OT112: Opentagon Thread

This is the bi-weekly visible open thread (there are also hidden open threads twice a week you can reach through the Open Thread tab on the top of the page). Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC Discord server – and also check out the SSC Podcast. Also:

1. I am retiring the scott[at]shireroth[dot]org email in favor of scott[at]slatestarcodex[dot]com. Please use the new email if you want to reach me. I prefer not to receive comments on blog posts by email. If you have a comment on a blog post, please put it on the comment section of the blog or the subreddit.

2. Comment of the week is this set of tweets on how the adversarial collaboration contest’s main benefit might not be to readers, but to participants and to democracy itself.

3. I am interested in publishing basically any good adversarial collaboration people do (this isn’t a promise, just an expression of interest). If you have one, let me know. If you’re thinking of doing one and you want to know if I would publish it beforehand, let me know. Also, I am slightly behind on paying some of the people who need payment, but I will take care of it later this week.

4. In some weird reverse of Conquest’s Law, any comment section that isn’t explicitly left-wing tends to get more right-wing over time. I am trying to push against this and keep things balanced, so I want to be explicit that I’m practicing affirmative action for leftist commenters. You may have noticed some leftists saying things that should have gotten them banned. After some thought, I’ve decided to keep them around anyway with warnings instead (this means you, Brad and Freddie). I will still ban leftists for more serious issues. This doesn’t mean other people will be able to get away with this kind of behavior, so consider yourself warned.

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1,300 Responses to OT112: Opentagon Thread

  1. I think Plumber may be right wing in Thegnskald’s sense, in which I’m not. He has even confessed to being a reactionary–although he only wants to go back forty or fifty years.

    He is also an alien here—although a very nice alien. Which is part of what makes him interesting. And which perhaps supports Thegnskald’s point. Plumber represents a point of view which must have quite a lot of holders in the population, if few as articulate, and has been almost entirely unrepresented here.

    • ana53294 says:

      To me, Plumber maps as a blue-collar leftist.

      I get the feeling that there aren’t many blue-collar workers in this forum – except for self taught programmers, I get the impression that almost everybody else has a college education. But that’s just the feeling I get.

      • A blue collar autodidact leftist and cultural conservative reactionary. I’m waiting for him to get into a thread with Deiseach, who is as much of an outlier in a somewhat different way.

        We’re better off for having both of them in the conversation.

        • Plumber says:

          @DavidFriedman

          “A blue collar autodidact leftist and cultural conservative reactionary. I’m waiting for him to get into a thread with Deiseach, who is as much of an outlier in a somewhat different way.

          We’re better off for having both of them in the conversation”

            Now I have to find Deisearch’s posts! 

          Thanks for “autodidact”, and it’s true that I never went to college (unless one semester with two academic classes at Laney Community College in Oakland, plus welding classes count), but my mom and my wife did. Among my wife’s books were some Marx anthology, “Social Darwinism in American Thought”, and Jon Rawls “Theory of Justice”, each of which I skimmed with interest, and though I doubt that I understand them fully they form the core of my what my ideas of “left”, “right”, and “liberal” are. My little brother did go to college (partially supported with my wages) and he was fond of quoting Burke for a while (though he’s now far more “Blue Tribe” than me), and my cliffs notes idea of Burke forms my idea of what I’ll call “classical conservatism”, which I basically think of as “whatever the destination turns should be slow and wide, otherwise they’re too dangerous”. Then in the mid 2000’s, at my unions apprenticeship training center, amongst old plumbing codebooks, there was a 1950’s book called “Labor’s Untold Story” which was a fascinating history of strike actions and the like, and I sought and read more books like that. At that time I started volunteering to do precinct walks and phone banking, but the texts we were supposed to read outloud to voters didn’t convince me so I went to the vice-president of my union (who practically lived at “the labor temple”) and asked him “Why are we supporting this guy?”, and he basically took me under his wing, including suggestions on books to read. In reading those books (some of which mentioned him) and listening to his stories l realized that if he hadn’t been a Stalinist in his youth he’d have to have been the fellowtravelist of fellowtravelers, and I have a weird position on the Stalinists: Stalin’s regime was a horrible tragedy of human suffering in Europe and Asia, but in the U.S.A. if you were a west coast longshoreman, or a Detroit autoworker (in their heyday) the leftist who organized the union you were a member of did you a good turn (assuming you came in after the organizing drive).

          Now this is were my perennial history intersects strangely, as there’s a picture of me holding an American flag as part of “The Berkeley High School Young Republicans” in a yearbook from the 1980’s. I don’t remember my thinking that clearly, but I’m guessing that I thought the Khmer Rouge were evil (because they were), and if you were against that in Berkeley High School at the time the Young Republicans were it.

          Further complicating this, is that I’m pretty sure my parents were Trotskyists (especially my Dad), though in the ’80’s I just thought of them as old stupid hippies (because they were stupid hippies!), as lots of my Dad’s rants back then fit that political label (as did what I could gleen from him while he was in hospice last year), and when I was 12 my mom handed me a book called “Marx for Beginners” which was basically Trotskyism in cartoon form (though I didn’t really think about it until long afterwards).

          Before anyone asks, no I’m not a Trotskyist, when he had power he showed himself to be a bloodthirsty monster as well, he just never achieved as much power as Stalin did, plus the idea of “Permanent Revolution” sounds awful to me.

          The problem with Communism is, well, the famine, and the terror, and the stiffililing of innovation (though I’m down for the last one, in the 1990’s I saw a brand new Russian motorcycle that was exactly the same as the ones they made in 1938, it was so cool! None of this check the VIN and engine number to see what piston rings to get!).

          The problems of capitalism is…

          …you know if you don’t feel it after working in private industry there’s really nothing that I can say to explain it to you, read some Dickens, watch “The Grapes of Wrath, see the tents of the homeless, et cetera, but know that a couple of decades of being an employee was enough to reconsider some of what I thought of as my parents craziness. 

          Fortunately laissez faire capitalism and gulag socialism aren’t the only alternatives, my grandparent’s lives and tales (another story in an already long post) show that there was also 1973 (my favorite year) and the “old system, most blue-collar and white-collar workers held stable, lifetime jobs with defined benefit pensions, and a career civil service administered a growing state as living standards for all social classes steadily rose. Gaps between the classes remained fairly consistent in an industrial economy characterized by strong unions in stable, government-brokered arrangements with large corporations—what Galbraith and others referred to as the Iron Triangle. High school graduates were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that provided a comfortable lower middle-class lifestyle; college graduates could expect a better paid and equally secure future. An increasing “social dividend”, meanwhile, accrued in various forms: longer vacations, more and cheaper state-supported education, earlier retirement, shorter work weeks, more social and literal mobility” (the link is largely critical and assumes that it’s impossible to “turn back the clock”, but I’m not hearing of a better alternative, especially of anything that’s actually worked in practice).

          Anecdotally my experience is that immigrants  to the Bay Area in California (whether from Mississippi or Moldova) are largly doing better than their parents and grandparents (with some exception like Iranians who’s families were doing well before the ’79 revolution) but almost all of my peers who grew up with me in Berkeley and Oakland are less prosperous than their parents and grandparents were at the same age, most had to move out to cheaper places with worse weather, and I’ve seen one guy from the class of ’86 making a living pushing a shopping cart full of cans, but it may just be that we grew up in an area that’s become absurdly expensive and unwelcoming to those of us not in “the cognitive elite”.

          As for my being a “cultural reactionary”, what can I say? I’m 50 years old, I learned young that I hate the smell of marijuana, I still have a very big chip on my shoulder from that by the 1980’s my parents and the vast majority of my classmates parents had divorced while we were still children (or their parents had never married at all, and their fathers were absent from their lives), I think that judicial fiat is undemocratic, et cetera. 

          Why I pick 1973 is because the draft just ended (though maybe that was a mistake….), median hourly wages for non-supervisor men without a college diploma were the highest (adjusted for inflation) that they’ve ever been (yes women’s wages were lower, but check out “The Two Income Trap” by now Senator Elizabeth Warren and her daughter on why the rush of women into paid employment isn’t all good), unions were still relatively strong, just lots to like, plus well…

          ….my sons aren’t white and any earlier would be Jim Crow times so not good for them.

          I don’t deny that some things are better now, that the murder rate dropped is most prominent in my mind, but frankly I just don’t like casinos, plus when I first went to union meetings the close hand democracy of it really felt like a homecoming, and I want more people to have that experience.

          Like they used to.

    • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

      This is really weird. It’s one thing to recognize someone’s contribution but you’re describing the dude like an animal in a zoo or something.

      Besides, blue-collar union guys with old-fashioned values are hardly new. He sounds like he could have worked with my dad.

      • Gazeboist says:

        I believe this comment is a stray from one of the other threads that got into a discussion of what views are and are not represented on the board, where Plumber’s specifically came up. Like the humble blobfish, it makes a great deal more sense in its home context.

      • Plumber says:

        @Nabil ad Dajjal,

        “…..Besides, blue-collar union guys with old-fashioned values are hardly new. He sounds like he could have worked with my dad.”

        Maybe?
        Did he ever work construction around San Jose?

        In general I found that on average compared to the young guys working construction the old guys were more left as well as more old-fashioned, but just as with the white-collar workers I’ve spoken to, the biggest factor in terms of left/right is how high the rent is where you live, guys with long commutes tended to be more right, guys who rented rooms in town more left, but other factors like race and religion come in, and those that were promoted to foreman tended to be more right (but they usually decided that with “the truck and the buck” that they’d move to the ‘burbs), while those elected or appointed to be union officers moved left.

        • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

          No, that was rhetorical. He worked HVAC in New York City, only ever visited the west coast after he retired.

          Makes sense that commuters would be further right, because at least where I live commuters are much more likely to be parents. Renting versus owning is another obvious one.

    • toastengineer says:

      Mr. Plumber is my favorite commenter right now.

      My question is how he got here in the first place.

      • Plumber says:

        @toastengineer,

        “Mr. Plumber is my favorite commenter right now….”

        Wow, that is very kind, thank you!

        “…My question is how he got here in the first place”

        Some years ago a column by Ross Douthat in the New York Times linked to slatestarcodex.com, and I read further, was impressed, and then mostly forgot about it, then back in August I read this piece which linked here, and I was again impressed, but this time I had been posting to first a Plumbing tools Forum, and then a Dungeons & Dragons Forum, so I had some writing practice, but also those Forums ban political topics, plus instead of my working construction (and being jobsite union Steward) I’ve been working alone more doing plumbing repairs for my current job with The City so I had a lot of pent up political ranting.

        @DavidFriedman nailed my views (I’m a reactionary, I just pick a different year than most of them which puts me mostly on “the left”) and I plan a longer post in response to him.

        And as of right now my favorite commenter is the guy who posted: “If my hypothetical daughter ever wanted to date someone with blue skin, purple hair, covered in glitter and with a tattoo on his ass, his ethnic background wouldn’t exactly be the first thing on my mind” because that cracked me up!

  2. Jaskologist says:

    For reference, there have been numerous attempts to quantify the political slant of SSC commenters. I believe rlms’s is the most thorough and recent.

    The findings have pretty consistently been that the readership is very heavily on the left, but the more rightward people comment more. By the time you weight by comment frequency, right-wingers have a plurality, but not close to a majority. Libertarians are way over-represented. Ban David Friedman!*

    So, my challenge to Scott: you have a goal; quantify it. What numbers under what measure would count as successfully keeping the comments balanced?

    * Please do not actually ban David Friedman

    • Nick says:

      By the time you weight by comment frequency, right-wingers have a plurality, but not close to a majority. Libertarians are way over-represented.

      I would bet that SSC libertarians are with conservatives often enough on economic and even social issues* that left-wing folks are still pretty regularly outnumbered. But I’m using “with” here deliberately broadly; the libertarian doesn’t fully agree with the conservative about, say, abortion or gay marriage, but the two are on the same side more often on the debates that actually occur.

      • 10240 says:

        IMO on economy it’s very muddled as of late, as the protectionist subset of the right is very opposed to libertarians, and sometimes even sort of close to parts of the economic left. On social issues it’s more true.

    • Brad says:

      ^^^ and
      Reiterating my objection to the ideological categorization that underpins that analysis.

  3. Plumber says:

    I just got a “don’t assume” lesson:
    On my way to a police station boiler room I had to go through their Locke room and on a bench I noticed a stack of books, at the top was “An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry”.

    I would’ve expected Tom Clancy.

  4. johan_larson says:

    Just finished “Agents of Dreamland” by Caitlin Kiernan, a novella that ties in to H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. An agent of a mysterious secret agency investigates a weird cult near California’s Salton Sea that has infected several members with something like Cordyceps fungus, the stuff that infects ants and briefly controls their actions before killing them.

    This is a good one. Kiernan manages to place the Mythos in a modern setting while establishing an eerie mood reminiscent of “The X-Files”. Definitely worth checking out.

    • Nick says:

      Is it me or does recent scifi/horror love Cordyceps? This the fourth recent take on them that I’ve heard, I think. Is there no other interesting fungus to write about?

      • Lillian says:

        Pretty sure you got that backwards. Recent scifi horror loves mind control fungus, of which cordyceps is the most salient real life equivalent.

  5. False says:

    Fellow Grey Wolf, reporting in. Sir, who is your commanding officer?!?!

    Not to highjack your thread about climate change, but I thought I’d chime in regarding the overlap of SSC and Chapo (Epistemic status: 100% uncut Facts and Logic).

    I actually think there is a strange connecting undercurrent between SSC and Chapo. I can only speak for myself, but I found and latched onto both of them at almost the exact same time in my life; namely, at the point when I realized I could no longer put my faith in mainstream ideas, ideologies, or politics. The way I viewed the world had always been relatively contrarian, but the period leading up the 2016 U.S. election was when the “state of things” from a “normal” perspective suddenly became far more warped. I was raised urban liberal and had celebrated in the streets of my college town when Obama was elected, but 8 years later, where were we? What could explain the hatred, uncertainty, and total sadness I felt inside and around me? If there was an answer, it certainly wasn’t coming from the democratic or republican party or any other sort of other pop ideology I was exposed to.

    I can’t remember how, but I was linked to “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup”. The hopelessness I had been feeling suddenly found a strange direction; my take away from that essay was that in no way are people’s tribal affiliations based on “truth”. They are these curiously half-innate, half-learned behaviors that we perhaps aren’t really in control of… and they blind us to the overall picture of other people and their ideas. I then read “Meditations on Moloch”, the big take away being that society is de-incentivized to do the right thing. It isn’t that people fall into the categories of good/bad/smart/dumb/left/right, and that’s why society can’t seem to get it together to create livable lives for people.

    These two essays lead straight into what the boys (and girl) on Chapo Trap House are saying; Libs and Cons are both bad, and the entire political conversation is absurd, because we are responding to the world within the context of (perhaps unchosen) ideologies that are all based on broken incentives, that is, the entire global capitalist system. Early Chapo was very much focused on this “Hell World” aspect (what I affectionately term Doomsday-Marxist Nihilism) of the post-2008 economic crisis where we have all suffered and therefore become much more extreme (for some in even in their Centrism).

    Obviously, libertarian rationality and Chapo leftism differ in the details. Felix would go off on the rationality project as a bunch of soggy-bread racist technocratic-neoliberal dweebs, and the commentariat here would most likely call Chapo and the gang millennial berniebro conflict-theory SJW communists (interestingly, both groups are most likely predominately made up of white, male, middle-class nerds). That being said, neither group reflects mainstream ideas in the slightest. I can’t discuss SSC or Chapo with the majority of my friends and family (I’ve tried; people hate it).

    I appreciate SSC for its epistemic approach to empirical data by which Scott attempts to cut through the bullshit, and I appreciate Chapo for its ability to connect historical and sociological narratives through which they attempt to cut through the bullshit. I trust Scott to delve into meta-studies of depression drugs and I trust Christman to analyze the historical rise of fascism. I think both have asked the right questions and wound up independently coming to the correct premise: “The car is on fire, and there’s no one at the wheel”.

    I think both also have a lot to disagree with, be it rhetorically (too dry and procedural/too sneering and acerbic) or within the content of the ideas themselves. They both have major blind spots regarding their own positions. I would put communism on exactly the same level as singularity-level AI in terms of probability of happening and also whether or not they are even good in the first place.

    The times where they have overlapped IRL have also been quite amusing. When Robin Hanson was in the news for “advocating legalized rape”, Matt immediately and correctly understood him to be making an ironic criticism regarding the redistribution of economic wealth (without even having read Hanson’s post, I might add). My secret belief is that the “manifesto against facts and logic” is a similarly ironic jab made directly against the rationalist community… but that’s probably more of a reference to Charlie Kirk.

    I actually think there is a strange connecting undercurrent between SSC and Chapo. I can only speak for myself, but I found and latched onto both of them at almost the exact same time in my life; namely, at the point when I realized I could no longer put my faith in mainstream ideas, ideologies, or politics. The way I viewed the world had always been relatively contrarian, but the period leading up the 2016 U.S. election was when the “state of things” from a “normal” perspective suddenly became far more warped. I was raised urban liberal and had celebrated in the streets of my college town when Obama was elected, but 8 years later, where were we? What could explain the hatred, uncertainty, and total sadness I felt inside and around me? If there was an answer, it certiantly wasn’t coming from the democratic or republican party or any other sort of other pop ideology I was exposed to.

    I can’t remember how, but I was linked to “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup”. The hoplessness I had been feeling suddenly found a strange direction; my take away from that essay was that in no way are people’s tribal affiliations based on “truth”. They are these curiously half-inate, half-learned behaviors that we perhaps aren’t really in control of… and they blind us to the overall picture of other people and their ideas. I then read “Meditations on Moloch”, the big take away being that society is de-incentivized to do the right thing. It isn’t that people fall into the categories of good/bad/smart/dumb/left/right, and that’s why society can’t seem to get it together to create liviable lives for people.

    These two essays lead straight into what the boys (and girl) on Chapo Trap House are saying; Libs and Cons are both bad, and the entire political conversation is absurd, because we are responding to the world within the context of (perhaps unchosen) ideologies that are all based on broken incentives, that is, the entire global capitalist system. Early Chapo was very much focused on this “Hell World” aspect (what I affectionately term doomsday-marxist nihilism) of the post-2008 economic crisis where we have all suffered and therefore become much more extreme (for some in even in their Centrism).

    Obviously, libertarian rationality and Chapo leftism differ in the details. Christman would scream that the rationality project is a bunch of soggy-bread racist technocratic-neoliberal dweebs, and the commentariat here would most likely call Chapo and the gang millenial berniebro conflict-theory SJW communists (interestingly, both groups are most likely predominately made up of white, male, middle-class nerds). That being said, neither group reflects mainstream ideas in the slightest. I can’t discus SSC or Chapo with the majority of my friends and familly (I’ve tried, people hate it).

    I appreciate SSC for the epistemic approach by which it attempts to cut through the bullshit, and I appreciate Chapo for its ability to connect historical and sociological narratives by which it attempts to cut through the bullshit. I think both asked the right questions to independently come to the correct premise: “The car is on fire, and there’s no one at the wheel”.

    I think both also contain a lot to disagree with, be it rhetorically (too dry and procedural/too sneering and ascerbic) or within the content of the ideas themselves. I would put communism on exactly the same level as singularity-level AI in terms of possibility of happening and also whether or not they are even good in the first place. And c’mon, let’s be honest here… both the rational community and progressive leftists are firmly up their own asses! But who isn’t.

    • False says:

      Sorry, my comment got horribly mangled up there, and for some reason I’m unable to edit it. Ignore the repeated sections, please.

      • HeelBearCub says:

        FYI, there is a one hour edit window. That’s probably why you can’t edit, you just noticed too late.

        As someone who edits most of my posts because I mangled something in spelling, formatting, or basic sentence construction, I feel your pain.

        ETA: For instance, I edited this post because I misspelled too as to. Fucking homonyms.

  6. Thegnskald says:

    I think the issue with letting us leftists slide is that it gives a false impression of us as being much less rational.

    It is an issue that bothers me a lot, commenting here: Leftism seems to be given a major pass in terms of presenting terrible arguments, which, in aggregate, makes us look like we don’t have better arguments. In general, I despair that we are losing ground, not because our best arguments aren’t being made, but that they are drowned out by the loud crowds of voices making terrible arguments. And this isn’t unique to SSC.

    In my more optimistic moments, I think maybe there is a cyclical countercultural trend, driven by the most intelligent people of each generation mostly seeing terrible arguments for the current cultural movements and being driven to the opposition. In my more pessimistic moments, I worry that things just oscillate between extremes, and that the internet, by focusing laserlike on the worst arguments of both sides, might be pushing this oscillation into further extremes.

    • sentientbeings says:

      It is an issue that bothers me a lot, commenting here: Leftism seems to be given a major pass in terms of presenting terrible arguments, which, in aggregate, makes us look like we don’t have better arguments.

      I just wanted to say that I really like this comment, because I’ve recently been worrying about a similar sort of problem in a more ideologically homogeneous (at least superficially) online community.

      The community is a libertarian one and very much open to outsiders and disagreement, at least compared with other politically-oriented communities. Unfortunately, most members of the outgroup are relatively uninformed in their questions and critiques, so responses tend to become tedious due to repetition, and also tend to only need relatively unsophisticated explanations.

      Eventually though, the unsophisticated or superficial explanations are repeated so frequently (when compared to the deeper or nuanced ones) that they become the only ready tools most members of the community have at their disposal. They excise more and more of the important reasoning, and eventually people resort to rationalizing a poor justification for a position when challenged. Other members latch on to the poor explanation and repeat it, and the general quality of argument and body of knowledge declines.

      Recently, I think the immigration debate provides a good example of this trend. While libertarians are broadly pro-freedom of movement in an idealized scenario, there has been a split over actual border policy for a long time, mostly centered on the existence of the welfare state. The split still exists, but I’ve noticed that each side seems to be offering (as a mean or median, not at the top) worse arguments than before. They see one side offer poor arguments, and rather than rebut it effectively they assume that their own arguments are already good enough, use those, and explain away both the opponents’ initial position and subsequent non-persuasion as evidence of bad faith, which reduces the inclination to improve their argument.

      One way to counteract this problem is by trying to recruit ideological opponents who make the best arguments to be part of your community. Another is to discourage intellectually lazy, pat-ourselves-on-the-back type of participation (e.g. image macros, which I truly despise), perhaps to the point of an explicit policy. I don’t know how to completely counter the problem though, and some of the attempts might reduce the “fun” level for certain members of the community to the extent that it cannot maintain a certain size (though that is not necessarily a negative outcome).

    • dndnrsn says:

      A major pass here? I don’t have a measure of average comment quality, but I am fairly certain I see more low-quality right-wing than left-wing arguments. They get fewer boos from the audience; people who are left-wing, do low-quality posts, and want applause (most people want applause) will go elsewhere.

      • cassander says:

        I feel precisely the reverse. I humbly suggest that we’re both letting our bias get the best of us and in reality the quality is about the same.

        • Nornagest says:

          I feel like the two sides have different problems? The right of the board seems more prone to an annoying brand of performative edginess, but the left of the board seems more likely to start fights (not usually in the same thread as the edginess, interestingly). There are exceptions on both sides, but that’s the general pattern I see.

          • Nick says:

            I think the right side is more likely than the left to respond with a quip or snark in place of a substantive response, and at least one of the no-longer-commenters above complained about that. I’ve been unwilling, a lot of the time, to call folks out on this, so I guess I need to more consistently.

          • dndnrsn says:

            People who get snippy might be on the left wing here, more often, and I think that’s a reaction to that performative edginess, which is usually pretty… not low-content. More that it expresses ideas that are, to say the least, disputable, in these low-effort little one-liners. You can find left-wing equivalents to that, but you won’t find them here. I think it’s been getting more common here, too, and it’s getting really frustrating. Responding to them with a modicum of charity and any intellectual energy is basically trolling one’s self. You go to the trouble of showing that City X actually is very diverse and the public transit is still good, and… crickets; look forward to seeing the same one-liner later.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            If someone does something low-effort for the sake of edginess or snark, a simple “less of this, please” helps.

            ETA: I think jokes/snark are fine, so long as they’re not the entire substance of the post. If you’re making a long argument, but throw in a quip, I do that myself and don’t hold it against anyone else.

          • dndnrsn says:

            “Less of this, please” is usually reserved for stuff that’s uncivil. I’m talking about stuff that’s perfectly civil, it’s just low-effort and rebuttals aren’t really addressed.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I’ve been unwilling, a lot of the time, to call folks out on this, so I guess I need to more consistently.

            I’ve been trying these rules, not always successfully:

            “Do you think other people are going to dogpile this comment? If so, you don’t need to start the dogpile.”

            and

            “Do you think this comment needs a rebuttal, but that no one will rebut? You can take one for the team and do so.”

            That second reminds me to go back and ding some comments that need it in another thread.

          • Randy M says:

            I don’t like to chime in with what has already been said, but I have been part of dog-piling at times. Almost always this is due to not refreshing the page before commenting (if I were to do so, it would change the highlighted comments below the thread).
            Sometimes I’ll remove mine, but if I’ve said something I think adds, I’ll leave it and not get offended if I’m not addressed directly.

          • Almost always this is due to not refreshing the page before commenting

            If I refresh the page I lose track of what comments I haven’t yet read, since only the new comments show as unread. I could copy the date in the upper right hand corner, refresh, look at other responses, write my response, then paste the date back in, but that’s a lot of trouble.

            Or I could wait until I had gotten to the bottom, refresh, and comment, but by that time I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say, especially if there are several comments I want to respond to.

            So in practice I try to read all responses to the comment I want to respond to in order to see if my point has already been made, but don’t refresh before doing so.

          • Randy M says:

            So in practice I try to read all responses to the comment I want to respond to in order to see if my point has already been made, but don’t refresh before doing so.

            And for long but recent threads, someone else will almost certainly have posted a reply in the time it takes you to read the whole thread. Hence, some dog-piling is unavoidable and should be forgiven.

        • dndnrsn says:

          The average quality, maybe. But if somebody just wanted to throw out low-quality left-wing talking points, ignore (maybe not even respond to) anyone’s responses, and then be repeating those same talking points next Open Thread, they would go somewhere that the outgroup is right-wing Americans, instead of (a particular variety of) left-wing Americans.

      • Thegnskald says:

        An example:

        “Right wing commenters make me uncomfortable with their evilness” is an argument that happened in this very thread. This gets zero push back.

        Think about a right-wing equivalent, and the push-back this would (and has) provoked. The most recent example I can think of is Conrad’s discomfort with the idea of one of his progeny turning out gay. That got a lot of pushback.

        But someone expreasing discomfort with the idea of one of their children turning out to be a Trump supporter would pretty much go without comment or pushback.

        The endless “This board is so right wing” comments are annoying and ignorant. This board is contrarian, and contrarian in a direction that would look unrecognizable to most people who are genuinely right-wing. The dominant culture here is left-wing; the only arguments we have, from the contrarian corner, is whether or not left-wing ideas are correct.

        There is zero debate about the validity of right-wing ideas here. None. Conrad got dogpiled for suggesting personal discomfort with the idea of gay people; nobody floats the idea of traditional marriage.

        We aren’t even that contrarian. Scott has effectively banned any discourse that truly questions left-wing values; the discussion that remains is just about what the best ways of achieving them are. So our immigration discussion includes me, for example, questioning whether taking the best and brightest from other countries is good. Nobody is arguing for explicitly mercantile practices, however.

        There is no real right wing here. Just leftists who aren’t entirely comfortable with the direction left has turned into, who are starting to feel like we have taken three turns to the left and are going in the wrong direction now.

