till there are too many false reports to sort through. Even keeping track of whether a ban is ready to expire is probably becoming a chore.
I worry Scott is worrying too much about looking for excuses to ban; if ban-hammer is all he has time for, just ban! He doesn’t have to spend his time rule-lawyering himself.
His taste and instincts made ssc a special place where now a lot of people are coming … and criticizing him.
So, Scott, from “Am I allowed to participate?” to “You get an indefinite ban on the spot for suggesting it”, how OK would you be with a SSC Commenter Dead Pool?
@Whatever Happened to Anonymous: What, for actual money? Or just for bragging rights?
i understand why he was banned, but he came off as being mildly autistic, so SA came off as kind of rude for saying something mean to him
I think Scott is pretty fair in his use of the ban hammer. I’ve been going through some of the entries on that list and I’d say pretty much everyone on that list was a toxic poster.
Yup, a lot of people banned were banned for pretty explicit shitposting and often after a long period of trying to pick fights.
I’d go as far to say that he is softer on people he disagrees with. Take James A. Donald for instance. Jim got many warnings for personal attacks on other posters and in the gay marriage thread where he got his first ban he was practically straight up trolling. But he got additional warnings, his first bans were temporary, and such.
That was before the Reign of Terror. Which at this point I’m starting to find actually frightening. I like this community and don’t want to lose it. I wish he *would* go back to *always* giving limited-term bans as warnings first!
@Cord Shirt:
That’s asking Scott to do more work.
As this community grows (which it seems to have, witness the increase in total comments per post), it’s reasonable to assume that the only way he can possibly keep up is do less work per “problem child”.
Eventually he will have to trust a select few to administer temp bans, I’m guessing.
“The mod(s) give(s) warnings prior to handing out any perma-bans” is a necessary condition for a healthy community. The fact that it’s more work does not make it any less necessary. IOW…
“Eventually he will have to trust a select few to administer temp bans, I’m guessing.”
…I think we’re there now.
“As this community grows (which it seems to have, witness the increase in total comments per post), it’s reasonable to assume that the only way he can possibly keep up is do less work per “problem child”.”
Time was a post with more than 500 comments meant that there was some sort of culture war shitstorm in the comments. Even Scott’s most controversial posts garnered maybe 1,000 comments, tops (Radicalizing the Romanceless, Untitled, I’m thinking of).
Now even a mundane open thread has approximately 12,000 comments and since I don’t check this blog every day I’m finding myself dreadfully behind.
Now even a mundane open thread has approximately 12,000 comments
The previous five open threads gathered an average of 1,247 comments each and a maximum of 1,574. Those numbers will climb a bit as the last discussions trickle out, but “approximately 12,000” is an order of magnitude too high.
I’m curious…does anyone here actually work in inside sales? I do (though with my level of experience I would not be what CFAR has in mind) but my guess is that this is very non-representative of the rationalist community as a whole. Anyone have information on rationalist salespeople?
I started out in inside sales before moving into merchandising, and eventually into the more technical/analytical parts of ecommerce. Rationalism as commonly understood around here was pretty useful for sales- the mythos of salespeople is that it’s about winning, so they match up nicely. Plus, learning a great deal about cognitive biases helps you when trying to understand other people’s needs.
The last month I did sales, I was #1 in our salesteam, and I was never one of the “dark arts” guys. I just tried hard to understand the customer, and then offer them exactly what they most needed/wanted. Both of us ended up happier!
This was also my experience when I was in sales. I was often the top salesperson in any given month for the chain of stores I worked for when in college and law school, and one month I was the top salesperson at the computer store I worked in even though I wasn’t allowed to sell to business customers at all. My approach was exactly what you describe. It wasn’t that I was a gifted BS artist or a master manipulator, and it wasn’t that I’m pretty darn smart, unless it takes being pretty darn smart to arrive at what seems like a pretty obvious conclusion.
It must be less obvious than it seems, if both sets of our fellow salespeople weren’t realizing it, or if realizing it, weren’t executing it well. It might be one of those things that are obvious only in retrospect, like the way Scott describes the LW Sequences.
Hello. Long time lurker here. Recently graduated college, and having trouble finding scientific articles to do personal research on topics now that I don’t have access to the university’s databases and access through paywalls. For those of you who know, what sites/databases are typically useful? Also, with respect to the information gathering process(source quality, publisher quality, citations, etc.), how do you go about determining if the quantity and/or quality of articles found is sufficient to make an informed decision?
One resource location you might want to look is your local library’s online resources. For example, the Boston Public Library gives access to JSTOR and a bunch of other article sources to all library card holders.
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ for books
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag for articles
http://sci-hub.io ditto
ETA:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar to request things you couldn’t find otherwise
thank you. i had no idea.
Many local universities will let the public get accounts anyway. You might check that. And, fortunately, publishing preprints on the author’s website is almost the norm these days.
Successful autodidacts: how do you do it? I’m a CS major but I know there’s a lot of stuff I need to delve into on my own if I want to really excel. But I can’t usually muster up the willpower for it. In my free time, I’m either a) too beat from my actual schoolwork to dive into heavy technical reading I don’t actually have to do or b) tempted to take the path of least resistance and dick around on the internet instead of studying emulation or computer graphics or math or any of the other subjects I want to learn about. Should I just treat it as mandatory as I treat my schoolwork?
Get a job. It is an excellent motivator, to lose your job if you can’t learn to do it.
Merely applying to a job can be very motivating. If you know that in two weeks some interviewer is going to ask you a bunch of questions about some particular subject, the fear of being exposed as humiliatingly ignorant can get you to study hard.
Some kind of cool small project that has been behind my motivation almost the whole time. The very first programs I wrote on my TI-83+ calculator were little “screensavers” that supposedly made my classmates think I was smart. the homework timesavers I wrote were intended to buy me more videogame time. The visualizations I made in highschool were solely to impress people at an art school who didn’t believe computers were interesting. Later, the sound source locating software I wrote was again, a little project I thought would impress girls. Serious, it was part of a modern dance production and I was really trying to get on the choreographer’s good side because she was hot. 😛 The software would locate footfalls on the floor and draw various effects around the dancers with a projector.
On a smaller timescale, the motivation that gets you to keep guessing at why your program isn’t working 50 times until you finally get it, is more of kind of competitive mindset. The compiler is taunting you, but it is nothing more than an elaborate puzzle, and you can be pulled in trying to show it who’s boss.
The Super-Easy-Super-Akrasia-Beater: amphetamine. (Or methylphenidate – some prefer it for this purpose.)
I recommend amph/amph-related compounds enough to get accused of being a pharma rep, but I’ve got to counteract the current hippy drug mentality that’s demonizing productivity drugs. Plus, they really do work. If anything in the pharm world has a claim to doing exactly what it says on the tin, it’s these.
How about looking for things you find rewarding that are also good opportunities to study something useful. For example,
… you could make a (simple) video game, and learn a lot about graphics on the way.
Or you can create various forms of procedural art, which I find fun – for example, look at these images from this Castle Generation contest I participated in for fun.
As a more general approach, maybe subscribe to a bunch of blogs / twitter feeds / whatever of people doing cool stuff in the domain you’re interested in. That should naturally make you think more along the lines of “I would make something cool like this and show it / share it on github”. I took the example of computer graphics, but you could do the same with data analysis, deep learning, web design, etc.
Promise to do things that you only have a vague idea of how to accomplish.
Warning: can lead to despair.
My suggestion to you is that while you’re in school, focus on your schoolwork. The other stuff you want to learn will still be there when you graduate. You may find it easier to study something interesting and useful after a hard day of debugging than after a hard day of deriving the runtime complexity of some algorithm. And if you still need external motivation, there are plenty of online classes which are scheduled, and depending on where you live a local university might have an extension school or something.
I suppose I am a successful CS autodidact, so:
1. I always have some project for which the thing I am learning is useful. I never try to learn something by itself in the abstract. (Except when I was in school and that was highly hit-or-miss in retention.)
2. This is the part that would be tricky to reproduce: my parents arranged for me to have a massive amount of free time (unschooling, and I entered college late, on my own initiative). Lots of this time was indeed spent “dicking around on the internet” (well, not the parts from before always-on consumer Internet access was a thing), but you do enough of that and you start wanting to improve the Internet — that is, it was closely associated with an interest in communication technology (the layers of software that bridge between bits-on-a-wire and people) which sparked many educational-as-a-side-effect programming projects.
So, how about some followable advice, hmm—
Never treat anything as mandatory unless it actually is. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it; find a better motivation first.
Don’t “dive into heavy technical reading”. Skim things (not necessarily textbooks, maybe Wikipedia) until you know where to look for information. Then when you reach a point in a project where you have a use for this information (allow yourself to be inspired to start a project by your skimming!), you know what you need to study to be able to attack the problem. This gives you motivation (you will be able to program the thing) and context (you know what it will be good for).
Example of “dicking around” turning into a project, particularly while at school:
When I was in college, I spent a lot of my free time playing Minecraft. Minecraft can be a problem-solving game if you play it like I do (building machines to make my survival-mode life comfortable, fitting them into buildings in an elegant way), but more to the point I got bothered by Minecraft’s update logic glitches (“BUDs”) and some other things, and set out to make my own voxel game structured so that the update logic is as rigorous as any cellular automaton. (The project is stalled at the moment because I noticed an inconsistency I don’t have a satisfactory fix for, but it’s one due to additional choices I made, not the core idea.)
[Meta: I think this comment turned out less coherent than I hoped, but hopefully posting it is more useful than not posting it.]
More than anything, you have to actually want to learn these things. If your desire to study graphics is motivated solely by the feeling you have to because you need more skills to list on your resume, it’s going to be hard. If it’s motivated by real things you want to do that require you to know graphics, you’ll do it because you want to do it.
Fall in love with someone who is an enthusiast for the subject.
Failing that, interact with people who are enthusiasts. My daughter and I just got back from three days of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, and she was commenting on what a good way that was of learning stuff about gems and minerals.
So I’m doing a stylometric analysis to determine who Wertifloke (wrote The Waves Arisen) really is. To do this, I require comparison documents, specifically rationalist fiction that is readily available as a .txt file.
Resources I’m going to use:
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality – Yudkowsky
Luminosity – Alicorn
The Metropolitan Man – Alexander Wales
A Bluer Shade of White – Alexander Wales
Branches on the Tree of Time – Alexander Wales
Three Worlds Collide – Yudkowsky
Shadows of the Limelight – Alexander Wales
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant – Nick Bostrom
Mother of Learning – nobody103
The Last Christmas – Alexander Wales
Friendship Is Optimal – Iceman
Animorphs: The Reckoning – WhatWouldEnderDo
Pokemon: The Origin of Species – DaystarEld
Worm – Wildbow
Ra – qntm
Harry Potter and the Natural 20 – Sir Poley
The Fall of Doc Future – W. Dow Rieder
Time Braid – ShaperV
Trust in God, or, The Riddle of Kyon – Yudkowsky
The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover – Yudkowsky
Peggy Susie – Yudkowsky
Mandragora – NothingPretentious
To The Stars – Hieronym
If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d be glad to take them to have a more complete corpus for comparison.
Potential issues with the comparison:
– Author hasn’t published any other (or very good) rationalist fanfiction. This seems unlikely given the quality of Waves Arisen, but it is possible.
– Given low number of samples, we won’t be able to determine exactly who wrote it with a large degree of confidence.
– Technically this isn’t a scientific study, given that I don’t have a hypothesis that I am testing.
I’d throw in some other major, non-rationalist writers in whatever fandom you’re looking at, too.
Would you at least consider not making your results public? If the author is in fact some better-known person, presumably they have some reason to want to remain anonymous. Silence is a virtue.
Unless it’s Yudkowsky, because if he can be destroyed by the truth, he should be.
Huh. I hadn’t looked into The Waves Arisen since it’s outside my circle of fandom, but I’m impressed to see candidates like this are seriously being considered for the author.
Another possible source of text for analysis would be the winners of those regular /r/rational competitions. Also, I’d suggest throwing in the major HPMOR fanfics, especially Significant Digits by AnarchyIsHyperbole and that Phoenix one (which seem to be the most technically well-regarded.)
It would probably be a good idea to contact the author once you have your results, or even before, although (as you note) this couldn’t identify them with a high degree of confidence.
Just based on the introductory paragraph I’d say it’s either Eliezer (also helps that he’s previously recommended Naruto fanfic) or someone who is very good at imitating his style. And the only reason I’m considering an imitator is because the writing screams “I am Eliezer Yudkowsky” so hard it’s almost protesting too much.
I’m pretty confident it’s not Eliezer. It could be a collaborative work, of course.
I would give considerably higher probability to “the author hasn’t published any other fanfiction.” Good writing generally takes a lot of practice, to be sure, but people who write fanfiction may well have gotten that practice doing other kinds of writing, or writing things that (for whatever reasons) they decided not to publish.
I’m no expert in writing styles, but if it isn’t eliezer, it’s someone trying very hard to pretend to be him (on ch. 4 now). That said, seeing how influential HPMOR is in “ration-fic”, that’s not unlikely itself.
Why are you doing this? Because lots of people have suggested Yudkowsky? Well, then, yes, you do have a hypothesis.
He has published fiction under more than one name, so he is a reasonable candidate, but for the rest of them, it seems pretty implausible that they would assume a pseudonym, especially a new pseudonym. The hypothesis that is someone well-known for non-fiction is more plausible. But that is a lot harder check because people have different styles in fiction and non-fiction.
I’ve finished the study and published the results at https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/461h03/d_who_is_wertifloke/
The analysis appears to show that none of those surveyed is the writer of The Waves Arisen, and if they are, they went to a great deal of effort to hide their similarities.
I plan to repeat it with a larger sample set of fiction, since it really could be any rational author. I’ll also add in some published books.
If you want to keep up with the study, watch https://github.com/Gbear605/Improbably-Inaccurate/tree/master/Wertifloke (or reproduce the results yourself. It was very simple and hopefully well documented)
When you take up a new tool, it is important to test it on known data before applying it to new data. For example, does it cluster together known Yudkowsky works? Well, we can look at your trees and see that no, it does not. Your tool does not think that he has a distinctive style. Therefore it is incapable of distinguishing whether a particular work fits his style or does not fit his style. You can say nothing.
There are two possibilities. One possibility is that EY does not have a distinctive style. Your tool clumps Alexander Wales tighter than EY. So maybe your tool is capable of ruling him out, even if it cannot address EY. But it clumps AW pretty loosely, too, so I think not. The other possibility is that your tool says little about styles. I think that is probably the correct answer.
If I read it correctly, it clusters together stories from the same fandom. That is exactly the opposite of personal style.
I have not heard about The Waves Arisen until now. I’ve just finished reading it, and to me it reads like an early draft of HPMoR. I would be very surprised to find out that EY had not written it — either wholly by himself, or perhaps in collaboration (though this is less likely). The fanfic simply shares too many features with HPMoR for it to be a coincidence.
Link for convenience: The Waves Arisen by Wertifloke
I enjoyed the story very much and recommend it to any fans of Naruto or of rationalist fiction.
So, Kurt Godel believed there was a conspiracy to suppress the works of Leibniz. See:
https://plus.google.com/117663015413546257905/posts/9qM9dZne5fN
That’s a pretty extreme belief, but I wonder if philosophy has been in a cul-de-sac from Kant onward because he rejected the incomplete corpus of Leibnizian rationalism available as a “dogmatic slumber”.
Could one of the best ways to advance human rationality actually be hidden in old manuscripts?
Almost certainly not. Don’t let the name fool you, the “rationalism” found in these parts bears almost no resemblance to anything Descartes, Spinoza, or Leibniz ever said. What’s more, professional philosophy has lately seen a revival of aprioristic metaphysics ostensibly underwritten by some faculty of rational intuition, far closer to the views of the old-timey rationalists than is the watered-down positivism advocated by Yudkowsky and company. It is also false both that Kant trapped philosophy in any sort of cul-de-sac — he could not have, because his influence outside of ethics has waned to basically nil over the last century– and (more controversially) that philosophy is stuck in any sort of cul-de-sac at all.
“Rationalism” is kind of an unfortunate name. The philosophy ’round these parts bears a lot more resemblance to the empiricist tradition.
I think there is a strong case to be made that philosophy’s usefulness is largely over. I think that the scientific method has fully replaced philosophy as the best means for acquiring knowledge. But then again I enjoy the works of Daniel Dennett so perhaps philosophy still has some role to play–just not its original one.
This is absolute nonsense. It’s just a category error.
They study different subject matter.
It’s like saying “Yeah, I think recently physics has fully replaced mathematics.” No. That is not possible. They study different things, and moreover the practice of modern physics is extremely dependent on background mathematical knowledge. The only way for physics to “replace” mathematics would be if physicists decided to abandon mathematics altogether and ceased making quantitative predictions.