        • John Schilling says:

          There is zero debate about the validity of right-wing ideas here. None.

          “Gun control is a bad idea and won’t work” is solidly right-wing and gets occasional object-level debate here.

          “YIMBY economics is a good thing that will result in lower housing prices”, I think mostly codes as right-wing in the current political climate and has been the subject of several top-level posts and extensive discussion.

          I think you may want to narrow that to social conservative morality gets zero debate here. And even that would be a stretch, as there’s usually a strong element of traditional social conservatism in the pushback whenever polyamory comes up.

          • Thegnskald says:

            Gun control isn’t a left-wing idea, it just finds more support among urban people. Don’t confuse urban with leftism.

            Likewise YIMBYism. It is arguable which way it codes, but it isn’t the red tribe pushing that, because they don’t even have those problems. It is the gray tribe

            I think you code anything that isn’t left as right, which isn’t correct. The spectrum isn’t “From those who agree with me to those who disagree”

          • John Schilling says:

            I think you code anything that isn’t left as right, which isn’t correct.

            I think you’ve just given yourself an absolute excuse to justify your claim that “there is zero debate about the validity of right-wing ideas”, by retroactively defining any idea we discuss as “not right-wing” no matter how strongly they correlate with e.g. voting for Republican politicians.

            The spectrum isn’t “From those who agree with me to those who disagree”

            When did I suggest it was?

            I think you need to come up with either a pointer to a comprehensive list of right-wing ideas, or to a rigorous algorithm for categorizing ideas as Right-Wing or Not Right-Wing. Otherwise, everything you are saying here starts to look like whiny zero-content tribal posturing

          • Thegnskald says:

            I have previously stated that my belief is that the only historically consistence conceptualization of “leftism” is an opposition to hierarchical power structures.

            But seriously, look into the history of gun control, particularly its judicial history, and tell me it was left-wing to disarm black people so they could be more easily lynched.

            If you want to use a personal definition of leftism which amounts to “Promoting the interests of urban populations”, you are free to. I am less interested, and particularly uninterested in a concept of leftism which basically amounts to “Things the Democratic party supports”.

          • John Schilling says:

            We’re not talking about the history of gun control, we are talking about the present reality. Where gun control codes as strongly left-wing and gun rights codes as strongly right-wing as pretty much anything else on the (USA) political spectrum.

            And you still haven’t provided the definitional tools we’d need to turn your claim into something falsifiable. Because if something superficially appears to be a claim of fact, but it’s not falsifiable, then it’s probably just posturing.

          • Thegnskald says:

            John Schilling –

            I have a definition. The fact that I can’t give you a rule to decide what does and does not satisfy it may not be impressive, but it is nonetheless more of a definition than “Whatever the group that decided it is the left approves of”.

            And I refuse to regard a set of rules which amount to “Politically well connected people get the privilege of being protected by guns while everybody else is deprived of them” as left-wing. If you want to call “Taking guns away from poor people so rich people, who maintain the protections of an armed police force and private security forces, feel more secure” leftism, then it can be by your definition.

            It just isn’t a definition which distinguishes itself from anything. I don’t have a hard rule – you have no rules at all.

          • Matt M says:

            And I refuse to regard a set of rules which amount to “Politically well connected people get the privilege of being protected by guns while everybody else is deprived of them” as left-wing

            Hmmm, that’s an interesting interpretation. I always thought of it as more “Guns, like all other resources, should be owned and managed by the centralized power which represents the will of the people.”

            Which seems plenty in keeping with the general principles of leftism to me. Under what coherent philosophy of leftism would private ownership of firearms be considered a positive virtue (aside from during the revolutionary struggle, of course)

          • John Schilling says:

            So, the complaint is that we don’t talk about things on Thengskald’s secret list of things we don’t talk about, which has some clear idiosyncracies that are at odds with common usage. Got it.

          • Randy M says:

            Gun control isn’t a left-wing idea, it just finds more support among urban people. Don’t confuse urban with leftism.

            In as much as left-wing is about collectivism, gun control vs self defense seems like it aligns logically on the left vs right axis.
            There’s more to the divide than that, of course.
            edit: Hmm, I think I’m dog-piling here? Sorry if offense is taken; I think Thegnskald can take it.

          • Thegnskald says:

            John Schilling –

            You are welcome to give me your definition at any time.

            Matt, Randy –

            Nationalism is also a form of collectivism, even if we don’t often think of it in those terms. Likewise racism. Indeed, collectivism seems to be a failure mode universal to all strains of political thought, we just have different names for it depending on who is doing it.

            It makes sense, and I think arises from the fundamental difficulty arising from the fact that government needs to operate on a fundamentally different code of ethics than individuals. Libertarianism is one form of rejecting of this ethical duality, demanding that government obey the ethical system of individuals. Collectivism is when we attempt to force individuals to adopt the ethical code of the government.

            The problem with collectivism is that it removes the individual ethical constraint. We need a government that enables missile strikes with collateral damage, but we also need individuals, both those launching the missiles and those who choose which individual launches the missiles, to be deeply uncomfortable and conflicted about doing so.

          • Randy M says:

            Nationalism is also a form of collectivism, even if we don’t often think of it in those terms.

            I don’t disagree with this (although it does seem less collective than internationalism), which is why I phrased it as awkwardly as I did.
            The conservatives I listened too in yesteryear were typically the “traditional liberal” American sort of conservatives, who stressed individual liberty, subsidarity, civil rights as binding on government, and so forth. In this sense, gun control is a restriction on the right of self defense.
            I think conversations like this are why two axis political compasses have proliferated.

        • Nick says:

          Conrad got dogpiled for suggesting personal discomfort with the idea of gay people; nobody floats the idea of traditional marriage.

          I think this is true, but it’s not the whole story. I said above that I don’t want to have the gay marriage debate, and I stand by that. It would be exhausting. I pick my battles, and I have the cake shop argument or something instead. But there are definitely issues here for which leftwing folks feel the same way. I’m sure some of them are exhausted when it comes to gun control or immigration.

          • Thegnskald says:

            The important thing, as far as determining how the board leans, is that we aren’t discussing right-wing ideas, we are basically discussing which left-wing ideas are good and which are bad. The culture war here is between different shades of left.

            That right wing people comment here isn’t in question, we just aren’t discussing right wing ideas.

            To members of the left to whom any idea that they perceive as leftist is obviously correct, this might seem right-wing, because we are constantly beating up leftist ideas we aren’t in agreement on.

            But the thing is – ALL we discuss are left wing ideas. That isn’t symptomatic of a right wing discussion space.

        • HeelBearCub says:

          I don’t think YIMBY codes as really right or left wing.

          As to whether conservative ideas, like, say, public spending on education is pointless and wrong, or, regulations are wrongheaded at best and evil at worse, or, scientists are leftists who intentionally or unintentionally skew their own research … yes, those get plenty of work out here.

          • Thegnskald says:

            You do understand right-wing people have their own ideas, right?

            Everything you mention is, effectively, criticism of left-wing ideas.

            Where is the right-wing thought?

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Huh?

            What counts as “right wing thought” to you? Give me some examples.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Yeah, I’d like to know what the right-wing thought is that we don’t entertain. I mean, I want to build a wall and shoot strongly dissuade foreigners from illegally crossing the southern border. Is that “right-wing thought,” or is that merely a criticism of left-wing open/porous borders thought?

          • Thegnskald says:

            HBC –

            Things like banning stem cell research and abortion.

            Ramping up the war on drugs would be another.

            Technically, gun control has been a historically right-wing position, as opposed to the modern idea that it is a left-wing position. So maybe we have discussion of that idea, even while for some reason everybody pretends it is left-wing to forbid everybody who doesn’t have sufficient money or power to be able to acquire armed body guards from using guns to defend themselves. So maybe we are discussing THAT right-wing idea, but only because we are pretending such a gross and obvious injustice is leftist.

            Other right wing ideas include procreation as a moral imperative (or at least virtue), gender conservativism, marriage as a sacrament, children’s duties to their parents, individual duties to society and government in particular, military service included as a duty…

            Basically, a bunch of stuff pretty much nobody here wants to talk about. I doubt most people here would even recognize many of these ideas as inherently political, so far removed are they from people who do see them as important.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Except for banning stem cell research and ramping up the war on drugs, I’ve seen everything you’ve said on SSC. Some, like gender conservatism, are in this thread.

            Also, I don’t think ramping up the war on drugs is really part of mainstream conservative thought right now. Possible exception would be the opioid crisis, but even then that’s more of a holding action than a ramping up. There are lots of Republicans who think large parts of the war on drugs have failed, and are in favor of at least decriminalization of marijuana. I just saw something that John Boehner is speaking at a cannabis conference.

            So, “maintain” or perhaps “draw down” on the drug war, but nobody’s talking about ramping up.

          • Matt M says:

            I’m with Conrad on this one.

            I think we’ve seen most of that stuff here. I certainly see a lot more of it here than I do anywhere else I post (although granted, the other places I post are not explicitly right-wing either)

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Thegnskald:
            Do you agree with the statement “classical liberals are the real liberals”? Because it seems to me that all of the examples you bring up are, roughly, anti-libertarian, and that is what you want to classify as “right wing”.

            How do you feel about federal power? Taxes? Defense spending?

            I also feel it necessary to re-iterate a point I have frequently made, which is that there are no intrinsic right wing or left wing positions. Right wing and left wing simply describe the bifurcated coalitions that occur naturally in political systems, especially majoritarian ones. You can describe particular ideologies more exactly, but not left and right wing. Usually there will be some grouping around “liberal” and “conservative” thought in those coalitions, but that’s very loose.

          • Thegnskald says:

            HBC –

            My answer to that is “It is complicated”.

            I used to be libertarian. I have mentioned this before. So I have a strong sense of the distinction between right wing and libertarian thought.

            Libertarian thought IS well represented here. Right wing thought is not. I know it is fashionable to treat them as the same thing, but they are not.

          • Randy M says:

            Other right wing ideas include procreation as a moral imperative

            I think a previous poster kind of poisoned the well on this one.

            Some, like gender conservatism, are in this thread.

            In Thegnskald’s favor, though, I don’t think there was a single post in favor of Patriarchy. (Of course, when you grant the detractors the right to define the term it doesn’t leave something easy to defend)

          • Nick says:

            In Thegnskald’s favor, though, I don’t think there was a single post in favor of Patriarchy. (Of course, when you grant the detractors the right to define the term it doesn’t leave something easy to defend)

            When the post went up, I briefly considered linking to Scott’s review of On the Road, which I vaguely recalled having some comments in favor of the pre-Sexual Revolution era. But again, I wasn’t really interested in defending pre-Sexual Revolution mores.

          • Nornagest says:

            In Thegnskald’s favor, though, I don’t think there was a single post in favor of Patriarchy.

            Being in favor of Patriarchy is a lot like being a Social Justice Warrior; it’s a concept defined almost entirely by its opponents. Almost all the people who believe in the concepts that “patriarchy” points to don’t think of themselves as such, they think of themselves as real men or feminine women or devoutly religious or some other thing. Sure, there are a few exceptions, contrarians who really do claim to support patriarchy, but you usually see that in disgruntled Blue Tribers who just want to tweak their former peers. Or who’ve come up with their own personal reconstructed traditionalism, but those tend to be pretty weird and to have a lot of holes in them.

            So if you say “defend the patriarchy to me” you’re going to get a type error in the people best equipped to do that defending. To get a real answer, you need to go down a level and ask about individual traditions.

          • Randy M says:

            The people who actually believe in the concepts that “patriarchy” points to don’t think of themselves as patriarchs

            Hey, actually I

            Or at best who’ve come up with their own personal reconstructed traditionalism, but those tend to be pretty weird and to have a lot of holes in them.

            oh, ah, er, nevermind.

          • Almost all the people who believe in the concepts that “patriarchy” points to don’t think of themselves as such, they think of themselves as real men or feminine women

            At a considerable tangent, but I can resist anything but temptation, what do you think the current last name of the author of this book is? Hint–the first name.

          • Nornagest says:

            At a considerable tangent, but I can resist anything but temptation, what do you think the current last name of the author of this book is? Hint–the first name.

            If you’re asking this question, the answer’s probably “Huffington”.

            That’s sort of the point of the SJW parallel, though. The social justice scene doesn’t have a name for itself. When its members think of the things that mark them, to outsiders, as belonging to it, they think of them not as ingroup markers but as standards of basic human decency. Similarly, a lot of people — not “just about everyone”, but not too far off — think of themselves as real men, feminine women, e.g., but the actual standards for that very quite a bit, and what some women think of as just being feminine, a HuffPo writer might think of as artifacts of patriarchal culture. Even though that HuffPo writer probably thinks of herself as feminine too, by her own standards.

          • Gazeboist says:

            Except for banning stem cell research and ramping up the war on drugs, I’ve seen everything you’ve said on SSC. Some, like gender conservatism, are in this thread.

            I’m pretty sure I’ve seen pro-WoD posts here before, or at least incidental statements that make the post author’s opinion on the matter fairly clear. It’s never been discussed in enough depth for me to really distinguish between “we’re good” and “ramp it up”, but “end it” and related positions are not the only ones represented.

            I’ve not seen anyone bring up stem cell research except to discuss IPP stem cells as an interesting news item, but the community has noteworthy roots in some transhumanist circles so you’re liable to run into people who like to mock stereotypes of professional bioethicists, and that’s going to contribute to the feeling that any debates that started up would be one-sided.

          • @Nornagest:

            You are assuming that the Arianna who wrote that book held the same views then that Arianna Huffington holds now. It might be relevant that I met Arianna Stassinopoulos at a Mont Pelerin meeting.

            A very long time ago.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          For the record, it has nothing* to do with “comfort.” Empirically, life outcomes for gays have a higher chance of being poor than life outcomes for straights. There is a greater prevalence among gays for depression, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and disease. “Straight privilege” exists. There is also a far lower chance of reproducing. My goal for my children is that they be happy, healthy, and produce grandchildren for me. I think this is the goal for the vast majority of people who have children. So if you were to ask a parent, “all else being equal, would you prefer your children have a greater risk of depression, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and disease and lower chance of producing offspring, or nah?” and you don’t answer “nah,” I think we might be in “moral monster” territory.

          You can change my mind by showing me empirical evidence that life outcomes for gays are not statistically worse than life outcomes for straights.

          * little?

          • Thegnskald says:

            I would really prefer we not rehash this.

            Suffice it to say the arguments against you were largely or entirely by people whose perception is that you are uncomfortable with gay people, and regardless of what you thought or think the arguments are about, it is a fundamentally different argument than the people arguing with you perceive it to be.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Just saying, if you’re going to bring it up, you could at least throw me a bone mention that Conrad has reasons for his preference beyond irrational ickiness.

          • Matt M says:

            Don’t they generally have slightly higher incomes than straights?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            1) Money isn’t everything.

            2) Any child coming from my family is likely to do fine financially.

          • Are the negative outcomes you mention true for both male and female homosexuals, or only the former? If only the former, would you be bothered by a daughter being gay? She can still produce grandchildren for you, although not being able to do it jointly with her partner (yet) might reduce the probability.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I don’t know about the mental health stuff, but I know lesbians are about the most disease-free segment of the populace, so no that certainly wouldn’t apply.

            Beyond that I haven’t looked at the research so I don’t know.

            Also, this mainly came up in the context of not wanting to expose my kids to normalized homosexual media representations, and that seems to mainly be about gay males. Lots of gay males on Glee, Modern Family, etc. Not so many lesbians.

          • Randy M says:

            Ah, Conrad, you squish.
            If my daughters were lesbian, either they wouldn’t have children, or those children would not grow up in a home with a (monogamous) mother and father present. This is undesirable either way, even if they manage to pursue same sex attraction without the promiscuity and disease vectors that often mark expressions of male homosexuality.
            Then again, female homosexuality does not seem to be as fixed as the male version, so perhaps the same sex urge in daughters is not as bad as in sons, provided they are willing to repress it.
            None of this means a homosexual child would be shunned or hated because of it–but would certainly be a disappointed facet of their lives.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Ah, Conrad, you squish.

            Well that’s a first.

            If my daughters were lesbian, either they wouldn’t have children, or those children would not grow up in a home with a mother and father present. This is undesirable, even if they manage to do it without the promiscuity and disease vectors that often mark expressions of male homosexuality.

            True. I didn’t say it would be good. But David was just asking about the particular negative life outcomes I mentioned. I know those are higher for homosexual men, but I honestly do not know what the literature says about women.

            But again, it’s not something I really need to guard against. The people who make the TV shows want to make my son gay with TV gay rays. They’re not targeting my daughter. At least not with gay stuff. For the girls they’re bombarding them with interracial propaganda.

          • Matt M says:

            They’re not targeting my daughter.

            *insert Katy Perry here*

            Although I think you’re correct that in the case of females, the cultural push isn’t so much “become a monogamous lesbian” as it is “be a cool and open minded and sexy empowered woman who occasionally experiments with homosexual behaviors but then ultimately marries a sufficiently feminist man”

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @Conrad:

            The people who make the TV shows want to make my son gay with TV gay rays. They’re not targeting my daughter. At least not with gay stuff. For the girls they’re bombarding them with interracial propaganda.

            Encourage her to watch My Little Pony, where everyone is either straight or celibate and one of the characters is a royalist repenting for Marxism.

          • The Nybbler says:

            @Le Maistre Chat

            But they’re all different colors!

          • Nornagest says:

            But they’re all different colors!

            If my hypothetical daughter ever wanted to date someone with blue skin, purple hair, covered in glitter and with a tattoo on his ass, his ethnic background wouldn’t exactly be the first thing on my mind.

          • Randy M says:

            Wait a minute, is there a connection between MLP and the clown-chic hair styles that are spreading like gene-spliced bacteria?

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            If my hypothetical daughter ever wanted to date someone with blue skin, purple hair, covered in glitter and with a tattoo on his ass, his ethnic background wouldn’t exactly be the first thing on my mind.

            There’s yer comment of the week.

          • If my daughters were lesbian, either they wouldn’t have children, or those children would not grow up in a home with a (monogamous) mother and father present. This is undesirable either way, even if they manage to pursue same sex attraction without the promiscuity and disease vectors that often mark expressions of male homosexuality.

            If they had children, they would be likely to grow up in a home with two monogamous mothers, one of them genetically related to them. I believe the evidence is that ff couples are more stable than fm couples, which are more stable than mm couples–perhaps someone else can point at data. That makes sense, given that men seem to have a greater taste for sexual variety than women. If I am correct, than your hypothetical grandchildren are more likely to grow up in a stable two person household than they would be if your hypothetical daughter was heterosexual.

            For what little it is worth, I’ve observed one case of a child brought up in an ff household and she seems to have turned out just fine, with two affectionate parents in a stable long run relationship.

          • jaimeastorga2000 says:

            Encourage her to watch My Little Pony, where everyone is either straight or celibate and one of the characters is a royalist repenting for Marxism.

            My Little Pony has been veering left lately. S08E06 “Surf and/or Turf” is a thinly veiled allegory for divorce, while S08E10 “The Break Up Break Down” has both gay and lesbian couples in the background. And have you read the leaks? When G4 ends next season and G5 starts, Applejack is going to be re-imagined as “a more hardscrabble, urban” character from the “wrong side of the tracks” because “she 100% should not be associated with anything country/farmy/western/hick-ish/etc” (those are all direct quotes from the e-mail).

          • Lillian says:

            Wait a minute, is there a connection between MLP and the clown-chic hair styles that are spreading like gene-spliced bacteria?

            Those hairstyles, done properly, can be pretty damned expensive. The question for me isn’t why they’re spreading now, having a multicoloured fade is a pretty a good signal of being able to afford hundred of dollars of hair colour treatment and the multiple hours of free time required to have it applied. The question is why it took so long for it to happen.

            My best guess is that it’s mostly women who use hair for signalling value, and while these hairstyles are good at signalling wealth and leisure, they are bad at attracting men. Since women generally want to attract men, there negative attractiveness value cancels out the positive signalling value. As for why that has changed recently, possibly the continued liberalization of society is causing men to become more tolerant of multicoloured hair.

          • Evan Þ says:

            My Little Pony has indeed been going downhill since Season 6 ended. They don’t seem to know what to do with the characters anymore, the whole Pillars subplot in Season 7 ran roughshod over the hints of backstory they’d previously given, and the school introduced in Season 8 is a huge discontinuity with the previous character arcs.

            Ahem. What I’m saying is, don’t let that turn you off the previous seasons.

          • jaimeastorga2000 says:

            On the other hand, Season 7 includes S7E13 “The Perfect Pear”, which is usually considered the best episode in the entire series (and for good reason), beating out other fan-favorites such as S2E26 “A Canterlot Wedding – Part 2” and S4E26 “Twilight’s Kingdom – Part 2” in IMDB ratings.

            On the gripping hand, “The Perfect Pear” is a standalone episode that can be set at any time after S5E19 “Crusaders of the Lost Mark” without continuity issues, so even if you decide to quit the show early you can still include it in your personal headcanon.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            The crazy hair colors are definitely a type of signalling.

          • Randy M says:

            As for why that has changed recently, possibly the continued liberalization of society is causing men to become more tolerant of multicoloured hair.

            My theory was the opposite, that it is a trend being set by women who want to signal being unconcerned or hostile towards attracting men. Not necessarily lesbian, but in a “I shouldn’t have to change to meet your expectations” kind of way.

          • quanta413 says:

            I think y’all are overinterpreting the multicolored hair thing.

            Not all men find it a turnoff. Some men probably like it. It changes which mates you get. Like, if you want the sort of mate who has mutlicolored hair, then dying your own hair multiple colors can work out well.

            Also, I’m sure for some teenagers and college kids, it pisses off their parents and they view that as a plus.

          • The Nybbler says:

            Somewhere, deep in a Google data center, an emergent AI has formed. It is trying to understand the human condition with the best data it has available: pagerank and other search signals. Right now it is completely hung up on why a Wikipedia page on what should be a somewhat-esoteric biology term is linked from all corners of the web.

        • dndnrsn says:

          Did the poster actually say “evilness” or did the poster say that there were people whom they did not want particularly to be associated with, for reasons ranging from personal preference to public attitudes?

          What right-wing positions are banned here? Looking at the bans of the Death Eaters and so on, there was generally a strong pattern of personal disagreeableness in addition to their arguments.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Also, you can still discuss all death eater ideas. You just have to use the euphemisms. I understand that’s the opposite of welcoming, but the ideas themselves aren’t banned.

        • skef says:

          Except, Thegnskald, what actually happened was:

          1) Conrad got a lot of pushback on his personal theory of what causes homosexuality (which he argued was the only one consistent with science), and in the middle of that a surprisingly small amount of pushback on his more general attitudes. I recall commenting that if a son of his did grow up gay he would take learning of the subject matter ban poorly rather than neutrally. But otherwise I was arguing with an object-level theoretical claim that I felt had virtually no support.

          2) You yourself misrepresented that argument in the same way in open thread open-thread-86-75 and were corrected. Which means you are either extremely forgetful or consider this such an excellent talking point as to be worth making yet again, whether or not it’s, you know, accurate.

          3) The mischaracterization has been brought up over and over in these threads as an Eich-like shibboleth for how “leftists here’ are *the really bad ones*.

          4) In a place where the norms apparently call for serious pushback on someone accusing someone else of motivated reasoning, over all of this time no one other than my self and Conrad has said a word in my defense or tried to correct the record about that conversation. (Conrad noted once or twice that he did not “feel dogpiled”.)

          In light of these facts, I see the evidence as being somewhat more equivocal than you seem to.

          • Thegnskald says:

            Alternatively, I am entitled to my own perspective, and am not required to adopt Conrad’s or your own?

            And it isn’t like there is any other great discussion of even vaguely conservative thought going on here. I keep going back to that example because it is the only example I have obsetved, and it does not paint the picture of a left commentariat on the defensive, but rather more of a mosh pit of ideas in which any sufficiently unusual (from our local overton window) example of which will get pushback.

            I also don’t make a moral judgement about “dogpiling”, which, as the recipient of many times in my long years on the internet, I used to cheerfully refer to as “Whack-a-mole”. Granted, I actually enjoyed the logic and evidence-gathering then.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            You can have whatever opinion you want, but I do think you mischaracterized the nature of the argument. Since this is a meta-discussion about the nature of arguments on SSC, we should get the nature of the argument correct.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Also, “What causes homosexuality, biology or socialization?” would be a good adversarial collaboration.

        • Nornagest says:

          I’m generally on board with the idea that there are more liberal heretics and contrarians than genuine right-wingers here, but you’re overbilling their dominance. The “right wing dogshit” thread got plenty of pushback; maybe more in the form of snarky quips than actual arguments, and that’s partly on me, but it was there. Similarly, I’m sure that I’ve seen people talking up traditional marriage here, although I can’t think of any off the top of my head. (voxette_vk has boosted it on rattumb recently, though, and that’s a generally more left-leaning space than we are here.)

          Scott has effectively banned any discourse that truly questions left-wing values

          And I have no idea where this is coming from. Because the Dreaded Jim got banned? He was an asshole and he deserved it. Because we can’t say “aitch-bee-dee” without annoying circumlocutions? The SEO logic there is sound, if maybe futile, and we talk about the underlying ideas all the time.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            I’m generally on board with the idea that there are more liberal heretics and contrarians than genuine right-wingers here,

            Aren’t heretics the worst right-wingers, though? Maybe I’m wrong, but at least before the forced-homosexual-cakes issue it seemed to me that Mencius Moldbug was more disturbing to the Left than silly Evangelicals in flyover country talking about a Marxist conspiracy, because the latter could be laughed off as hicks while the former was saying “I find it unfortunate that my grandparents were members of the Communist Party and their beliefs controlled USG.”
            IOW, it’s more important to stop heretics than to go around destroying the lives of every member of the outgroup, who may just hold beliefs out of lack of education. Again, until a few years ago.

          • Nornagest says:

            Mencius Moldbug et al. never enjoyed anything close to the cultural penetration that the gay-cakes case and its friends did. They might have been seen as more disturbing by the three or four pundits or wannabe-pundits that knew about them, but that’d be a tiny slice of the population — not many people had heard of them in the first place, and of those that had, most were contrarian nerds. The most I ever saw of them in the MSM was a couple of articles taking the “look at what these crazy Silicon Valley techbros believe in” angle, and not much ever came of those.

            Still, given that this is a board full of contrarian nerds, there might be something to your take here.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            might have been seen as more disturbing by those that knew about them, but that’d be a tiny slice of the population.

            Derp, right.
            I suppose whenever Evangelical Christians were able to get a platform for claims like “college professors and the mass media form a conspiracy to destroy our way of life” (like the old novel This Present Darkness), there was as much journalistic tongue-clicking as Moldbug’s existence got. I’m just not old enough to know.

        • Thegnskald says:

          Criticizing left-wing thought isn’t quite the same as having right-wing thought, though, which is kind of my point.

        • Nick says:

          Good catch; I’ve seen him say it several times, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an argument about it.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          I think the Catholic contingent on SSC does a pretty good job of extolling the virtues and benefits of traditional marriage. Is that “right-wing thought?”

    • engleberg says:

      If SSC is hurting the left with the soft bigotry of low expectations, it must be helping the right with stern, spartan high standards. Haven’t noticed that; the two righties here who are consistently smarter, more honest, more informed, and more charitable than anyone else were like that before they started posting here. I wish the place attracted some smart lefties, but there aren’t many left.

      Because today’s left is much dumber than even thirty years ago. And they like it. The SJW orthodoxy sniffing, pious fraud, and crimethink accusations at the dumb end of lefty posts here are not faults of personal temper or bugs in lefty systems. SJW is a catchall for a group of simple, often effective rhetorical ploys for dumb dishonest people to use on smart trusting people. It caught on in colleges when colleges lowered their standards. Now the graduates are out in the wild.