Physics can give you equations to plug in and make predictions, but insofar as you start asking what the findings mean, you’re doing philosophy of science. And of course your interpretation of philosophy in general is going to influence how you apply it to the field of science.
The influence e.g. of Spinozistic rationalism on Einstein’s interpretation of relativity, or of positivism on the Copenhagen interpretation of quantium mechanics, is enormous and undeniable.
Quantum mechanics is the go-to example for people who want to say that philosophy is relevant for science. But name one more. Virtually all of the time, science gets on fine without philosophers studying a frequently non-existent subject matter (or semi-competently studying a subject matter that is, in fact, the object of a particular science – happens a lot with linguistics).
@ Creutzer:
I did name another one in that very post: relativity theory.
Going back further, Newton, Leibniz, and the dispute over absolute space.
Ernst Mach and the dismissal of the atomic theory of matter as incompatible with positivism.
In fact, you name an example of an area of physics that doesn’t imply any particular philosophic views, and I’ll tell you how it does.
It’s unclear what this even means. Do scientists claim to know things? Do they claim to be making statements about existence? Yes, they do.
Well, philosophy includes epistemology, which studies how it’s possible to know things. And it includes metaphysics, which studies the basic nature of existence. If scientists don’t have an explicit theory of epistemology and metaphysics, they have an implicit one.
At least it’s conceivable to see how physicists could reject mathematics. They’d have to redo almost everything, but there would still be something left. But what in the world would be left if they consciously avoided discussion of any topic on which philosophy had any bearing?
I suppose: “numbers go in the equation, numbers come out; you can’t explain that.”
Philosophy, as a subject, is not the same as “whatever they do in philosophy departments”. To say that it wouldn’t be too huge of a loss if philosophy departments were eliminated is not the same as saying philosophy is useless. It means you think the particular style of philosophy currently dominant is useless.
Edit: it’s really weird how “philosophy” lined up five times in a row in that last paragraph.
Questions about philosophy’s usefulness really seem to miss the point for me. I don’t really care if philosophy is useful in any sense. I think it’s interesting, and people who are concerned about claiming knowledge about the world probably should be interested in it.
That being said, science will generally get along fine without it, doing crude philosophy when is needs to (like when attacking creationism), or just holding implicit philosophical theses everytime an experiment is performed.
Addendum slogan: philosophy is unavoidable but non-essential
@ Urstoff:
Again, there is a difference between “philosophy” and “arcane technical questions in sub-domains of philosophy”. The former is interesting and absolutely essential. The latter is perhaps-interesting and perhaps-useless.
In that case, they’re not “getting along without philosophy”. They’re just not calling it “philosophy”. It’s as if physics claimed to dispense with mathematics—but then said, “Ah, but of course we’ll retain quantitative calculations. That’s just a part of physics.”
This doesn’t make any sense at all to me. Some implicit theory of philosophy is a necessary prerequisite to making any substantive statement in any field of study whatsoever.
Therefore, it’s unavoidable and completely essential.
Now, if you mean “arcane useless terminological disputes in philosophy”, then yes, they are non-essential. But then they are also avoidable.
What and who do you mean by “positivism”? I’m pretty sure I deny the influence of positivist philosophers on the Copenhagen interpretation.
Other than Schopenhauer, has a philosopher who was not a scientist or mathematician ever had influence on science?
Well, admittedly, I can’t judge examples from the history of physics because I know too little about them. I was therefore narrow-mindedly thinking of contemporary examples and seeing QM as the only one. I think from a contemporary perspective, Spinoza is quite spectacularly irrelevant to relativity as a scientific theory, no matter which heuristic endeavours may have been going on in Einstein’s mind.
There is a huge debate over what’s called scientific realism. Would you say this has, or should have, any impact on what the people at CERN are doing? (There’s also much more to science than just physics.)
Yes, most people do. They, too, get on just fine without philosophising about it. If using any concept that philosophers talk about counts as “doing philosophy”, then of course nobody doesn’t do philosophy. But that’s kind of a weird interpretation of “doing philosophy”.
Aren’t we discussing the usefulness or uselessness of philosophy as a separate discipline? Mathematics has obviously fertilised science many times and is probably still doing so. I don’t know that the same is true of philosophy. (The situation is a bit confounded by physicists weirdly liking philosophy so that there may have been some inspiration going on at a personal level. I’m not convinced this would imply conceptual relevance, it could be, in a way, purely psychological.).
@Vox
The arcane technical questions are what happens when you take philosophy seriously as a form of inquiry, just as has occurred in every other form of serious inquiry. What gets published in Nature (much less a more specialized scientific journal) is just as arcane and technical as anything published in a philosophy journal. Deep inquiry and specialization is the mature endstate of inquiry.
I agree with you that scientists do philosophy even though they don’t call it that (and a generally simple kind of philosophy at that). I’m claiming, however, that science will get along just fine (as a set of inquiries) even if all it does is simple, naive philosophy under some other name. It’s just probably a bit self-deceiving if it claims to be an inquiry that produces truths (rather than an inquiry that produces propositions that are “scientifically supported” according to whatever happens to be the standard of the day).
@ Douglas Knight:
It’s hard to give it an exact definition. It is a type of “radical empiricism” most commonly known for its complete rejection of (what it calls) “metaphysics” and its adherence to the “verficiationist” theory of meaning—in practice, known for arguing that a pretty wide range of statements generally taken to be meaningful are actually meaningless.
I am not saying that positivist academic philosophers directly formulated theories of quantum physics. The influence is indirect: the philosophers created a positivist environment, which influenced the physicists to formulate their theories in a positivistic way. For instance, in the case of Niels Bohr, he was very much influenced by Ernst Mach’s skepticism of causality and identity, who in turn was influenced by 19th-century positivists like Auguste Comte.
And we get very positivistic interpretations, like the idea that a particle doesn’t have any specific position until you “observe” it, at which point it does. Not that it has one but we don’t know what it is (that would be “unverifiable”), but that it simply doesn’t have one. Other interpretations are certainly possible (e.g. the De Broglie pilot-wave interpretation), but whether you view them as more plausible or less plausible is going to depend on your philosophic premises.
Now, the general idea usually given out is that physicists wanted to embrace the traditional view of causality and identity, etc., but that scientific experiments proved them wrong. That is what David Harriman calls the “quantum physics fairy tale” (I don’t agree with everything he ever says, but his lectures on the philosophy of science are pretty good). And it is not true. First came the positivist influences and then came the interpretations. Moreover, if you understand the relationship between philosophy and physics, you would see how nothing in physics could possibly prove or disprove anything in philosophy: the hierarchy is the other way around.
I don’t have the specific source on this one, but one apocryphal story is that Niels Bohr was presenting the “quantum physics fairy tale” to a colleague, arguing that recent new discoveries in physics had refuted old philosophical ideas. The colleague answered him: “But Niels, you were saying all this twenty years ago!”
A similar story can be told of the reject of the concept of the luminiferous aether. The philosophic question is whether there can be space with nothing in it; i.e. whether nothing can exist. The Michelson–Morley experiment does nothing to answer this question one way or the other. The positivist interpretation is: we can’t observe the aether; therefore, it doesn’t exist (this is what they said about atoms, too). But if you go the other way on the philosophic arguments, you will have to say: obviously there must be something there, but we just don’t know what it is at this point.
Does Aristotle count? This is a weird question.
The only way a philosopher could influence science is by either being a scientist himself or by influencing a scientist and thereby doing it indirectly.
I would call Mach a scientist and Comte not. Thus if he influenced Mach, that would count as a philosopher influencing science. It’s tough to adjudicate, though, because Comte claimed to be formalizing what scientists were already doing.
Or Spinoza influencing Einstein. What are you talking about?
Why wouldn’t you think that Aristotle was a scientist?
@Douglas Knight, Have you never read any of Einstein’s writings about himself? He talks about how he was influenced by Spinoza (and other philosophers, like Hume and Mach, and the positivists generally, for that matter).
@ Douglas Knight:
Einstein’s admiration for Spinoza is extremely well-known. For instance:
Spinoza not only influenced Einstein’s pantheism, but Einstein also shared his view that there is no such thing as “contingency” in the universe: everything flows from the nature of God as an inexorable logical necessity. No fact could be otherwise.
This viewpoint also had a very large influence on the way he formulated the “four-dimensionalist” theory of the relativity of simultaneity. Einstein was here strongly influenced by philosophical “eternalism”, which says that there is no such thing as the objective present. From the eternalist theory, for one, it follows that all facts are necessary and couldn’t be otherwise.
But more importantly, the whole idea that time is a static “dimension” and not a process of change is pure eternalism. Einstein didn’t have to formulate his theory the way he did; he could have chosen otherwise. He formulated it in an eternalist way because he was an eternalist.
This is not to mention the whole idea that time and space are actual things that can be “distorted”. That is a philosophical interpretation of space and time, as opposed to the idea that space and time are merely relationships among entities.
Now, it wasn’t all Spinoza that influenced Einstein. There were other philosophers, too. But he didn’t come up with all of these ideas himself.
I absolutely would say he was a scientist. My thought was that some partisans of “we-don’t-need-philosophy” might argue that he wasn’t a “real scientist” because he didn’t use modern methods.
Moreover, he was primarily a philosopher. And to argue that his philosophy did not influence his science seems absurd.
Overall, I don’t understand what point your question was supposed to get across. If it’s supposed to show that philosophy hasn’t influenced science much, it doesn’t show that.
Protagoras, no, I have not read Einstein. Would you like to make a precise suggestion?
I have not read Einstein, but I did make obvious google queries before posting. I did not find people claiming that the influence on relativity was “obvious” or “well-known,” or even existed (not that such claims are at all reliable). I did find lots of quotes like the one Vox posted, which do not seem relevant to me. Vox seems to concede as much. I cannot blame google for drowning me irrelevant quotations, but I can blame Vox.
@ Douglas Knight:
Are you serious? What do you want?
“Here’s how Spinoza influenced my thought: A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, etc.” Sorry, I don’t have that one.
I thought the fact that he called him the greatest modern philosopher might be taken as relevant, especially in the context of how I specifically told you Spinozistic ideas influenced him.
One of the volumes in the Library of Living Philosophers (so called because they were alive when their volumes were being put together; of course they’re almost all dead now) is “Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist.” Like all the volumes, it includes an intellectual autobiography by the subject; that’s the lengthiest discussion of Einstein by Einstein that I’m personally very familiar with, and it mentions some of his philosophical influences.
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Library of Living Philosophers Volume 7, Paul Schilpp, ed ? (Google books confuses me by listing 2 volumes)
Thanks for the recommendation. I will take a look at. However, the first 94 pages, the bilingual autobiographical notes, contain no mention of Spinoza, according to my OCRed copy.
I’ll take your word for it; what I remember the autobiography containing is mentions of Hume, Mach, and positivism. Apparently he talked about Spinoza several times in his letters, but I haven’t read those extensively myself.
Oh, yeah, I should have said: just one mention of positivism, that it lead to the rejection of the atomic theory, even after Planck measured the size of the atom. (Einstein’s compatible second measurement won over the last hold-outs.) Two mentions of Hume. Quite a few of Mach.
Philosophy can be useful without being useful for science. How can science answer questions like: what s knowledge,what s truth, what is the good…?
I disagree. The statement that they study “different subject matter” is not consistent with the history of western philosophy and science. Philosophers from the ancient Greeks onward were trying to discover truths about the world. Aristotle is an obvious case in point. Around the time of Galileo philosophy began to split into two camps. The camp of “natural philosophy” (also known by other names) championed observation and experiment as the best means to gain truths about nature. This camp of philosophers became what we now call scientists. Their list of accomplishments speak for themselves.
The other camp, which continues to this day and is what I meant by “philosophy”, is conceptual rather than experimental. The truths about nature that this camp has discovered is negligible (if in fact there are any). This is not to say that their writings are not interesting or meaningful; only that as means of learning about the world the “conceptual” camp has failed.
@Vox Imperatoris
In response to, “you would see how nothing in physics could possibly prove or disprove anything in philosophy”. I’m not so sure. Darwin destroyed Plato’s theory of forms and essentialism in general.
I think your assumption that science needs a philosophical foundation is question-begging. I don’t at all think that science needs a metaphysical theory. The truth or falsity (or better, the probability) of a scientific hypothesis is determined by experimental results and not by theory.
Of course, scientists make assumptions and have their own world view. If that is what you mean by “metaphysics” then OK. But again those assumptions are ultimately validated or invalidated by experiment.
@TheAncientGeek
“Philosophy can be useful without being useful for science. How can science answer questions like: what s knowledge,what s truth, what is the good…?”
If those are real things then they can be studied by science. If they are merely conceptual entities then they cannot.
Let me put this a different way, what is the accepted, consensus answer by philosophers to the question “what is the good”? I mean what answer would the overwhelming majority of philosophers accept in the same way scientists accept Einstein’s theory of relativity?
Philosophy could be useful for things other than science, e.g. if it could resolve any of the questions The Ancient Geek suggests it might be applied to. Ironically, application of the scientific method suggests that it is not useful for that, because it has failed to do so and there is no reason to expect that it will do so in future.
> Thanks to Bakkot (I assume, but maybe someone else) for improving the comment highlighting function. It no longer resets every time you post a comment!
Yeah, that was me. It’s a bit hacky, but seems to do the job.
Although one or two people have said it does not work or stopped working for them. I’m looking for more details on that from anyone having issues – in particular, is your internet just really slow? (It won’t work if the page takes more than 2 minutes to load.) Are you opening the page again in the meantime? (It’s just using the most recent threshold, so if you open the page again, e.g. in a background tab, this will reset the threshold and when you reply you will see that instead.) Are you posting several comments in a row? (I don’t think this will cause issues, but I’m not sure.)
As always, suggestions for improvement are welcomed, though I’m pretty conservative with UI changes.
Have you tried this since, say, mid-November? There used to be this awful script WordPress included which tended to hang low-power devices, but it’s been removed for months, and I haven’t had any problems loading SSC on my fairly old Android phone since then.
I’ve had mobile safari crash repeatedly on any post with a video in it when trying to load comments. E.g. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/08/ot33-opeth-thread/
Not sure if that’s related.
I’ve had the “don’t reset the new comment list” thing fail and work in the past day or so. Both happened on the same laptop. I don’t know whether it matters, but I use Chrome.
Edited to add: It just worked three times in a row. Maybe it’s become stable for me.
I’ve noticed that it resets to the *original* time I had on first loading the page. If I’m going through the comments by advancing the “since” function, this is largely the same as resetting it to any other number.
Still, it’s nice that it doesn’t immediately fail.
Should now be fixed, hopefully. Out of curiosity, what do you mean by “going through the comments by advancing the “since” function”? Are you just advancing it hour-by-hour and seeing what’s new, or…?
It stopped working for me at some point this evening. After that, every time I posted a comment, the date/time reset. It didn’t reset to the current time, however. The number of comments it showed since the time went from four hundred some down to one hundred some.
But it didn’t reset after that comment. I had left SSC and come back before making it.
The behavior you describe is consistent with you having opened the page in another window while also remaining on this one, since when you post a comment the new page uses your most recent threshold, which is not necessarily the one the page you posted from was using. Do you think you might have done that? If you’re certain you didn’t, then there’s some other bug.
I’ve just changed it to use whatever threshold was on the page when you posted, which might fix your issue once it finishes propagating (if indeed it’s caused by opening the page somewhere in the background).
It’s doing it again this morning, now going to a very few comments since, so presumably resetting the time to almost the present.
I don’t think I’ve opened the page in another window. I sometimes click on a link in someone’s comment, then use the back arrow to get back to SSC. I’ll try to watch to see if that’s connected–but once the problem exists, it persists.
Except that that time it didn’t–I posted the comment above and the time didn’t reset.
A while after posting my previous comment, I noticed that I did indeed have SSC open in two windows. How long that had been the case I don’t know, but it might explain today’s encounter with the problem.
Is there any way to include a list of clickable markup tags? Like the ones on reddit or Econlog.
This is my number-one feature request. Even better if they are connected to keyboard shortcuts.
Yeah, I think I can make this happen when I get a spare hour or two, although I’m not sure if I’ll make shortcuts (I assume you want C-i to insert the italic tag, etc?).
I’m trying to decide how they’ll look UI-wise. Most obvious way would be something like this.
*reign of terror intensifies*
Madoka Magica is a great anime. I highly recommend it. It’s only 12 half-hour episodes, so you can probably muster the time to watch it. I also noticed striking similarities between Madoka Kaname and Scott; they’re both the kindest person ever, they both regularly interact very personably with assholes because they believe every person has worth, and they’re both magical girls.