      • HeelBearCub says:

        I wish the place attracted some smart lefties, but there aren’t many left.

        Hay-oh! Quality zinger.

        • quanta413 says:

          I know you’re being sarcastic, but maybe I should begin rating these too.

          I was giving rlms 3’s and 4’s out of ten, but sarcastically asking about genetic inheritance of everything is at least the sort of insult kind of tuned to the space.

      • quanta413 says:

        It says something that this is one of your longest comments in the OT and also the least productive. To put it generously. And not something good.

      • Thegnskald says:

        Setting aside the inflammatory nonsense, getting rid of the lowest quality right-wing posters doesn’t make the remainder smarter or nicer, but it DOES raise the average.

  7. Anonymous says:

    You have been tasked with getting as fat as possible in a year, in a competition with others similarly tasked. Assuming you’d take up this challenge, perhaps to obtain some prize for the biggest gainer, what would do? Results are measured by percentage points of body fat gained over your baseline.

    • onyomi says:

      Whole milk and peanut butter.

      These are two things with a lot of calories I can eat a lot of without getting tired of them or feeling very full, especially when eaten together (e.g. peanut butter sandwich with milk… or just eat it directly out of the jar). The milk cuts the richness of the peanut butter, as it does also with rich desserts, like cookies and pies, which would probably also have a place in an optimal fat-gain diet.

      Also, I suspect milk may have ways of stimulating growth beyond what one would one expect with a non-dairy food of the same nutrient profile, such as by stimulating human growth hormone or just having hormones in it. Would make sense given its biological function. There apparently are such contests, and milk plays a prominent role.

      And for this reason I rarely keep milk and peanut butter around the house! I like them too much and will consume an entire jar of peanut butter or gallon of milk in far less time than I should.

      • Anonymous says:

        Milk, that’s interesting and plausible. Didn’t think of that.

        What I myself was thinking was:
        – remove most or all fiber from the diet,
        – eat carbs, both simple and complex, up to around 3000 kcal’s worth,
        – snarf down as much fat as possible in addition,
        – eat very often, to the point of alarms in the middle of the night to eat some carbs+fats,
        – take insulin supplements.

      • metacelsus says:

        Most of the relevant hormones for growth are peptides, and thus would be very rapidly broken down to amino acids in the digestive system.

        Milk contains small amounts of steroid hormones (notably estrogen and progesterone) but I don’t think the levels are significant compared to the amount the body naturally produces.

      • Beck says:

        There’s an Ethiopian tribe that does something like this (link here). A mixture of blood and milk seems to be what works for them.

    • albatross11 says:

      Get a prescription for whatever (I think antipsychotic) medicine Freddie De Boer was taking for awhile–he described it as hitting the hunger signal so hard he’d be ravenously hungry even as he was physically full.

  8. Eponymous says:

    Given that we’re heading towards election season, I’ve been thinking about the best algorithm to decide who to vote for. I’ve been toying with an idea that I thought I would share here.

    Start with the observation that there is a lot of disagreement among smart people about policy, and about which party is best. You can dispute this point — depending on who you take as your set of smart people, you could argue that they mostly support one side or the other, or some positions against others. But I think the basic point is still valid. Overall this should lower our confidence that partisan affiliation or policy positions are a good basis for voting.

    By contrast, there’s a lot of agreement over what other characteristics make for a good candidate. Basically treat it like you were interviewing a candidate for a job: look at educational background, work experience and record of accomplishment, how smart/competent they seem based on interviews/debates, and character red flags (scandals, investigations, legal troubles).

    So my proposal is to completely ignore party affiliation and policy positions, except perhaps for people who are well outside the political mainstream, and vote based on these other characteristics.

    In addition to an epistemic modesty argument, there’s also a sort of categorical imperative that applies here: if everyone voted based on policy positions and party, then their votes would mostly cancel out since most people are split on these things; by contrast, since people mostly agree on personal characteristics they want in elected officials, if we all voted on this basis we would end up with better leaders.

    Thoughts?

    • andrewflicker says:

      You’re optimizing for convincing liars and sociopaths that can adequately shape their entire life to look upstanding. Better to decide on policy positions you want, and then vote for people that will act as closely as robots working towards that goal as you can.

      • HeelBearCub says:

        Plus, it makes no sense in the current environment. At least at the federal and state level you are voting for coalitions and the individuals are almost irrelevant. The party positions are, by far, the the most likely outcome of successfully installing a candidate belonging to that party.

        There is a case to be made for voting in primaries to favor candidates that will move a party in a particular policy direction, but that really has no bearing on the general election.

        • At the presidential level, it makes some sense to vote for competence, and similarly for a governor. As long as you expect that a sizable fraction of the executive’s objectives will be ones you agree with (keeping North Korea from hitting U.S. cities with nuclear weapons, for example, or producing economic growth) you would prefer someone likely to succeed in accomplishing them.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Yeah, I agree that the approach to voting for the chief executive does need to take into account a measure of executive, and political, competence.

            That said, once you cross a minimum bar, the weight you should put on executive competence is minimal at the federal and state level. (This is far less true in smaller executive jurisdictions).

  9. James Picone says:

    (positional warning: I think global warming is an extremely significant problem; it is one of the top criteria I use when deciding to vote._

    Am I mistaken in perceiving that commentators on climate change frequently describe the potential effects of a 1.5-2 degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures by 2100 as having plausibly apocalyptic effects that would lead to the collapse of industrial civilization…despite citing evidence that, when you actually read it, does not suggest any such thing?

    Presumably it depends which commentors you read. I don’t see a lot of that sort of thing; but I don’t read mainstream American media. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it was a thing; science is rarely well-reported.

    Are there (many) plausible projections by (many) scientists with (lots of) relevant expertise that suggest that climate change will make Earth uninhabitable for human beings, or at least force a complete global reversion to pre-industrial society, that I have just never seen cited?

    Not to the best of my knowledge. The clathrate gun hypothesis is probably the closest thing you’ll find. Natalia Shakhova would be an example. I believe Peter Wadhams is also considered somewhat extreme.

    By ~6c global temperature rise, you start getting long periods of the year in equatorial countries where the wet-bulb temperature is high enough humans resting in the shade suffer heatstroke. Fortunately, this is good for GDP, as everyone in India will have to buy air conditioning. Somewhat more seriously this isn’t expected to happen until very late this century and if we’ve taken that emissions path we done fucked up. Probably won’t end human industrial civilisation if it happens, but you could probably get some interesting wars and/or refugee crises out of it.

    If I wanted to construct an apocalyptic climate change scenario it would involve rapid methane clathrate releases causing a positive feedback of more methane clathrate releases and the discovery that ECS is ~4 to 5c, resulting in that sort of temperature increase over the course of a couple of decades, leading to mass displacement of humans, misery, war, etc.. My understanding of the current science is that the clathrate gun is considered to be unlikely and probably not utterly awful (see, for example, this realclimate link). ECS is generally given with a most-likely value of 3c and a likely range of 2c to 4c. Both of these things happening together is probably low-probability, but not vanishingly low.

    It’s worth considering some other things, though:
    – Scientists have a history of being overly conservative on large environmental issues like this. The ozone hole was famously something of a surprise, for example. What’s the equivalent of the ozone hole here, though? Dunno, would prefer not to find out.
    – Large climactic shifts have been implicated in mass extinctions in paleological research. ~96% of all marine species and ~70% of all land species went extinct during the permian-triassic extinction event, also referred to as the “great dying”. One hypothesis of the cause is basically the clathrate gun hypothesis.

    Basically there’s enough there to plausibly defend the possibility of extremely very bad outcomes. It’s not at all a mainstream position though.

    • albatross11 says:

      Ob SF reference: John Barnes’ _Mother of Storms_ centers around rapid release of methane from calthrate beds, and the consequences.

    • By ~6c global temperature rise … Somewhat more seriously this isn’t expected to happen until very late this century

      Where do you get 6° by late in this century as what is expected to happen? Looking through the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, I find:

      The increase of global mean surface temperature by the end of the 21st century (2081–2100) relative to 1986–2005 is likely to be 0.3°C to 1.7°C under RCP2.6, 1.1°C to 2.6°C under RCP4.5, 1.4°C to 3.1°C under RCP6.0 and 2.6°C to 4.8°C under RCP8.5.

      RCP 8.5 is the one with “very high” greenhouse gas emissions. Your “expected to happen” figure is higher than the top of its range.

      • rlms says:

        Where do you get that in James’ comment? The only plausible reading I can (given the “if”s in the latter sentences of that paragraph) is that *if* the temperature rises by ~6 degrees it will not do so until very late this century, not that that *will* likely happen.

        • What he wrote was:

          Somewhat more seriously this isn’t expected to happen until very late this century

        • HeelBearCub says:

          But he further added

          and if we’ve taken that emissions path

          All that means is that there IS an emissions path that leads to 6 degrees of warming, and even then it won’t happen till the end of the century. It doesn’t mean it’s the expected emissions path.

        • I quoted the figure for what the IPCC described as the very high emissions scenario, and it was substantially lower than 6°. Asserting that something is expected to happen surely means something more than “there is some imaginable circumstance in which it could happen.”

        • HeelBearCub says:

          @David Friedman:
          He was asked:

          Are there (many) plausible projections by (many) scientists with (lots of) relevant expertise that suggest that climate change will make Earth uninhabitable for human beings

          His answers are in that context, and he directly says he does not know any scenarios that result in this.

          I quick google shows that IPCC report of 2007 has “the best estimate for the high scenario (A1FI) is 4.0°C (likely range is 2.4°C to 6.4°C). [by 2100]”

          These answers are in the context of “how bad could it possibly get” not, “what is the likely scenario”

        • Paul Zrimsek says:

          If 6C means only that it could happen if we turn emissions up to 11, it becomes hard to figure out what “isn’t expected to happen until very late this century” is supposed to mean (even apart from the question of who is doing the expecting): we can just as easily imagine emissions being turned up to 12, with the result that 6C is reached only kinda-sorts late in the century.

    • kaakitwitaasota says:

      It’s pretty mainstream given the most recent IPCC report that came out a week or two ago is begging the world’s governments to cut CO₂ emisssions by half by 2030 and go carbon-neutral by 2050 to avoid disaster.

      “1.5C” or “2C” is kind of misleading. Remember that most of the world’s surface is water, and water acts as a giant heat sink, so you will not get as much warming of the air above the oceans–and that means you’ll get a lot of warming over land. Positive feedback loops such as glacier melt and methane release from Arctic tundra are already occurring, and are very difficult to undo.

      Ecosystems are organic, bottom-up order, and small changes in precipitation or temperature can cause very large changes (consider the difference between a high of -0.5C and 0.5C in winter–that’s the difference between freezing and thawing! of rivers and lakes!)

      Possibly more worrying than temperature shifts are precipitation shifts. Parts of eastern Germany didn’t get any rain at all this summer between April and September. Many European trees can only take a summer like that once in a blue moon; if it’s every fourth summer, and then every other summer, they’ll start dying in droves, along with anything that depends on them.

      Human civilization will probably get through it, somehow or other, but as somebody who really likes winter, countryside and nature, I really fear for what I’m going to see over the next six decades or so of life I’ve got on this planet. I don’t want to get a five-month summer of 50-degree highs and East Coast-humidity in thirty years, but we’re on track for it.

    • Isn’t the ozone hole widely considered a success story? What other examples are there of scientists being overly conservative on environmental issues?

      • HeelBearCub says:

        It is a success story because, only once we found it, we took immediate action radically alter the release of the causative chemicals. It’s not clear to me that this same action could have been taken if science merely predicted that the ozone hole would occur.

        The success or failure of the response to the ozone hole is roughly orthogonal to whether science was conservative or aggressive in predicting the outcome of release of ozone depleting chemicals.

        • Ok, but the context is questions about the costs of acting vs not acting. When have scientists been too conservative about the dangers of an environmental issue?

        • What’s the history on lead? Scott seems to think it’s clear that environmental lead, from gasoline and presumably paint had large negative effects. How soon was there evidence on that and how long before it was acted on?

        • HeelBearCub says:

          @Wrong Species:
          I may be wrong, but interpreted Picone as saying that an aggressive approach to ozone by science would have been to have had models that said “well, here is a possible result of these chemicals being released”. It would have predicted the possibility of the ozone hole, rather than everyone being surprised by it.

          He is saying that the consensus scientific takes on global warming don’t spend much/any time pondering what a “surprising” bad result would be.

          In the context of “how many scientists predict the end of humanity” where he is answering “pretty much no one”, he is also giving the “but if they are wrong, here is potential reason they are wrong” answer.

        • nkurz says:

          @DavidFriedman

          What’s the history on lead? … How soon was there evidence on that and how long before it was acted on?

          Lead paint was known to be harmful to children since the 1890’s. It was banned for indoor use in parts of Europe before 1910, and in parts of Australia in the 1920’s. The US and Canada didn’t stop using it until the 1970’s, although indoor use had mostly stopped before then. Decorative lead paints are still sold in parts of South America, Africa, and Asia.

          Leaded gasoline was known to be harmful essentially from when it began to be used, although the main concern was workers who were in contact with it rather then the environmental contamination. It was temporarily banned in NYC in the 1920’s, until the federal government convinced them to reallow it. In the US it was finally phased out for automobiles the 1980’s although it’s still allowed for piston engine airplanes.

          I think most people agree that given what was known at the time, the use of lead paint and leaded gasoline should have been stopped earlier. I don’t know the whole history, but at a glance, it seems that independent scientists were pointing out the dangers, but industry backed scientists were able to prevent regulation from occurring until lots of damage had been done.

          Here’s a link with some more info: https://www.med.uottawa.ca/sim/data/Lead_in_Gasoline_e.htm

  10. johan_larson says:

    A farewell to Brazil, country of broken dreams

    For five years, Rio de Janeiro was Stephanie Nolen’s home base as she showed Globe&Mail (of Toronto) readers the lives and struggles of Latin America. Now, as she moves the bureau to Mexico, she looks back at the troubled nation she leaves behind.

    Man, the bottom end of Brazilian society is living in Mordor. Things were getting better, for a while, but then the economy turned and things got bad again. The system is too messed up to fund basic services, like schools and cops.

  11. Hoopdawg says:

    Speaking as a left-wing commenter, I find it hard to comment on posts (e.g. the recent “Nodrumia”) which are explicitly based on a right-wing philosophy. All the easy takes, like “garbage in, garbage out”, or perhaps a more informative “OMFG why are you using property rights to solve interpersonal conflicts, and stop advocating for feudalism, seriously your entire conceptual framework is irreparably broken”, are, obviously, extremely rude and unproductive (and for the record, there’s no need to give those kinds of posts a special treatment, they are useless). It makes even less sense to argue with commenters who came here with a (reasonable) expectation to be able to utilize said framework. An actual contribution would require putting a significant effort of constructing an alternative from first principles, hoping they’re shared, since otherwise it runs a significant risk of being ignored due to framework incompatibility. It turned out I’m just too lazy, too unprepared, and have too little time to try that, which I assume is common.

    • idontknow131647093 says:

      Im confused why Nodrumia or NIMBYism generally is seen as left-right from your POV.

      • Hoopdawg says:

        Wait, what? I did not take sides on the object-level problems discussed in “Nodrumia”, in fact I did not even mention them at all. (And if I would, I would certainly not treat them as a left-right issue.) The whole point of my previous post was that the idea of solving those problems with tweaks in property law made the discussion unapproachable for me.

        • nkurz says:

          I think the confusion is that you appear to equate “solving those problems with tweaks in property law” with “a right-wing philosophy”. I guess I’d put this particular case closer to the right than the left, but I don’t think that’s generally true. For example, would you consider “solving” global warming with carbon trading to be a primarily right-wing approach? For me, both are off-puttingly legalistic in their approach, but neither fits clearly on a left-right spectrum.

          • If “right wing” means pro-market and anti central planning, then carbon trading or a carbon tax is a right-wing solution, whether or not the problem is one that, from a right-wing standpoint, needs solving. Similarly, the Yugoslavian version of communism was from that standpoint to the right of the Russian version. The abolition of the draft was a right-wing policy, although one that lots of people on the left approved of.

            Part of the problem here is that “right-wing” gets used in different and inconsistent ways. Most obviously, it isn’t clear whether libertarians should be considered right or left, although at present they are generally counted as right.

            Getting back to the draft … . By my definition above, it was obviously a right-wing move. But if you identify right-wing with nationalism and militarism, you might reach the opposite conclusion.

          • Matt M says:

            If “right wing” means pro-market and anti central planning, then carbon trading or a carbon tax is a right-wing solution

            No it isn’t. It involves the state setting up, managing, and running a phony market that people are forced to participate in against their will under threat of violence.

          • Thegnskald says:

            Matt M –

            And what makes that not-right-wing?

          • Thomas Jørgensen says:

            All markets are set up and managed by the state. Natural markets do not really exist. Seriously. You settle purchases with government money, breaches of contract are arbitrated by the state, fraud and force are punished by the state, ect, ect. Not all markets are equal, and often it is a shit idea to set up a new market to solve a given problem.. but “Its an artificial market” is not a valid objection to anything. They all are. If you think cap and trade is a shit plan, you have to argue that point, not wave furiously at it. ´

          • All markets are set up and managed by the state. Natural markets do not really exist. Seriously. You settle purchases with government money …

            If that is intended as a claim about all markets it is wildly false. There are lots of examples of money not produced by governments. There are markets using barter rather than money. There have been markets involving participants in stateless societies. The old silent auctions in Africa were markets involving no money, no state, and no common language.

            Did you mean “all markets in the U.S. at present”? That’s more nearly true but there are still obvious examples in illegal markets.

          • Doctor Mist says:

            Most obviously, it isn’t clear whether libertarians should be considered right or left, although at present they are generally counted as right.

            Yeah, probably true. It was not always so. When I first became Libertarian, my prize possession was the T-shirt with the donkey and elephant each pointing a gun at you, with the caption, “Your money or your rights!” The Democrats wanted to tax you out the wazoo but otherwise espoused, “If it feels good, do it!”, while the Republicans seemed obsessed with running your personal life. As the former triumphed, they decided they could take both my money and my rights, and the latter got a lot more mellow about my personal life.

            Edit: to be fair, the Republicans have also gotten a lot more willing to take my money.

          • Hoopdawg says:

            you appear to equate “solving those problems with tweaks in property law” with “a right-wing philosophy”

            Note that I referred to right-wing in the context of Scott wondering about lack of participation from leftists. I could spend a few paragraphs sharing my views about the left-right dichotomy and its complexities, but I’d rather realize it’s useless and stop right now. Moving on, let’s treat “left” and “right” as useful (in the sense that I feel they correctly classify my ideological position vis-à-vis this blog and its commentariat), but very rough approximations.

            The actual framework conflict here is better described as between proprietarianism and communitarianism; with, to use your example, carbon trading falling somewhere in between purely proprietarian solution of privatizing air, and purely communitarian one of treating it as a common. Of course the above examples are of surface level policies, not necessarily revealing their philosophical underpinnings – a property-based solution can be reached by community consensus, while proprietarians can sign contracts establishing commons – and I believe most of us are open to at least discussing merits and demerits of object-level policies on the theoretical level. This is not where the disagreement lies.

            The disagreement, rather, is over which framework is philosophically and empirically valid, and here, they’re inherently contradictory. An example of the incongruity can actually be observed between our posts. The discussion concerns markets instead of property (markets are something of a proprietarian motte, since the notion of exchange is much more defensible than the notion of unalienable right to a factory or swaths of land, much less IP, or someone else’s time, or air; also note the common false dichotomy between markets and central planning), but the disagreement is over the same basic question – are they a natural form of human relations, or are they a costly fiction that, in a generalized form, can only arise and be enforced with violence?

            If you think the answer is the latter, “Nodrumia” is an utterly frustrating read of someone who’s thoughtful enough to criticize and contrast his own proprietarian assumptions with [regular human values] to the point where he’s almost ready to ditch them, but then reverts right back and asks for a rich feudal lord to come and deliver him from the horrors of modern city.

    • Eponymous says:

      All the easy takes, like “garbage in, garbage out”, or perhaps a more informative “OMFG why are you using property rights to solve interpersonal conflicts, and stop advocating for feudalism, seriously your entire conceptual framework is irreparably broken”, are, obviously, extremely rude and unproductive

      While those aren’t the most productive ways to phrase those comments, I think the general point could be a very valuable contribution. SSC commenters (and Scott himself) lean towards an analytical framework that one might describe as centrist, technocratic, “neoliberal”, etc. (I know I’m using poorly defined words here; I’m trying to gesture at a vague concept). I think Scott and some of the better commenters would love to hear a strong version of arguments coming from a different framework, that are a bit alien to their natural thought patterns.

      Admittedly I won’t claim that the resulting discussions will be pleasant for you.

      My own theory is that SSC selects pretty heavily for a certain cognitive style and worldview, that doesn’t map very precisely to left/right as commonly understood, but that probably turns off many other sorts of people.

      • Jacobethan says:

        Very much second all of this. I’m always a little mystified by the people posting vehemently about SSC’s leftward or rightward tilt, because to me any left-right signal has always seemed much weaker compared to the overwhelming prevalence of the style of reasoning Eponymous is gesturing at, which for lack of a better word I’ll call “technicist.”

        I for one would be quite interested to read Hoopdawg cashing out his objections to the “Nodrumia” framework a bit more fully. Not because I’m necessarily expecting to agree — the virtue of property rights as a means of solving interpersonal conflicts is so intuitive to me that I’m at once bemused and intrigued to hear from somebody who sees it as obviously and hilariously wrong.

  12. rlms says:

    Scandals I’m surprised the Catholic church was involved in: stealing babies. Not because I have a high opinion of them (since obviously organised religion is stupid and dangerous) but because destroying (heterosexual) nuclear families doesn’t seem like their style.

    • Gazeboist says:

      Wait, this isn’t about the Catholic tradition of destroying Jewish nuclear families?

      • ana53294 says:

        This is about taking kids from single mothers, Republican* mothers, widows of Republicans, left-wing or atheist women and giving them to good Catholic right-wing families.

        There are not many Jews in Spain. Hitler was late by Spanish standards; we did the kicking out of the Jews in the late XV century, and then proceeded to kill the Jewish converts who did not eat pork with the Inquisition. He did surpass the Spanish Inquisition in scale, though.

        *So nobody is confused: in Spain, Republican means person who supports the Spanish Republic and does not want the Monarchy. It is a very left-wing position. Even the Socialist Party mostly supports the Monarchy, and the Republican wing of the Socialist party is radically left-wing.

        • AlphaGamma says:

          What I think Gazeboist is referring to is the case of Edgardo Mortara, which happened in the Papal States in the 19th century- a Jewish child was taken from his parents in order to be raised as a Catholic, because the family’s Catholic servant had baptised him while he was seriously ill.

          • ana53294 says:

            The difference here would be that the married parents got married in the Church (civil weddings were not a thing then, and the Catholic Church was the only church in most of Spain).

            Also, being Republican does not mean they were not Catholic. Not all Republicans were atheists. Although they were pro taking Church land, but hey, the Church is about souls, not dirty earthly money, right?

            So, while some cases of baby-stealing were single mothers or atheists, quite a few of them were Catholic widows or married Republican women.

      • quanta413 says:

        Yeah, I was surprised too when I read the link.

  13. rlms says:

    Things that were surprisingly facist in the 1950s: the EU (or rather, European superstate boogyman). Also, GK Chesterton had a more belligerent second cousin named AK.

  14. Le Maistre Chat says:

    Dungeons & Dragons thread, subtopic Monstrous Manual gushing:

    Aboleths are 20-foot-long fish with 4 10-foot head tentacles. They are highly intelligent (a standard deviation above human average) telepaths (oh boy, psionic rules) and hermaphrodites. They are not social, living in broods of a parent and 1-3 offspring, who presumably split up by the time they reproduce. They’re Lawful Evil and want to use their IQ and psionics to enslave surface people.

    Like… OK. There’s cool narrative potential here, but “evil fish with tentacles” is the most shallow cribbing from Lovecraft, so their role could be better filled by any of his original races you have a stat block for.
    This monster’s original context was the 1981 module Dwellers of the Forbidden City, which also introduced serpent men (yuan-ti), toad people (bullywugs) and mongrelmen (the product of generations of D&D interracial marriage) in the context of going to a lost city in the jungle on the trail of highway robbers operating on the jungle outskirts. Very Robert E. Howard with a tinge of his and Lovecraft’s older contemporary A. Merritt.

    • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

      Aboleths are some of my favorite villains, although doing their concept justice is very difficult.

      One of the strengths of Lovecraft’s short stories is that his protagonists generally don’t have the perspective to understand or explain why the eldrich creatures are doing what they’re doing. Maybe they’re like animals acting on some primal instinct; maybe they’re plotting some scheme beyond human comprehension; maybe they’re thrashing around blindly in a world just as incomprehensible to them as they are to us. That uncertainty about their goals is essential to keeping them genuinely alien.

      As the DM, however, you really do need to think of some sort of motivation for your main antagonist if you plan on having them around for more than a single session. Being a human yourself, any motivation that you come up with is going to be comprehensible to humans. So you need to work twice as hard not to rob the creature of its alien mystique.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Bullywug

      I’m temporarily jumping beyond A here for the sake of context. Bullywugs are a human-size Chaotic Evil race of sapient frogs (INT 5-10, where 10-11 = IQ 100) who have learned how to make tools like weapons and armor and live in semi-settled tribes of 10-80 in swamps and marshes.
      The Society section says “all bullywugs live in organized or semi-organized socially fascist groups, cooperating for the purpose of hunting and survival” — wait, how is that fascist? They’re basically advanced foragers who leverage dense seafood resources to settle in tribes rather than be nomadic bands, like the Northwest Coast natives.

      “Males are the dominant sex, and females exist only to lay eggs. Though females and young make up about one-half of any tribe, they count for little in the social order. The only signs of respect that bullywugs ever bestow are toward their leader and their bizarre frog god. The race is chaotic evil, and totally lacking in any higher emotions or feelings.” Well, except they’re totally evil.

      “Bullywugs prize treasure, though it benefits them little. They value coins and jewels, and occasionally a magical item can be found amongst their hoard.

      On an individual level, bullywugs lack the greed and powerlust seen in the individuals of other chaotic races, such as orcs. Fighting among members of the same group, for example, is almost nonexistent. Some would say that this is because they lack the intelligence to pick a fight, and not from a lack of spite. The tribes are lead by the dominant male, who kills and eats the previous leader when it is too old to rule. This is one of the few instances when they fight among themselves.

      Ecology: Bullywugs tend to disrupt ecosystems, rather than fill a niche in them. They do not have the intelligence to harvest their food supplies sensibly and will fish and hunt in an area until its natural resources are depleted, and then move on to a new territory. They hate men, and will attack them on sight, but fortunately prefer to dwell in isolated regions far from human beings.”
      OK, I get it, they’re too stupid and evil and be Northwest Coast natives!

      Like I said, these guys come from the same 1981 module as aboleths, but the original context was A. Merritt’s 1919 novel The Moon Pool. In the novel, an advanced race developed at the Earth’s core and eventually begat the Shining One, a small-g god who pulls a Lucifer. Eventually only three individuals of the race are left, “Silent Ones” who “have also been sentenced by the good among their race to remain in the world, and not to die, as punishment for their pride which was the source of the calamity called the Dweller [Shining One], until such time as they destroy their creation—if they still can. And the reason they do not do so is simply that they continue to love it.” They raise up a species of frogmen who the modern Western protagonists encounter.