Furthermore, compare the following quote by Madoka to The Lottery of Fascinations and The Parable Of The Talents:
It’s uncanny.
Did you watch Madoka as it was airing? I did and I loved it, but having recommended it to several people I think a big part of the charm came from having a week to think about each episode and discuss it with others, and watching it after the fact (and in bulk) doesn’t work. I think Haruhi is another show of this type, except there I’m on the other side – I watched it way after it aired, and saw all episodes in the span of 2-3 days, and disliked it for it.
I did not, but I did watch it over the course of a couple of weeks, and I think that might have contributed to my appreciation of it; my friends who watched it all at once seemed too tired to really appreciate it by the end.
(I find it mildly spooky that the final episodes were delayed by a natural disaster during the original airing.)
I binge-watched it on Netflix, and I still hold it in high esteem.
Likewise. Madoika is extremely fantastic, and I don’t think binging it hurts the quality at all.
I saw the first season of Haruhi all at once, but watched season 2 week by week with /a/ as it came out.
Oh boy, was that a trip!
Has there ever been a greater trolling event in the history of television? There might be some that I don’t know of.
I’m still convinced that there should be an art museum exhibit where they just play Endless Eight on loop.
I binge watched Madoka, and as far as I can tell that didn’t ruin the experience for me. Though it certainly is one that it’s especially fun to discuss with others. I also binge-watched Haruhi, and I think you may have a point there, though the bits that seemed over-done or that dragged might still have annoyed me even if I were watching just one episode a week (though I also think Haruhi has enough good points to make up for the flaws).
Maybe I’m just too much of a contrarian, but watching it live while discussing it with people almost killed my enjoyment of it.
I think the prescription is to watch, then talk, then watch, then talk, not to let people talk during the show.
I’ve been reading a Madoka fan-fic lately. It’s not my usual fare but pretty good.
It’s impossible to sort out the great fanfics from the decent ones without reading for an hour or a couple, so I really appreciate your recommendation.
This. Rationalist-recommended fanfic has provided me with a great deal of enjoyment lately, and I have actually actively been looking for more in the last few weeks. Does anyone know of a list of recommended fic, incidentally?
You can check out my Favorites on FanFiction.Net – I recommend starting by searching through the list for a completed fanfiction of a work you have read/watched. The ~350 completed fics in that list may seem like a lot, but I do try to be selective – my less-liked stories are shunted to “Rory’s semifavorites”.
Here are a few stories from that list you might like, if choosing one is too difficult: The Best Revenge for Harry Potter, Hogyoku ex Machina for Bleach, and In Flight which can be read without having seen Fate/stay night and Sekirei.
A good rationalist Naruto fanfiction not published on FFN is The Waves Arisen by Wertifloke, mentioned upthread. I reread it yesterday and it was still quite interesting.
If you are okay with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfiction, you can also check out my 9 Top Favorites on FIMFiction. In particular, Friendship is Optimal, a story exploring AI, doesn’t require knowledge of the show.
haha, late replies are best!
Read Waves Arisen a couple weeks back, when someone mentioned in here that they didn’t like it. I enjoyed it pretty okay, kinda wish it hadn’t stopped when it did. Friendship Is Optimal I devoured probably a year ago, and man if that wasn’t an amazing story.
The rest are new to me, and thank you for them!
Neat. Does this imply that you’ve seen Madoka Magica proper? What did you think of it?
I’m told the quintessential rationalist Madoka fanfic is To the Stars. I have not read it.
To The Stars is long and ongoing, but does a great job of blending magical girls with classic space opera.
(To answer anon’s speculation, I watched Madoka all at once and loved it.)
I also really like Fargo. It’s a bit like Worm in the way that it’s also a not-quite-YA horror-action urban fantasy with hardass young female protagonists, but I found it leaner, meaner and generally funnier (mostly black humor with bits of the absurd). Interestingly, after all the large amount of scheming and strategizing I’ve lately encountered in fiction it’s refreshing that in Fargo the protagonist isn’t a tactical genius or even particularly smart.
Probably better if you’re acquainted with the genre (“Sailor Moon” is the best-known example stateside) so you have a sense of what it is that’s going horribly wrong.
Indeed it is! I appreciate it especially for pointing out the most awesome feature of being alive: The world is what you make it, and most of the time you are limited only by your imagination, because magic (err science) is real and humans are its stewards.
Madoka Magica is a great anime, but very much an anime fan’s anime, and not recommended for people newer to the genre.
More casual fans might enjoy Death Note, which bears some relation to the http://pastebin.com/QgJVYgjj politics this blog sometimes engages with.
Odd – people said that about (e.g.) Evangelion & TTGL: that is, that you can’t really appreciate them without watching decahours of classic mecha shows. But actually, you totally can. Certainly not as much, but it’s not hard either – they’re good shows as well as deconstructions/reconstructions/parodies/love-letters. Or, it’s harder to understand what the heck’s going on in Kara no Kyoukai without familiarity with the wider Nasuverse canon, but I’d still recommend it as a starting-point because they’re really great movies on multiple levels and the understanding isn’t worth slogging through the Fate/* stuff for. It’s probably more fun to just hack together your own interpretation anyway.
Take this with a grain of salt, though – I never watched Madoka and have ended up osmosing some (all?) of the major plot points instead. A foolish mistake, in retrospect.
The new Fate/* shows are really good though, and totally accessible to newcomers. (And the original VN is a modern classic of world literature, but you can hardly expect someone to play it.)
And honestly, if you’re watching Eva or Guren Lagann without some basic familiarity with the genre they’re riffing on, you’re doing it wrong. You might still enjoy yourself, the same way a lot of people enjoyed Forrest Gump because it had a funny retard in it, but I can’t sanction that sort of thing.
I was able to appreciate some (but not all) of the deconstructive aspects of Eva even without having seen any anime at all before – it just takes some inferential ability.
(Partly because some of what Eva’s taking apart are universal tropes like the kid hero who wants to save the world and can do it too, partly because ‘oh they’re emphasizing some explanation that would normally be glossed over in an action sci-fi series’ or ‘they’re treating emotional reactions to things more realistically than a typical action story’ are easy enough for an observant viewer to notice).
Some of the deconstruction elements are subtle though. If you weren’t watching robot anime before, the idea of bio-organic anime (the EVA has teeth!) was completely original and out of left field. EVA as far as I know was the trope codifier for that. The original design of the prog knife is a box cutter, a really insane touch that hits home you are having kids fight, cause that’s what they use. The reboot got rid of that.
And you can’t really beat Stein’s Gate IMHO at least . . .
It’s actually better if you don’t watch robot shows when watching TTGL, because it becomes a lot worse and less creative. It HEAVILY rips off of Getter Robo-Spiral Energy is literally a cut and paste of the Getter Beams, and GR had the whole idea of supermassive mecha (Getter Emporer) first. The drills owe a bit to King of Braves Gaogaigar, as well as the whole “courage powers everything.”
Eva though is such an excellent deconstruction it escapes that.
edit: Also, if you like TTGL, Martian Successor Nadeisco is a wonderful deconstruction in the same lines that predated it, and is also very hilarious. TTGL also ripped it off too, but that involves spoilers.
I feel like people in the rational-sphere (ie people with high IQ and high Openness) are less likely to need to be “eased into” anime than Joe Random, who might be better starting out with Cowboy Bebop. And aside from the character designs, it’s not like MM is super heavy on anime tropes that outsiders might find awkward – ie it’s not like recommending Bakemonogatari to a newbie.
(Personally my first anime was Evangelion and I loved it).
Shaft isn’t really anime tropes, it’s Shaft tropes, and even many anime fans don’t like them. A lot of their style currently tends to be more due to cost reduction than anything. Compare Kagerou Daze or Nisekoi to Moon Phase Tsukuyomi. The latter has an actual budget, so you get far less of the scratchy storyboards, black screens filled with text, etc.
(Sorry, i tend to have many opinions on anime out of love of the genre.)
I guess I must have an even lower IQ than I thought, because IMO Cowboy Bebop was great. It’s a totally different anime as compared to EVA or Lain, but “different” doesn’t mean “bad”. Cowboy Bebop handles story and character development in a way that these other animes simply cannot, due to the way they’re structured.
Don’t worry, we can have our own low-IQ, entry-level-loving anime club. We’ll discuss which version of FMA is better and whether Monster or LotGH is the best series ever.
I get the impression that LotGH is far above entry-level. Also, it shows you how much I know: I have never heard of Monster.
My level is, like, Dragonball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, Inuyasha, Gundam Seed, and Death Note. I guess the latter two are (relatively) more cerebral. I watched the first three as a kid/teenager.
I did like gwern‘s summation of Death Note: a show about how, even when given the perfect murder weapon, someone is still stupid enough to screw it up and get caught.
I am currently watching Rose of Versailles, which I like so far.
LotGH and Monster are weird cases, I’ll admit.
The thing is that, while they’re not very well known to non-anime-fans, due to their subject matter, presentation, etc. they have a wider appeal than more specifically genre series.
There’s no need to be defensive. The point about “accessible” anime is that everyone can enjoy them, both clueless newbies and anime veteran supergods, so enjoying them doesn’t actually say much of anything about you. I liked Cowboy Bebop; for my money it’s better than Eva or Lain.
Now the absolute best anime is unlikely to be the absolute most accessible anime, just because you can only maximize one variable. But there’s plenty of room to enjoy anime that’s not the absolute best.
Berserk is the best anime ever.
Put your glasses on.
Yes…no one I showed Madoka too even remotely enjoyed the show, though Madoka ranks as one of my favorite shows/movies/books/etc. of all time.
My Wife absolutely loved Code Geass, which I did not expect. She’s normally a Disney-and-RomCom kind of girl.
On one hand, it seems that way to me too, but on the other hand, my girlfriend really liked Madoka despite not having watched much anime previously. And there’s not much good magical girl anime to ease someone into Madoka. (Maybe Nanoha? But it’s not that great.)
There’s Card Captor Sakura, which besides being brilliant in its own right (I still listen to the OSTs) is I think one of PMMM’s explicit models. Kyubey’s design echoes Keroberos’, the introduction of Madoka’s home and parent struck me as a deliberate reflection of Sakura’s; and Homura is nothing more or less than Grimdark Tomoyo.
Depending on how much you’re willing to stretch your definition, there’s also Magic Knight Rayearth and Princess Tutu (Princess Tutu is better than Madoka, IMO).
CCS is rather long and IMO too slow-paced.
Princess Tutu is one of my favorite *things* ever, but it’s also incredibly hard to recommend to people, since there aren’t any obvious draws like there are with Madoka.
Speaking of weird, vaguely-within-the-magical-girl-genre, how about Revolutionary Girl Utena?
Utena is hella good, but it’s not quite a magical-girl story. It’s also deconstructive in a lot of ways that you’ll miss if you’re not already familiar with shoujo anime.
It’s probably worth watching even if you’re not, though.
I liked Madoka better than Princess Tutu, but I did like Princess Tutu.
Madoka is a bit overrated. Shadow Star Narutaru essentially did what it did far earlier, and without the needless Faustian abstractions. It’s also much more brutal about the realism of power corrupting, and probably harder to watch. Madoka is essentially cosmic horror, but Narutaru is real horror. What happens when you give the average teen an indestructible pokemon? In Pokemon it’s fine, but when teens bully or abuse each other, or you grow up with abuse from your parents, or you’re crazy drunk with power…
Also, in manga, if you like Madoka, Alien Nine is a wonderfully insane take on the idea of pokemon. A tremendous deconstruction of “gotta catch em all,” as three young girls take part in an after school alien fighting club. They team up with their “mon,” a frog-like winged animal that they wear as helmets, as they capture aliens that wind up in their school to cause trouble. But the program has a purpose, and there’s a shattering cost to being an alien fighter.
Alien Nine has an anime, but it’s brief and ends just as the series gets good. Even then though there’s nightmarish images aplenty. Very unnerving, especially with the subtext about how you change as you go through the teen years.
>Madoka is a bit overrated.
It’s impossible to not be overrated when you’re a lovechild of the holy trifecta of anime overratedness: Shinbo directing, Urobuchi writing and Kajiura soundtrack.
I try not to hold it against the show.
At least it’s legitimately good. It just seems to be lauded a bit too much. There’s some anime I can’t even fathom why it’s as popular as it is. Akame Ga Kill for american viewers, Terraformars for the JP.
I’m afraid you’ve lost me with your post-2011 anime knowledge.
Honestly, the Faustian themes were my favorite part. But I like Faust.
I have not seen Madoka, but I’d like to chime in with my +1 for Narutaru (a.k.a. Shadow Star).
The first episode of the show introduces us to the protagonist: a young high school girl who is visiting her grandparents, has a fun day at the beach, and meets a cute little star-shaped critter buddy. It’s all pretty fun and lighthearted. It is also absolutely the last lighthearted episode of the show. From that point on, there’s nothing but an exponential downhill slope into the configuration spaces of unimaginable power, unwinnable scenarios, personal sacrifice, death, madness, and the end of the world. Human minds — not even children’s minds — were not made to endure the pitiless, rational calculus that is required for survival in the new world of their own making. Some break early. Some are not as lucky…
My partner and I saw its U.S. premiere — at Otakon, I think. It was only the first few episodes.
…you can guess where they stopped.
Yeah, we picked it up and binged the rest of it as soon as the bluray was available. One of my favorite shows ever.
On the good magical girl series, I recommend the webcomic Magical 12th Graders:
http://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/magical-12th-graders/ep-0-prologue/viewer?title_no=90&episode_no=1
The heroine tend to choose the easy/blunt way out for better or worse (see the short prologue for linked above for a good example).
There is good tragedy in there
It’s a good view of the worst aspect of the Korean education system.
“striking similarities between Madoka Kaname and Scott”
I never realised how much I needed fanart of our host in a frilly pink dress.
Question for those of you that drew self-defense from the lottery of fascinations; what would be the closest real-world analogue, if any, to that principle which serves as the centerpiece of Professor Quirrell’s Battle Magic curriculum in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationlity (quoted below for the ones who haven’t read it)?
Note that Professor Quirrell intends this principle to apply to more than just magical creatures, since he uses it to advice Hermione to flee Hogwarts later in the story:
Closest thing I can remember is Penn and Teller’s Bullshit where they announced that instead of learning martial arts to buy a gun, claiming that the legal and ethical consequences are the same. (This was undercut with footage of aspiring martial artists delivering blows sufficient to kill or maim to dummies lying on the ground (They noted that self defense should include self defense law). They also advised throwing wallets and running away.
If I am not mistaken, Bruce Lee followed similar advice, carrying a revolver to dissuade stalkers and “challengers”.
Penn and Teller, in this case, are wrong. The legal and ethical consequences are the same if you kill the guy, but while it’s not exactly hard to kill someone hand-to-hand if you’re a much better fighter, you generally need to be trying pretty specifically to kill them. Accidents do happen — every year or so I hear of some guy that fell badly or something after one punch and died as soon as he hit the ground — but they’re rare.
The big advantage of martial arts in a self-defense context is that it’s much easier to control the amount of force you use, especially if you train in a style like jujitsu that has options other than strikes on tap. The big disadvantage is that it’s not always immediately obvious how far you can escalate, which might force you to actually escalate where a gun or a knife would scare an attacker off without violence.
(On the other hand, the big disadvantage of a gun or a knife is that if they call your bluff, you need to use it or you’re in worse trouble than before. There is no scenario worse than carrying a weapon you’re not prepared to use.)
Source: am pretty serious martial artist, and decent but not exceptional pistol marksman.
A couple of thoughts.
1) Martial artists tend to be fixated on the ideal of the duel. This is a failure of some gun enthusiasts as well, I admit. Anecdata: I’ve been robbed at gun- and knife-point more than once. The smallest number of miscreants was 3. The largest 6, but in exceptional circumstances. In the real world, you want a self-defense mechanism that’s going to allow you to disengage more easily from multiple attackers, and which will act as a deterrent against numbers. That’s a firearm.
2) When carrying a firearm, escalation can also become a problem, but in a different way. Taking up a threatening stance isn’t likely to result in legal issues, but in some places, revealing that you’re carrying might just earn you an arrest for brandishing. Judgment is essential.
3) Even assuming that the martial artist isn’t a member of a school that mostly teaches combat-themed fitness – as most are – controlling yourself in a violent interaction, with the wash of exotic chemistry running through your system, is not all that easy. Yes, contact sparring and similar training will help, that’s the point of them. It’s still conducted in safe circumstances, when you’re not trying to make decisions at the same time with safety and property on the line. You’re not going to have the fine control that you’re expecting, at least the first couple of times, and hopefully you don’t get into enough serious altercations that you do build up these calluses.