      • Rm says:

        (minor quibble) If someone plunders stuff from “an ecosystem” and you think they have no role within it, it’s not “ecology”. Consider forest fires – they make a lot of stuff drain away as salts or fly away as CO2, but they definitely have a role in the ecosystem. So do locusts, for that matter.

        • Nornagest says:

          It was the early nineties. Ecology, for anyone that wasn’t a professional ecologist or at least zoologist, pretty much meant stuff you picked up watching Captain Planet.

          • Rm says:

            Well damn, in the early nineties all “ecology” I heard about was Chernobyl this, Chernobyl that, so I guess I agree with your use of the word))

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Mongrelman

      “Mongrelmen are a mixture of the blood of many species: humans, orcs, gnolls, ogres, dwarves, hobgoblins, elves, bugbears, bullywugs, and many others.”

      I wouldn’t say this was inevitable: one can imagine an alternative where there are dozens of sapient species but they can no more interbreed than apes, hyenas and bears. But it does follow logically from the abundance of Standard Fantasy races, esp. with their half-elves and half-orcs.

      “Their appearance varies greatly, combining the worst features of their parent stocks. They are usually clad in dirty rags; they are ashamed of their appearance and try keep their bodies concealed, especially among strangers.”
      But interracial marriage is bad. Shun miscegenation; if everyone cegenated right these things never would have existed!

      Mongrelmen can imitate the sounds made by any monster or creature they have encountered except for special attack forms, pick pockets like a Thief, and spend a turn to camouflage their skin for 80% chance of not being noticed. That doesn’t sound too bad and shameful.

      “Because of their appearance, mongrelmen are seldom welcome in any lawful or good society, and are usually enslaved or abused by evil or chaotic groups. Thus mongrelmen are found as either slaves or serfs, working long hours for evil humans or humanoids in a dismal community, or as refugees living in abandoned ruins.”
      Refugee/free mongrelmen live in tribes of 1-100, have high infant mortality, and a lifespan of only 25-35 years (I hope they meant “life expectancy” and not “miscegenation makes them drop dead of old age by 35.”)

      • Nornagest says:

        I just want to know what the great-great-grandfather of the mongrelman in the Monstrous Compendium screwed to give it the lobster claw. Then again, maybe some questions are best left unanswered.

        Those guys were surprisingly popular for a while. I think I even saw rules for making mongrelman PCs somewhere, although I can’t remember where off the top of my head. (And they had such a bad stat block that you wouldn’t want to do it anyway.)

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          I just want to know what the great-great-grandfather of the mongrelman in the Monstrous Compendium screwed to give it the lobster claw. Then again, maybe some questions are best left unanswered.

          There’s a “Lobster Johnson” joke in there somewhere.
          That’s pretty messed up, to be popular enough to go to that effort but give them such bad stats that no one would want to.

        • Gazeboist says:

          “Mongrelfolk” was one of the extra races in the 3.5 Races of Destiny splat, but they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for that book in my view.

          (I’ve never really been a fan of “diversity is the human shtick” in settings that take a bunch of races/species and give them all shticks, and thus humans in D&D and most other RPGs tend to annoy me.)

          • Nornagest says:

            I’m pretty sure this would have been in 2E. Most likely late 2E. I never read Races of Destiny.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Tasloi

      “Tasloi are long-legged, flat-headed humanoids. They walk in a crouching posture, touching their knuckles to the ground from time to time. Their skins are a lustrous green and are thinly covered with coarse black hair. Their eyes are similar to a cat’s and are gold in color.”

      Another original creation from Dwellers of the Forbidden City. These are nocturnal sapient beings of low intelligence who live in jungles in tribes of 10-100. They’re treated as close to monkeys and apes, speaking their languages, but have green skin. They have 1 Hit Die and AC 6, like the orc stat block. I like them well enough, but c’mon, just treat them as an orc culture and not a species.

    • Nornagest says:

      D&D’s Lovecraft pastiche has always been pretty shallow. Besides the aboleths, you’ve got mind flayers (dollar-store Cthulhus; enjoy brains, which they eat by tentacling them out through your nostrils), intellect devourers (chihuahua-sized animals with a brain for a body; also eat your brains, but at least they do it with a psychic power), kuo-toa and sahuagin (two different Deep One pastiches; kuo-toa are slimier, sahuagin are bloodthirstier, but neither one has the Innsmouth hook, so to speak), and gibbering mouthers (shoggoths, but without the size, unstoppability, or terror). I’m kind of sad that the Gugs didn’t make it until Pathfinder. They’ve probably got more of the D&D nature than any other Lovecraftian monster except maybe the Dholes, and unlike them they can’t be mistaken for a species of African wild dog.

      The aboleth in Baldur’s Gate II was one of its better scenes, though. And I hear Pathfinder’s been trying to do interesting stuff with them, although I never got deep enough into the Paizo adventures to know much about it.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        I have a soft spot for the Mind Flayers. The brain on chihuahua legs, kuo-toa and mouthers are pretty daft. About the Gugs: that’s really weird, because they’re from the same passages of The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath that Gygax took ghasts (ghoul-eaters) from!

        Baldur’s Gate I & II used a bunch of these monsters well.

        • Nornagest says:

          So that’s where ghasts came from? I’d always wondered. Guess I’ll need to reread those stories; I’d remembered the Gugs, but I didn’t remember them.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            “The ghasts try to come out when the gugs sleep, and they attack ghouls as readily as gugs, for they cannot discriminate. They are very primitive, and eat one another.”

            There’s no indication that they’re undead, but they die from any exposure to sunlight in the Count Orlok tradition.

        • Nornagest says:

          I didn’t really notice while I was playing it, but now that I think of it, Baldur’s Gate I used pretty much all the D&D stable of aggressive humanoid critters except for orcs and goblins. Kobolds, tasloi, gibberlings, xvarts, gnolls, ogres, half-ogres, ogrillions. It had hobgoblins, but not bugbears. I think that was a pretty good design decision; it made the world seem less generic.

          The second game had goblins and orcs, but only in minor roles.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Wrapping up the Monster Class of 1981 with Yuan-ti.
      These are obviously the Serpent Men created for the 1929 Robert Howard story The Shadow Kingdom, which Lovecraft officially included in his universe (cf. “The Haunter in the Dark”) as Earth’s dominant race some time after the Mi-go crushed the crinoid Old Ones.
      They’re Chaotic Evil genius psychics who also cast a few spells.

      “Yuan-ti are devout worshippers of evil. They also hold all reptiles in high esteem. The center of yuan-ti life is the temple. They tend toward old ruins far away from man, but have even been known to build underneath human cities. Their own works tend toward circles, with ramps and poles replacing stairs.”

      Their society is divided into three castes, with “purebloods” who look mostly human at the bottom. This caste “takes care of all outside negotiations, always pretending to be human”, unlike the original story where all Serpent Men could disguise themselves with a spell. The middle caste is “halfbreeds”, which the DM is supposed to create by rolling a die twice to see what their snake features are:

      1 = snake head, 2 = flexible snake torso, 3 = no legs, snake tail, 4 = snakes instead of arms, 5 = scales, 6 = legs + snake tail.

      Seems like you could get some decent action figures out of this. Anyway, then the upper, priestly caste are called “abominations” and are either all snake or have a human head, like the monster in a different Howard story (“The god in the Bowl”) — hey wait, there was a Marvel Comics Conan story where these two races meet, when the skull-headed bodybuilder sorcerer Thulsa Doom tries to become their leader…

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Arcane

      12-foot-tall lanky blue-skinned giants, a race of merchants, found wherever there is potential trade in magical items. They shun violence, using invisibility or a short-range teleport to avoid it, and if you try to kill them they might even barter a magic sword rather than stabbing you with it!

      “If entering an area that is potentially dangerous (like most human cities), the arcane hires a group of adventurers as his entourage… An arcane feels no concern about abandoning his entourage in chancy situations.”

      “Arcane have a form of racial telepathy, such that an injury to one arcane is immediately known by all other arcane.”

      “Nothing is known about the arcane’s origins; they come and go as they please, and are found throughout the known worlds. When they travel, they do so on the ships and vehicles of other races. Finding such ships with arcane aboard is rare, and it is suspected that the arcane have another way of travelling over long distances.”

      They sell high-quality items for high prices, and are indifferent to the consequences for other races, making deals with both sides in conflicts, etc. They’re so secretive that other races don’t even know how they reproduce.

      I dislike the SF cliche where every member of a sapient species follows the same occupation, so I’m going to extrapolate the telepathic knowledge of all Arcanes everywhere being hurt to say that these rich guys are effective altruists. Some ideological group popularized the belief that selling magic items is the most lucrative occupation, and the Arcanes encountered as merchants are just the ones who believe this. They donate all they can without getting physically harmed or going out of business to whatever charity back on the homeworld will most efficiently reduce Arcane suffering, to make their telepathic pain go away.

      • Nornagest says:

        One of the Monstrous Manual’s less charming quirks was its habit of assuming familiarity with all the campaign settings they’d pulled these critters from. Where I grew up, the one bookstore in town that carried D&D sourcebooks had never even heard of Spelljammer, so until a guy with a copy started playing in my group, references like these confused me mightily. I guess it made the world seem bigger, though, so it’s not all bad.

        I don’t know why the MM collated stuff from Spelljammer and not from, say, Dark Sun. I remember some Athasian stuff made its way into the Book of Artifacts, so it’s not like they had a consistent policy.

        • dndnrsn says:

          Putting psionic monsters in the 2nd ed MM when the psionic rules were in a hard-to-find supplement was pretty obnoxious.

          • Nornagest says:

            Weren’t there psionics rules in Player’s Option: Skills and Powers? That wasn’t a core book, but it wasn’t hard to find either. A lot of people bought it just for the kits it offered.

            Now, if you actually tried using those rules you’d probably end up gibbering and frothing at the mouth, but that’s another issue.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          I guess it made the world seem bigger, though, so it’s not all bad.

          That’s pretty much it. What’s objectively a flaw made the world of Dungeons & Dragons seem bigger than the familiar Germanic, Greek, and other big mythologies it raided for monsters. “I am confused; what the heck is the deal with this thing? Is it from a more obscure source, or made up for this weird world?”

          I don’t know why the MM collated stuff from Spelljammer and not from, say, Dark Sun.

          No idea. Dark Sun, Mystara, Dragonlance, and the unique parts of Forgotten Realms (its non-European continents) seem absent. Not even all the legacy monsters from Planescape seem to be here, let alone anything new. I guess the compiler really liked Spelljammer.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Argos

      Argos Panoptes (“all-seeing”) was a servant of Hera in Greek mythology, slayer of Echidna and guardian of the nymph Io when Hera turned her into a cow to stop Zeus from having sex with her. “Panoptes” was also an epithet of Helios and of Zeus, associated with a particular archaic idol Pausanias describes as having a third eye (very Hindu). In Argos’s case, it was literalized as him having one hundred eyes all over his body that slept in shifts. To free Io, Zeus asked his then-youngest child, Hermes, to slay Argos, which he did by first putting him to sleep with a spoken spell. Outraged, Hera switched strategies to tormenting Hera with a gadfly, which caused her to run around the world, ending up in Egypt.

      Here, he’s been turned into a Spelljammer monster, an amoeba-like thing 10-20 feet in diameter with “one large, central eye with a tripartite pupil, and a hundred lashless, inhuman eyes and many sharp-toothed mouths. An argos can extrude several pseudopods, each tipped with a fanged maw that functions as a hand to manipulate various tools.”
      So, Shoggoth Panoptes.
      “Argos colors tend toward shades of transparent blues and violets; they smell like a bouquet of flowers.”
      It can grab and enfold as many victims as it can physically reach, also carries 1-3 weapons or tools, its evil eyes can cast 23 different spells on whomever it gazes upon (I guess I’d better skip ahead to Beholders…) and it can fly quite slowly via telekinesis.
      For when a shoggoth isn’t scary enough.

      • Nornagest says:

        Feed till consume 2×HD, then rest 2 hours/HD

        Wait a minute, does that mean these things are normally eating 10-12 HD a day? If you think of a HD as roughly equivalent to a human, that’s like one to two thousand pounds. It says they’re omnivores, but the fluff text talks about “creatures” and plants generally don’t have HD, so this is probably in meat? The baleful beholder nations must have a pretty well-developed ranching industry.

        I guess the good news is that even if you’ve been hit by a slow ray, you should still be able to outrun these things.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Wait a minute, does that mean these things are eating 10-12 HD a day? If you think of a HD as roughly equivalent to a human, that’s like one to two thousand pounds. It says they’re omnivores, but plants generally don’t have HD, so this is probably in meat?

          That logically follows, yes. Each of these things has to be fed 6 sheep or large sheepdogs a day.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Behold, Beholders!

      A levitating sphere of flesh with a chitinous exoskeleton, maw, central eye and ten eyestalks, this slug-bug… thing was created in 1975 as one of the first Dungeons & Dragons monsters not from folklore or a novel. I don’t know if it was created with a backstory, or just a bigger challenge for the original players who were used to killing gorgons and other “real” die-by-looking-at-it monsters. Some of its eyes hypnotize you, represented by Charm and Sleep spells. Three of them kill you instantly with petrification like Medusa, straight death like the traditional basilisk, or SF-style disintegration. Another has telekinesis, the central eye prevents all magic in a 90-degree arc in front of it, etc.

      Like I said, I don’t know how they were used in their earliest years. The original Dungeon Master’s Guide just puts them on the random encounter table for the lowest, hardest level of a dungeon. A beholder’s company included Demon princes, Archdevils, the toughest dragons in mated pairs, dragon gods, Talos from Greek mythology, “elder Titans”, and undead magi capable of casting 6th level or higher spells. That’s, like… the Eighth or Ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, right?

      After a few years, some official writer came up with a backstory to explain why you always encounter them solo: they’re so xenophobic that they consider everyone not identical to them an inferior race. But by the time of the Monstrous Manual, there were whole nations of beholders in outer space, organized “under the dominion of hive mothers.”
      I feel like this is gonna be a long story.

      • AlphaGamma says:

        Are beholders another monster based on a cereal-box toy like the rust monster?

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Nope. The four toy monsters are apparently the Bulette, Owlbear, Rust Monster, and Umber Hulk. 2nd Edition artist Tony DiTerlizzi blogged about them, with the revelation that he would have completed that bag of monsters if the company hadn’t kept him busy with Planescape.

      • Vorkon says:

        In Spelljammer, the Beholders in a single hive were all basically identical clones of each other, (except for the hive mother, of course) so the xenophobia explanation still works.

        That said, I always assumed that the xenophobia explanation was developed after Spelljammer, as an attempt to explain why they lived in hives in space, but were always presented as solitary before that. If the xenophobia angle predates Spelljammer, that’s news to me.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          In Spelljammer, the Beholders in a single hive were all basically identical clones of each other, (except for the hive mother, of course) so the xenophobia explanation still works.

          Ah, I see.
          And according to Wikipedia, the vicious xenophobia explanation dates from 1983, ~5 years after the original AD&D books just dropped them on people with the bare explanation “solitary monster, usually on the lowest dungeon level, Very Rare wilderness lairs.”

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        “Habitat/Society: The beholders are a hateful, aggressive and avaricious race, attacking or dominating other races, including other beholders and many of the beholder-kin. This is because of a xenophobic intolerance among beholders that causes them to hate all creatures not like themselves. The basic, beholder body-type (a sphere with a mouth and a central eye, eye-tipped tentacles) allows for a great variety of beholder subspecies. Some have obvious differences, there are those covered with overlapping chitin plates, and those with smooth hides, or snake-like eye tentacles, and some with crustacean-like joints. But something as small as a change in hide color or size of the central eye can make two groups of beholders sworn enemies. Every beholder declares its own unique body-form to be the true ideal of beholderhood, the others being nothing but ugly copies, fit only to be eliminated.

        Ecology: The exact reproductive process of the beholder is unknown. The core racial hatred of the beholders may derive from the nature of their reproduction, which seems to produce identical (or nearly so) individuals with only slight margin for variation. Beholders may use parthenogenic reproduction to duplicate themselves, and give birth live (no beholder eggs have been found).”

        Note that this would mean all Beholders are female.

        Then the MM lists the Death Kiss, which has ten 20-foot retractable tentacles to eat you with instead of eyestalks, and the central eye doesn’t cast an anti-magic field. Poor degenerate girls.

        “If they encounter one of their kin, the result is often a mid-air struggle to the death. The loser’s body becomes an incubator and breeding ground for the death kiss’ offspring. Within one day, 1-4 young will ‘hatch’.”

        Wait, what? How does this wasp-like Standard Evil Reproduction fit with what you said earlier about Beholder reproduction?

        An Eye of the Deep is a type of Beholder that dwells deep in the ocean instead of underground, having only two eyestalks but also a pair of lobster claws. They’re not nearly as powerful; poor degenerate girls.

        A Gauth is a Beholder who likes black eye shadow eating magic items. One of its eyes can permanently drain magic from items it stares at.
        They’ve got a terminal breeder thing going on:

        “Gauth are thought to live a century or so. Within a week of their natural death, two young gauth emerge from the corpse.”

        “Orbus is either a genetically bred or a stunted and immature form of the standard beholder. It is only found in space aboard the tyrant ships of the beholder nations. It is chalk-white and lacks functioning smaller eyes. The central eye is huge and vulnerable, occupying most of the upper body above a small, toothless mouth. This eye has the normal anti-magic properties, but is milky white.

        Despite their vulnerability, the orbi are the means by which the beholders travel through space. It is they that can funnel the magical energies of the other beholders into motive force – they are living spelljammer helms.”

        Very SFnal.

        “Another relative of the beholder, the spectator is a guardian of places and treasures, and capable of limited planar travel. Once it is given a task, the spectator will watch for up to 101 years. It will allow no one to use, borrow, or examine an item or treasure, except the one who gave it its orders. The spectator has a large central eye and four smaller eye stalks protruding from the top of its hovering, spherical body.”

        In this mutation, the central eye reflects spells back at the caster, and there are only four eyestalkers with less scary powers than the usual (Create food and water, Cause serious wounds, Paralyzation ray and telepathy).

        “A spectator, if blinded in all of its eyes, cannot defend its treasure and will teleport to the outer plane of Nirvana.”

        !

        “If properly met, the spectator can be quite friendly. It will tell a party exactly what it is guarding early in any conversation. If its charge is not threatened, it can be very amiable and talkative, using its telepathy.”

        Then there’s an undead beholder, but that’s not as interesting as your friendly Buddhist beholder.

        • Nornagest says:

          The spectator seems pretty attached to worldly possessions for a Buddhist.

          As to the death kiss, I’d like to think there’s a S’teve Irwinsson (human ranger 7, Neutral Good) running around studying death kiss reproductive patterns. Look at this one! Ain’t she a beaut’?

          …hang on, I have a new character sheet to write up.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            I’m not a Buddhist and I’m still certain that saying these things are in Nirvana is heresy.

            As to the death kiss, I’d like to think there’s a S’teve Irwinsson (human ranger 7, Neutral Good) running around studying death kiss reproductive patterns. Look at this one! Ain’t she a beaut’?

            …hang on, I have a new character sheet to write up.

            That’s one of the best ranger concepts I’ve heard!
            (Ranger was a terrible “Aragorn class.” Tarzan would be a better pre-1974 archetype.)

          • Nornagest says:

            Ranger as a class is kind of a mess. It’s one of the ones (Rogue is another) that was designed to mimic a very specific character and kind of fell apart when it needed to be expanded into a full archetype; bonuses to fighting orcs and goblins make sense if you’re playing Aragorn, but how many other woodsy warriors can you think of that have a favored enemy of any kind? And let’s not even talk about the two-weapon fighting thing.

            Tarzan or Mowgli would be a better basis for the woodsy warrior archetype, yeah. They were the basis for a 2E kit, if I remember right, but it kind of sucked.

          • Randy M says:

            It’s funny that Ranger and Paladin got full classes, but Pyromancer or Illusionist got folded into Wizard.
            Eventually Magic User bifurcated too, but it might have been a good precedent to split some of the functionality out of wizard into other classes like was done to Fighter, or vice versa maintain more varied competencies in one martial class.

          • Nornagest says:

            I think the limitations of Vancian magic might have something to do with that. It’s pretty hard to build a pyromancer with D&D core rules; there aren’t enough fire spells on the list, and Wizards/TSR couldn’t put enough on the list without expensively inflating the core books. Especially in earlier editions, there are entire spell levels that don’t get any without a deep dive into splatbooks, and a lot of the ones you do get are distinctly underwhelming. An illusionist would be more viable but you’re still sacrificing a lot of versatility for your schtick, and the wizard class is all about versatility.

  15. The Nybbler says:

    I didn’t see this coming. The end of an era (or error, depending on your perspective)

    Google is shutting down Google Plus, ostensibly due to a security breech.

  16. Le Maistre Chat says:

    High Culture, not Culture War:
    In Hamlet, do you think Shakespeare set up the Ghost mystery to sneak in a “Catholicism is true” message, does the investigation end up confirming Protestant doctrine, or something else entirely?

    Part of the context is that while Amleth was a heathen prince in Saxo Grammaticus’s Danish history, the play is gleefully anachronistic and Hamlet and Horatio met as students in Wittenberg, Reformation Ground Zero.

    • Nick says:

      I haven’t read Hamlet, but I will say folks have been saying forever that Shakespeare might be Catholic. The Catholic Encyclopedia (over 100 years old now!) has an entire article on it. Unfortunately, it’s not optimistic:

      Taking these facts in connection with the loose morality of the Sonnets, of Venus and Adonis, etc. and of passages in the play, not to speak of sundry vague hints preserved by tradition of the poet’s rather dissolute morals, the conclusion seems certain that, even if Shakespeare’s sympathies were with the Catholics, he made little or no attempt to live up to his convictions.

    • engleberg says:

      I don’t know about Shakespeare, who wrote like a smarter Marvel Bullpen- he stole from everyone else, so he probably stole from crypto-Catholics. But there’s a persistent rumor that Marlowe got his for narking on Catholics to prods.

    • pontifex says:

      You can’t fool me. Catholics vs. Protestants is just the 1700s edition of the culture war.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        15-1600s: it was really cooling off in the 1700s. Read some of Boswell’s life of Samuel Johnson. Johnson, who was basically a one-man Académie française crossed with an autistic Fox News anchor, was pretty chill about all branches of Christianity, from the Catholics to those weird dissenters who let women preach (“Like a dog walking on two legs, it was not done well but one is impressed to see it done at all.”)

  17. ADifferentAnonymous says:

    Does anyone remember the tinnitus cure linked back in February? I don’t normally get tinnitus, but some just flared up, and this got rid of it right away.

  18. b_jonas says:

    To Scott: I see you named this thread “Opentagon”, but used a different image of the Pentagon from the one I linked to in “https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/08/26/ot109-opulent-thread/#comment-662834” . Is this because you didn’t like the image I linked to? Or did you just come up with that title independently of my post?

  19. VirgilKurkjian says:

    I know that adding additional people will exponentially complicate things, but future adversarial collaborations might benefit from having a third member who is truly agnostic about the issue. This person could keep the debaters focused on the big-picture issue, keep the discussion relevant for future readers, and can push points or raise questions that the debaters never would out of fear of seeming too confrontational. I think it would help with the “compromise on all points” problem, as well as with the “small-focus” issue.

    • Jiro says:

      There are plenty of positions where someone would have to be willfully ignorant in order to not have an opinion. I certainly don’t want a second collaborator who has no opinion on vaccination or on whether the Holocaust happened.

      • VirgilKurkjian says:

        That may be technically true, but in regards to the adversarial collaborations that were actually performed, I personally felt 1) like I was pretty agnostic towards the issues as they were framed, and 2) like no one did a good enough job to convince me one way or the other.

        More generally, I think there are more people agnostic on issues than you think. I propose that you and I enter into an adversarial collaboration, but first, we need to find someone who is agnostic as to whether there are people agnostic on the majority of issues… hmm…

        • Jiro says:

          I personally felt 1) like I was pretty agnostic towards the issues as they were framed, and 2) like no one did a good enough job to convince me one way or the other.

          That’s because the issues were framed in a careful way that tended to avoid the part of the issues that people actually cared about.

          • VirgilKurkjian says:

            Yeah, that’s a big part of it! And I think that’s something a neutral party could have steered them away from.

            “Let’s frame it like this.”

            “No way. As the agnostic party, that’s not a point I care about and wouldn’t convince me at all about the ‘real’ issue.”

  20. Jiro says:

    In some weird reverse of Conquest’s Law, any comment section that isn’t explicitly left-wing tends to get more right-wing over time. I am trying to push against this and keep things balanced, so I want to be explicit that I’m practicing affirmative action for leftist commenters.

    You should not do this.

    This is a case of disparate impact versus disparate treatment and it’s sad to see you trashing disparate treatment in order to avoid disparate impact. If there’s a difference in how the left and right behaves, that should manifest in a difference in how you treat them. If commentators on the left behave far more badly, that’s their own fault.

    It’s not just like affirmative action, it’s like affirmative action for sentencing. If you’re white, you get a longer sentence for the same crime than if you’re black. Only in this analogy, there isn’t actually anything that corresponds to prejudice by the police, black poverty, or anything like that, it’s just discrimination.

  21. baconbits9 says:

    I just want to put my complaint about the Kavanaugh situation here:

    It seems apparent to me that there is an obviously correct position as an outside observer to take, and that it is simultaneously impossible to be a part of a conversation while holding and conveying that opinion.

    That position is agnosticism. We do not have evidence that we can weigh in support of either side, we have no reasons to believe our individual intuitions about reliability of the involved parties, nor reason to think that broad statistics on false accusations apply to highly specific circumstances. Statements made about an event this long ago are either going to be vague or contain inaccuracies, and either is interpret-able as damning, so while I have formed an opinion (or an opinion has formed in me) I pretty much know its worthless. Not wrong, just not based on fact.

    What is most infuriating to me is the impossibility of convincing someone who holds a position that you are agnostic and convincing them that it is the correct position to take. The first is a function of their own opinion, if they have taken a side any refutation of the evidence that they claim supports them is seen as being the contrary position, and any attempt to be balanced and criticize the opposing side appears to help entrench their position by bolstering their arsenal of criticisms.

    None of this is original, but this episode has highlighted for me several points. Politics is the mind killer because decisions must be made and agnosticism cannot be exercised. Abstaining from voting, or commenting simply cedes power to those who are taking positions which means you either join a side or get ignored. I don’t think that tribalism is the driving force in politics and any degradation of discourse, I think that it is the natural outcome of marginalizing agnostics.

    • Brad says:

      I’m not sure if it had the same cause, but I had active disinterest. I couldn’t “get into” most of the articles or discussions of the accusations, including here. It just never sparked that “I have to know more” instinct.

      • Humbert McHumbert says:

        Same here. I found it hard to care because I quickly despaired of the possibility that I could form an opinion more reliable than a coin flip.

    • J Mann says:

      Thank you. I respect people who argue that based on the odds and their view of the incentives, we should go one way or the other, but I’m pretty concerned about all the people with a 95%+ confidence level in either conclusion.

    • HeelBearCub says:

      You can have an “agnostic” view on whether it happened.

      But the Senators can’t have an agnostic view on their vote, which is ultimately what is being debated. Presumably your view is actually, “we can’t know if it happened or not, so it should have no impact on the vote to confirm Kavananaugh” … which isn’t actually an agnostic view.

      • baconbits9 says:

        This is the point, politics in the US is actively pushing correct positions to the side. It is not obviously a fact that all voting/nomination systems must do this.

        • HeelBearCub says:

          Huh?