4) It’s much easier to learn passable close-range pistol marksmanship than it is to become a competent martial artist. The gun is also an option for eg. the wheelchair-bound, the elderly, or anyone else with physical limitations. Martial arts may be great for young and middle-aged men, but anyone else is going to run headlong into the limitations of physics and anatomy.
Yeah, multiple attackers are common in serious self-defense scenarios — and for a number of reasons I’d actually recommend treating multiple attackers as a threat on the level of a weapon, in which case the whole escalation-of-force deal becomes much less salient. You’re starting at a huge disadvantage; you need to erase that as quickly as possible, or legal and ethical concerns will be the least of your worries.
But, as I said elsewhere, serious self-defense scenarios aren’t usually what you’re going to be using your kung fu or whatever on.
No objections re: ease of use, or the equalizer thing. I’d probably recommend buying a gun there too.
I agree with the adrenaline thing too, but that’s at least as much an issue with guns as it is with empty hand. I took a pistol class once where they had us run hundred-yard sprints just to get our adrenaline up, then fire at targets. Hardly anyone could hit anything — and a lot of the people in the class were cops, active military, people who actually do this for a living.
Fair enough. I did read your post and do agree that the dramatic scenarios are also the less likely. Don’t intend to sound like the expectation is life and death struggles around every corner.
Martial artists tend to be fixated on the ideal of the duel. This is a failure of some gun enthusiasts as well, I admit.
This. If whoever is teaching you to “fight”, doesn’t teach you the basics of how to fight A: men with fists, B: men with clubs, C: men with knives, and D: men with guns, they probably aren’t teaching you how to fight so much as how to win athletic competitions. If they teach you how to use a particular sort of weapon and most of the training involves an adversary with the same sort of weapon, then it is nearly certain they are teaching you a competition sport. Whether they know it or not.
From reading Her Wits About Her, a book of accounts of women defending themselves, it’s quite possible (not guaranteed) to avoid being overwhelmed when attacked if you’re willing to settle for escape rather than victory.
I think all the accounts were of sole attackers, which might be a more common situation for women than men.
As I recall, the book started with women talking their way out, and generally speaking, I think talking one’s way out should be taught.
@Nancy Lebovitz
My dad has many years of martial arts under his belt, and he ran me through a lot of “talk yourself out” concepts when I was a young teenager. He encouraged me to think of things that would unnerve or distract an attacker, or to go along with a non-violent situation until I saw an opening to leave. Caveat on the second one: getting into a car with an attacker should be avoided at nearly all costs.
One memorable conversation: I didn’t swear much in high school. We were talking about violence from acquaintances, and he said that my reputation for not swearing could come in handy. “If you’re in trouble with some guy, and he knows you don’t swear much, letting loose with a bunch of vulgar language could throw him off guard enough to get away.” It was an idea I hadn’t considered, leveraging the existing relationship as a self-defense technique.
@Helldalgo
I have some odd reactions to danger and anger that may or may not be a form of cataplexy (I’m narcoleptic).
When I’ve been in adrenaline inducing danger, I tend to dissociate and handle things smoothly and almost robotically. Works great for unexpected car accidents right in front of you.
When I’m angry, I get weak at the knees and can’t seem to hold onto things. This is a very rare state for me; I’m very even tempered. The last time this was triggered was when I found out my (now) ex-wife was cheating on me. I dropped my keys and phone and slumped against a wall for a few minutes.
Getting really quiet and turning cold is disconcerting, according to my friends, and has done a decent job of defusing a few fights or keeping my involvement to a minimum.
I’ve seen one or two people who either purposefully or naturally go from calm to “puffed up” to foul mouthed psycho right before violence breaks out (if it does). It has not been very effective with strangers but it might with acquaintances.
@Nancy: Verbal self-defense is absolutely underrated, yes. Definitely one of the places you want to have meaningful strong language available. And, if necessary, scream like a girl – that’s why it was invented. Physical posturing is also relevant here.
Self-defense for girls and women is probably going to be focused on the question of rape and sexual assault, for obvious reasons. And in that context, the class-based distinction I raised earlier gets transformed to “Are you more worried about date rape, or stranger rape”? Rape by strangers, simply breaking free and running may not be enough. “Date rape” is far more common, the police frown on you actually killing the perpetrators, but it’s also much easier to avoid the necessity altogether. But in some cultural contexts, that might mean avoiding most of the legitimate romantic opportunities you’d like to pursue and would find your life diminished if excluded from.
My preference would be to focus first on strong verbal self-defense skills and second on rapist-killing skills, but it’s not my problem and it’s a different problem for different women.
@Winfried
I don’t think the “danger” reaction, at least, is that unusual; I have a similar reaction to danger, and I remember investigating it and finding out it’s not uncommon after the first time it happened (a car accident; car destroyed, but fortunately no bodily injuries). It’s certainly a _useful_ reaction, and doesn’t seem to hurt large-muscle control; I’ve avoided other car accidents in that state. I get the shakes afterwards.
From a usenet discussion of the usefulness of martial arts– about half the people who replied said that the most valuable thing for them was knowing how to fall safely. I suggest that even those who prefer guns should learn to fall safely.
A fast search didn’t turn up any information about risks from falls for the non-elderly — I wanted the total risk in the hopes of comparing it to the risks from being attacked in such a way that a gun or martial arts might help.
I will say that while gravity isn’t as dangerous as a human enemy, gravity is very persistent.
Agreed, being able to fall safely and “roll with a punch” (or any blow for that matter) are probably the two most underrated and generally useful skills that you can pick up from practicing martial arts or full contact sports.
I have loved this youtube series as a resource:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EemFtE9V0R4
Oooh, a chance to ramble and procrastinate. A twofer.
Speaking as someone who used to teach,
Yes, learning to fall correctly is what will benefit the average individual the most, as most individuals don’t get into one-on-one fights. I would note that while I can teach someone how to fall in a single class period, it takes lots and lots of practice for it to become ingrained enough that you don’t revert to instinct when it happens out of the dojo.
Guns are a mixed bag. If you aren’t confident that you can keep physical control of the gun or the other person has already drawn and will see you draw yours, it is generally best to leave it holstered.
Some people take issue with the fact that reputable instructors tell their students to go through significant effort to avoid fights, as it gives the appearance that we don’t have confidence in what we are teaching (not that I’ve seen that here, but I have seen it). The reason for this is that if someone attempts to engage you, the best case scenario is that you come out as well as you were before the fight. Fighting in self-defense is inherently a losing proposition for you. There is no ‘winning’, there is only ‘not losing’.
Self-defense courses for women are way overrated. See the issues below and then add “large strength differential” and “lack of practice” to the list.
Sparring isn’t very effective in preparing yourself for a fight. It can help with the muscle memory in learning how to dodge/block, however:
1: People tend to pull their punches on both sides. Which means that the attacks are slower and you inadvertently train yourself not to hit correctly.
2: People are still adhering to some level of rules. You can’t expect that in a real fight.
3: You don’t get that fight/flight response, which will totally throw you for a ride. Fight/flight tends to kill muscle memory, which leads to all that training going right out the window.
Most one-on-one fights end up on the ground and are over in 60 seconds. So any self-defense that doesn’t cover ground work is leaving a huge gap and you have to learn to pace yourself. Fight/flight will make you want to burn all your energy really really fast. Don’t do that if you can avoid it. If possible, you let the other person exhaust themselves then you escape/counter.
Reading the situation is paramount. You want to know the fight is coming well before the first swing. If you think you have been targeted and escape isn’t a good option, then this is one of the few times it is a good idea to act really creepy around strangers. Creepy probably won’t work around people that know you. In that case, gather what advantages you can.
If you are going to seek training, do your homework on the instructor first as there is a lot of B.S. floating around. Warning signs include:
New age/quackery side businesses.
Does not train anyone that competes.
Unusual/exotic styles. If it isn’t something you have heard of, be wary.
High testing fees and/or an excessive amount of ranks. Generally shouldn’t be more than 10 before an adult gets into the black belt ranks.
Not registered with a reputable national organization. Most legitimate black belts have their rank registered with a national organization, which means they can be validated. Doesn’t prevent the org from selling the ranks though, so watch the reputation.
Never spars with students. (health notwithstanding)
Claims to have an unusually high rank. I would raise an eyebrow at anyone claiming to be higher than a 4th degree black belt, especially if they are under 40. I think the youngest person I have met that had the skills to back up a 4th degree was in their mid-30s.
Re rank: in most systems, ranks above 4th or 5th degree say nothing about technique and a lot about teaching experience (not necessarily teaching skill) and the internal politics of the organization they belong to. Contra Jason K, I don’t think ranks in the 5-6 dan range are an automatic red flag — 3rd or 4th dan is the traditional rank to be starting an independent dojo at, and the best teachers will have been in the game for a while — but if someone claims to be 7th dan or above, it should be easy to find out who they are just by Googling their name, and if you can’t then it means they’re almost certainly bogus. 9th or 10th dan is a definite red flag unless you’ve heard of their system before and you know for a fact that they’re very important in it. I have only met two people at 10th dan or equivalent; both were special occasions, and one was overseas.
Reputable systems include a time-in-rank requirement for dan levels, and do not give out black belts to minors. This essentially dictates minimum ages for the various black belt levels, and actual practitioners will generally not advance at the maximum rate unless they’re exceptionally dedicated. I know one guy who made it to 4th degree in the minimum of 9 years after his shodan promotion (he was, I think, 32 at the time), but that’s very rare.
It is a shame that there are not schools that teach Wrestling to adults as I think it is fabulous basic traingng for self defense.
The big thing is that it allows for real sparing at full speed and gives you a real taste of fight or flight type adrenaline.
Additionally It teaches
“learning how to fall”
how not to be taken off your feet
how to escape from someone’s grasp
how to roll around on the ground to gain position or escape.
How to fight through and apply pain.
And beause of full speed sparring it gives fantastic conditioning.
@eccdog:
It teaches really bad instincts for most self defense though.
But if you really want it, judo is a martial art taught to adults, and that is even more applicable.
@HeelBear
What do you have in mind when thinking about bad instincts?
Grappling with someone while their buddies polish their shoes on your head is not a good self-defense strategy.
I distrust arts that’re organized as sports — wrestling, judo, TKD. That’s not to shit on the skills they teach you; you’ll get as good an education in grappling in a freestyle wrestling class as you’ll get in any other art, probably better. But they have the Goodhart’s Law problem: once you start judging by any simplified metric, you start drifting towards the metric and away from what you’re really after. So they tend to overspecialize, effectively giving you a hammer and inviting you to see every problem as a nail.
If you’re lucky, it’s a claw hammer (freestyle wrestling, judo). But sometimes it’s a deadblow mallet, a splitting maul, or an upholstery hammer.
(UFC was designed to avoid this problem, but only within limits — there are things it structurally can’t cover, like weapons and multiple attackers. Even if you ignore those, though, you can already see it starting to head in a more specialized direction.)
Agreed,
But I am thinking about the ability not to be taken to the ground to begin with and the ability to get out and get away. And less about the ability to attack someone.
Against a crowd pretty much nothing is going to work other than running or a gun. But the ability to keep someone from holding onto you or holding you on the ground is an important first step to running.
But really more than anything, what I think is great about wrestilng and boxing too, and heck even football or rugby is that you get to experience getting knocked down, getting into something that very closely resembles a fight and you get lots of full speed practice at it.
ETA: I am clearly biased here as a former hs wrestler, but I grew up in a fairly tough city and a fairly tough school where fights were not uncommon. The problem I observed with folks who had learned martial arts or self defense was they just had so little experience applying those skills in something that approached the conditions of a fight. The best fighters fought alot and wrestlers tended to be good fighters because they had lots of real fight or flight experiences. So while technique wise something like wrestling might not be optimal it more than made up for that in its ablilty to create lots of high level sparing conditions that taught a lot of core muscle memory skills.
Self-defense classes are mostly useless, if you mean the seminar kind where you go to a dojo or a gym three hours a week for a month and get a certificate at the end. They’ll give you the right techniques — sometimes — but not the familiarity to apply them without thinking for half a second first, which is way too long. And they’ll do nothing for your conditioning, which is just as important if not more so.
Many dojos also — understandably — tend to be reluctant to let high-school-aged kids spar with each other, and you need to spend time sparring (ideally at or close to full contact) or you’re doing glorified cardio.
@eccdog:
One issue is the group dynamic. Another issue is that grappling is just not very good if you are over matched (size or strength).
Now, I wrestled in HS. In a fight a might still go to wrestling, but it would have to be a fight where I judged we were trying beat each other, not maim each other.
Because, if I start winning a wrestling contest, the number of ways that I am exposed to serious harm from the other guy goes way up if stabbing, biting and eye gouging are on the docket.
Of course, far better to over-match the other person, and being really good at anything can give that advantage. So, that is a point in your favor.
Isn’t that just consequentialism as applied to self-survival/thriving? (“self” also able to apply to self-chosen groups)
This all sounds like the philosophy of Krav Maga, as taught to civilians. Don’t seek fights, run away from fights if possible, incapacitate (kill) all threats ASAP if not.
I suspect a lot of that is Krav Maga’s military background talking. It’s good advice if you’re regularly faced with people who’re trying to kill or badly hurt you, but you almost never are as a civilian; if you’re in a place where you use martial arts skills, it’s probably something along the lines of breaking up a fight between friends, or dealing with an belligerent drunk or an overly handsy character of some kind, or working as a bouncer or mental health worker. Even the classic mugging scenario (which is comparatively rare in most subcultures) probably won’t take lethal force to resolve unless you’re dealing with a weapon, and most of the value added by martial arts there comes from giving you the attitude you need not to look like a soft target.
Hmm. I’d have gone the other way ’round.
Option 1: Apparate away. (de-escalation, avoidance)
Option 2: Assuming that you’re supporting others, defending/claiming an essential objective, constrained in ability to escape or will be followed/attacked later (can wizards follow an Apparate? I don’t know the setting well enough to know), don’t muck about with anything less than absolute guaranteed lethal force.
>(can wizards follow an Apparate? I don’t know the setting well enough to know)
Not in canon. It’s possible that a way exists in HPMOR.
On the other hand, Apparating in melee does canonically bring your attacker with you, which would make it ineffective against e.g. the common pixie. (There’s also the issue that many HP monsters have psychological or AOE attacks that may affect you before you’ve noticed them, or are supernaturally stealthy, or have humanlike intelligence and/or rudimentary magic of their own.)
“On the other hand, Apparating in melee does canonically bring your attacker with you, which would make it ineffective against e.g. the common pixie.”
but fairly effective against a mountain troll . . .
Depends – are we talking about a barroom brawl, or defending your wife against a rapist?
Off the top of my head, six major justifications for violence, depending on cultural context.
1. Waging just war
2. Privately defending innocent parties (including yourself) against murder or other heinous crimes, i.e. most violent felonies
3. Privately defending innocent parties against lesser crimes
4. Enforcing social norms by hurting defectors and/or apprehending them for future punishment if they won’t submit peacefully
5. Gaining and/or retaining status by demonstrating martial aptitude, courage, and will
6. Practicing for any of the above.
For cases 1 and 2, YudkowskyQuirrel has it about right. For the rest, no – there are culture-specific rules of engagement, which may or may not allow limited use of lethal force (e.g. duelling in case 5, shooting fleeing felons in case 4) but must be obeyed. Winning by violating the rules is worse than losing.
In modern Western civilization, for Church’s “G” and “E” class hierarchies, case 5 is in most cases no longer part of the culture, and there is a strong presumption that cases 3 and 4 will be handled by the police whereas case 6 is for dedicated training grounds. It is still permissible as a private citizen to defend yourself against minor assaults or thefts or apprehend fleeing criminals, but it isn’t often necessary (some combination of the police and insurance companies should set things right in the end) and there is little tolerance for excessive force if you do. In this environment, the top priority is to learn to fight to win, dirty and lethal, preferably with firearms if they are available. And to then not fight for any reason other than class 1 or 2, even if it means letting people push you around. Probably you’ll never wind up fighting at all, and getting pushed around a little bit. That’s OK.
In the Churchian ‘U’ and ‘L’ hierarchies, status-through-violence is still sometimes a thing, and police protection against minor crimes is less reliable. Not being able to hold your own in class 3-5 fights may result in your being pushed around a lot, to the extent of a significantly dimnished quality of life. Being imprisoned for killing someone in a barroom brawl, also diminished quality of life. So there it may be worth focusing on winning minor fights within your culture’s rules of engagement, trusting that the enhanced status will reduce the chance of anyone trying to kill you and your less-than-optimal fighting skills may still be sufficient if you do.
Better still is to learn to fight both clean/safe and dirty/lethal, well enough that you won’t slip up and use the wrong skillset for the fight. But that requires much more training time than most people are willing to devote, unless as you note they “drew self-defense from the lottery of fascinations”. In which case, consider a career in the military or law enforcement.