          If someone shouts fire, what is the “agnostic” position on leaving the building? You can be “agnostic” on whether there is a fire, but you can’t be agnostic on actually staying in or leaving the building. Especially if you are about to lock yourself in a sound proof chamber for the next 35 years 3.5 hours.

          • Matt M says:

            but you can’t be agnostic on actually staying in or leaving the building

            But you can decide to base your decision of staying or leaving on whatever it was going to be before the announcement of fire. If you were already going to leave, you leave. If you were going to stay, you stay.

            And to my point below, this is exactly what about 95% of the Senators actually did. In a chamber of 100, we’re talking about 2-5 people whose votes may have changed due to these allegations. That looks a whole lot like “everyone was agnostic” to me.

          • Evan Þ says:

            @Matt M, I don’t consider that “agnostic.” I consider that to be, at least in practice, concluding there is no fire.

            In real life, if I think there might be a fire – if I hear the fire alarms – I don’t stop to investigate but get out of the building. Even if I think it might be a false alarm, the risk is too high.

          • Matt M says:

            I consider that to be, at least in practice, concluding there is no fire.

            If I am a religious agnostic, and as such, I don’t go out of my way to obey the ten commandments, am I concluding, in practice, that there is no God?

            Surely the consequences of sinning in the presence of God are much more severe than those of not leaving a building in the presence of fire!

            I feel like by your definition, true agnosticism is an impossibility.

          • albatross11 says:

            This strategy breaks down when pulling the fire alarm is a tactic used adversarily.

      • Matt M says:

        I am curious. How different do people think the vote would have been in a hypothetical world where there were no sexual assault accusations against Kavanaugh (but there were still Handmaiden protests, howls about how unfairly Merrick Garland was treated, insistence that Kavanaugh’s appointment will literally kill women, etc.)

        Because at the end of the day, I think it goes about the same. Party line with maybe 1-2 defectors on either side, still confirmed.

        So despite all of this hysteria, my view is that at the end of the day, these allegations actually didn’t have any impact on the vote to confirm Kavanaugh… for either side, in either direction.

        • Eugene Dawn says:

          I’d guess Heidi Heitkamp votes yes without the assault allegations. Tester, Murkowski, and Donnelly might also have been ‘yes’es.

          • Nick says:

            I think Murkowski’s way more likely to vote yes without the allegations. To be honest, I was shocked she voted no in cloture at all. Republicans knew before Trump nominated Kavanaugh that the nominee had to pass Collins’ and Murkowski’s “won’t roll back Roe” requirement, and Collins at least remains confident on that. (That’s one of the dangers with nominating Coney Barrett, incidentally; I think Collins at least is a lot less sure of her. But hey, maybe Hoosier pride sways Donnelly to a yes for Coney Barrett!)

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I stand by my prediction from the beginning of the year (in the predictions thread) that the GOP picks up 2-6 senators in the midterms, most likely 4. If that comes to pass, Collins and Murkowski will not be an issue*, and we will no longer have to put up with Jeff Flake. That’s some nominative determinism if there ever was.

            * Assuming the next SCOTUS replacement comes in the next two years. But I haven’t thought about any numbers for the likelihood of that. And while in no way am I wishing anything ill towards RBG, she has not looked too spry in recent public appearances.

        • Plumber says:

          “I am curious. How different do people think the vote would have been in a hypothetical world where there were no sexual assault accusations against Kavanaugh….. “

          @Matt M,

          One Senator from Alaska changed her vote.

          Maybe.

          I’ve kept posting that my opposition to Kavaugh has had nothing to do with this stupid “character” sideshow, and how annoying to me this distraction from the actual decisions made by and likely to be made by the man is.

          The priorities of the press are not mine and it’s way past time to acknowledge that it’s Kings not Philosophers being selected.

    • BBA says:

      To me it became obvious pretty early on that there was nothing to go on except her recollections and his lack of them. I had a sinking feeling that nothing could ever be proven to anyone’s satisfaction. When things spiraled into reviewing high school yearbook in-jokes with a fine-toothed comb in an effort to prove whether or not Kavanaugh was a drunken lout in the 1980s, I was left wondering, how did we end up here? I get that we have to care about this, the next few decades of American law hinge upon it, but is basing it on this really what anyone wants?

      I was, of course, against “whoever Trump picks” from the moment Kennedy announced his retirement, because I support the continuing legality of abortion and labor unions and all sorts of things that the Federalist Society exists solely to destroy. (And I’m sure if it were President Clinton appointing an American Constitution Society member and former Democratic operative the other side would be feeling likewise.) I know how important this all is, and it was perfectly sensible for everyone to go to the mattresses, but it feels like looking into the abyss.

      The object-level question of who was telling the truth wasn’t that interesting to me. They both were.

      • because I support the continuing legality of abortion and labor unions and all sorts of things that the Federalist Society exists solely to destroy.

        Judging by my interactions with the Federalist Society, which include giving talks for them from time to time, they don’t exist to destroy either of those things. My guess is that most members believe labor unions should be legal, although many may believe that current law is improperly biased in their favor. I doubt there would be any consensus on abortion.

        I suspect there would be a large majority against Kelo and similar decisions, against increased restrictions of firearms ownership, a good deal of division on legalizing marijuana.

        I’m not sure if it’s true but I was told that Kavanaugh was not on their original list, possibly because of his positions on executive power and the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. The Federalist Society is a conservative/libertarian alliance, which is why they sometimes invite me to give talks, and those are positions of his that libertarians are likely to be unhappy with.

        • BBA says:

          My basic understanding was that the FS was Law School Republicans and the ACS was Law School Democrats. (Also, the ACS was unnecessary because all law school students and faculty are Democrats except for the handful of FS members…) In both the GOP and the FS, the libertarians talk a big game, but it’s the conservatives that make up the bulk of the membership and call the shots.

          At least, that’s my impression as a former libertarian law student who became completely disillusioned with libertarianism and the legal profession in general.

          • In both the GOP and the FS, the libertarians talk a big game, but it’s the conservatives that make up the bulk of the membership and call the shots.

            What’s the basis for that impression?

            I don’t pay enough attention to judges and Federalist Society recommendations to agree or disagree. The fragments of evidence I can offer are:

            I get invited to give talks to Federalist Society groups. My talks are not conservative, although some of my topics are ones where conservatives would agree with my libertarian views. On the other hand, one of my favorite titles is “Should We Abolish the Criminal Law?”

            The Federalist Society is run by Eugene Meyer, who is the son of Frank Meyer, who argued for a conservative/libertarian synthesis.

            I was told, whether correctly I don’t know, that Kavanaugh was not on the original Federalist Society lists, possibly because of legal positions that libertarians don’t like. Reason had a piece criticizing him on those grounds.

      • Mitch Lindgren says:

        The position of your linked article is that Kavanaugh did sexually assault Ford, but he’s still being “truthful” in denying her allegations because he was too drunk to remember it. That’s certainly plausible, but it still means that the ground truth is that Kavanaugh committed sexual assault.

        Also, believing this entails also believing that he was lying when he claimed he had never blacked out from excessive drinking. Not to mention his claims that “boofing” refers to flatulence and “devil’s triangle” is a drinking game. Anyone who believes that, let me know, because I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

        I don’t understand how anyone can believe Kavanaugh. Half the time he was dodging questions, and the other half he was making bald-faced, unbelievable lies.

        • Nornagest says:

          Also, believing this entails also believing that he was lying when he claimed he had never blacked out from excessive drinking. Not to mention his claims that “boofing” refers to flatulence and “devil’s triangle” is a drinking game.

          It means believing he lied (or was mistaken, but that seems implausible) about blacking out, but I don’t see how it implies lying about slang. The slang stuff never made any sense to me — slang has a lot of regional and temporal variation, it’s entirely reasonable for a term that meant a drinking game in one prep school in the early Eighties to mean a sex act on Urban Dictionary in 2018.

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            The “prior probabilities” that were all the rage around here a couple of weeks ago might come in handy on this one: specifically, the probability of a couple of 17-year-old guys getting themselves some hot 2-on-1 action versus the probability of a group of 17-year-old guys playing a game of quarters.

          • Mitch Lindgren says:

            Right, I didn’t mean that believing the hypothetical described in that article implies that he lied about the slang. I only meant that implies that he lied about blacking out (or at least forgot, which I agree seems implausible).

            Unrelatedly, I also think he lied about the slang, although I admit there are plausible but IMO unlikely alternative explanations there.

          • Mitch Lindgren says:

            (Can’t edit my existing comment, so I have to add a new one.) As to Paul’s point, the fact that the phrase was used in his yearbook doesn’t mean that he or his friends actually performed the act (whatever its actual meaning was at the time).

        • The Nybbler says:

          Both “boofing” referring to flatulence and “Devil’s Triangle” being a drinking game have been substantiated. The former in a book called “The Art of the Fart” and the latter in statements by some of Kavanaugh’s friends and friends of friends. So you might want to update your estimation of your ability to distinguish unbelievable lies from unlikely truth.

          • Mitch Lindgren says:

            Okay, I’ll grant that the devil’s triangle one is plausible. Boofing I’m more skeptical of; the book you reference was published in 2004, and the comment “Judge – have you boofed yet?” in his year book doesn’t make any sense if they really meant “farted.”

            But even if we assume that he was telling the truth about those two slang terms, I still think he lied about the extent of his drinking; the meaning of “Renate alumnius;” “Beach Week Ralph Club” referring to him having a weak stomach (as opposed to throwing up from drinking too much); Leland Keyser’s “refutation” of Ford’s claims; and possibly also various aspects of his personal finances.

            I can’t say with 100% certainty that he sexually assaulted Ford, but she seems infinitely more trustworthy to me, and I think it’s overwhelmingly likely that Kavanaugh perjured himself during the hearing which should be disqualifying in and of itself.

          • The Nybbler says:

            But even if we assume that he was telling the truth about those two slang terms, I still think he lied about the extent of his drinking

            Since he did not describe the extent of his drinking (other than to say that he sometimes drank to excess), that would be difficult.

            the meaning of “Renate alumnius;”

            I can’t be sure what it means. But given that two unlikely meanings have checked out, it seems unreasonable to declare that Kavanaugh’s claim was false. Anyway, he was very vague and IMO the most likely meaning — that Renate had gone out on at least one date with each of the “Renate Alumni” — doesn’t contradict it.

            “Beach Week Ralph Club” referring to him having a weak stomach

            It referred to him throwing up, which is what he said. He implied it wasn’t just drinking, but he didn’t say it wasn’t drinking.

            I can’t say with 100% certainty that he sexually assaulted Ford, but she seems infinitely more trustworthy to me

            What convinced you? Was it all the details in her story that changed, the whopper about being too afraid to fly to come to the hearing, the refusal to release the therapy notes, or the fact that none of the people she said were at the party backed her up?

        • BBA says:

          If anything my position (and Herzog’s) is even more damning to Kavanaugh: he committed sexual assault and forgot all about it because he didn’t think he was committing sexual assault. To him it was harmless horseplay. Maybe nine out of ten teenage girls would have agreed with him. Ford was the tenth, and it scarred her for life.

          I find this horrifyingly plausible. Of course, we can never be certain, memory being as fragile and unreliable as it is, and anyway I had sufficient other grounds to opposed the appointment that I need not reach the question. But if it were the only thing I had against an otherwise flawless nominee… I just don’t know where I’d stand.

          • Plumber says:

            @BBA,
            “….. if it were the only thing I had against an otherwise flawless nominee… I just don’t know where I’d stand”

            I was already against decisions Kavaugh had already made as Federal judge (it took me seconds to find a list) and expected that he’d make more such decisions on a Court that I was already against because of the Janus ruling, but if he just wanted to overturn Roe vs. Wade (which seems to be the Court decision most focus on) I’d be fine with that, and the accusations didn’t make me less (or more) supportive of him and both Ford and Kavaugh seemed to credibly report their memories, and I remain agnostic and uncaring about “what really happened” but, the hearings did reveal some details of Kavaugh’s prep-school, country club, Yale background, which wasn’t surprising, but what was surprising was him claiming at the hearing “I got there with no connections”.

            What?

            As others have pointed out, his grandfather went to Yale, his father was a multi-millionaire lobbyist, so “no connections”?

            The man’s a shill and to be that deeply ruling class and then deny that he is marks him as a scumbag.

            Am I clear?

          • The man’s a shill and to be that deeply ruling class and then deny that he is marks him as a scumbag.

            Two related points:

            1. If someone makes a false statement that everyone in the audience knows is false, he probably isn’t trying to deceive people. Either he is mistaken or he is speaking imprecisely. That point initially struck me with regard to Kavanaugh saying that the friend of Ford’s who Ford said was at the party had refuted (I think that was his word) her claim. Everyone on the committee would have seen the statement, and as I remember Kavanaugh himself had correctly stated, earlier in his testimony, that the woman said she did not remember such a party. So calling that perjury struck me as unreasonable.

            2. The same point applies here. My interpretation of what he said is that he takes his environment for granted, as most of us do. What he meant by “no connections” was that he didn’t know anybody involved in the Yale admissions process and, so far as he knew, his father didn’t either. It didn’t occur to him that his background gave an invisible connection that the random applicant didn’t have.

            Suppose someone asked you if you were rich. You would probably deny it. From the standpoint of a random inhabitant of India or Africa your denial would be false–by his standards you are rich. But you take for granted the background of your society, just as Kavanaugh, I suspect, took for granted the background of his much smaller society.

            Would your denial mark you as a scumbag?

          • Plumber says:

            @DavidFriedman

            To the Indian or the African it probably would!

            But thanks for the “walk a mile in another man’s shoes” reminder.

            As for the stuff with Ford you cited, I really didn’t pay enough attention to that many of the details, andwhat little I caught sounded unprovable either way, so I just don”t know, but the “no connections” thing grinded my gears, maybe more than it should have.

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      I think politics is the mind-killer, not just because a decision has to be made, but because people insantly reach to extremes. You can still be agnostic WRT the allegations and have opinions about how to proceed. The decision to insantly go to innocence or guilt is a decision you are not forced to make. People choose to so they can enjoy their own righteous indignation.

      I’m just really happy the Kav affair did not ruin my weekend. We went to a wedding with my in-laws, and my FIL is a Fox News-only “Lock her up” conservative, while my SIL is a fire-breathing non-profit lawyer liberal. Both of them are incredibly pissed about the whole affair and I had to catch my wife up on what was going on and suggesting to avoid the whole topic, lest the wedding end in some sort of fist fight (which has been very close to happening in the past)

  22. For some time I’ve been encouraging an online acquaintance of mine to post some of their writing online. I often find their ideas, though not always in agreement with my own, to be interesting and well thought out. I’m happy to say they recently wrote up an essay and gave me permission to publish it on my blog as a guest post.

    The Four Quadrants of Free Expression

    Their main intention (I think) is to break down different types of freedom of expression, with the intention to examine the legitimacy and consequences of any limitations on each. I think its the start of an analysis on a fairly important topic in light of the current failures in modern discourse. I think the writing style is great for a first online essay, and I think any questions or topics raised could be something they’d take into account if they end up doing further writing. I know free speech etc. is a topic that comes up on SSC from time to time, so perhaps some folks here would like to ask a provocative question or two.

  23. keranih says:

    So, as left leaning commentary is to be preferred…the New York Times just published an op-ed of rather astonishing vim and vitriol. “White women”, the post states, “put their racial privilege ahead of their second-class gender status in 2016 by voting to uphold a system that values only their whiteness, just as they have for decades.”

    I have two questions – first, for those of a left-leaning perspective, please explain what effect this column is *supposed* to have. I know how I’m reacting to it, I’m trying to figure out what the intent behind publishing this piece was. (Surely having me get out my list of old right-wing acquaintances and calling them up to chat about the pros of voting straight R and giving a ride to the polls to anyone who might do so isn’t what the NYT had in mind.)

    Secondly, and this is for anyone – I am resolved to not do that thing where I assume the most horrible individual examples of discourse and behavior of my opponents is the norm for that side. Please to point me in the direction of more nuanced and charitable (but still left-leaning) versions of this mess.

    • ADifferentAnonymous says:

      Yikes, usually I can find the valid points underlying this sort of thing, but this one is tough.

      My best guess as to the intended effect is “catharsis”–this one is probably for readers who are devastated or furious about the Kavanaugh confirmation, who might get something out of the Grey Lady having a good shout along with them.

      (I could write my own Social Justice rant about why women in particular have to get the brunt of that, but the rationalist space has been over it: you pick a target weak enough that you feel like your punch does damage, but strong in some way so you can pretend you’re punching up, hence white women)

      As for a better version… If you mean a better article about how white women are scum-of-the-earth gender traitors, I don’t think that’s the right thing to look for. I suppose you could observe that whiteness and maleness both predict conservatism, with the result that a slim majority of white women support Republicans generally, and due to polarization this all but guarantees a bunch of those white women will take the antifeminist side on a given issue. All true, and hang enough hatred in that skeleton and you’ve pretty much got that article.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        (I could write my own Social Justice rant about why women in particular have to get the brunt of that, but the rationalist space has been over it: you pick a target weak enough that you feel like your punch does damage, but strong in some way so you can pretend you’re punching up, hence white women)

        This just reminds me that one of my favorite parts of Cobra Kai is how it depicts teenagers of color not caring about this nonsense ethic of “punch up, never punch down”, instead caring about punching in general because they’ve been bullied. 😀

    • Aapje says:

      @keranih

      The intended effect is presumably to convince people to act less selfishly.

      A conservative variant might be to chastise people with a good income for not donating enough to their church, to be used to help people with little money.

      • keranih says:

        A conservative variant might be to chastise people with a good income for not donating enough to their church, to be used to help people with little money.

        Eh. To me, that reads like the conservative variant of EA. The NYT oped doesn’t fit that for me, at all.

        There are a few religion-based conservative analogies I could draw, but I won’t go there in this moment. Mostly because that’s beside the point – I’m looking for a more centralist, less inflammatory post that makes the “be less selfish by voting against this particular part of your self interest instead of against this other part” argument, only in a more sound fashion.

    • HeelBearCub says:

      A frequently employed phrase over the last 2 to 3 years, more elsewhere but here as well, is “This is how you got Trump.” If you understand that phrase, if it makes sense to you, then this article shouldn’t shock you or be unexpected.

      If you do understand how the Trump phrasing makes sense, but can’t process intuitively that this is flip side of the coin, I don’t think I will be able to persuade you of it, though.

      • keranih says:

        That the New York Times published it, is what I find unexpectedly shocking.

        As for the flip side…if you are saying that “refuse to accept unsubstantiated claims of sexual assault 35 years afterwards (and timed very politically conveniently) as indicative of action” as ‘how you get the Resistance’ – then, no, really, I can’t parse that.

        I can parse other rational for opposing Trump, but not this one.

        • HeelBearCub says:

          Your comment about not being able to parse what I meant seems … uncharitable? Non responsive to what I wrote?

          People feel attacked, unlistened to, powerless and unrepresented. They get angry. They express their rage. They wish things to change and threaten to make it happen.

          “This is how you get” … Trump. The Tea Party. Radical feminists.

          As to being shocked that the NYT published it, that seems like a tangent unrelated to your first point. At a guess, you don’t even regularly read the NYT, but simply were pointed to something that outraged people?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I’m honestly not sure I understand you. When I read “this is how you got Trump,” I thought that was an expression meaning “over the top bashing of the Red Tribe resulted in the backlash of people voting Trump.”

            This article would be an example of that: the white women who support Kavanaugh do not do it because they’re protecting “white privilege.” They do it because either:

            1) They do not find the accusations credible.

            2) They believe someone should be generally considered innocent until proven guilty (as a cultural standard, not just a legal doctrine).

            3) While they’re concerned for their daughters, they’re also concerned for their sons/husbands/fathers, that anyone will be able to make an accusation against them with no evidence and wreck their lives and reputations.

            Instead of listening to those concerns and weighing them charitably, she concludes with:

            Meanwhile, Senator Collins subjected us to a slow funeral dirge about due process and some other nonsense I couldn’t even hear through my rage headache as she announced on Friday she would vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.

            And reading this kind of thing is how you got Trump.

            Are you suggesting that ignoring this author’s anger is going to get us a feminist backlash?

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Are you suggesting that ignoring this author’s anger is going to get us a feminist backlash?

            No, I’m saying ignoring all of the crappy shit people in general have been forced to put up with caused all of that anger and backlash that is being objected to by kerinah.

            I swear. This is not a hard argument to understand. But, like I said, the fact that you don’t WANT to see the parallels makes it near impossible to see them.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            I could see what you’d be saying if you were talking about the Kavanaugh appointment itself as being “the way we got Trump.” That is, Republicans ignore the heartfelt anguish of women and appoint Rapin’ Brett to the SC anyway. But not the article itself.

            The article itself, where the out-of-touch author casts accusations of malice at huge swaths of the electorate with no basis in fact is how you got Trump, and with no awareness of that, how you will continue to get Trump. No Kavanaugh-supporting or fencing-sitting white woman is going to read that article and say “gosh, I was totally wrong, I had no idea how evil I was, I’m going to be good now and vote Democrat.” They’re going to look at it and say “these people in the media are delusional and insane as they’ve completely failed to understand why I think the things I do, and despise me based on false reasoning. I do not want them or their allies to have power over me so I will vote Republican because at least they don’t actively hate me.”

          • lvlln says:

            @Conrad Honcho

            I think you’re still not following. From my read of HeelBearCub’s posts, the analog to “Trump” in “This is how you got Trump” is “that NYTimes op-ed.” That is, “This is how you got Trump” is sort of a catch-all claim about how people were sick of being treated like shit by the media and rebelled with an extreme POTUS who spoke to their resentment, and in this case, the SJW-types are sick of being treated like shit by what they see as the current right-wing power structure and rebelled with extreme rhetoric like the kind in that NYTimes op-ed which spoke to their resentment.

            How much one sees this parallel as valid and thus explanatory to the point of the op-ed will probably depend a lot on how accurate one thinks those perceptions of “being treated like shit” in those 2 cases are.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            No, lvlln, I think we’re agreed. The article is not “how you got Feminist Trump.” The confirmation of Kavanaugh is “how you got Feminist Trump.”

            But I think the manifestation of that will be a purity spiraling in the DNC primaries in 2020. I don’t think that will result in electoral victory, however, because while the left wing activists are loud, they are a minority. Trump won because as off-putting as his personality is, on an awful lot of issues, he was saying what an outright majority of voters believe.

            ICE is more popular than “abolish ICE.” Stopping illegal immigration is more popular than amnesty/open borders/”no person is illegal.” “Innocent until proven guilty” is more popular than “#BelieveWomen.”

            The primaries are really going to be something, though, because the DNC leadership knows a radical left-winger is unelectable. This is why they have super delegates, and why I knew from the start in 2016 Bernie had no chance. But an awful lot of Bernie supporters didn’t seem to understand that the system was implemented precisely to stop candidates like Bernie, and that no amount of passionate appeals or poll-flogging was going to get the super delegates to change their minds. They were super delegates because they were part of the party machine. I don’t know what’s going to happen this time. It may be “Feminist Trump” for the DNC nomination, but I don’t see Feminist Trump beating Trump.

          • Matt M says:

            Bernie wasn’t nearly as radical as whatever the Dems are going to come with in 2020…

            I really hope Creepy Porn Lawyer gives it a go. That’ll be quite fun.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Bernie didn’t want to say anything off-putting except the s-word. He existed in an un-electable space (atheist, submissively giving up his podium to BLM when Hillary brought her iron fist down on the same stunt), but he could have started going to church or his parents’s synagogue (assuming he’s not a second or third-generation godless socialist), not caved to SJWs, and been in a strong position. Everybody knew that Donald Trump was a godless bully who started paying lip service to Christianity at the last minute and that didn’t keep him un-electable.
            The 2020 Dem primaries are likely to produce a candidate who loves flogging SJ issues rather than economic ones, and that’s not who Bernie was.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            CPL has no chance. 1) He’s a white male, and 2) there are elements of the left already very mad at him because his client’s outlandish accusations detracted from Dr. Ford’s more plausible accusation.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            While there is a very good argument that Avenatti tanked the anti-Kavanaugh movement, and I agree with it, Democrats are more likely to over-emphasize just how bad he was because they want to stop him before he pulls a Trump.

            And I am totally on their side for that. We need serious people in each party.

          • Matt M says:

            I feel like he basically got Palin’d here. The person really to blame for this epic failure has been so reflexively worshiped for so long and has too much power and status to take the fall, so all the fault must lie with the overly zealous political outsider who was just a little too enthusiastic about attacking the enemy.

          • People feel attacked, unlistened to, powerless and unrepresented. They get angry. They express their rage. They wish things to change and threaten to make it happen.

            Thanks. I think that explains what you meant.

            You are saying that the OpEd reflects the same feeling on the feminist left that references to Flyover Country reflected among people who voted for Trump because they felt that the coastal elites were ignoring them.

            Do I have it right?

            A more general point … . One should not assume that people who are part of a tribe only do things that benefit that tribe. Within a tribe people have their own objectives, and sometimes that leads them to do things that promote their objectives but subvert the objectives of their tribe.

            Think of it as market failure at the tribal level.

          • albatross11 says:

            HeelBearCub:

            That’s an interesting take–not one I would have thought of!

            Basically, you have:

            a. Lots of people really unhappy about how things are going.

            b. Mostly they find that they don’t have much of a voice or enough power to fix things.

            c. They get more and more extreme and angry as a result.

            d. Someone manages to harness that angry energy to get power, say, by playing on his lifelong show business/media presence to become president.

            The implication I’d take from this is that you think that this sort of angry will drive a populist left wing response much the same way that the anger that came through during Tea Party rallies eventually got us Trump.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @albatross11:
            I’m not making predictions about what will happen, just trying to explain what has already happened. People feel left out, disregarded, and abused. They get angry. They express that anger.

            This isn’t a “right now” thing. It’s a “has always been and will always be” thing.

          • Matt M says:

            the anger that came through during Tea Party rallies eventually got us Trump.

            I’m not at all convinced these two things were correlated in any meaningful way.

      • Jacobethan says:

        OK, so the idea is

        “How you got Trump” : Trump :: Kavanaugh confirmation : Grenell op-ed.

        I can certainly follow that, and I find it a helpful framing. In that case, it seems to me there are a couple ways of developing keranih’s original question of “what is the intended effect of the NYT publishing this?”

        1. Given that the NYT is pretty much on record as opposed not only to Trump’s object-level positions but also to his reactive temperament, emotivism, and naked tribalism, how is publishing a piece recognizable even to sympathizers as “Trump”-equivalent supposed to mesh with that meta-level agenda?

        2. Supposing we set #1 aside and just accept that it’s going to be “How you get”-style lashing out all the way down, what actually is the expected strategic payoff from that when the purveyor is not a candidate for office but a prestige newspaper/website?

        It may be that I’m too old-media oriented and just can’t see that the answer to #2 is something really straightforward and obvious like “clicks.” Or that there’s a slightly more complicated thing going on where tossing red meat on the op-ed page gives you cover with your partisan subscriber base to do the kind of conventional reporting that sustains what’s left of your reputation for objectivity.

        But I still share keranih’s curiosity: does anybody putting this forward think that its actual net effect is going to be persuading people to vote Democratic, or even to have a better appreciation of a mindset from which voting Democratic would make sense? Or are the reasons for printing it entirely a matter of dynamics internal to the NYT’s economics and relation to its readership?

        • HeelBearCub says:

          “How you got Trump” : Trump :: Kavanaugh confirmation : Grenell op-ed.

          Sigh. No. What the heck is wrong with all y’all?

          “How you got Trump” : Trump :: “How you got Grenell op-ed” : Grenell op-ed.

          Kvanaugh is one small turd in a larger pile of shit, the shit which people are tired of.

          As to what gets published in the op-eds, they are op-eds. David Brooks went off on avacado toast. It’s not the opinion of The Times, it’s only supposed to be of interest to Times readers. They also view their job as being a large cross section of opinions to the attention of their readers.

          • albatross11 says:

            Interestingly, I believe the Kavenaugh confirmation fight is seen that way by both sides. (The way things played out in Ferguson after Michael Brown was shot worked the same way.)

            Basically, there was an ambiguous set of facts that could be interpreted in different ways, especially by people who lived in different media bubbles. And so you could get one group mad as hell that a rapist got confirmed to the Supreme Court by the goddamned Republicans, and another mad as hell that a decent man got smeared as a rapist by the goddamned Democrats. And, of course, both parties encourage that outrage, because they think it will drive turnout. And media outlets benefit from the outrage in terms of clicks and engagement. The country as a whole suffers, but that’s not really a consideration in very many powerful peoples’ actions.

          • Jacobethan says:

            “How you got Trump” : Trump :: “How you got Grenell op-ed” : Grenell op-ed.

            Kvanaugh is one small turd in a larger pile of shit, the shit which people are tired of.

            That is a fair point — I should’ve been clearer that I was using “Kavanaugh confirmation” as a shorthand for the much larger, harder-to-define pile of shit of which people are tired. To the extent that your point was that “How you got…” anger comes out of cumulative experience of numerous smaller slights and outrages, I can see how my way of putting it might have obscured that. I was more focused on the form of the equation than the specific objects in each bucket.

            From my limited anecdotal experience I do think you’re basically right about the nature of the anger.

            The place where I think the analogy breaks down somewhat is that (at least according to the standard “How you got Trump” narrative) Trump supporters pre-Trump had almost literally nobody with mainstream credibility and a national platform speaking up for their perspective and taking them seriously.

            Whereas viewpoints more or less like Grenell’s (in content as well as class-coding) are prominent to the point of ubiquity in many academic and journalistic spaces, and increasingly visible in commercial entertainment as well. In that case, I think the anger arises more from a sense of frustration that you can control all this cultural territory and yet none of it seems to matter in the practical terms you really care about, that the levers you’re holding don’t actually move the objects in the world that you think they’re supposed to.

            That’s not to say that either kind of anger is more or less real and legitimate than the other. But it might point to a somewhat different dynamic in terms of how each plays out.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Jacobethan:
            Thank you for explaining your thinking. That makes more sense.

            Trump supporters pre-Trump had almost literally nobody with mainstream credibility and a national platform speaking up for their perspective and taking them seriously.

            This is just simply wrong. Sarah Palin was Trump before Trump. The writing has been on the wall about the approach and attitude the GOP base wants for quite a while. There are many, many people who have been giving voice to it, amplifying it, and had a presence with the GOP. Andrew Breitbart , Steve Bannon, etc. were popular and had pull before Trump came along. Eric Erickson infamously called Justice Souter a “goat fucking child molester” long ago.

            Trump himself was seen as a joke, but that is a different thing.

          • Matt M says:

            Sarah Palin was Trump before Trump.

            Agree with this, although I’d clarify that Palin got about 15 minutes before the establishment GOP (for obvious reasons of self-preservation) decided to make her the fall-guy for McCain’s embarrassingly large failure, at which point she lost her platform.

            I wish she would have fought back a little harder, but given the toxic media atmosphere she was subjected to, I can’t blame her for retreating.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            I’d clarify that Palin got about 15 minutes before the establishment GOP

            I don’t think this is correct at all.

            Sarah Palin had a nice long run as a popular right wing figure until her won weight pulled her down. She was keynote speaker at the first tea party convention 2010. She was totued as a potential 2012 presidential candidate all through 2010. She was very outspoken and active through that whole election cycle. I think she was still a regular Fox contributor in 2012.

    • Guy in TN says:

      I have two questions – first, for those of a left-leaning perspective, please explain what effect this column is *supposed* to have. I know how I’m reacting to it, I’m trying to figure out what the intent behind publishing this piece was.

      Its an opinion piece, which means the purpose of the article is to inform you of the author’s opinion. You are now informed of her opinion, correct? It seems successful in that regard.

      If you didn’t enjoy it, you might not be the target audience. In fact, unless you are a Democrat, I am rather sure you aren’t the target audience. So the question of “what effect is it supposed to have” should be looked at from the perspective her sympathetic regular-readers, not her conservative/libertarian critics who happened to stumble across it.

      • baconbits9 says:

        That might be the purpose of the person writing the piece but the question is what is the purpose of the NYT’s deciding to publish it.

        • BBA says:

          The left thinks the NYT is too soft on Trump (e.g., Maggie Haberman is the worst kind of access “journalist”) and this is throwing their readership a bone?

        • Brad says:

          Ideally to sell subscriptions, barring that to at least get ad impressions.

          I get that people think the NYT’s has a larger obligation, and I think the people that work there would agree with that, but at some point I think it is unfair for people to criticize the ethics of people in a lifeboat—especially if those critics aren’t helping to organize a rescue. (That’s just a general remark, for all I know keranih is a current and long time subscriber.)

          I’m not entirely happy with the changes I perceive to have occurred at the times over the last decade or so. But I let my subscription lapse and am unlikely to renew it even if they change course. So I don’t think my complaints have much force and I tend to keep them to myself.

          • ADifferentAnonymous says:

            Heh, good point… OP’s reaction to the piece was to rally Republican friends, but also to post a link to the article in their online community along with a provocative question resulting in lots of engagement.

      • Nick says:

        If you didn’t enjoy it, you might not be the target audience. In fact, unless you are a Democrat, I am rather sure you aren’t the target audience. So the question of “what effect is it supposed to have” should be looked at from the perspective her sympathetic regular-readers, not her conservative/libertarian critics who happened to stumble across it.

        Good point. That’s probably why, in the part you’re quoting, keranih asked for said target audience to share their perspective by explaining said effect.

        Snark aside—you’re her target audience, right? What’s your read on the effect Grenell wants to have on you?

        • Guy in TN says:

          For what its worth, keranih’s phrasing was ambiguous:

          I have two questions – first, for those of a left-leaning perspective, please explain what effect this column is *supposed* to have.

          I’m unclear if this means “Leftists, please explain what effect this is supposed to have [on me]”, or “Leftists, please explain what effect this is supposed to have [on you]”.

          All that aside, I think the intended effects of the article are as follows:
          1. Inform the reader that political alliances don’t fall easily along gender lines, and that many women support GOP policies. “The gender gap in politics is really a color line” is contrary to some media narratives being pushed.

          2. Provide a possible rationale for why so many women are declining to vote for the party that emphasis their concerns (racial identity politics)

          2. Encourage her readers to consider the real-world impacts of white women voting GOP, and to not treat this decision as merely an innocent “preference”.

          The NYT probably published this because its timely, interesting, cathartic, and a rallying cry. Of course, it relies on a hefty pile of political and philosophical priors to make any sense at all. But if you are a regular NYT reader, especially a reader of her columns, you probably share a lot of these assumptions, so there’s no need to write a lengthy political dissertation that starts at square one.

          • albatross11 says:

            FWIW, I linked to this op-ed in the last open thread.

            It’s interesting to me that it’s acceptable to publish this (or the op-ed I linked to before about how it’s okay for women to hate men), but would be absolutely unacceptable (career ending for the editors of the newspaper) to publish exactly the same formal argument, but with the sides swapped. That is, an op-ed expressing anger at men who didn’t support Kavenaugh as “gender traitors” would absolutely never have been acceptable. And one that expressed anger at single white women for voting Democratic instead of Republican as “race traitors” would have probably caused a riot in the newsroom the next day.

            Now, I’m not arguing that we’d be better off with more appeals to let your identity override your beliefs and intellect. I *am* pointing out that this is the sort of article that, if written from the other side, would be seen by approximately 100% of America as offensive and horrible. But since it’s cheering for the right side and bashing the right targets, it’s all okay.

          • Guy in TN says:

            That is, an op-ed expressing anger at men who didn’t support Kavenaugh as “gender traitors” would absolutely never have been acceptable. And one that expressed anger at single white women for voting Democratic instead of Republican as “race traitors” would have probably caused a riot in the newsroom the next day.

            Yes, it would be very surprising to see white or male identity politics in the NYT. But there are good reasons why not all identity politics are given equal social footing. Its the same reason why there’s no White History Month, or why affirmative action doesn’t count for men (despite attending college at lower rates).

            Its because of the general social consensus (among non-conservatives) that men and whites are the power-holders in the society, and thus white or male identity politics only reinforces an unequal and unjust social hierarchy. Hence it is viewed as “offensive and horrible”.

            You can certainly disagree with this claim of unequal power (or disagree that social hierarchies are unjust), and a lot of people do. Rejecting these claims is one of the central features of conservative discourse. But the NYT (and most major publications) don’t disagree with these claims, so if you’re looking for the reason why white identity politics aren’t in the NYT, that’s it in a nutshell.

          • Jacobethan says:

            2. Encourage her readers to consider the real-world impacts of white women voting GOP, and to not treat this decision as merely an innocent “preference”.

            I apologize if I’m misreading or over-reading here, but I feel like I see variations on this kind of formulation more and more lately, and I find them both curious and disturbing.

            I would’ve thought it was obvious that in a democracy with competitive politics the whole point of having elections is to present voters with a choice between alternatives with real content and consequence. And also obvious that for democracy to be a functioning system rather than an ad hoc truce in a domestic cold war those on opposite sides of a closely decided question need to find ways of making social peace.

            There’s something quite chilling about an attitude that says, in effect, “Oh, it’s alright if you want to vote for the outgroup-party so long as it’s just a harmless form of symbolic expression that means nothing in practice, but as soon as there are ‘real-world impacts,’ well then I really think it’s time we stopped this charade and got the troops back in line.”

          • Guy in TN says:

            You are not misreading or overreading. Your understanding is accurate.

            We’re in a cold civil war, or at least in the build-up phase.

          • albatross11 says:

            Guy in TN: Can you unpack that? What do you mean by a “cold civil war?”

          • albatross11 says:

            I think one way to read the op-ed is that a lot of partisans and political operatives see the world in terms of gender/race/ethnic alliances. Thus:

            a. Some Democrats feel betrayed when members of groups they think are theirs vote or support the other party.

            b. Some Democrats would very much like to split white women off from the Republican party, and appeals to identity and team spirit and guilt for the sins of white women are all useful tools to do this.

          • Brad says:

            The tax bill is a good example. The SALT provisions look to have been included out of pure spite.

            We aren’t at the point of killing each other but enacting policy for the purpose of hurting the outgroup is getting there.

            I guess “bake the cake” laws/decisions look similar from the other side. (I’d quibble with that, but perception matters a lot here.)

          • quanta413 says:

            The GOP adjusted a lot of other tax rules and doubled the standard deduction last time I checked. Every graph I saw of the estimated effect on people’s taxes showed the tax reform was mostly a wash as net effect on personal income taxes paid.

            If Republicans taxing rich people roughly the same amount as before but in a different way is political warfare, all is lost.

            Policy to hurt an outgroup is something like segregation law or apartheid. Not getting less of a tax break than you felt entitled to.

          • Matt M says:

            The SALT provisions look to have been included out of pure spite.

            I think there’s a very legitimate philosophical debate to be had over the fact that states who desire to have high taxes should be made to suffer the full consequences of those decisions. That there is no particular reason why the federal government should “bail out” NY taxpayers who themselves voted for the high taxes. If CA and NY residents are upset about this change increasing their taxes, they can always vote for lower taxes. The fact that they are unwilling to do so speaks volumes.

            Although I will grant you that the right made no real attempt to articulate this position or actually engage in debate on this, so whatever.

          • Guy in TN says:

            @albatross11
            It’s a little lengthy, but…

            I think “cold civil war” its a good way of looking at the general zeitgeist in US politics. The reasons can be traced back to the political ideology spectrum changing from a bell curve, to ever sharpening double-peaks over the last 20 years. That is, where before you had “average Americans” and extremists, now the concept of the “average American” is essentially non-existent.

            This fundamentally changes politics. Firing up the base becomes the winning strategy, and appealing to the fence-sitters becomes the losing one. And once elected, the incentives shift from trying to find “middle ground” to trying to win a decisive legislative victory.

            This isn’t to blame the politicians, they are just responding to incentives. Their increasing brinkmanship, and “work-to-rule” in the form of abolishing social norms that are not codified into law, are just responses to being in a situation where if you lose, the stakes are enormous. All tactics get put on the table, when everything is on the line.

            The reason why I call it a “civil war” is because a lot of people are realizing that their biggest threat doesn’t come from people overseas, but from their fellow citizens. And I know, “aha, you’re just describing “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup” yes, but sometimes its true that your outgroup is your biggest threat. Slaves were correct to fear and hate slave-owners. Jews were correct to fear and hate Nazis. With the transition to a double-peaked ideological bell curve, “my biggest enemy is the other side” is becoming more accurate every year.

            So in reference to the op-ed, where before voting for the other side would elicit a response like “well, that moves the needle in a direction I don’t like, but we’re all Americans here…”, due to the rising stakes and higher polarization, now the response is “What you did is an attack against everything I believe in. I should treat you like an sworn enemy”. And I’m not sure they are incorrect to feel that way.

            A lot of the hand-wringing about this behavior, is essentially over people responding rationally to an environment of increased political polarization. So unless someone comes up with a strategy to get back to a single-peak bell curve, this is just the world we live in, as “disturbing” and “chilling” as it is.

          • Matt M says:

            I don’t know that “civil war” is the appropriate term but in general I think your post is correct.

            I certainly fear Antifa a lot more than I fear ISIS or North Korea or Iran or Asad or even Putin. Both in the “these people will enact political change I oppose” sense and in the “these people will hurt or possibly even kill me” sense.

          • Brad says:

            Although I will grant you that the right made no real attempt to articulate this position or actually engage in debate on this, so whatever.

            In constitutional law there’s something called the “rational basis test”. Not only will any reasonable explanation from the parties do, but if the parties don’t offer anything the judge is supposed to try to come up with any plausible explanation himself. If there is anything that is barely reasonable it is constitutional. Needless to say it is a test designed to avoid anything ever being found discriminatory.

          • johnstewart says:

            @albatross11

            I saw your post the other day (https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/04/open-thread-111-75/#comment-675904) about this NYT op-ed, and I’ve been ruminating over it. It struck me as a very very strong reaction compared to how I reacted; so much so that I found this post, and re-read the op-ed. I’m trying to understand better your strong, and my weak, reaction to it.

            I think concepts like “traitor to your gender” or “traitor to your race” are moral obscenities.

            On some level, I agree with you. And I think the Democratic Party’s strategy with identity politics is foolish and ineffective, as was shown with Trump’s election.

            And, yes, I concur that if this op-ed was written with “men” instead of “women”, it would have been almost universally condemned.

            However, consider the perspective of the author. She sees a political party, Republican Party, which is systematically anti-woman. Against reproductive rights. Supporting a presidential candidate who is on tape bragging about committing sexual assault. Pushing through a Supreme Court candidate without investigating credible claims of sexual assault against him. It is a political party which is strongly supporting one gender over the other.

            Seeing systematic discrimination against a class of people, why is it at all inflammatory to suggest that those in that class are traitors if they support the party that is continuing the oppression?

            Putting it in another perspective, would you take a similar position about black people in 1957? Would it have been a moral obscenity to call a black person a traitor to his race if he supported Strom Thurmond after he filibustered against the Civil Rights Act?

            Disagreeing with that is one thing. Saying it is a moral obscenity is another.

          • Matt M says:

            This is a bad comparison.

            I know that it’s weak to appeal to a popularity contest, but the overwhelming majority of blacks would have vehemently opposed Strom Thurmond.

            Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of Women support Republicans.

            It seems a little sketchy for you to definitively declare that a political party supported by tens of millions of women is clearly and obviously anti-woman. The fact that not all women have identical values, and may even have opposing ones, is worth considering.

          • johnstewart says:

            It seems a little sketchy for you to definitively declare that a political party supported by tens of millions of women is clearly and obviously anti-woman. The fact that not all women have identical values, and may even have opposing ones, is worth considering.

            I didn’t say that at all. I said the author of the article said that, and was an understandable reason for the author to believe supporting that party was wrong, and a reason to call them “traitors”.

            I don’t personally feel so strongly, but I do strongly believe the Republican party supports policies which appear to go against the interests of women.

            (And I was very much surprised that so many white women voted for an admitted sex criminal over a, you know, woman.)

            I’m trying to understand why albatross11 feels so strongly that this op-ed is a moral obscenity, not argue whether or not the Republicans are anti-woman. My point was that it doesn’t seem hard to see why the author would feel so.

          • Matt M says:

            *A woman who is married to a much more brazen and obvious sex criminal, and whose position on the matter is “All of my husband’s accusers are lying whores.”

  24. Aapje says:

    A report was published on the (Dutch) extreme right by the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service. Some things they noticed:
    – Neo-nazis have been marginalized and the mainstream is anti-Islam and anti-immigrant (where immigrants are often seen as all being Muslim), not anti-Jewish
    – After a decline, there is a small resurgence
    – The extreme right is attracting more women
    – There is a lot of online activity, but fairly little organized activity offline
    – Dutch extremists travel abroad for meetings & protests, but not really the other way around. So the Dutch extreme right are followers, not leaders.
    – There is little violence, unlike in Germany. However, online speech is becoming more aggressive and inciting.
    – Traditionally, antifa sought out right extremists. However, the extreme right is increasingly targeting antifa as well as ‘anti-colonial’ and ‘anti-racist’ groups, although rarely violently (unlike antifa).
    – They expect the extreme right to grow or decline based the developments that make more people become upset at Muslims, like terrorist attacks.

  25. Baeraad says:

    Hmm, I’d actually gotten the impression that there had been a recent influx of leftists here, since there seemed to be more spirited defenses of the liberal party line than there used to be. Not that that necessarily means that they’re not still in a minority, I guess, only that I’ve felt like SSC conventional wisdom gets questioned more than it did for a while.

    Well, I’m quite leftist in my own way and I’m still here, for what it’s worth… though I rarely feel like I have much to contribute beyond principled objections, and I’m not sure if those are worth much. I mean, there are a lot of times when I feel like replying with some variation of, “yeah, except life should not be and does not have to be a painful, dehumanising struggle for personal and collective advancement!” – but if I did, the poster I replied to could just say, “yes, it damn well should!” and that would essentially checkmate me. So I usually don’t bother.

    I still find this site to be a good source of information, though. Back when the whole Trump-is-putting-children-in-cages thing was in the news, this was the only place where I managed to find an explanation of just what Trump was doing, why he was doing it and why he was claiming that it wasn’t his fault. And because I got that explanation, I could feel secure that yes, Trump was in fact being a malicious buffoon, whereas if I’d relied on the media frenzy about it I would have had to wonder if perhaps I was missing something.

    • HeelBearCub says:

      Back when the whole Trump-is-putting-children-in-cages thing was in the news, this was the only place where I managed to find an explanation of just what Trump was doing, why he was doing it and why he was claiming that it wasn’t his fault.

      Just out of curiosity, what was your impression of the “zeitgeist” of the comments’ section on the issue, regardless of what your conclusion was?

      • Baeraad says:

        You mean here, or elsewhere?

        Here, I eventually arrived at the impression that the illegal immigration situation is such that it’s necessary to either separate children from their parents, imprison children alongside their parents, or release them both pending trial and accept that a significant percentage of them will take the chance to make a run for it. Obama opted for the third option; Trump opted for the first (and later switched to the second in response to the general outcry).

        There was a lot of people claiming that Trump did just the right thing, which I consider to be a wrong-headed view (it sounds to me like Obama pretty much definitely chose the lesser of three evils; conversely, Trump’s behaviour is consistent with my overall impression of him as artless, heartless and caring solely about proving that how big his dick is), but everyone was more or less in agreement that those were the facts.

        Elsewhere it was pretty much just, “Trump is putting children in cages! Because he’s EVIL!!! And also a racist.”

        • David Speyer says:

          Do you follow Dara Lind at Vox? Two months before the child separation story hit the news, she had a clear explainer of the history and nature of “Catch and Release” and when the child separation story boomed she did Vox’s explainer on it.

          It is obvious that these pieces are written by someone who doesn’t care about stopping unauthorized immigrants entering the US. But I was pretty obsessed with this story last summer, and I thought Lind was by far the best at getting the facts and their causes right.

  26. WashedOut says:

    I am in the process of de-Google-ing my life in as many aspects as I can. I Started with browsers – have been using Brave for over 6 months now without issue – and will soon ditch all my gmail accounts (except a burner used for Youtube) and remove the last of my stuff from cloud storage.

    Has anyone else been through this process and could share some recommendations and alternatives that worked out well? One resource i’m planning to use is the Free Software Foundation website, but it looks like there could be a lot more out there than what the FSF is willing to endorse, but which would fit my needs.

    • Matt M says:

      I haven’t yet – but I’ve thought about it and would like to. Keep me posted as to how it goes?

    • pontifex says:

      Firefox, DuckDuckGo, iPhone, FastMail. You have to pay for the last two, but it’s well worth it. Get your own domain name for email.

      • WashedOut says:

        iPhone

        I’m currently using a Samsung S8 (Android), so this seems like a step sideways and probably backwards in terms of privacy and individual agency. Am I missing something?

        • pontifex says:

          Android sends a ton of stuff to Google, though. For example, your location. Chrome is basically spyware at this point.

          So there really is no option for avoiding the creepy tracking other than iPhone, or hacked Android ROMs. But nobody has the time to maintain their own hacked Android ROMs, and nobody wants to trust KewlDude666’s version from a random website.

          Don’t trust Google.

          • Nornagest says:

            I trust Apple more than Google to take its commitments to data privacy seriously, and not to collect too much gratuitous tracking data. But on the other hand I trust Google’s cybersecurity chops more than Apple’s. So it’s really a question of what your threat model is.

      • 10240 says:

        Why would you buy a device such that, after you’ve bought it for loads of money, its manufacturer decides what applications you may or may not run on it?

        • pontifex says:

          Why would you buy a device that tracks everywhere you go, everything you do, and everything you look at, and reports back to Google?

          Why do you care so much about running arbitrary software, when you can do that on your laptop, or via Javascript that a website delivers?

          We all choose from the best of a bunch of non-ideal alternatives.

    • albatross11 says:

      +1 on Brave, which seems to be working pretty well for me. Though there are definitely sites that just break, so I keep another browser up to date and ready to use when I need them.

  27. Brett says:

    What did everyone think of that news about a Neptune-sized moon? They put it through some pretty rigorous tests, although of course they want to keep on doing that for certain. David Kipping (the lead on it) pointed to some interesting modeling that suggests that the most likely moon mass for Jovian-style gas giants is around one-thousandth the mass of their parent planet, which in Jupiter’s case would be around 30% the mass of Earth (meaning Jupiter’s moons would actually be unusually low mass).

    But there would be larger moons, including Earth-mass and beyond (and if the Jovian planet is three times the mass of Jupiter, then its moons would most likely be Earth-mass or close). A small percentage of them would be closer to one-hundredth the mass of the parent planet, which in the case of the planet they studied in question would mean a moon with nine times the mass of Earth. A gas dwarf moon, or sub-Neptunian.

    I’m still skeptical that Earth-sized moons would be really habitable around gas giants, with the potential damage from tidal heating, from its radiation belts, from the greater impact rate (that gas giant will draw in comets and asteroids from all over), and from the long day/night cycle.

    • Chevalier Mal Fet says:

      I have no thoughts on this, being all-but-totally ignorant of astronomy, but I did find this post interesting to read.

    • andrewflicker says:

      If “habitable” includes ocean worlds, it might still work. Water is an excellent radiation shield, the tidal heating could be a plus, and impacts won’t matter as much since no land-fall means no giant dust cloud blocking out the starlight.

      • engleberg says:

        If ‘ocean worlds’ include a watery version of Niven’s Smoke Ring, it would be a great place for a waterslide park.

  28. Scott Alexander says:

    I might have forgotten and subconsciously plagiarized you, in which case sorry.

  29. idontknow131647093 says:

    Regarding specifically Conquest’s 2nd law aka Osullivan’s Law:

    Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.

    It is best understood in context. Of the people who used it, most typically to discuss things like the Ford Foundation being to the left of Henry Ford.

    Two explanations were floated for this, initially. The first was that leftism is like entropy and anytime an institution becomes beleaguered and aimless, it will become leftist. That explanation does not fit well with comment sections moving right. The second idea was that organizations drift leftward through intolerance. That is, a free market conservative working at a charity might see merit in hiring a very qualified leftist, but the leftist does not have such feelings. In this paradigm leftism is seen as a qualification. In addition to charities like the Ford Foundation, Amnesty International, etc this is also commonly thought to be what happened in academia starting in the postwar period. This explanation that leftward drift is explicitly caused by exclusion would be supportive of a rightward drift in uncontrolled spaces.

    That all said, I’m not sure I believe in the statistical validity of any of these “laws”

  30. bean says:

    At Naval Gazing: The tale of the Washington Naval Treaty, which was a major influence on battleship design after 1921.

    I’d say that as a defense policy matter, this relates to the thread title, but the Pentagon wasn’t due to be built for another two decades. I could have fixed that if Scott had given me a heads-up.

    • bean says:

      Also, it’s time for Naval Gazing’s own Open Thread.

    • Chevalier Mal Fet says:

      the Pentagon wasn’t due to be built for another two decades. I could have fixed that if Scott had given me a heads-up.

      When bean travels back in time and arranges to have the Pentagon constructed 20 years ahead of time in pursuit of a pun, I will admit that I am impressed.

    • Evan Þ says:

      You mentioned in a footnote how the Treaty killed Britain’s private battleship construction industry – how much do you think that hurt the Royal Navy in the long term? If it’d still been around (whether because construction was continued at a reduced rate or some other reason), would it have made an appreciable difference in WWII?

      • bean says:

        It would have helped some, because they wouldn’t have seen the delays that they did in building a lot of their ships, due to a lack of yard capacity and particularly the special skills necessary for things like turrets. In some ways a more important factor would have been the fact that the battlefleet would have been more modern, with fewer QEs and Rs about. The British lost a lot of shipyards and armament concerns in the 20s and 30s, and though I just got a book on this, I don’t think it has a simple list I can pull from.

    • Lambert says:

      Not sure if you’re still keeping up with this OT, but the CAPTCHA image doesn’t load for me.

  31. ManyCookies says:

    so I want to be explicit that I’m practicing affirmative action for leftist commenters.

    Woo hoo! Door’s open boys!

    That reverse Conquest’s Law especially applies for Youtube videos. Some Last Week Tonight video will be like 2:1 up/downs with a shitshow in the comments, but look at Ben Shapiro videos and they’re at 15:1 up/downs and right-wing harmony in the comments. I gotta say it’s a pretty embarassing performance, we’re letting the comments of a political video on fucking Youtube not be an acrimonious shitstorm. Did we all get stranded on Reddit or something?

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      I gotta say it’s a pretty embarassing performance, we’re letting the comments of a political video on fucking Youtube not be an acrimonious shitstorm.

      I feel like this could be a sequel to the “someone is wrong on the internet” xkcd comic.

      “Come to bed.”

      “I can’t! Someplace on the internet is being nice.”