Reminds me of the old joke:
“A karate black belt and a judo black belt walk into a bar. Twenty minutes later a fight breaks out. Of the two black belts, who wins?”
A: It depends on which one is the better go player, but really, that’s a very short game…
Context, after the puzzled look: Well, after the two black belts walked into the bar, they saw that the crowd was unruly and hostile, so they just borrowed the go board from the bartender and left. When people started throwing chairs, the master fighters were no where near the place.
(I got told this so far back that a lot of schools were still keeping with the white/black belt division, without the colored ones between.)
…
As John Schilling says, there are specific cases for legit use of violence. And there is a difference between the fight you went looking for and the one that was forced upon you.
However, Apparate only works if you’re a wizard, just as running like a deer is not an option for my great uncle with a cane. The effect use of violence to oppose unlawful violence (like armed robbery, home invasion, etc) decreases the perceived utility of this unlawfulness on both those of us who can run away and those who can’t.
I’m not entirely sure what “real-world analogue” in this context really means but it should be noted that Quirrel is basically echoing/re-framing Miyamoto’s statements on clarity of intent from the Book of 5 Rings.
Eh. If you don’t have a wand, knowing that mountain trolls are vulnerable to sunlight may save your life. And you don’t start out teaching eleven year olds Advanced Anything, you start them off on the basics and scale up. This is like saying “I won’t bother to teach you how to make scrambled eggs, I will expect you all to be able to cook like Escoffier even though this is the first time you’ve ever held a spatula.”
Also, you may never be unfortunate enough to encounter a Dementor at close range, but you could suffer a plague of pixies. How many people in Muggle terms have had to deal with a mouse infestation in the house versus a rabid dog? Teach me the small stuff before you get onto the big stuff, professor, because posturing about how tough you are in the big, bad, out to kill you world to a bunch of eleven year olds does not impress me.
He did start them on the basics and scale up, it’s just that knowing ten fun facts about mountain trolls doesn’t scale up into anything useful.
Starting off DADA with “In every situation USE THE KILLING CURSE” is like that man who burned down his house trying to kill a spider.
All that excerpt does for me is make me think “Right, got it: we’re in grimdark territory here, obviously Rowling was a wuss and her universe needs to be toughened up and Our Hero is the guy to do it”. Which in turn makes me go the Eddie Izzard route: “I’m not going down there, it’s spooky down there”.
SPOILERS
*
*
*
*
*
Quirrel is still Voldemort, just like in cannon. It’s supposed to be your first hint that he’s a total psychopath.
You don’t start self-defense classes by saying “if it so happens a piano is falling, you can protect yourself against a mugger by tricking him into standing under it”.
Okay, example from my own personal experience (this happened to my granny – allegedly – and most Irish people of a certain age would know the answer).
So you’re being led astray by the fairies and can’t find your way out of a field in broad daylight where you know there’s a gap in the ditch but you’re going round and round the field and can’t find your way out.
What do you do to break the spell?
Hint: You do not emulate Quirrell here and use the Killing Curse; it’s one of those small, ‘useless’, pieces of knowledge that he is sneering about in the ‘useless’ textbook and moaning about being expected to teach when he should be turning them all into the Terminator.
Answer here.
For general interest, my maternal grandfather – according to my mother, who told me this story once – was fairy struck by a black dog as a boy and had to be cured by the quack doctor, so I have family reasons for turning my nose up at Quirrell turning his nose up at “small” vexations and small charms to cure same 🙂
Why would the killing curse fail here? Presumably fairies have a self-preservation instinct. Tell the fairy “let me out or I kill you”.
@Jiro:
It does not appear necessary that the fairy make themselves known or even be physically present for this curse to be effective. (“Being led astray by the fairies” would seem to imply active participation, but if she’s referring to the curse the link describes, the fairy is leading you astray with magic, not by leading you on a will-o-the-wisp chase.) It’s all in your head. The only apparent application of the Killing Curse would solve the problem but in a non-optimal way.
Apparate out and Fiendfyre the whole furlong from atop a tactical broomstick.
It’s the only way to be sure.
@Robert,
Real apparators only use the finest tacticool broomsticks.
Memery aside, the reason I would say the Killing Curse isn’t as useful as it first appears is the risk of magically shooting yourself in the foot. Sure you might hit the Gnome or whatever minor hazard you’re aiming it, but you could just as easily blast someone else who happens to be in the line of effect if you miss. Or, like Voldy, you could end up on the wrong end of a magical “ricochet” effect and wind up with a face full of turban. That’s a reasonable risk when fighting a dragon or something but not so much with the relatively mundane threats that Wizards normally deal with.
Memery aside, the reason I would say the Killing Curse isn’t as useful as it first appears is the risk of magically shooting yourself in the foot.
Why would you want to do that?
To unpack: I don’t think I can recall a curse ever missing its target in the books. Being blocked by e.g. a countercurse, yes, but not simply missing due to poor aim. And the implied accuracy is far too great to come from the geometric alignment of a handheld wand. There’s a reason people invented gunsights, and expert marksmen who eschew their use cannot achieve the accuracy apparently achieved by teenaged amateurs in the Potterverse. Also, there are wizards who study and adapt muggle artifacts, but the wizarding world isn’t ruled by the first Dark Lord to score a crate of machine guns for his henchmen. At a minimum, mounting a decent reflex sight on a wand would make one nigh-invincible in open battle.
My working hypothesis is that curses are magically guided by the intent of the caster, limited by perhaps the ability to see the target but not by the precise alignment of the wand. An alternate hypothesis is that there is some undescribed supplemental magic incorporated in wands that enables precise alignment by the will of the caster. Either way, shooting yourself in the foot (literally or figuratively) is not a likely problem, and the Killing Curse deserves its reputation as an unparalleled danger. I suspect that Yudkowsky would rearrange all of that in a heartbeat if it served the point he was trying to make, and for that matter Rowling herself isn’t above tactical retcons, but is there anything in the original books on this point?
Alternate alternate hypothesis, Rowling did such a hasty and inconsistent job of setting all this up that there’s no point in trying to make sense of any of it. But that’s no fun at all.
I vaguely recall curses hitting bystanders or otherwise flying off target, but it’s been so long since I read those books (finished each of the last four on the days they were released, never reread them) that I can’t say for certain.
If spells cannot miss then obviously my point is invalid.
Edit:
Also the Magic v Guns thing seems like more of an across-the-pond culture dispute than anything else. If even your police are terrified of criminals wielding knives I don’t think “just shoot Voldemort, you moron” is something that will cross your mind. Had Rowling been American, Mad Eye Moody would self-load his own Caster Shells and be have a vocal opinion in the hex velocity / stopping power debate.
I distinctly remember situations in HPMOR where curses were dodged or the caster missed, which wouldn’t be the case if they magically sought the intended target, so in the context of Quirrell’s specific speech above, aiming would definitely be a factor.
You may very well be right about how curse-aiming works in the original, though. There MAY have been cases of casters missing or targets dodging in the books, but I can’t remember any off the top of my head.
That said, I seem to recall that a major component in being able to cast the killing curse is that the caster needs to honestly wish for the target to die, so even if the beam hit the wrong target, I’m not sure it would have the same effect. A lesser hex could probably hit the wrong target, though.
If the Killing Curse works the same way as the Cruciatus Curse in that regard, it wouldn’t miss, it would just fail to work. You can hit somebody with a Cruciatus Curse even if you don’t have the stomach to actually torture them. It just won’t do much (if anything.) It definitely won’t hit somebody else.
Unless, perhaps, that somebody else was also in range and you really did want to torture them. This provides an intriguing potential explanation for at least some “misses” which hit the wrong target. Tweren’t a miss at all. This seems pretty possible, especially if wands can’t distinguish between conscious targeting and subconscious desires. It might even explain otherwise mystifying misfires – the person might have consciously wanted to hit someone with a spell, but subconsciously they did not, to the point where the spell failed.
Do you have to intend to kill that particular person or just have murderous intent?
I read Harry being unable to use Cruciatus as more of him being too soft / kind to want to torture anyone, even someone who deserved it, rather than that he didn’t want to torture Bellatrix in particular. I can see your average Death Eater, for example, throwing around a Killing Curse without having a precise target in mind but just to kill somebody.
@John Schilling, Dr. Dealgood & Vorkon: In the books it was a plot point that George Weasley’s lost ear came from a curse hitting the wrong target.
The wizarding world is different, it’s noted that a lot of people were killed by Voldemort and before that by that G guy whose name I’m not going to try to spell. Dark Lords are a not that uncommon threat in that universe.
My father’s generation, growing up in peaceful NZ in the 1950s and 60s were all enrolled in army cadets at high school and started learning to fight as an army as teenagers. Not to deal with mice infestations. That’s what two world wars (plus all the wars of the Victorian era) did to the curriculum.
I think our culture is the unusual one, historically speaking.
Not sure I get what Quirrell’s point is supposed to be, but the first rule of intelligent self-defense has always been to avoid situations where you might need to defend yourself.
The surface point is that Quirrel is a bitter veteran from a civil war that only ended about 10 years ago, and thinks Mad-Eye style ETERNAL VIGILANCE is the only way to protect magical Britain from the *next* dark lord who, according to historical schedule, is due in about 20 years.
The deeper point is revealed above, under SPOILERS.
Except that ideally, the average wizard should only be defending against butterflies and slugs, because there would be an actual, competent police force. Harry Potter grew increasingly stupid to me when it became apparent that the “good side” was utterly incompetent and required twelve year olds to engage in fairly brutal battle to fix the messes they created. Rather than have all the adult wizards quiver in fear over Voldemort or essentially turn a blind eye as the Death Eaters managed to infilitrate everything they held dear they should have done things. Dumbledore is one of the most moronic “heroes” in literature.
In this case, although it may be intentional due to Quirrell, the advice is so laughably bad its tragic. You do not give 12 year olds training in or the ability to use lethal force, no matter how useful it may be, because as the novel showed, they were too happy to use magic to hurt and fight with each other. You go through all those years of boring training to weed out the people who would use it irresponsibly, because ideally any use of lethal force should and would be rare and left to a professional class. The training is to use force responsibly and morally-thinking preteens could even begin to do so its rather stupid.
In a war situation (as the situation with Voldemort was, despite the desperate wishful thinking of everyone), it may be good sense to teach twelve year olds to fight.
However, that does not give you a cadre of trained rationalists, all bright-eyed and eager to shine the light of SCIENTIFIC METHOD REASONING on the dark and gloomy superstitions of magical lore, it gives you Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army where you turn children into soldiers.
It’s never good sense. It happens, but it’s never good sense. If the author of that passage isn’t having a Quirrell say that because he is corrupted and would see it in those terms, but really means it, he’s absurdly naive and reductionist.
Quirrell’s definitely, er, damaged/corrupted in that fanfic.
In the case of the Lord’s Resistance Army an awful lot of bad stuff was going on apart from teaching kids to fight, like killing said kids’ parents, and drugs and the like.
As for bright-eyed rationalists, the only children like that in the story are Harry, who started off like that from the very first chapter, and Draco and Hermione, who Harry taught.
Quirrell didn’t give them the ability to use lethal force, all his training was using sleeping hexes and the like.
Plus the concept of the use of lethal force being restricted to a professional class is very new in human history. WWII is still within human history and that had widespread conscription, plus soldiers hunting down and killing civilians and widespread civilian revolts (eg the Warsaw Uprising). Conscription for young men lasted in most western countries into the 1960s or 70s, and several countries still have it even now.
Hell, never mind conscription, pretty much everyone in the farming branch of my family tree was a decent shot with a rifle by age 14 or so.
SPOILER WARNING
Keep in mind, Quirrel at the end of the book says that the students of hogwarts are a valuable resource. He probably does NOT want to weed out the bullies; he needs them for his army.
As far as I can tell, the only conscientious institutions in the wizarding world are whoever is administering the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T.S, and Gringott’s bank.
Part of the atmosphere of the books is that you can only trust small-group loyalty.
The bank is run by goblins, so no help there.
N Tevatbggf gryyre xvaqn fperjrq gurz bire va gur friragu obbx gubhtu.
@god damn John Jay
Rot13 for spoilers is a good idea but it doesn’t make much sense without a (plaintext) spoiler tag in front of it. The set of people who are curious/idle enough to figure out your comment is not exclusive of people who don’t want spoilers for HP.
It’s a tangent, but… has anyone noticed how libertarian soap operas are? Everyone either runs or works in a small local business. The police are depicted as clueless outsiders meddling in issues that they don’t understand and that are already under control. The characters all have extensive support networks and rely on one another, their agreements and their relationships and exchange and barter, to solve their problems, rather than on institutions. No problem in a soap opera is solved by a law being passed. Someone doesn’t have a job? No problem, some local business owner or other will offer them work in whatever business they run.
EDIT: I’m basing this on British soaps. For all I know, soaps from other countries are different – are they?
I feel very atypical here as someone who has never read Harry Potter and has no desire to (maybe just older than most but I suspect not?). I’d be very, very surprised to find I’m also atypical in never having watched a soap opera.
Outside institution swoops in and solves problems doesn’t tend to make for a compelling story line.
I think the soap opera thing fundamentally has the same answer as “Why are the adults useless in kids’ books?” Or “why do so many fantasy novels focus on a guy who turns out to be the only one who can save the world?”
Yes there are compelling stories that can be told without resorting to those tropes. But soap operas have to come up with a lot of storylines. There’s going to be a tendency to pick ones that are easy to make compelling.
I’m not hugely informed about soap operas, but the impression I’ve gotten is that American soap operas tend to focus more on extended families, and have characters who are more likely to be independently wealthy, or professionals.
@Tracy W
Quite probably. I guess its implications are just more noticeable in a soap opera because they don’t focus on only a handful of characters, and they present a persistent and ongoing world in a way that novels, with their finite length, don’t and can’t.
Lame signalling that I’m going to do anyway: I do not regularly watch soap operas. It was just on. I was, uh, watching it for a friend.
Ha! To be fair, I have seen a few when I was a kid and watched with my mom in the summer, but I barely remember. I just don’t expect much overlap with the SSC crowd and the actual target demographic of daytime soaps.
@Anonymous: my relationship with soap operas is a bit like a reformed alcoholic’s relationship with booze. I realised many years ago that I would get sucked in by longing to find out what happened next even though I didn’t actually enjoy the story line in its own right. I was turning down invites to things I actually enjoyed doing to find out What happens Next.
Now I actually leave the room if one comes on, and people who know me have instructions that if they find me staring at a TV screen with a finger hoovering above the remote’s off button, to just switch the TV off.
RE the crappy policing. According to author’s statement, there are about 3000 wizards in magical Britain and Ireland, which means there are probably only about 15-30 aurors, based on real world police forces. So the idea that Voldemort could skirt the forces of justice seems a lot less ridiculous when the entirety of two islands police force is only two-dozen guys. Voldemort has more Death Eaters than there are soldiers in the official military.
Speaking of which: What I’d always taken away from the “Great Houses” talk around Malfoy and Black was that Voldemort was basically leading a civil war. He didn’t have the Malfoy’s and the Black’s “infiltrate” anything- they were already the legitimate heads of civilian government organizations, and they managed to escape being punished for defecting as their price for peace.
Not to get all fanwanky, but Rowling’s comments on the size of the magical community make no sense given the kind of cultural institutions we see in it. It solves the Voldemort problem, but it introduces a lot of others.
I like the idea personally that, outside the Laws of Secrecy, the whole Ministry is more of wizards aping muggles like with the clothes and basically the entire character of Arthur Weasly.
Someone told the wizards about Ministers and some bright drip went “Oooh, Ministers, yeah yeah, gotta have a Minister.” It’s a play-pretend government for people who don’t really have an economy for anything but food, because you can make just about everything else out of rocks.
Alternatively: The Statute of Secrecy is only 200 years old at the start of the book, and wizards live to be like 150 right? So maybe it’s just a hand down from the time before secrecy, a single aged generation that barely remembers the wizard social class as it fit into regular Britain forcing everyone else to ape the form.
I’ve often thought that Harry Potter’s killing curse represents an incredibly British perspective on guns and self-defense. No need for lethal force because there is an implausibly convenient alternative – a disarming spell that works from a range, perfectly, and instantly. You don’t have to kill the bad guys, you can just disarm them, and then bring them to justice!
It’s very much a wishful thinking Brit’s view of the world. I suspect that an American version of Harry Potter would have looked somewhat closer to Yudkowsky’s version, in terms of its stance on magical self-defense.
It’s very much a wishful thinking Brit’s view of the world.
And yet somehow over on this side of the Atlantic we are managing not to all be murdered in our beds, despite the fact we don’t routinely give guns to lollipop ladies.