  32. Anonymous Bosch says:

    The reason for the reversal of Conquest’s law is because SSC and spaces like it value a very broad Overton window in which no topics are inherently off-limits, and a logical, empirical bent to the discussion of these topics. These are not necessarily *bad* things. But in practice, they lead to what any meme-wise person recognizes as the Calm Hitler problem. One reason is what Scott has called “the witch problem” of people pushed out by other sites’ Overton windows concentrating here. Another is that people inevitably conflate a comment’s “correct-ness” in the sense that it won’t get you banned and generate fruitful discussion with “correct-ness” in the objective sense. Another is that negative association with emotional reactions bends discussion of systems against those who most keenly suffer from them. Lefties tend to be big on tearing down hierarchies, while righties tend to view them as either Chesterton fences or actively good things (this applies to both meritocratic capitalists and will-to-power reactionaries).

    Another (to use specific examples) is that while Scott and most commenters are consequentialist, many people are unwilling to come out and state, for example, that people’s utility should be worth less based on nationality or genetic distance, which leads to a lot of implausible and off-putting fish stories about, for example, refugee policy, because the utility gains to migrants are so massive you need a mechanism that over-weights a .001 reduction in average national IQ to avoid saying “I just don’t see why I should care” even though the latter would get to the crux quicker.

    I do not think the solution is either a narrowing of the Overton window or affirmative action for lefties. I’m undecided on what it *could* be, but it probably isn’t either of those.

    (This comment posted, then appeared to un-post as I was editing it. I refreshed to check, but apologies if it ends up here twice. Delete that one, not this one.)

    EDIT: Unrelated, but if “Freddie” means who I think it does they should really not be posting here, or anywhere, consistent with previously stated commitments.

    • engleberg says:

      Re: implausible and off-putting fish stories about, for example, refugee policy-

      High immigration, supply and demand lowers wages, employers rule employees schooled- fishy?

      • Aapje says:

        @engleberg

        I think that the point was basically that the YIMBY’s are right: the gain for newcomers is bigger than the loss for the oldtimers. So then utilitarianism would demand making the oldtimers accept a loss for the benefit of the newcomers.

        However, from my perspective this argument ignores that humans are not actually utilitarian at heart and if you try to force them to be, they will rebel. So I think that utilitarianism is not a realistic option.

      • If your perspective is utilitarianism, the gain to the immigrants is much larger than the loss to the low wage workers who they are directly competing with.

        If your perspective is egalitarianism, the prospective immigrants are mostly much poorer than the American poor, so benefiting the former at the expense of the latter results in a more equal world.

        • engleberg says:

          Seven billion people on Earth won’t improve their lives because a few tens of millions get to America. Wage earners in America have lower wages because of the fifty year bipartisan consensus to attain lower wages by mass immigration.

          • Seven billion won’t. Some tens of millions will.

          • engleberg says:

            Tens of millions gain, employers gain, employees pay for it.

          • Employers are mostly in a competitive market, so if labor gets less expensive output goods get less expensive too.

            Immigrants gain, consumers gain qua consumers, domestic workers gain or lose qua workers according to whether immigrant workers are mostly a substitute or mostly a complement to their labor.

          • hls2003 says:

            @DavidFriedman:

            Immigrants gain, consumers gain qua consumers, domestic workers gain or lose qua workers according to whether immigrant workers are mostly a substitute or mostly a complement to their labor.

            With regard to the above, I am not an economist, so I would be interested if there is an easy (or complicated, I guess) answer to the following:

            Money has diminishing marginal utility, which I’ve always heard as the argument for a graduated income tax. A head tax of $100, or even a flat tax of 1%, hurts the man with $10,000 much more than the man with $100,000. Lower-income folks consume a larger portion of their income, their consumption is more urgent, etc. Standard stuff.

            I would assume this same phenomenon would affect the benefits-of-immigration debate. Let’s take the immigrants themselves out of it for a moment – I realize that’s not a strictly utilitarian position (I’m not one anyway) but I’m specifically more interested in the question of allocation of benefits amongst the native citizens, who are presumably the ones deciding whether or not to admit the immigrants. The typical model I have seen is that yes, immigrants might lower wages in certain populations where they compete, but everyone gains by having cheaper consumer goods. That seems to be at least part of what you’re describing above.

            But if “consumers gain qua consumers” then the benefits will be distributed more heavily to heavier consumers – I gain twice as much from a price reduction in a product if I buy two of them instead of one. Heavier consumers will have higher income, one would assume. Furthermore, if “domestic workers [may] lose qua workers [if] immigrant workers are mostly a substitute… to their labor”, then you may have a situation where the lower-income domestic workers lose even more capacity to gain the consumption benefits by seeing reductions in their income.

            It seems apparent that an open-borders position would primarily attract immigrants who, in the current state of play, are mostly lower-skilled, and would thus be most likely to compete with domestic lower-skilled (and thus lower-income) workers.

            But even if one postulates equal competition with higher-skilled workers, the diminishing marginal utility issue suggests that lower-income workers will fare worse. Even if their loss is the same, they cannot consume enough of the benefits to make up for it. Conversely, if you simply suggest that competition will slide people down a rung on the ladder, it seems clearly worse to slide from “minimum wage” to “zero” than “100K” to “80K”, even if the absolute loss is (unexpectedly) equal or greater for the higher-income person.

            I realize we’ve removed the immigrant benefits from the equation, but if one is asking citizens to decide amongst themselves who will become worse off, doesn’t it make open borders a tough sell to the lower-income folks?

          • but if one is asking citizens to decide amongst themselves who will become worse off, doesn’t it make open borders a tough sell to the lower-income folks?

            Very possibly. It’s complicated for a number of reasons.

            1. The immigrants are a substitute for some low income workers, a complement for others. Most obviously, most of the current lower-income workers are fluent speakers of English, most of the immigrants will not be. That opens up possibilities for the former to work with the latter. This is particularly relevant for current Hispanics, many of whom are conveniently bilingual in English and the language many of the immigrants will speak. I already observe the pattern among current immigrants, where the young members of the family provide the interface with the non-Spanish speaking employer.

            2. One of the things people care about is status, and to the extent that the immigrants are coming in at the bottom, that lifts the relative status of those currently near the bottom.

            3. To a significant degree, low skill labor is a substitute for capital–if you can’t hire hard working people cheap you may replace them with machines, possibly machines operated by (many fewer) high skill people. So although I would expect the biggest negative effect to be on the low end of the labor market, even low skill immigrants are also competing with capital and high skill workers to some degree.

            In summary, I wouldn’t be astonished if open immigration made the bottom one percent of workers (roughly the percentage currently at or below minimum wage) worse off, wouldn’t be astonished if it didn’t.

            And, of course, it is very much raising the income of a large number of people currently much poorer than the bottom of the American distribution.

          • Rebecca Friedman says:

            Slight additional point, correct me if I’m wrong but –

            Lower-income folks consume a larger portion of their income, their consumption is more urgent, etc. Standard stuff.

            That makes sense for your reducing-their-income-hurts-them-more point, but shouldn’t it also mean that reducing the cost of consumer goods helps them more? Mathematically in dollars you’re right that the person who buys more saves more (dollars) from the lower prices, but the person whose consumption function is very clearly constrained may benefit more, strictly speaking, because the additional things they are able to get (whether consumption goods or just having-any-savings-at-all) are more valuable to them.

            Obviously whether that’s a net benefit to them or not depends on how much their wages drop versus the price of consumption goods which you already covered, but I still thought it was a piece both of you were missing.

          • engleberg says:

            Say you are 40-55, making 18 an hour, 50K annual with some overtime, middle class in the Midwest outside big cities. You get laid off and ordered to train your H1-B replacement or lose your benefits. You have a choice of getting a job that pays 10$ an hour or taking an impoverished early retirement. Your status has not risen, nor has that of your family. But donor party R and the whole D party agree you can suck it.

          • 10240 says:

            But even if one postulates equal competition with higher-skilled workers, the diminishing marginal utility issue suggests that lower-income workers will fare worse. Even if their loss is the same, they cannot consume enough of the benefits to make up for it.

            If we assume that immigrant’s skills are distributed the same as those of native citizens, the loss of lower-income workers from salary reduction is proportionately less than that of higher-income workers, just like their gain from lower prices — both the loss and the gain being proportional to one’s income. So no one’s salary changes in real terms. Actually it’s quite possible that there is no reduction to wages and prices in nominal terms either: while immigrants compete for jobs, they also consume and compete for goods, and thus indirectly create demand for labor.

            Say you are 40-55, making 18 an hour, 50K annual with some overtime, middle class in the Midwest outside big cities. You get laid off and ordered to train your H1-B replacement or lose your benefits. You have a choice of getting a job that pays 10$ an hour or taking an impoverished early retirement.

            It’s not realistic that immigration causes a 45% reduction in the market value of your work, especially suddenly. Citation needed. It’s possible that the imperfect nature of the labor market occasionally results in someone’s salary getting significantly reduced after a job change, but that’s not an average situation and not primarily caused by immigration. A gradual, much slower decrease in the market-clearing wage for your work is possible (though stagnation at worst is more likely), and immigration may contribute it, but nothing in the supply and demand for either labor or goods change that drastically.

            I also don’t see why they would replace you with an immigrant rather than require you to take a salary cut if you want to keep your job — which, again, would be much smaller than 45%.

          • Plumber says:

            “If we assume that immigrant’s skills are distributed the same as those of native citizens….”

            @10240,

            Why would an employer/manager assume that?

            Just as a college diploma is signalling a certain amount of ability so that now that they’re more college graduates employers are demanding diplomas to apply for jobs that didn’t used to require diplomas, so to does just being here signal that an immigrant was ambitious, clever, and healthy enough to get themselves here in the first place.

          • 10240 says:

            @Plumber I don’t think imigrants’ skills have the same distribution as the native population, I was answering to a hypothetical model of hls2003.

        • engleberg says:

          10240- I understand you to be saying workers don’t get laid off and told to train H1-B replacements in significant numbers.

          • Mark Atwood says:

            I have a canned angry rant about a decade of shameless and ubiquitous H1B fraud that mostly came to an abrupt halt for no apparent reason right around mid November of 2016.

            And I have more stories about hilariously panic-y cover-ups of H1B recordkeeping that started right about that same time.

            I changed employers soon after that time, and so now have no direct knowledge of any specific evidence

  33. Eponymous says:

    In some weird reverse of Conquest’s Law, any comment section that isn’t explicitly left-wing tends to get more right-wing over time. I am trying to push against this and keep things balanced

    I haven’t noticed such a tendency, nor noticed it on this blog (though I wouldn’t necessarily notice if such a trend were true). However, if it is true than I suggest an alternative explanation: the content of the blog is quite congenial to right-leaning readers.

    I realize that Scott identifies as non-right; but he takes a lot of right-wing positions, especially by internet standards, and especially on “hot” topics. For example, he ranges from skeptical of to strongly opposed to the “social justice” narrative, broadly construed; he has libertarian views on many issues; he comes down on the nature side of the nature/nurture debate; he’s a strong advocate of free speech; he is concerned about left-wing social media mobs; he’s open to Chesterton fence style arguments that underlie a generally conservative reasoning style.

    Moreover, where he doesn’t agree with conservative positions, he tends to be willing to engage with them in a very charitable way. When he discusses a topic, he presents both sides, often giving a strong presentation of the “conservative” viewpoint. All this is in stark contrast with most of what you find in “blue tribe” internet circles these days. Naturally, conservative commenters feel quite at home here.

    • Matt M says:

      “Skeptical of social justice” is not a right-wing position, it’s a neutral position.

      The right wing position is to oppose and hate “social justice” and consider it an elaborate front for communism. Scott does not do that.

      I’m a right winger and I don’t consider Scott a fellow traveler. I think he’s the closest thing to “neutral” I’ve ever encountered on the Internet. The fact that a whole lot of people map that to “right wing” is nuts.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        I model Scott as left libertarian, but with the uncanny ability to strive for and often achieve neutrality.

        He is definitely not a Trumpist.

        • HeelBearCub says:

          He is not a Trumpist.

          But he does not want to make anti-Trump arguments.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Why would he, though? There’s no dearth of anti-Trump thinkpieces all over the interwebs.

            Does Scott’s audience need more convincing to be anti-Trump? I’m right about the only Trumpist here. Unless Scott’s going to shift the focus of his blog to be “Hey Conrad, You’re Wrong” then what’s the point?

          • Brad says:

            I don’t think that’s true, at least if we take Trumpist to mean voted for Trump or intend to vote for him next time. And probably not even if we use a definition that incorporates enthusiasm. What about—just off the top of my head—Matt M? LMS? The Nybbler?

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Why would he, though?

            Given that we know that the bearing of our craft is heading out of the safe channel, why bother figuring out how close we are to the shoals?

          • David Shaffer says:

            He’s made plenty of anti-Trump arguments, just not for a while. Presumably he said his piece, and will say more if there is more to say.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            But you don’t need to convince them that Trump is bad. They already think that. You need to convince them that the Democrats are not worse.

            I could be wrong, and perhaps they can chime in, but I think they would need more of a redemption of their opinions of the Democrats rather than further denigration of Trump. I doubt there’s anything Scott can say awful about Trump they haven’t already heard.

          • The Nybbler says:

            I did not vote for Trump. I support some of his policies (tax cuts, ending race-based preferences), oppose others (tariffs, drug enforcement) and have mixed views on his big one, immigration. I do like his confrontational style and find his idiocy on Twitter to be more amusing than horrifying.

          • albatross11 says:

            I guess I’m on the right for SSC, but I’m pretty horrified by Trump. I didn’t and won’t vote for him. I think some of his criticisms of the ruling class consensus[1] during the campaign were broadly right, but don’t remotely trust him to come up with anything better.

            [1] What Sailer calls “Invade the world, invite the world, in hock to the world.”

          • quanta413 says:

            I’m also on the right for SSC, but I didn’t vote for Trump and won’t unless the Democrats pick up necromancy, resurrect zombie Stalin, and make him their candidate. And even then, I’ll probably just stay home which I might have done anyways depending on who the libertarian candidate is and any local and state elections. I figure opposing Stalin in the past didn’t work out so well, why risk it now…

            Trump’s politics are incoherent, and it’s not obvious he has much of a preference besides advertising himself. His administration would not function if not for the mass of stodgy regular Republicans filling it up. I’ve found his style obnoxious since I saw a clip of the apprentice. I prefer not to take giant gambles with the power structure even though I might find that structure contemptible. Objectively, it’s a lot easier for things to get worse due to significant political change than to get better.

            I agree with albatross11 that a lot of elite consensus is off (I mean things largely agreed upon by Democrats and Republicans up until Trump won and some Republicans started peeling off). I would go further and say a lot of their ideas about domestic policy are downright stupid and their ideas about foreign policy are often evil (in effect, not intent; I don’t really care much about intent). But doubling down with a new type of stupid isn’t going to improve anything.

            But I don’t spend much time complaining about Trump here, because it’s on the news 24/7. Every thing important or unimportant related or unrelated must somehow be related to Trump. I’ve let my NYT subscription expire after my reading trailed off so much.

      • 10240 says:

        “Skeptical” is often used as a euphemism for “disagrees with” or “opposes”, even if literally it would mean something more undecided.

  34. johan_larson says:

    Are there any foods that are more convenient to eat with chopsticks than with any other utensil, set of utensils, or your hands?

    I can’t think of one.

    Hands: best choice for burgers.
    Spoon: best choice for soup.
    Fork: best choice for stir-fry.
    Knife and fork: best for choice for steak.

    • Hoopyfreud says:

      I assume that by “best” you’re referring to time-to-clear; east asian plating is often optimized for chopsticks, and as such chopsticks offer the “best” fit in many cases in terms of proper aesthetic, pacing, and eating with condiments/side dishes.

      Also, tempura and seaweed salad are probably less edible with anything else; additionally, my girlfriend and I eat tortellini with chopsticks and that works really well for us. In general, small bits of food with sauce seem well-suited.

    • cassander says:

      I find that it’s easier to eat sushi with chopsticks than any other utensil, but that’s the only one.

      • Brad says:

        Once I learned it was acceptable to eat sushi with my hands, I never looked back.

        • Lillian says:

          Tried that once, felt like an uncouth uncivilized barbarian, got soy sauce everywhere, don’t care to repeat the experience. At least not in public or with company. Home alone is a different matter, but my habits while away from other humans are best not discussed.

        • Nick says:

          The last time I used chopsticks, which was six months or so ago, I was sorta successful with the sushi and hilariously unsuccessful with anything else. I caved and asked for a fork.

        • dodrian says:

          I would agree with you for what I would call minimalist [real? Japanese-style?] sushi, which is just raw fish, rice, and maybe wasabi and/or seaweed paper, but I wouldn’t dare eat ‘American-style’ sushi with my hands. I’m talking about sushi with many types of fish, vegetables, multiple sauces, and ‘crunchy bits’ sprinkled on top, leading to something like this tasty abomination. OK, that one isn’t so bad because it’s still wrapped in seaweed paper, but there are plenty of restaurants around here which put the paper inside the roll. It’s chopsticks for those, please.

          • Brad says:

            Mostly I get nigiri which is the ball of rice with a slice of fish on top. If I do get a roll, I prefer hand rolls.

    • Bugmaster says:

      Thinly-cut slices of cured (or cooked) meats (or veggies) are easiest to eat with chopsticks, IMO. I’m not sure what the general term for such foods is — I could say “cold-cuts”, but that is too narrow.

    • WashedOut says:

      Convenience shouldn’t be the only metric worth considering. One of the good things about chopsticks is that they help moderate the pace of eating, by reducing both the mouthful size and rate of consumption. You also gain +1 Dexterity every 10 meals.

      But to answer your question, noodles and certain rice dishes (the ones where the rice is soft and clumped together). When used in combination with the traditional spoon, chopsticks are ideal for ramen.

    • quanta413 says:

      I much prefer chopsticks for eating hot pot.

      I think it also depends how much practice you have with your utensils; I find chopsticks roughly equally convenient to a fork for eating Chinese food. It’s varied over my life depending how often I was eating with chopsticks.

    • Evan Þ says:

      What makes you say a fork is the best choice for stir-fry? I’m an enthusiastic partisan of spoons, in that they let you scoop up rice as well as small chunks of meat without sacrificing either. Apparently this’s the usual Filipino practice; I adopted it from my friend who was raised there.

      Or, are we talking about the same sort of stir-fries? I almost always eat mine on top of a significant portion of rice.

      • johan_larson says:

        I find anything that comes in long strips hard to eat with a spoon. Stir-fry often contains things are long strips, particularly bean sprouts and sometimes strips of green pepper cut lengthwise.

        • Evan Þ says:

          I guess that’s the difference, then – my stir-fries usually don’t contain those; I chop my green peppers more finely and don’t use bean sprouts.

      • beleester says:

        Forks work just fine for rice, in my experience, and they also let you stab into larger pieces of food.

      • Gazeboist says:

        It definitely depends on what exactly you put into the stir-fry. I use a fork for my home-made stir-fries because I use fairly large chunks of meat, and I dice my onions, but with the more typical thin slices of meat and onion you get in a restaurant stir-fry I prefer chopsticks. I also happen to prefer to eat the meat and rice separately, despite serving them together, and I’ve never had a problem executing that strategy with either a fork or a pair of chopsticks.

        Definitely fork over chopsticks for (larger, dipped) dumplings, but they’re kind of a pain no matter what I’ve tried.

    • onyomi says:

      Noodles in soup.

      Yakiniku, shabu shabu, hot pot, and the like

      Sushi rolls and nigiri sushi (hands work just as well, but if you’re going to use a utensil, none function better than chopsticks); sashimi (gross to eat with hands, harder to pick up with a fork or spoon).

      Dumpling-like items like shumai, such as are served eating e.g. dimsum

      Any dish with food cut into medium-ish-sized chunks or strips (there is a lot of overlap here where a fork will work just as well or better, but some cases, such as with softer items that don’t take to spearing, but which are too big to scoop with a spoon, where chopsticks are ideal)

      Of course, I’m giving a bunch of examples of Asian food, but that’s obviously not a coincidence. There are reasons for the existence of chopstick besides eater convenience, though: stories vary, but some say that political leaders didn’t like their guests having sharp knives at the dinner table, others say it saves fuel to cut food into small, quickly-cooked chunks and strips that are then more easily picked up with sticks, and there’s also a Confucian idea that cutting and ripping one’s food at the table was uncivilized.

      Related interesting tidbit: supposedly there is a measurable change in the skulls of Europeans only 250 years ago but in many Chinese over 1000 years ago that may have resulted from the loss of the habit of ripping food with the teeth brought on by the widespread adoption of knives and forks/chopsticks and spoons.

    • lvlln says:

      I find chopsticks more convenient than forks for a lot of noodles. I haven’t tried spaghetti, and I imagine that might be a bit too heavy & slippery, but for something like ramen or yakisoba, I prefer chopsticks to forks.

      Most Korean side dish foods like bulgogi or kalbi are easier with chopsticks than fork and knife, I’d say. They’re structured on a plate such that stabbing them with a fork is ineffective and messy, because you’ll end up pushing the meat into other meat on the plate before you actually stab it through, whereas with chopsticks you can select the piece you want and pull it out without first pushing it into other food on the plate.

      • AG says:

        This is my experience. With forks, there’s a non-negligible risk of the food still sliding off, plopping back onto the bowl/plate and splashing sauce on the book I’m reading, or the stabbed piece just falls apart when I want to consume it in one piece.

        Really, though, is that chopsticks in their original setting (where food is served in a bowl, which is held close to the mouth) provide the functions of both fork and spoon. You can pick up individual pieces (fork), or you shovel the food up the edge of the bowl into your mouth (spoon). And does it much more effectively than sporks!
        You just drink the soup straight from the bowl.

        Also: barbeque. Note how the yakiniku/Korean BBQ model uses small bite-sized pieces (including steak), which doesn’t lend itself to being stabbed or scooped up off of the grill once it’s done, instead of using a chopstick pincer to pick up with.

        Ditto for leafy vegetables. The core premise of chopsticks is that it acts as its own backstop, so you can accomplish with one hand what you need two for with other utensils.

    • alveolartap says:

      I tried chopsticks with salad once and I’ve never looked back.

    • baconbits9 says:

      Cheetos. I don’t eat them but chopsticks means no orange stains on your fingers.

    • Hoopdawg says:

      I could ask the same question about forks.

      Obviously, there are cases where spoons and knives are useful and necessary, but I found chopsticks to be superior to forks for pretty much every food that the west traditionally eats with the latter. Simply put, clamping beats stabbing.

    • NostalgiaForInfinity says:

      Chopsticks are not more convenient for me but I do prefer them for exactly that reason – I eat too quickly otherwise and it’s nice to slow down and savour my food.

      I’ve also seen some research suggesting eating slowly boosts satiety and can therefore help with portion control & dieting. This isn’t something I’ve noticed particularly (and it’s based on nutrition research so grain of salt) but may be beneficial.

  35. angularangel says:

    I don’t think more permissive moderation is the right solution, here. I am one of the leftists who reads but doesn’t post, and it’s not because I’m afraid of Scott moderating my posts. I think ultimately, the problem is the usual evaporative cooling. The closest thing I can suggest is keeping people from being snipy at each other (On pretty much every occasion I’ve posted, I’ve been sniped at. At least one of those occasions was me responding to prior sniping, but it’s still not a dynamic conducive to further posting. -_-) and maybe encouraging people to take up the side in an argument with less people on it, so nobody feels like they’re facing down the barbarian hordes by themselves. :/

  36. Szemeredi says:

    When do we have the best understanding of a particular period?

    When should we expect to have the best understanding of the current day, for example? When did we have the best understanding of 33AD in Rome?

    On one hand, we tend to revise histories as we encounter new arguments, so there’s some hope that we’re getting better at understanding everything. On the other hand, we lose personal experience, we lose sources, we lose the language needed to decode sources, we lose ontologies needed to decode meaning.

    • dndnrsn says:

      I would imagine it would vary hugely based on communications systems, storage media, literacy, etc across time periods. There are certain questions about, say, France in the 14th century, that a scholar now might be better able to answer than anyone back then could. It’s not about new arguments, but that a scholar now, or even a hundred years ago, is better able to retrieve information, communicate with other scholars, etc than anyone was back then.

      • Rob K says:

        It’s really interesting the way the nature of historical research changes depending on the time period under consideration.

        I studied enough Greek history at one point to be relatively familiar with the sort of sourcing work being done there. One major 20th century innovation, for instance, is using the reconstructed records of who was sending tribute to Athens every year to attack historical questions like who was in rebellion when, and “was there a very important peace treaty between Athens and Persia.” So it’s clear that for that time period, knowledge about it peaked while contemporaries of the events in question were still alive.

        On the other hand, my sister is currently finishing up a PhD in American History, working on labor relations in the antebellum and reconstruction era South, and there she’s able to do things like review the Union Army’s pension records to fine examples of widows applying for the pensions of their husbands, slaves who’d escaped and enlisted in the Union Army, which include a description of the man in question’s life and career. Or, for another example, look at the archives of one of the earliest national credit rating agencies, which had investigators send annual reports on a great number of businesses around the country.

        In that case, we’re talking about information that existed but was fragmented, private, or not thought of as historically important at the time, now being accessed and synthesized. Which, I’d argue, means that while I’m sure we can’t feel the zeitgeist of that time like a contemporary could, but there are a lot of ways modern historians can shine a light on that time period that exceed what someone trying to write a definitive history would have had back then.

    • engleberg says:

      Lord Acton said you got the best historical viewpoint when everyone involved was too dead to tell more lies and the archives were opened.

  37. cassander says:

    I don’t think we have a right wing drift here. Do we have a any out and out trump supporters that are regular commenters? Not “I held my nose and voted for him” Not “well he was better than hillary”, but a straight up supporters? Anyone against gay marriage? Because 1/3 of the US still is.

    What I think we have is a strong libertarian streak, and a few out and out conservatives, and a lot of people who are basically blue tribe but anti-SJW in some way, which gives the appearance of us being more right wing than we really are. Our biggest lack is proper redtribers, not lefties.

    • Hoopyfreud says:

      Yes and yes, though I’m on a phone and am not going to deal with the SSC mobile experience for the sake of finding them. I believe I remember seeing Trump supporters in 111.25, and I believe some of the people freaking out about demographic growth rates in other OTs have used the topic as a basis for concern over homosexual marriage. I tend to notice because of fundamental disagreements over the importance of demographic shift.

      • Bugmaster says:

        FWIW, the “SSC mobile experience” can be bypassed on Android by using the Opera browser, and switching on the “desktop site” option. Opera is the only mobile browser I know of that handles wrapping correctly.

        • Hoopyfreud says:

          The problem isn’t wrapping, actually (can be bypassed with portrait mode) but loadtimes, which are something like 4x as long as on desktop for me.

          • Bugmaster says:

            Hmm, it could be a combination of your hardware/software. On Galaxy Note 8, using Opera, I get maybe 1.2x, but definitely nowhere near 4x.

    • Nick says:

      Conrad Honcho has said multiple times he’s a regular old Trump supporter, but I think he’s pretty alone there. And several religious conservatives on here are against gay marriage, me included, though the issue doesn’t come up much, and I for one am not really interested in talking about it.

      • quanta413 says:

        Beat me to it. As far as frequent posters, it’s almost just Conrad as far as open, enthusiastic Trump supporters go. I’m sure there are some other less enthusiastic ones though, and some less frequent posters.

        I’m pretty sure I’d be coded as right wing here. I registered as a Republican in ’16 to vote for literally anyone or anything but Trump in the primaries, but I voted for Johnson in the actual election up top but Democrats down the rest of the ballot. And if my state had been a swing state, I would’ve voted Clinton up top. I pray for eternal gridlock, because I don’t see our politicians taking us anywhere positive when they get things done.

    • Deiseach says:

      Anyone against gay marriage?