“Killing the bad guys” is a very seductive line of reasoning. How does Quirrell know the evil wizards are evil? Why, because they will reach first for the Killing Curse when dealing with anyone! How does he want to train his DADA class? Teach them to reach first for the Killing Curse when dealing with anyone!
In the Wizarding World, people are as likely to encounter Mountain Trolls or Hungarian Horntails as they go about their everyday business as people in the Muggle World are likely to encounter rabid wolves or marauding bears – that is, not unless you either go looking for them or live in an area where wolves and bears are common. Or Australia, where everything is trying to kill you. Teaching peacetime DADA classes to be reaching for the Killing Curse every time something rustles in the shrubbery is like teaching someone living in (let me take at random) New York to be wary of bears rummaging through the dumpsters in the alleyway.
When Harry goes to visit Ron’s family, they’re suffering from an infestation of gnomes in the back garden. A lesson in “Defence Against Minor Pests” would be a heck of a lot more useful there than “Well, I have no idea how to deal with gnomes, but I can cast a Killing Curse that will take out a Mountain Troll” – that would be like using a portable anti-tank rocket launcher to deal with an infestation of wasps. Yes, it’ll work, but you’ll cause more damage than you save by using it.
Sneering about learning to deal with “Nightmare Butterflies, which cause mildly bad dreams” ignores that, for instance, if you’re having mildly bad dreams every single night that are disturbing your sleep and causing you to wake up repeatedly, over time this will mean lack of sleep and all the problems associated with that, and you might be very glad of a silly little charm you learned from your useless textbook to drive away the Nightmare Butterflies. In our world, people look for all kinds of remedies, if not a doctor’s prescription, to help them with sleeping troubles.
A charm to get rid of bad dreams, even only mild ones, might be twenty times more useful than being able to take out a Mountain Troll in most situations. Most people use analgesics to deal with headaches and minor aches and pains, after all. The Killing Curse approach is like “Forget being able to buy a packet of paracetamol in the supermarket for that minor strained muscle pain, what you really need is the morphine patch for terminal cancer patients”.
And quite frankly, I’m too old to be impressed by “Oh yeah, gonna talk about HOW TO KILL and the GRIM NECESSITY OF BEING PREPARED TO DO SO and YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG TO LEARN THE HARSH REALITY OF LIFE” because I don’t think it makes the book or movie “adult” or “serious”, I think it makes it sound stunted – the perpetual “18 year old guy who thinks ‘more dakka’ is the coolest thing there is and that emanating an aura of toughness and ‘yeah I’ll fight you, I know how to take care of myself’ makes him sound like the biggest baddest dude on the block instead of a loser” – the Staines Massive effect, in short.
I didn’t mean to imply that either the British or the American view on self defense and guns is correct, only that Rowling’s treatment of the issue in Harry Potter clearly reflects the typical British perspective, with the fictional rules structured in a way that totally vindicates that perspective.
A big difference is that with pests you have the time to do research, like look them up in a book.
With things trying to kill you, you can’t.
I have for one reason and another done quite a few first aid courses, including one “Outdoor First Aid” which was focused on first aid that might be needed while tramping (hiking) and several days away from medical help. (Bad weather stops helicopters flying.) The normal first aid courses are focused on CPR, keeping breathing going, stopping arterial blood and calling for help. The outdoor one was much more wide-ranging because of the assumed inability to get immediate help.
I don’t expect teenagers to come home from boarding school having learned how to get rid of common household pests – I hire a professional exterminator for that, or go to the store and buy some traps and poison. I know the wizarding world is oddly lacking in many modern amenities, but surely they’d have one or both of those resources available?
Mostly no. According to out of book commentary, the entire wizarding Britain is only the population of a small town in Massachusetts, spread out over both islands. Combined with magic, there’s basically no distribution of labor at all, which is why everyone with a job works for the government.
Like Judge Dredd vs. The Punisher?
IIRC at the start of the seventh book Harry is trying to escape somewhere under cover of lots of decoys, and gives it away by using Expelliarmus in a situation where most wizards would normally have gone for something more directly dangerous. He gets told off by people who are all “Jesus dude, try actually stunning people trying to disarm them is dangerous and a bad idea”.
Yeah, that was a plot element in book 7. Admittedly hitting someone in midflight with anything will likely kill them.
Yep, definitely happened. Though partly that’s because the Disarming Spell is seen as Harry’s “Signature” spell.
This was when 7 people pretended to be Harry Potter, so disguising the TRUE Harry was a big deal.
God I hated that series….
Okay, serious request: has anyone got an excerpt from HPMOR that they want to put up as an example of good writing? I don’t mean “Harry Stu lectures straw-stuffed mannikins making his points with all the subtlety of an anvil to the head” (if I want that, I’ll read Ayn Rand), but something – a piece of descriptive writing, a conversation, anything – that you want to point to as good prose style, or so funny that it made you laugh, or it’s beautiful, or anything of that nature. I’ll give you a sample of something that may illustrate what I mean, the description of the day breaking in the following extract:
Is there any passage in HPMOR that struck any of you as a startling, original, or striking metaphor, that gave you a sense of a visual image of beauty?
Anything, in short, that would make me go “Yes, I quite liked Harry Potter, I’d be interested in reading this” and not (as all the excerpts to date I’ve seen) evoke instead a response of withering scorn. I don’t like emulating a spitting cobra and having my bile duct revving up to top gear when I’m critiquing the scraps I’ve read, but if this is the great work that is drawing in scores of new recruits to rationalism, I am beginning to worry about rationalists (or at least think you all have tin ears when it comes to fiction).
Maybe you’re expecting the wrong thing. If it was just a traditionally very good piece of fiction it would be hardly worth the hype. It does several unusual things very nicely:
1) Repeatedly incorporate pieces (standard) science and math in an epic way
2)Apply reason to the magic in the standard HP universe, and testing the limits of everything
3)have the characters outwitting each other
All this in a reasonably readable style, so it flows well.
You could try this chapter, which captures very efficiently what is great about HPMOR. If you don’t like it, I guess it’s just not for you.
http://hpmor.com/chapter/17
3) have the characters outwitting each other
Yes, the hero’s long utter denial of any sane instinct, followed by a confrontation with the monologuing villain was just *lovely* /s
See, if it’s presented as fiction, I tend to want some writing in with the preaching 🙂 I’ll read something straight-up presented as “Fifteen Reasons Why I’m Right And The Rest of You Are Clods”, even if it’s only in the hopes of a good row. But I have a very strong dislike of didactic fiction (unless, as I said, there’s a rattling good story and well-written prose sugaring the pill) and if it’s pages of Obvious Hero standing at the lecture podium then I will skip it.
Read the first section of the recommended linked chapter (as far as the first section break).
KILL ME NOW.
Sorry, it probably was of breath-taking thrill-a-minute pulse-pounding excitement for the mathematically inclined, but since I neither know nor care what the hell P=NP means or signifies, I was left “Yes? So?”
Apart from the cautionary message, which (if Brilliant McBrillance had reflected for five seconds instead of being dazzled with his own marvellousness) explains why everyone is not conspicuously running around with Time Turners – honestly, if you really could assure your desired outcome by messing about with time, do you think Voldemort or Grindlewald would not have been all over that?
Still suffers from a flat prose style and the obvious want of a beta reader, apart from all that.
All I can conclude is that it is not for me, and thank you for at least trying to enlighten the ignorant by supplying me with a recommendation 🙂
Later on in the story, Voldemort and Dumbledore both use time-turners pretty extensively. Perhaps not as overtly as Harry, but they both use them, and since a big part of the point of the story is that Harry is young, careless, and (while smarter than most) not nearly as smart as he would like to think, it makes sense that they would be more careful with them than him.
Admittedly, Harry’s over-reliance on time-turners got real old after a while, and cutting back on it a bit would probably have made for a better story, but the time-turners are probably the most glaring plot hole in Rowling’s original work, and overall I think Yudkowsy did a good job of portraying how they might actually effect the world in a realistic way, given how nonsensical they were in the original.
This. I *know* fanfic is perfectly capable of being transformative/critiquing the text and being a delight to read, it’s done every week.
This isn’t.
[Very mild spoilers for both HP7 and HPMOR]
Let me begin with asserting that J. K. Rowling knows exactly what she’s doing. Her success might be “chance” in that publishing in the 90s worked in ways that hadn’t she eventually found a publisher we would not have gotten to know HP at all, but otherwise I find the success to be very much deserved. More so if I compare it to the shallowness of other YA fiction. To the critical eye, which mine as a young reader certainly was not, the early Potters might have their flaws but I think by HP3 Rowling found her stride and pulled of the whole saga with flying colors.
You might want to dicuss if Rowling performs “the craft” or “the art” but I assume nobody would disagree that she has created something of lasting influence.
I’m steelmanning (correct use of term?) Rowling here because J. K. Rowling, modern genius, did not manage to make me care for Hermione whatsoever. It should have been easy to make the nerd care for the nerdy girl but it did not “click”. When reading the first six books as a teenager Hermione was a sexless purposeless second sidekick, that could have easily been merged into Ron or even Neville freakin’ Longbottom. Reading HP7 many years later, all I could think was, “wow, this guy is on an extended camping trip with Emma Watson, sex godess, and nothing happens”. That’s how faceless the character was to me. I confused the character for the actress despite never having seen a HP movie.
And Yudkowsky managed what Rowling did not. My favourite part of HPMOR is when Hermione is on trial. And Yudkowsky made me care. Boy did I care. And not for Emma Watson, but for the character I feel Hermione deserves to be rather than the version Rowling gave us.
Of course, if in Rowlings case we could dispute whether she has “craft” or “art”, Yudkowsky is very very clearly on the craft side of things if even that. And yes, I could not point out a single paragraph in his largely forgettable prose that would qualify as anything else. But his writing did move me in a way beyond “Harry Stu lectures straw-stuffed mannikins making his points with all the subtlety of an anvil to the head”, admittedly an accurate description of the bulk of the book. So for me, yes, there is something of beauty in HPMOR as a whole.
So, you perceived her just like people tend to perceive nerd girls? It seems that Rowling is a master (or mistress?) of her craft, indeed 😉
I agree that Hermione is the one character Eliezer actually managed to improve (at least in the first chapters — I quit out of general frustration later on).
Edit: I was going to link to the first Hermione chapter in HPMOR, but then I saw that its goodness is somewhat diminished by a visit from Harry Stu and his reality-distortion field.
You have a point there. Then again, the few girls I’ve met that I would classify as nerd girls, I would prefer over the fantasy of Emma Watson (can’t say anything about real Emma Watson, naturally). But given the choice betwen Rowling’s Hermione and Watson, I’d prefer Watson, I think.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be romantically involved with canon!Hermione — she’s a bit too ruthless and violent for my taste. But she’s similar to me in some ways, and it’s nice to be represented 🙂
> But she’s similar to me in some ways,
If anything, this makes me more fond of canon-Hermione 🙂
I always thought Hermione’s character development made her less interesting.
I cannot believe you are fond of Ron though, he spends the entire series being a piece of shit. (Every time Ron comes up I get annoyed, after being useful in book 1, he basically spends the entire shitting on Harry / Hermione).
>I always thought Hermione’s character development made her less interesting.
Is this Yudkowsky-Hermione being less interesting then Rowling-Hermione from your point of view or something else?
>I cannot believe you are fond of Ron though,
I did not say that, but now that you point it out, it’s indeed true, I’m fond of him.
Like I said, I read HP1-6 then a long pause and then HP7.
HP1-6 is somewhat hard to remember because that was years ago. What I can say is that at least to younger me, the Harry / Ron dynamics was entirely believable. Harry was fond of Ron for reasons I could relate to and therefor I was fond of him because I rooted for Harry (who didn’t?). As far as I remember Harry did not care in the same way for Hermione and neither did I.
Yudkowsky could get away with killing Ron because Yudkowsky-Harry has nothing in common with Rowling-Harry. Rowling-Harry sans Ron would be severely crippled and I wonder if Yudkowsky understood this.
As an adult reading HP7, I mentally reframed the Harry / Ron conflict in terms of Ron fearing that rock star Harry eventually gets to fuck his (Ron’s) super hot girlfriend Emma Watson. Works well for me.
I can’t for the hell of it remeber if I read HP7 before or after HPMOR. I assume that HPMOR made me go back to the series of my youth. What I decidedly do remember is that I hated Harry throughout HP7 for his stupidety – probably in contrast to Yudkowsky-Harry. Hating Harry does a lot for being fond of Ron I assume.
No great fan of any of the HPs, but to criticize canon-presintation-of-canon-Hermione I’d start at the far end — Rowling’s alleged recent statement that Hermoine should not have got personally involved with Ron but with someone more her equal. From the first hint of romance between her and Ron, it rang quite false to me.
A first class heroine in a second banana role.
It rings false in that this is a universe of fiction and there are rules and one of the rules is that the sidekick does not simply get the girl in the end. The hero gets the girl, period.
In reality, attraction works in stange ways and there is no reason why Hermione should not be attracted to Ron rather than the obvious choice(tm). Taking this for granted and then reading HP7 as if Ron himself were aware of that oddity (can’t remember, maybe Rowling actually hints that he is) did a lot for my enjoyment of the book, as described above.
No idea why Rowling wants to ret-con this now.
If I remember right, the source of the retcon:
Rowling wanted to tie everyone off with a romantic happy ending. Hermione had only interacted romantically with Ron, Harry, and Krum. Krum wasn’t appearing in this film, and Harry had Ginny and there wasn’t going to be any magical polygamy in this series, so that left Ron. Rowling didn’t really think Hermione and Ron worked as a couple, but it was too late to cram in a new subplot and she wanted to end everything with a wedding and it wasn’t like she’d be writing a sequel (/s) so she just did it, knowing that if there ever was a sequel she’d probably have to write them as on the way to divorce. And now that she’s had time to sit, and consider the little fib there at the end of book 7, and think about a sequel, she wishes she hadn’t written herself into a corner.
@ Nicholas
I don’t rememember which number film it was that ended with a triumphal feast where H and H hugged full body carefree, and then she turned to Ron and they shook hands embarassedly. So R/H was being set up pretty young, even if that were added at filming time.
The version I heard of Rowling’s remark (perhaps extrapolated) was that she had been too fixed on getting Harry and Hermoine married into the Weasley family.
I’ve been applauding Leia dumping Han … in a Disney sequel. Now awaiting a Disney-level official sequel a few decades later where Hermoine has dumped Ron. It’s the choice of a new generation of producers!
Unless I SERIOUSLY missed something in The Force Awakens, Leia didn’t dump Han. Han ran off on Leia and adopted his old lifestyle, because he couldn’t deal with his feelings of loss over (something that is probably pointless for me to filter as a spoiler, since this entire discussion is a spoiler, but I’m going to anyway because it strikes me as a bigger spoiler, and doesn’t directly relate to the topic at hand) and Leia was mad at him, but perfectly willing to take him back.
@ Vorkon
Unless I SERIOUSLY missed something in The Force Awakens, Leia didn’t dump Han. Han ran off on Leia [….]
Thanks, I stand corrected. I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I assumed it was something less dramatic such as her recognizing incompatibility. (Typical Mind Fallacy, as I’ve never understood what she saw in him in the first place.)
Oops! Sorry about the spoilers I did include, then!
Ok, you are talking film. When I say Rowling-Hermione, I mean the book. Not because I’m a snob or something but because I simply managed to see not one HP-Film in its entirety.
This thing suffers from the same issue as Shinji and Warhammer 40k – there’s nothing recognizably childlike, or for that matter human, about the character 99% of the time. Then the author suddenly remembers they’re writing a preteen, and goes off into irritating fits of pubescent frustration and crying for ten minutes, after which we’re back to the God-Emperor Ascendant.
IMO this is what Rowling gets brilliantly right. She writes childeren. From seeing others fail at that I have to conclude that it is incredebly hard to do. Seems to get easier once the children reach Katniss Everdeen age, though.
If you are not spending a great deal of time around children, and on top of that are not a particularly empathetic person, then the fact that children’s brains are not fully booted up and connected will not be something you really grok deep enough to include in your attribution models.
That’s actually intentional–there’s a plot-based reason for it.
This reminds me of another fanfic whose “surprise twist” only worked as a surprise because readers were used to badly-written fanfic, so they mistook clues for bad writing. (I shared it with a friend who wasn’t in the habit of reading fanfic, and she picked up the clues and wasn’t surprised at all.)
HPMOR’s clues are more carefully done than that; IMO they would work in a published novel. But since HPMOR is fanfic, some people’s prior of “just bad writing” is high enough that when they notice this aspect, they assume it’s…just bad writing.
Can you provide some more evidence / context for this, my immediate thought was that the series was clever but unsubtle with a few legitimately great moments sprinkled in. But the tone and pacing led to me giving up.
I mean, it’s not, like, Agatha Christie or something. It’s just that Harry’s not *supposed* to be childlike. (Hope I haven’t said too much and spoiled you now.)
More generally, it’s like I said to Deiseach: IMO it’s best appreciated as an affectionate parody. If you don’t like the pacing, maybe it’s just not for you. OTOH, if you don’t like the tone, I think you might just be interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. 😉
(By which I mean I’m kind of sorry for poor–was it Anne Rice?–because that “interrogating the text from the wrong perspective” line was painted as “total gibberish that she obviously only came up with because she let herself overreact to the point of insanity,” but actually that phrase does have a legit meaning. Basically means, “You’ve got the wrong idea of where the author’s coming from, so you’re reading in attitude that wasn’t intended.” IOW I actually do think if you dislike the tone you might be assuming arrogance or something on EY’s part that maybe isn’t really there. OTOH I also acknowledge that the whole incident *was* painted as “Anne Rice goes insane over criticism that she should have just let roll off her,” so, like, feel free to disagree about that tone. 😉 )
“There’s a plot-based reason why Harry is like this” would be a rebuttal to “It is unrealistic for Harry to be like this”, but it is not a rebuttal to “for Harry to be like this is bad storytelling”. Plot-based reasons can be added to explain away most of the tropes of bad fanfic.
Furthermore, a related problem is not that Harry acts like that, but that Harry successfully acts like that. Lacking tact and acting arrogant in real life will not work, regardless of whether Voldemort’s mind is imprinted on you or not, because the other people around you won’t respond positively to that.
@Jiro: Good point–I was focusing on Leit’s complaint that Harry was “unchildlike.”
As for the other issue, I did find the situations plausible enough. But I’m like Eliezer in having a weak “arrogance-detector”. And since I was in the mindset that it was “affectionate parody,” I think I kinda expected it to sacrifice a bit of plausibility for the sake of the parody.
This is dreadful. You’re liking things wrong.
Seriously, though, you’re not exactly going to like anything I point to as ‘good’ prose. You like rich prose with grandiloquent metaphor; I like fruitcake with strong crumbly cheese. You know? I’m not sure your quote illustrates anything except that your tastes aren’t compatible with Yudkowsky’s works. Oh well, better luck next time, etc. Uh, this really shouldn’t need saying but usually does: that’s okay! Not liking things is fine. Even if everyone else seems to and it doesn’t make any sense! They’re neither too dull to know better nor too smart for you to appreciate the subtleties. They just like other things. That’s how it should be.
Though, while we’re discussing matters of pure taste: pizza. The world has mostly united on the side of good taste and decorum, against pineapple. The stragglers on the matter are at this point simply irredeemable. Therefore, we should move on to the next crusade: sweetcorn. A poor choice of vegetable even in the best of contexts, sweetcorn’s combination of weak flavour, starchy heaviness and crunchy texture make it unsuitable for continued use as a topping. It should be discontinued with all possible haste.
Seriously, though, you’re not exactly going to like anything I point to as ‘good’ prose.
” ‘Each to his own taste’, as the old woman said when she kissed the cow” 🙂
Well, take for example the sample chapter seventeen given to me as “if you don’t like this, then it’s definitely not for you.”
What I took away from it was that Harry Stu (sorry, but he is) was tremendously excited about something apparently world-shaking in its import. Doubtless had I read all sixteen chapters leading up to this, I too would know what it was all about and why this was so exciting. Given that I hadn’t, I didn’t, and I didn’t care.
This was very obviously a simplified and easy walk you through it step by step version, the Idiot’s Guide to – whatever it was – and yet it was still obscure. This was one of the few times when an “As you know, Bob” infodump would have been helpful and narratively necessary. A simple “‘What are you so excited about, Potter-Evans-Verres?” said Anthony Goldsmith as he handed over the parchment” and Harry explaining it would have helped me, the idiot reader (and this is where the absence of a beta reader is clear: their job is to point out things like that).
Instead we got Harry with two pieces of paper, on one of which he wrote something, on the other of which something was written. Depending what was written on the second, he would then write something else on the first. If it was one thing, he would write this; if it was another thing, he would write that. Either way, this was going to be hugely significant for some reason or other.
The eye-crossing tedium of this, and it only took up a couple of paragraphs, was excruciating for me and I, my dear ones, have read Departmental (as in Department of Education and Department of the Environment national government) circulars and Statutory Instruments for my day jobs, in which I get to revel in such gems of deathless prose as
and I have the happy joyful task of working out what constitutes “moral overcrowding” when processing social housing applications where the applicant has three children of different genders and varying ages, one or more coming up to the cut-off age of ten.
As Baby’s First Primer Of Rationality, it may be the bees’ knees. As anything approaching fanfiction, much less “the best-written thing I’ve ever read” – well, silence is best in this instance 🙂
In the event you care, but didn’t look it up:
It’s a time travel joke, about a somewhat famous philosopher’s essay. The slap to the head message of the letter at the end is that Harry almost destroyed all of the universes in the multiverse by self-destructing his time machine. For a laugh, based on a math thought-experiment.
You’re supposed to laugh at him, not with him.
ETA: When the work was originally posted, Elizer would include an author’s note that was basically an out of universe As You Know, explaining all of the puns and math references and physics jokes. To my knowledge all of them were deleted when he changed hosts. Reading the note first and the actual work second made several chapters more enjoyable to read.
That passage didn’t even qualify as “grandiloquent metaphor”. Metaphors relate two things, but “lead bars which might have silver bars inside and I guess the silver catches on fire for some reason” doesn’t qualify as a “thing”. It could take the silver medal (or possibly a lead plated inflammable silver medal?) behind “colorless green ideas sleeping furiously” as an archetype of a grammatically legal but semantically nonsensical phrase.
It’s as if someone heard how people rave about “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.” but didn’t realize that the humor in such a comparison has to be *intentional*.
As far as I can tell, the image is supposed to be that a bar of pure lead is kind of dull on the outside, but shiny on the inside, so if you broke one in half it’d be sort of silver colored. I can’t tell if the white fire is also a reference to metallurgy, or just an entire second metaphor in the same sentence.
I strongly suspect, on stylistic grounds, that the passage quoted is by Chesterton.
@David Friedman:
Generation gap: I just Googled it, and would have been surprised not to find out by that means where it originated. I wonder what’s on the other side of the generation gap between me and my teenage son….
Good ear, though: it’s from The Man Who Was Thursday.
I didn’t Google it.
That would be cheating.
“I am beginning to worry about rationalists”
Correctly so, by my lights. Liking something like HPMOR is a ton of evidence about the “type of person.”
Oh, I’m sure they’re all lovely people. I just worry they’d concrete over everything because it’s more efficient or something.
Was not meant as a judgement on moral worth.
I think this is just one of those things where tastes differ. For me, I just don’t get along with Dickens’s writing. Great plotting, writing (to me) as dry as dust.
Strangely, just the other day I had a whole discussion with a friend where I compared HPMOR to Dickens: Both have great individual bits, but are marred by the fact that the writer was writing in a serialized format, which screwed the pacing all up.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to look up specific passages, but for what it’s worth, I found pretty much any part where the plot involved Dementors to involve some wonderfully evocative writing, which did a great job of capturing how terrifying they truly are. It wasn’t all just oppressive grimdarkness, though; the scene where Harry finally learns the Patronus charm, while still rather preachy in a very Yudkowsy-esque way, was preachy on a more emotional level than his usual intellectual lecturing. It dealt with WHY he believes the things he does, rather than just WHAT he believes, and I found the entire sequence extremely uplifting.
Speaking of which, earlier somebody described Hermione’s trial as having a large impact on them. Part of the reason for this was the characterization of Hermione, of course, but I’d say another big part of it was also the fact that he’d previously done such a good job getting across how horrible a stay in Azkaban would be, so it made the fact that a character we know and love might just be faced with it all that much more impactful.
Also, I found a lot of the jokes very funny. Honestly, I think this is the biggest factor in whether or not someone will enjoy HPMOR, and senses of humor are wildly variable, so I can totally understand why a person might not like it.
I thought Harry’s Patronus was the worst part of the whole thing. Oh boy, I get to read a story where the protagonist gets superpowers from agreeing with the author’s politics. *jerking off motion*
Oh, it was certainly heavy-handed, no doubt about that. But if you’ve gotten that far into the story, you need to be the sort of person who can brush off some heavy-handedness, or else why on earth have you wasted so much time on it already?
It was still a well-written and evocative scene, though, unlike much of the rest of the heavy-handed preaching Harry/Yudkowsky does throughout the story.
That’s how didactic fiction works. If you don’t like it, it may not be for you.
I’m finding the fic uproariously funny, but mostly because the main character is a blithering idiot who genuinely mistakes misanthropy for intelligence.
Unfortunately, the scenes where his “genius” is played straight ruin the effect entirely.
Yup.
I kind of have a love/hate relationship with HPMoR for exactly this reason.
I like HPMOR, but it’s not the kind of writing that focuses on painting highly visual pictures or creating original metaphors. It’s affectionate parody.
(I only discovered it *after* having read the sequences, so…for me it’s not “didactic fiction,” it’s, “What if somebody tried to apply these things, things that we already know and like, to the HP universe?” That aspect just adds to the affectionate parody for me.)
BTW, you asked for things that made us laugh…from the chapter The Smoke linked, this right here from the beginning made me laugh:
This made me laugh in affectionate recognition of that personality type.
Same with this:
Ahaha. Listen, Harry, it’s the world’s tiniest violin. 🙂
BTW2, I disagreed with your interpretation of EY’s original fic that people were discussing earlier, but I didn’t have time to write about it then…I’ll go off and post about it now…here.
I’m several chapters in, and I think it’s the best fan fic I’ve ever read, with all that statement implies. Harry is coming across as an insufferable mix of the most annoying qualities of grad student Richard Feynman, Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, and Peter Wiggin, but every other character has been retuned in a fascinating way.
And on that, to your original challenge – Draco: “like Father says, there may be four houses, but in the end everyone belongs to either Slytherin or Hufflepuff.”
It’s not poetry, but I loved it all the same.
The Madam Malkin’s scene in chapter 5 of Methods is usually considered to be the funniest part the work. For a serious passage, try the stargazing scene from chapter 20, best read with “Sphere of Stars” in the background:
And then there is also this scene from chapter 47:
I think Quirrell is overselling the killing curse. As Harry showed, Expelliarmus is remarkably effective. (Yes, your opponent might have another wand or other weapons, but once you remove the first wand, he or she is pretty much at your mercy for binding or sleep charms).
Does Expelliarmus even exist in the world of HPMOR? I don’t remember it ever being used.
I think initiative might be a related concept. If you are faced with a single human attacker who does not maintain distance you can strike more quickly than he can react no matter the strenght differential or weapons involved due to human reaction time (if you know what you are doing, since it is extermely difficult not to show your intent). A single well executed strike to head, throat or solar plexus will most likely take everyone down if there is no reaction before the strike hits. This is crucial, since any reaction like flinching backwards and bracing yourself may take enough force out of the attack to prevent a one hit takedown.
Note that this also works for the attacker. If someone walks up to you and strikes without telegraphing in advance (difficult) you do not stand a chance no matter your training, weapons, whatever.
Source: I (1,95m, 100kg) have been on the receiving end of the latter case of this twice. Both times the attacker was much smaller and weaker than I am and both times were instant takedowns.
This is an odd medical request, but does anyone here (Scott Alexander?) know about thirst and urinary retention as a result of anxiety?
I have had bloodwork and a tube with a camera up my urethera and nothing was found wrong, plus I am young and my prostate is fine. I have tried benzos and muscle relaxants to little effect. Thinking I might try (reversible MAOIs).
[Repost, but it is kind of making life difficult]
I haven’t heard of this. There’s primary polydispia where people have a kind of psychotic compulsion to drink. And people who have conscious anxiety around urination sometimes retain as a result. But if you mean can free-floating anxiety unconsciously cause thirst and urinary retention, I haven’t heard of that happening.
Don’t try MAOI’s. There are more then enough good reasons why those things have stopped being prescribed.
Reversible, the kind that wont kill me.
But duly noted.
Are you new here?
There’s those that commit suicide from treatment-resistant depression, and those that don’t who would be better off dead (by objective standards, not just as a piece of catastrophising thinking which will crumble after a couple of CBT sessions). Complaining about the side effects of ADs can be like having your house on fire and declining an offer to put it out because the fire engine is the wrong color. In your case , I suspect it isn’t even your own house.
Are you aware of the giant study showing that modern SSRI’s more then double the suicide rate in teenagers, and strongly suggest that due to typical underreporting and biased studies by those with financial links to the industry, that it can easily be the case that even in adults it increases it?
I don’t keep up with psychiatric issues much, but I thought this was a known issues and SSRIs had a black box warning about giving them to teenagers?
Yes, though only in general terms. I was talking about treatment-resistant depression which in practice is never treated with ssris, because you don’t classify it as treatment-resistant until you have tried those. And I was careful to say “can be” rather than “is”; of course there are some side effects we should worry about.
+1 to this. I had long-term depression severe enough that I would have been willing to go far more dangerous than SSRIs or MAOIs to get some kind of life back; and I did, indeed, try the former (and tricyclics).
Luckily, another drug, used off-label, happened to suddenly completely eliminate my problems and with very few side effects, so I never had to try ECT or MAOIs. But I think they would have been worth it without the aforementioned Lucky Wonder Drug.
And the lucky wonder drug was?
Thirst and urinary retention would be a sign of diabetes, but if your bloodwork is okay, that’s ruled out. Kidney trouble is the next thing, but again – if nothing is showing up either in bloods or with the tube up your urethra, I’m going to assume this has been ruled out.
I would have thought anxiety would make you pee more, not less, but everyone is different.
All I know is if this is a USMLE question about anxiety, dry mucus membranes and urinary retention, the answer is anticholinergic drugs.
Or maybe pheochromocytoma!
(The USMLE likes to ask about particular weird rare things you’d have a much lower prior for in real life, so please don’t take this seriously. Although actually, I do kind of wonder if alpha blockers would help.)
@Gad Damn John Jay, Have you been assessed for diabetes insipidus? It’s very often missed, even by doctors who check for diabetes mellitus. it’s treated with a nasal spray.
In some people stress may result in excessive excretion of water (citation needed, though I have this problem) and as a result thirst. Don’t know anything about the urinary retention, though inability to relax the sphincter due to anxiety sounds somewhat plausible.
Anecdotally potassium 2-4g/d and magnesium 1-2g/d may help and are low risk if you have an eye on your K+ level. Ever had K+ and Mg++ levels checked? Mine are often slightly lower than considered normal. If your problem is the same as mine you will feel better after a day or two. Don’t take that regimen over weeks without having your K+ level checked!
Warning: To much potassium may kill you! Especially if you have renal problems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperkalemia).
Disclaimer: Not a doctor, this is not medical advice use your own discretion.
1. I don’t think there have ever been clear long-term nootroptic besides simply adhering to a healthy diet, sleep, and exercise regimen. There have been short term stims and uppers, like caffeine and modafinil. But other then that, most analysis I have seen of these show them to be worthless.
A question I have on open-thread is what are the plans to combat fake speeches by politicians and celebrities? Not the usual kind, but the CGI kind. I believe we have the tech today to make accurate voice mimickers along with environments indistinguishable from the real thing. And I believe we also have the tech to make it past the uncanney valley, though perhaps the skills to make it are not widespread yet.
Are there any plans in the futurology community? Its a very obvious application of CGI. And its fast approaching the day where the tech and skills are widespread.
What does fighting them buy us?
Its simply an incredibly foreseeable issue that can be a problem, that isn’t talked about much. Fake ISIS videos can be produced that no person can tell the difference. Fake “recorded” politician videos can be “leaked”. All made with CGI.
It could buy a fundamental trust in government. Or, less of a distrust.
a) I don’t think any video could buy “a fundamental trust in government”, yeah. ISIS is cartoonishly evil as it is, and that hasn’t produced trust in government. And on the other hand, I’m not sure what kind of internal government leak would produce serious results – some kind of classified averted disaster?
b) In terms of blackmail and attempted framing, I take he Culture position on the issue – the first time something like this is discovered to be fake, people will lose all trust in such recordings.
Does this present a genuinely novel problem, compared to the ability to fake texts, for instance?
Oh absolutely. Aspects of undercover journalism for the past 50 years could be rendered null.
The first reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks was “This nation is under attack”
The first reaction could then be “Is someone playing a prank on the network?”
I think it will present a genuinely novel problem. An algorithm converting what you say and do into what someone else says and does *could* mean a return to old ways of communication, before the electronics age. Its a bit more emotionally pressing. “Someone is sending fake texts” is a little less resonant then “I have a fake video from X”
@noge_sako
I don’t know how this is different than we have now. Special effects houses capable of faking 9/11 existed well before 9/11, and there are a few people who claim that the video of the planes hitting is a faked-up cover for missile strikes.
The moon landing has had this conspiracy theory among a wider audience for decades. One element that some people hold was that Stanley Kubrick directed the fake moon landing.
One of those people being Kubrick himself.
If you assume that the tendency to believe what you see remains constant, then these CGI technologies will be disruptive. I was assumingthat it would decline, like the tendency to believe that anything written down is gospel did.
>There have been short term stims and uppers, like caffeine
By short-term, do you mean that benefits wear off with long term use or that the effects of the drug itself only last a few hours after ingestion? Caffeine tolerance is a thing, of course, but I’ve successfully fought it and maintained its nootropic effects with small tolerance breaks. (Or, you know, more caffeine. But that might be more succumbing to it than fighting it.)
Mostly the latter.
Good voice synthesis, in the sense of ‘not easily distinguishable from a particular real person speaking naturally’, is still a work-in-progress. A more difficult problem than speech recognition, interestingly enough.
I think that’s not surprising at all. For voice imitation you need to basically hit one point in a space precisely. For speech recognition, you just need to categorise something correctly, but it’s irrelevant where the thing is within the region of conceptual space that demarcates the category.
Not the usual kind, but the CGI kind. I believe we have the tech today to make accurate voice mimickers along with environments indistinguishable from the real thing.
Given the run-up to our own national general election, and the campaigns for the Presidency in your country, do you realise how depressing this is? In the near future, no flesh-and-blood debates or party political speeches; just a generated broadcast of the Leader of the Party delivering something cobbled together by focus groups and special advisors. All the real candidate has to do is turn up at the count centre on election day and graciously accept victory/defeat.
It’d be perfect manipulation: no chance of your candidate going dangerously off-message, real-time instantaneous correction as the polls indicated audience response going up or down to points raised, no chance of an interviewer raising a sticky question and surprising a real answer out of the candidate.
Ugh. I thought current party political broadcasts were horrible glurge, but this opens up a whole new abyss of political trickery.
On the other hand, you can have programming glitches that make the bot start babbling nonsense, or repeating itself like a broken record – saaaaay, maybe that’s why Rubio kept repeating his canned 25-second mini-speech in that one debate even after Christie started calling attention to it! He’s an early test model!
But that’s the depressing thing – canned mini-speeches are what politicians are being told to learn off and keep repeating for media appearances. “Don’t let the interviewer distract you, don’t get pulled into trying to answer the question, just stick to the script and get the talking-point across” is what is dinned into them. We have one particular “school of communication” here in Ireland that has made a handy business for the past thirty years or so, in a “gamekeeper turned poacher” way as it’s run by former journalists, of coaching politicians on how to deal with the media – first print journalists, then radio and television interviews as these became more of a thing.
Online appearances will doubtless in time become even more important than face-to-face appearances and will be even more amenable to manipulation. Why have your human politician stumbling through an obviously rehearsed canned speech when the latest CGI model can smile, say “I’m glad you asked me that, Bob” and churn out the canned content in a much more believable and ‘realistic’ fashion?
And then people get tired of that kind of fakery and vote for a real human loudmouth like Donald Trump. I’m not even joking, I think someone like that would be an extremely viable contender against a CGI pol no matter how good the canned mini-speeches are.
As of now, its a funny topic to bring up. But I believe this is going to hit politics and international news in a way that can’t quite be grasped now.
With 9/11, you had thousands of people confirming X happened.
With this tech, you have an undercover “reporting” of worst political fears. Fake extremist groups. Now only one talented person has to make the video, with less then a handful of people to keep quiet. There used to be a hubbub about paid actors and sympathetic Hollywood special effects guys in moon landing videos. Now, cut out everyone besides one CGI specialist! It *does* lower the threshold to allow those things to occur.
I’m genuinely surprised its not brought up more often. I suppose its similar to being tin-foil hatty. Worst case, it means a return to early 20th century style communication. I don’t think it will be quite that bad, but it *does* open up a great amount of political and marketing trickery.
We already went through this with photos, right?
I’m not sure how not being able to trust video 100% will be much worse.
US politicians, even at the Presidential level, are still expected to travel the country and face voters in the flesh, in local stump speeches, town-hall meetings, and the like. Enough American voters expect this that a candidate who doesn’t make the rounds won’t win a contested nomination or a close general election. And pretty much all Presidential elections going forward are going to be close ones, at least until they stop being Democrat vs. Republican.
Virtual campaigning isn’t likely to be a winning strategy here in the near future. Can’t speak for Ireland; I’d expect being a smaller country would make the face-to-face aspect more important, but culture matters a lot and I’ve spent a grand total of four days in your country so I’ll defer to your expertise in the field.
Sure, but those “town hall” meetings are carefully managed, and given the leeway for control of access that “security concerns” permits, letting John Q. Citizen get anywhere near Candidate Joe Soap with a real question is going to be more and more difficult.
They do the same kind of campaign touring here in Ireland and I’ve seen it at first hand; the party leader etc. is whizzed around to press the flesh but at such a speed that distractions (like people wanting to ask awkward questions) are kept to a minimum and they are then whisked off by car (or helicopter) to their next appearance.
I don’t expect any candidate to have an uncontrolled, unauthorised encounter with a real plain member of the public and if it does happen, it will be managed after the fact as a protestor, generally a “kook”, stirring up trouble and/or dirty tricks by the opposition.
I don’t know about plain members of the public, but candidates do meet and converse with members of the public they consider important, most obviously potential donors. Of course, those conversations are not likely to happen in public, with cameras and recorders running.
This is one of those things that varies enormously from place to place. I live in a very “safe” state for one party. While at home, I have literally never seen a paid ad for a Presidential general-election candidate, and few for the primaries (I have seen the ads on journalism inside-baseball shows like *Meet the Press*, but those aren’t paid).
Only once in my life has a political candidate or one of their supporters knocked on my (or, when I was a minor, my parents’) door seeking support. I’m 41. I was going to vote for her anyway.
So, uh, that meetup Friday — the organizer still has not clarified which “central campus library” they mean. Do we want to assume they mean Hatcher, or what?
Also, Scott: I’ve asked you about this before, but since you bring it up, is it OK for me to continue linking to the Wayback Machine version of the 4th Meditation? (Not that I do that that often these days, I haven’t had much to say on that topic in a while.)
Yeah, sure.
Should we maybe have a fallback location in case the organizer doesn’t get their act together?
And lo it is declared: If the organizer doesn’t get back on this subject, “Hatcher” is the place.
Done, everybody can stop agonizing over it.
I’d be interested in that link. I’m not sure if I actually missed out on it or not.
(I’m also curious why it was removed. My guesses are too flak-prone or Scott no longer stands by it for whatever reason)
SSC SF Story of the Week #9
This week we are discussing “Just Another Day in Utopia” by Stuart Armstrong.
Next time we will discuss “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster.
Sigsimund claims that most people experiment with adventures when they are young and then grow out of them. Based on what we see of Ishtar’s adventures, I can see why. Sensory experience aside, adventures seem like the equivalent of a badly written video game; mowing down random enemies, being placed in a death trap after being captured, and having to solve an arbitrary puzzle revolving around unrelated abilities in order to escape that deathtrap reminds me of the Resident Evil series more than anything else, except with robots instead of zombies. It’s fun for a while, but not the kind of thing you would want to base your life around.
I’m not normally a cultural conservative, but I came away with a distinct feeling that Ishtar desperately needed something of real meaning or consequence in her life, and the society she lived in was doing a very good job of providing amusing but unsatisfying alternatives.
Adventures also seems really annoying for society in general – some jabroni wants to have fun playing Indiana Jones IRL, therefore all the deathtraps and enemy ambushes have to happen right in the middle of town and everyone else who happens to be in the area may suffer injury or property damage if they haven’t specifically requested Machine protection? Why wouldn’t the rest of society demand that adventures, or at least the dangerous parts, be restricted to certain areas so the people who don’t want to be bothered don’t have to deal with regular interruptions of action-movie stupidity?
Isn’t this exactly what the story was implying? That the people whose lives were being interrupted had explicitly requested X amount of disruption (or protection from the results of same) in the interest of entertainment?
It mentions things like that in passing, but if you have a town with a normal mix of people there are going to be some who hate that action-movie crap in any given public place, so how do you keep from bothering them while still providing excitement to the others? I suppose it’s possible that Ishtar’s town in particular is one where constant adventure is expected and if you don’t like that then there are plenty of quieter towns you could move to, but if that’s the case then the zero-safety artist is being particularly quixotic by insisting on growing his perfect landscape there rather than over in one of the low-adventure areas. His choice of location makes much more sense if other people’s adventures are everywhere and inescapable.
Note also that since he’s chosen zero safety from accident, the Machines also treat that as consent to have the whole garden blown up at any time if someone on an adventure happens to wander through. There’s no way to opt out entirely – either you have to sign up for a protection level, an excitement level, and general Machine control of your life, or you live at constant risk of being collateral damage when Machine mooks show up to create excitement for others.
It’s always struck me as horrifying in this story that something of real value – the lost Stradivarius – is potentially destroyed because somebody wanted their game to have “real meaning”.
I doubt that (for the reasons I list below). It’s like allowing someone to own the Mona Lisa as private property and burn it if they lose a bet.
Maybe the Utopia of that world does so cherish and protect the rights of private property that (a) one person can own as personal property the last Stradivarius and (b) if they want to chop it up for firewood they can do so.
But I think it’s much more likely it’s no more than a game item, and that in reality (if the Strad really does exist), it is as much at risk of being really destroyed as Ishtar is of really dying in her adventure.
Eh, value of Stradivarius is not that big, really. People can generate cultural artefacts of this scale on a monthly basis, with Machines help.
Relevant page from my new favorite webcomic, see last panel: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-01-26
People can generate cultural artefacts of this scale on a monthly basis, with Machines help.
Then that renders, as I said, Ishtar’s project (to unlock the secret of Strad production to restore this lost art to the world) meaningless and she’s only engaged in busy-work outside of her “adventures”.
So something is false somewhere; either it’s not a real Strad, or it is a real Strad but the Machines don’t care if it’s destroyed because they can knock out perfect replicas of everything, or it is real and the Machines don’t care if it’s destroyed because do you really care if your dog chews through its squeaky toy, as long as it isn’t destroying something you care about/treat as valuable?
I kind of got the impression that the Machines only try to satisfy people’s preference settings, and the Stradivarius isn’t covered under anyone else’s settings (because it’s hers.) So, your final option there.
Our Hero is allowed to let it get destroyed because it’s hers, and she asked to risk something meaningful to her; just as Love Interest is allowed to let his painting-garden get destroyed, because he asked to live without assistance from the Machines.
Yes, this is a bit dystopian, which is kind of my point.
>“The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster.
Skipped ahead and re-read this one having last read it as a child. It’s well worth a read. While it’s (like a lot of dystopian SF) a bit heavy-handed, and some of the exposition is a little awkward, it’s otherwise cleanly and powerful written and touches on a lot of concepts that are still relevant today. Hopefully I’ll remember some things to say next time.
Even the adventurer found her game so boring that she spent the whole time doing other things instead. She reminds me of myself when I have a few tabs of large articles open but keep searching for other things to read instead.
Anyone else have issues with the writing quality of this one? I couldn’t make it through the first two paragraphs.
This reads like marginal fanfic. I actually stopped and went back and forced myself through another couple of paragraphs and couldn’t keep going. If it had been in a magazine like Asimov’s or the like, I wouldn’t have gone back and tried again.
(I’ve noped right out of stories before, but not one on this thread.)
Yep, I was wincing the whole way through. I had to struggle to get to the end.
I’m not quite sure if Ishtar’s (and others) adventures take place in the Real World, or are only very, very convincing virtual reality adventures. She mentions the risk settings and how, in this plot (to give her a real loss) there is the potential destruction of one of the last (or the last?) Stradivarius.
Would the Machines permit part of human cultural heritage to be irrevocably destroyed like that, merely for one player’s adventure? (Never mind questions about one person being permitted to own as personal private property the last item or sample of something like that).
Either (a) the Machines can re-create the Stradivarius flawlessly, so it’s okay to destroy this one, in which case Ishtar’s project to unlock the secrets of how those violins were produced is meaningless or (b) it’s only part of the adventure and she really does not own any Stradivarius in reality, much less the last remaining one in the world, which also casts doubt on everything we’re told in the story. For example, going skiing on Mars – does that really happen, or is it only another re-created virtual reality experience?
We could have a world run by the Machines where humanity is confined to its pods, all in their VR dream-worlds, and we never went to Mars and have no bases there, much less a tourist industry. That makes the Utopia a much more sinister place: instead of a post-scarcity paradise of infinite possibilities, we’re all confined to our own little boxes on Earth and there are no colonies on other worlds or anything at all apart from what dreams the Machines write for us.
That apart, the basic plot is not an original one; I’m not claiming plagiarism, but it’s much the same as the 1997 Michael Douglas film “The Game” and, much earlier, one section of Chesterton’s anthology collection “The Club of Queer Trades”: The Adventure and Romance Agency which creates these types of exciting adventures to order for its clients (Major Brown gets caught up in one by mistake and thinks it’s the real thing until he finds out the truth):
Another possibility, she may believe that she has the last Stradivarius but it’s really just a good copy. The machines might know but refuse to confirm or deny such things on the basis of maintaining quality of experience.
There could even be a tiny number of real relics floating around along with a thousand times as many fakes with yearly attrition of cultural relics maintained far bellow our current rate of loss of artifacts. Expecting zero artifacts to ever be lost seems unreasonable since any worthwhile culture will generate new notable cultural artifacts at a reasonable rate.
Eventually the real Stradivarius would be lost but that’s true of our world as well.
Or they could be ems; sentient programs emulating human brains and bodies running around on simulated environments, either uploaded from real humans or created ex-nihilo at the prompting of two ems who want to reproduce. That would be much more efficient than putting a real body on a virtual reality system while achieving pretty much the same results, and have much better aesthetics too (surely a server on a rack looks less pathetic than this or this?).
Whether or not the story is a simulation – I would lean towards no – she *believes* the Stradivarius is real, and it’s loss a real loss to mankind; we can see her believing it in her internal monolog.
And that’s viscerally appalling to me.
Oh, if I thought it was real, I’d want to slap Ishtar’s silly face off her head. But I can’t believe it’s real – or if it is, then the Machines really do run everything and, like the Culture, Ishtar and her fellow humans are pets (since if the Machines don’t care if human cultural artefacts are destroyed in a dumb game, then humans are not the ones driving the bus anymore).
The adventures are just elaborate hamster wheels to keep the pets exercised and entertained, and from time to time a Machine may indulgently look in and go “Aw, ain’t they cute?”, but the real business goes on elsewhere, and it’s the Machines who are the ones doing whatever they are doing out in the Real World (turning the Solar System into paperclips?)
I imagine the idea of Utopia is “Suppose you really could play as a character in your favourite game from the inside, not just as mashing buttons or clicking the mouse from the outside?” but I’m not sure if the author intends us to seriously take the world as described as real and desirable and great fun for all in the post-scarcity future, or if we’re meant to slowly realise it’s not such a Utopia as the title suggests 🙂
“the Machines can re-create the Stradivarius flawlessly, so it’s okay to destroy this one, in which case Ishtar’s project to unlock the secrets of how those violins were produced is meaningless”
Learning how Stradivarius violins were made isn’t meaningless if you want to make additional wonderful violins. Or apply his techniques to other instruments.
I thought the point was that she could just ask the machines for the secret, if they could do it any time themselves. But I didn’t read the story, just the comment thread, so maybe they would refuse to help or something.
But if there is no real risk involved in having “the last Stradivarius” destroyed before Ishtar can find out the technique, that can only be because (a) it’s not real and/or not the last one (b) the Machines already know the technique and can churn out copies by the new time.
If option (b), then Ishtar isn’t learning or doing anything valuable, because those techniques are already known (by the Machines). She’s re-inventing the wheel to give a facade of meaning and purpose to her life that even the adventures can’t provide (because she’s not really battling a world-dominating supervillain, it’s all a game). So that throws a light on why she has accepted such a (in-world) high level of risk: only more and more “danger” can make her feel that she’s doing anything, in a world where the Machines are in complete control and can do everything better than humans and know all that humans knew and more besides.
I somehow missed JADiU on my various LW archive binges. I like it…but I think I identify more with the unnamed painter than the ostensible protagonist. She’s found ways to relieve boredom, but he’s found something interesting to do with eternity.