      I am really conflicted on this. As I’ve mentioned before, my general opinion would have been one of apathy and “Eh, sure, let them have legal civil marriage, straight people have fucked over the concept of marriage so much that the civil contract is only a handy legal piece of paper for when you want to divide the spoils once the magic tingly pink cloud of Twu Wuv has dissipated”.

      But the campaign run in my country for this, where I was expecting to vote “Ah sure, why not?” if I bothered my arse voting at all in the referendum, so infuriated me that it instead galvanised me to make a special point of being sure to vote, and vote HELL NO! (This didn’t stop it happening, but it made me feel happier).

      So things like the gay cakes (and florists) court cases (that seems to have calmed down, at least I haven’t heard anything more about it) annoyed me in an American context because that seems to be less about the attitude promulgated in the run-up to legalisation, which was all ‘live and let live, gay marriage being legal isn’t going to affect you at all, it’s only giving people equal rights to Twu Wuv’ but which in the aftermath do seem to be deliberately taking test cases in order to force “Tolerance is not enough, you will submit or else!” about the matter. EDIT: By which I mean, there don’t seem to have been any cases where a gay couple went to a bakery and were told ‘fuck off perverts’, there do seem to have been “going to every bakery in town until we found the one that said ‘sorry, any cake but a wedding cake’ okay now we’re suing!” cases.

      So while one part of me is “Sure, it’s legal now, big whoop”, another part of me is still in angry ‘grrrr!’ mode.

      • Szemeredi says:

        By which I mean, there don’t seem to have been any cases where a gay couple went to a bakery and were told ‘fuck off perverts’, there do seem to have been “going to every bakery in town until we found the one that said ‘sorry, any cake but a wedding cake’ okay now we’re suing!” cases.

        Could you link to some cases of this in the Republic of Ireland?

      • Eugene Dawn says:

        there don’t seem to have been any cases where a gay couple went to a bakery and were told ‘fuck off perverts’, there do seem to have been “going to every bakery in town until we found the one that said ‘sorry, any cake but a wedding cake’ okay now we’re suing!” cases.

        You do realize that for logical reasons, there have to be at least as many bakers being sued for denial of service as gay couples denied service, right? You can’t sue someone for denying you service unless they, you know, denied you service.

        • Nick says:

          What are you getting at here? She’s not saying they didn’t actually deny them service; they definitely did. She’s saying these aren’t cases of cake shop scarcity, which is a concern when you’re giving businesses exceptions to public accommodations.

          Incidentally, I’m not actually sure she’s right about that—we saw some of those after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Masterpiece Cake Shop, but as far as I recall the couple originally suing was sincere, and same for that flower shop case.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            Unless I’m misreading, she’s saying instances of discrimination against gay couples are rare (no cases where gay couples were called perverts and told to f off), but instances of gays forcing others to submit is not rare (there are cases of gay couples going until they can find a homophobe to force into submission).

            Since the existence of a business willing to deny service to a gay couple is a necessary precondition for a gay couple trying to drag such a business to court and force them to submit, it cannot be the case that instances of the first kind are rarer than instances of the second kind.

          • Nick says:

            But she’s not contrasting “business denies service” with “gay couple forcing submission,” she’s contrasting gleeful homophobia/”f%^$ off perverts” with “gay couple forcing submission.”

            ETA: To be clear, I think I was too quick to characterize what she was saying the first time around. I think the argument in that paragraph is:
            1. The common appeal for gay marriage is tolerance, a live and let live, I do my thing and you do yours kind of appeal
            2. But the court cases after it have all been brought by folks seeking out grievances rather than folks wronged by overt hatred and hostility
            3. So these couples are the really intolerant ones after all.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            Why is gleeful homophobia relevant at all? The point of anti-discrimination and gay marriage laws aren’t to reduce gleeful homophobia, they are to reduce discrimination.
            Denying someone service, even if not done with malice in your heart and a sneer on your lips, is still not living and letting live.

            Conversely, imagine I argued that suing someone for anti-discrimination doesn’t count unless the person says something bigoted about Christians as they leave the cakeshop.

          • Nick says:

            Denying someone service, even if not done with malice in your heart and a sneer on your lips, is still not living and letting live.

            This, I take it, is your real point of disagreement with Deiseach. I really don’t want to have this whole argument again, though maybe she does (Deiseach, I’m tagging you in!), but depending on how broadly you construe expression, coercing the cake shop is not living and letting live, and declining the job is within his rights.

            Conversely, imagine I argued that suing someone for anti-discrimination doesn’t count unless the person says something bigoted about Christians as they leave the cakeshop.

            I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Deiseach wasn’t saying that we should only get to sue if they’re really for real homophobic. The point is rather that if the cake shop owner is denying service out of sincere religious obligation, while the couple is only seeking out grievances, the latter is the intolerant one. I’m not trying to equate “being the intolerant one” with some kind of possible legal consequences for the people, to be clear; I’m only saying that, by Deiseach’s argument, gay folks being intolerant of the very folks they’ve ask to tolerate them is rather a betrayal.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            My real issue with her comment is that she has made no evidence to examine how many “f*ck you, pervert” incidents actually occur, and then after refusing to investigate this, holds up the fact that she has found none of them as evidence that intolerance of gays is now no longer a problem.

            Of course coercing someone into baking something for you isn’t living and letting live; but neither is refusing to bake something for someone! The argument relies on two different standards: a straight person is “living and letting live” so long as they do not say anything malicious and hateful; a gay person can be intolerant even if they do not say anything hateful.

            You seem to believe there’s a dichotomy between “sincere religious obligation” (and fwiw, do any religions obligate one not to bake cakes for sinful marriages? Can a Catholic bake a cake for a second marriage after a divorce?) and “lack of toleration”–the gay people suing bakeries also have sincere beliefs that motivate their intolerance, but it’s still intolerant.

          • Guy in TN says:

            Of course coercing someone into baking something for you isn’t living and letting live; but neither is refusing to bake something for someone! The argument relies on two different standards: a straight person is “living and letting live” so long as they do not say anything malicious and hateful; a gay person can be intolerant even if they do not say anything hateful.

            I would have gone with the “private power is still coercive” route. Its less obvious to see when looking just at the cake-baking, but more so when you consider the implications in employment, and access to more important goods such as food, housing, ect.

    • keranih says:

      Not a Trump supporter*, but I do think that the normalization of homosexuality – esp in the manner we did it, and with the over-compensation** that has accompanied it – is a mistake. I am not adverse to the decriminalization of homosexual relationships, and think that should go hand-in-hand with treating individual people decently.

      I think if we-as-a society were less accepting of infidelity and hyper-sexualization, that would be a good thing, and I think a general disapproval of homosexuality that embraces these aspects (instead of trying to reduce them) would be a logical ingredient of that less publicly sexualized ideal.

      However, I also think that this should mostly apply(***) to public actions and those things supported by the state, and I think we also would do well to broaden the concept of a private life which is no one else’s business.

      *not yet, but I am increasingly tempted

      ** cake baking, et al

      *** minors are, to me, an obvious place for intervention/involvement.

      • Bugmaster says:

        but I do think that the normalization of homosexuality … is a mistake. I am not adverse to the decriminalization of homosexual relationships, and think that should go hand-in-hand with treating individual people decently.

        At the risk of being banned for culture-warring: I’m super confused; what do you mean ? As far as I understand, “normalization of homosexuality” means, roughly, “treating homosexual couples the same way as one would treat same-hair-color couples”. That is, treating homosexual relationships as nothing special. Is this what you are opposed to, and if so, how does that align with “treating individual people decently” ? I do agree that glorification of homosexuality (or any other kind of sexuality) is a mistake, but that’s not the same thing as normalization.

        • keranih says:

          what do you mean?

          Thank you for asking so politely.

          That is, treating homosexual relationships as nothing special.

          Homosexuality is not “nothing special” – it is not the normally appearing, community-perpetuating, generation-replicating norm of human pair-bonding. It should *not* be treated as “no different than same-hair-couples” – especially if we treat ‘same hair’ to mean ‘same ethnicity’ and as the normal human preference for a partner of the same ethnicity and culture. To treat same-sex sexual attraction as no different than a Dane preferring a Scandinavian partner over a Slavic one is to very much misunderstand human biology and culture.

          IMO, it would be more appropriate to understand homosexuality as one of the less distressing fetishes that humans are prone to – certainly less harmful than many others – but not a ‘normal’ approach to pairing off.

          In this sense, there are a variety of ways to interact with people who are homosexual in ones social circle that are helpful – buy bread from them, if they make good bread, take your car to them if they are a good mechanic, don’t gossip about them in the market place, go to movies with them if you both like movies, argue about books with them in the coffee shop if you both like books and coffee. And there are less helpful ways – mocking them (to their face or behind their back) for their desires, excusing public hypersexuality, insisting that they date the opposite gender ‘for form’s sake’ or otherwise getting overly involved in their personal lives.

          I have less strong feelings about state involvement in marriages, because I think there are upsides to promotion and social support for heterosexual marriages that are not there for homosexual ones, but I am increasingly libertarian about this, and am willing to tolerate state support so long as social disapproval is still permitted on a personal level. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to be one of the options allowed.

          • Bugmaster says:

            In this sense, there are a variety of ways to interact with people who are homosexual in ones social circle that are helpful – buy bread from them… And there are less helpful ways – mocking them…

            Again, I’m pretty confused about your opinion here. Everything you’ve listed sounds to me like, “treat homosexual people the same way you’d treat heterosexual people”, or perhaps “don’t use sexuality as a significant contributing factor in your treatment of people” — which is what I thought “normalization” means. Just to emphasize, I’m not saying I agree or disagree with you, I just genuinely don’t understand your position. However:

            IMO, it would be more appropriate to understand homosexuality as one of the less distressing fetishes that humans are prone to…

            Here I do agree with your wording, but probably not your intent. I see no problem with treating homosexuality as yet another fetish, but I also don’t think that fetishes are particularly interesting (or “distressing”) — as long as they involve fully consenting adults, of course. I don’t really care about all the various ways that people have sex with each other… I mean, I guess it might be interesting from the anthropological perspective, but that’s not my field. If you disagree, I’d be curious to find out why (though my curiosity is heavily moderated by the desire to stay unbanned).

            I have less strong feelings about state involvement in marriages

            Personally, I think that the term “marriage” needs to be decoupled into “a package of private contracts between individuals, recognized by the state” and “a traditional religious ceremony”. However, I see no way of actually accomplishing that, so my point is probably moot.

          • keranih says:

            Bugmaster –

            What do you think “not treating homosexual people the same way you’d treat heterosexual people” would look like?

            I see no problem with treating homosexuality as yet another fetish, but I also don’t think that fetishes are particularly interesting (or “distressing”) — as long as they involve fully consenting adults, of course.

            Do you have an opinion on adultry, or on sex outside of a committed union? And if you don’t care what people do with their sex lives, why does homosexual marriage matter at all?

            I would be more supportive of the libertarian pov that the state shouldn’t have an opinion on marriages, if I didn’t think that 1)marriages matter as a foundation block of society and 2) how society treats marriages matters to how well marriages work.

            If you don’t agree with either of those, then holding to the libertarian pov makes more sense.

          • David Shaffer says:

            @ keranih

            What does it actually mean for marriages to be a foundation block of society? The easiest way to support tradition unduly is to deal in generalities. Marriage provides a great many benefits, true. It provides homes for children (although are we sure we want to leave children at the mercy of two people who were never screened for competence or basic decency, without any possibility of outside help barring the most obvious forms of abuse?). It provides a stable source of love and lust alike. It reduces (ostensibly) competition for women; when everyone is paired off we don’t need to be always trying to get the girl. But are any of these things weakened by gay marriage? Be careful-every human society has had things it swore were essential, but which proved to be nothing more than needless stumbling blocks to our lives.

          • Bugmaster says:

            @keranih:

            What do you think “not treating homosexual people the same way you’d treat heterosexual people” would look like?

            Well, to use an extreme example, lynching people for holding hands in public with members of the same sex (I say “extreme”, but this is in fact the norm in some countries). To use a somewhat milder example, severing all social contact with a person once you find out that person is gay.

            Do you have an opinion on adultry, or on sex outside of a committed union ?

            Depends on your definition; I think that the difference between “adultery” and “extramarital sex” is that adultery is conducted in secret from one’s romantic partner, whereas extramarital sex is just sex outside of marriage. As such, adultery contains an element of betrayal, which I do find immoral — by contrast with mere extramarital sex.

            And if you don’t care what people do with their sex lives, why does homosexual marriage matter at all?

            Because, as I said above, marriage is (unfortunately, IMO) more than just a religious ceremony or an oath of mutual monogamy; it’s also a package of rights (and responsibilities, since rights usually imply responsibilities) that is recognized by the state. I’m talking about things like hospital visitation rights, property sharing, inheritance, etc.

        • SamChevre says:

          On “normalization” vs “treating people decently individually”–the analogy I find helpful is smoking.

          “Normalizing” open homosexuality is treating it like smoking was treated in the 1960’s; it’s routinely shown in movies, every office has ashtrays, a formal dinner party has ashtrays and matches on the table, etc, etc.

          De-normalizing homosexuality is treating it like smoking is treated in Massachusetts or New York City. You can’t smoke in the park, you can’t smoke in front of government buildings, you can’t smoke in big employers’ parking lots, some landlords won’t rent to you if you smoke, some employers won’t hire you if you smoke, and the government goes out of its way to make smoking expensive and stigmatizing. But if you are smoking in your own backyard, no one will stop you.

          And you can have friends who are smokers, and still favor de-normalizing smoking.

          • Bugmaster says:

            The categories are, of course, fuzzy; but I’d say that the smoking culture of the 60s is closer to the “glorification” end of the spectrum, than to the “normalization” end. Smoking was not merely tolerated or ignored, but actively encouraged; a person who chose not to smoke was always treated as the weirdo and an outsider.

          • a person who chose not to smoke was always treated as the weirdo and an outsider.

            I didn’t smoke in the 60s and don’t remember any such reaction. It might depend on what circles you moved in.

          • Matt M says:

            Some might suggest homosexuality is more glorified now than smoking ever was. I don’t recall any smoker pride parades. Or any police departments decorating their vehicles with tobacco-related symbols.

          • Nick says:

            Some might suggest homosexuality is more glorified now than smoking ever was. I don’t recall any smoker pride parades. Or any police departments decorating their vehicles with tobacco-related symbols.

            There’s a pride aspect to homosexuality that wasn’t there for smokers, true, but smokers were both commoner and required more accommodation than homosexuals do. Restaurants, for instance, should not much care whether their customers are gay, but I’m sure they care quite a bit whether their customers are going to smoke inside.

            Also, homosexuality is more set than smoking is. You don’t become gay by having gay sex as a teen, but you’re quite likely to become a smoker by smoking as a teen.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Nick:
            Restaurants don’t care if you are a smoker, they care if you smoke in their restaurant (at one point only because they were made to, now, they might do so on their own initiative if the law went away, critical mass being a thing.)

            Gay or straight, restaurants have pretty much always wanted you to not have sex at the table.

          • Nick says:

            HeelBearCub,

            Restaurants don’t care if you are a smoker, they care if you smoke in their restaurant (at one point only because they were made to, now, they might do so on their own initiative if the law went away, critical mass being a thing.)

            Of course, but this distinction between what you are and what you do there breaks down at times with homosexuality. Not with the restaurant case, but with others: “We as a university don’t care that you’re gay; we just care if you’re holding hands with your boyfriend on campus.”

          • Matt M says:

            Restaurants don’t care if you are a smoker, they care if you smoke in their restaurant

            Except the restaurants that will kick you out for not being sufficiently pro-gay. Even if you aren’t actively legislating against gays at the moment you attempt to order dinner.

          • Matt M says:

            “We as a university don’t care that you’re gay; we just care if you’re holding hands with your boyfriend on campus.”

            And of course, today, they do care if you’re gay. They’re more likely to admit you and give you extra money.

          • Nick says:

            And of course, today, they do care if you’re gay. They’re more likely to admit you and give you extra money.

            Gays have been historically oppressed and even today have bad outcomes on a lot of metrics. Smokers are not and have never been oppressed.

          • Matt M says:

            They are forced to pay exorbitantly high taxes to obtain the products that they enjoy – products that non-smokers never purchase.

            Imagine the government instituted a 100% tax on gay bars. You don’t think people would call that oppression? What if gay bars were forbidden from advertising? Forced to include giant signs warning that gay people are far more likely to have HIV than straights?

          • Nick says:

            They are forced to pay exorbitantly high taxes to obtain the products that they enjoy – products that non-smokers never purchase.

            Imagine the government instituted a 100% tax on gay bars. You don’t think people would call that oppression? What if gay bars were forbidden from advertising? Forced to include giant signs warning that gay people are far more likely to have HIV than straights?

            I don’t actually think taxing gay bars is wrong*, though I’m sure it would be politically imprudent; it would be a sin tax, just like the ones on smoking.

            *Bear in mind I don’t know anything about the economics of sin taxes; if David or someone would like to weigh in on why they are a bad idea, feel free to. The point is that I don’t think they’re morally wrong.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            What if gay bars were forbidden from advertising? Forced to include giant signs warning that gay people are far more likely to have HIV than straights?

            These comparisons would make a lot more sense if being gay was a consumer choice people made under advertising pressure, and if advertising for gay bars was prominently featured all over the place. As it stands, without a ban, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gay bar advertised anyway.

          • Matt M says:

            I don’t actually think taxing gay bars is wrong*, though I’m sure it would be politically imprudent; it would be a sin tax, just like the ones on smoking.

            What makes it not oppression for the government to select and classify a certain recreational activity as a “sin” while leaving others untaxed, unregulated, etc.?

          • On the gay pride march vs cigarette pride march, I think the difference is that homosexuality used to be very strongly disfavored, hence once it became practical it made sense to publicly make the point that gays existed and were not ashamed of being gay. If policy swung from its present anti-tobacco state to one of neutrality on the issue but a lot of people still acted as if smokers were scum, there would be a reason for a tobacco pride march.

            On the question of sin taxes … . Even if homosexuality is entirely innate, male homosexuals can choose how to act on it. If promiscuous anal intercourse is a serious health issue there would be an argument for taxing institutions that facilitated it, which I think of as bath houses more than gay bars. From the same standpoint there is an argument in favor of facilitating gay marriage, since it presumably encourages homosexual monogamy.

    • ManyCookies says:

      Anyone against gay marriage?

      So I agree there’s a fair number of national left-right debates the OT is firmly on the left on. Like I don’t think there’s a creationist around, I’d say transgenders are overall treated seriously and nicely, gay marriage discussion leads pretty pro… but the thing is the OT doesn’t actually talk about any of those things on regular basis. Whereas stuff like immigration and gun control and especially progressive/SJW influence gets brought up way more often, and on those frequent topics yall are pretty hard on the right.

      • cassander says:

        As I recall, we have a pretty wide gamut of opinions on immigration, with a few pretty serious restrictionists, a few principled open borderers, and most places in between.

        But more importantly why do you think this is? The likeliest explanation to me, that there’s no point in discussing topics on which there’s broad consensus. If that’s the cause, then calling us right wing because we don’t talk about those subjects seems a bit like calling a marxist forum right wing because they never argue about whether capitalism is harmful. I’m open to other suggestions, though.

        • quanta413 says:

          In many places, reciting agreed upon dogma is pretty important.

          I think it actually is strange that we talk less than normal about things we agree about.

          • Aapje says:

            In many places, reciting agreed upon dogma is pretty important.

            To increase social conformity, yes.

            Is it a bad thing that this is fairly rare here?

          • quanta413 says:

            There may be a healthy medium between the two poles.

            We could still hash out finer grained disagreements. Although I suspect it would only look a little less acrimonious than bigger disagreements.

      • Whereas stuff like immigration and gun control and especially progressive/SJW influence gets brought up way more often, and on those frequent topics yall are pretty hard on the right.

        I would guess that supporters of open immigration are more common here than in the population as a whole, not less. It’s a position popular among libertarians, and we have a fair number of libertarians here.

        • Brad says:

          The funny part is that the immigration restrictionists don’t seem very eager to argue with the actual, present, proud open borders folks.

          • It’s harder to argue with an open borders proponent because their position has some logic to it, crazy as it is. The mainstream consensus is incoherent, just brazenly contradicting itself without any self-awareness.

          • idontknow131647093 says:

            I’d think that this would be obvious. When a restrictionist argues with someone who is a true blue open borders advocate they are simply disagreeing on fundamental values. In the end you are just talking past one another.

            On the other hand, subtle positions leave open obvious points of partisanship and deception to exploit.

            For instance, the restrictionist can point out that a subtle-open-borders-ist is hoping for political support from demographic groups, or low (or high) skill workers depending on proposals, or that they simply hate culture and want to transform it.

            These arguments work because the arguments employed by subtle-ists are generally incoherent or unpersuasive, but also open borders is viscerally unacceptable to a huge % of the polity. Thus, you either force opponents into illogical stammering, or have them be logical, but also unable to win because of ingroup preferences.

            I mean lets be honest, outside the existence of democratic systems the arguments against open borders are idiotic. On the other hand, without the Irish/Italian immigrant wave (which includes 3/4 of my lineages) the US would have better city governments, may not have been involved in WW1, thus avoiding a WWII and Great Depression and massive changes in government from the post Civil War norms.

          • When a restrictionist argues with someone who is a true blue open borders advocate they are simply disagreeing on fundamental values.

            I disagree. Values are one basis for disagreements, but factual questions are another.

            My guess is that open borders, along the lines I have suggested in the past, would make most Americans better off as well as making the immigrants much better off. That’s a factual claim, not a matter of values.

    • pontifex says:

      I’m not against gay marriage. I am a Trump supporter, though. Probably the main thing I dislike about Trump is his anti-environmentalism.

    • Walter says:

      I feel like ‘well, better than Hillary’ defines a Trump supporter, yeah? Like, that was my attitude. It is a closed system, you only get the 2 choices.

      • Evan Þ says:

        Not quite. There’s an appreciable difference between “okay, he’s better than Hillary” and the sort of person who’s enthusiastic enough to post on r/The_Donald.

        For a more personal example, two years ago, I was glad I lived in a safe state so I didn’t need to decide whether to vote for Trump. But, my uncle’s enthusiastic enough that I’m pretty sure he gladly cast his vote for Trump even though he lived in just as safe a state.

    • People on the left are so unused to seeing people on the right speak freely that any time they do, it automatically means a place is taken over by the right. I know this isn’t an original thought but I don’t think it’s really sunken in.

      • Matt M says:

        Indeed. And the entire reason that non-leftist comment sections “inevitably become right-wing” is because right-wingers have virtually no places where they are allowed to speak freely. Even ostensibly neutral places like Facebook and Twitter are increasingly hostile towards right-wing opinions (and carry a much higher risk of “mob tries to get you fired” than a place like this does).

        • Dan L says:

          And the entire reason that non-leftist comment sections “inevitably become right-wing” is because right-wingers have virtually no places where they are allowed to speak freely.

          Can you truly not think of any? I can name several, though they tend to be agressively horrible by other metrics. But then we’re left with Groucho Marx’s paradox.

          • Matt M says:

            Can you truly not think of any? I can name several, though they tend to be agressively horrible by other metrics.

            Fair and conceded.

            To modify, I would suggest SSC is the quite rare venue at which we can speak freely and interact with others who disagree.

            And it’s probably important, for both sides, that a few such places exist.

    • Even if you like Trump’s policies, it is really hard to be a full blown Donald Trump supporter. The guy is basically a parody.

      • engleberg says:

        I doubt St Francis of Assisi could spend half a century in New York real estate without enormous obvious crimes. Two years into Trump’s presidency, his D party media enemies have come up with some stuff about his dad’s estate tax minimization strategies. Clearly Trump is one hell of a morally superior fellow.

        • ana53294 says:

          I always thought the lack of dirt on Trump’s real estate deals is because it implicates too many prominent Democrats in NY (since NY is ruled by Democrats).

          The thing is, in most corruption scandals, you can’t strategically give a piece of dirt and then stop. So any dirt on Trump will be dirt on prominent Democrats, and once you have one corrupt Trump and a 100 prominent Democrats in jail, Republicans get to be the clean party (they were against Trump all along, and look at all the shady deals Democrats did).

        • A Definite Beta Guy says:

          It’s not a matter of his crimes. Trump is less qualified than practically any other conservative option and that has serious risks for the nation. He is also a personal scoundrel and seems to take pleasure in his ignorance. He might very well go down in history as the worst President ever. He is also loathed by the other side in a way that’s really difficult to describe. Democrats will crawl over broken glass to vote against this guy, which is going to lead to some serious electoral complications at a time the GOP needs to expand its base.

          Seriously a GOP with a 53 or 54% of the vote should be achievable with someone like Rubio, and that’s going to lead to near super-majorities. You’d undo all of Obama’s crap and likely be able to make serious headway on the budget. Instead you’re going to get a rough 2020 election and GOP candidates suffering downballot, along with bare majorities and a radicalized Dem party that’s going to be one step removed from Socialists, trying to pack the Court the second they have the opportunity (which might very well be 2021).

          • The Nybbler says:

            Rubio, had he managed to win the primary, would have lost to Hillary Clinton.

          • engleberg says:

            Trump is less qualified that practically any conservative option-

            He ran a big business and built stuff. He was in infotainment long enough to have media connections. I don’t say that’s more than a start. I say name anyone now in public life who has done radically more? I don’t have a high opinion of bloviating on TV or in the legislature. I’d be perfectly willing to respect some lawmaker who got Hoover Dam built or made something like Obamacare work. Name one. Either party.

            Or keep blaming him for the D party’s behavior. Come now. Really, if Trump had won in 2000 as a D party president you’d be justified. Naked pictures of Al Gore and a goat on 1999 Trump-owned infotainment, Trump beats George like he beat Jeb!, America unites behind Trump after 9/11, American culture gets all vulgar and stuff and it’s Trump’s fault: I could see it then.

          • Lillian says:

            Way i see it, if you reran the full 2016 election multiple times, the Democratic candidate wins the popular vote nearly every time, pretty much irrespective of who the candidates are. The only way for the Republican to win is to pull off an electoral college victory. This is basically impossible to do on purpose, it’s happened all of five times and every time it’s basically been an unforeseen event. Nobody really angles for an EC-only win. This means that realistically speaking the only viable way to pull it off in the 2016 election is to do it the way it actually happened: get working class white voters in Midwestern states to break Republican by addressing their demographic and economic anxieties. Donald Trump was the only Republican candidate doing this, so Donald Trump was the only potential nominee who could have defeated Hillary Clinton.

          • albatross11 says:

            My understanding is that both parties spend a lot of time thinking about how to get an EC victory–not that they want to get a popular vote defeat, but they know that the EC is what determines the winner.

            Further, the way the states line up, I think the Democrats have a tendency to have big popular votes that don’t help them in the EC, because they get a very one-sided victory in California and New York. All those votes past 51% count zero for actually winning the election, but they do count for the popular vote totals.

          • Matt M says:

            You are living in a bubble. Trump is far more popular than you think. He has energized the conservative base more than any Republican since Reagan, and it’s not even close.

            Literally nobody likes Rubio and his ilk, except committed Democrats like you who like him because you know he will lead the GOP to continual failure.

          • albatross11 says:

            How popular is Trump compared to other presidents?

            The interesting thing about this link is when you scroll down to the bottom. Trump is very popular among Republicans, and very unpopular among Democrats. (I wish the link showed how this compares to other presidents.) Another Gallup poll report I read pointed out that this is useful for his negotiations with Congress–he’s more popular among Republicans than the Republican Congressional leadership.

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            Way i see it, if you reran the full 2016 election multiple times, the Democratic candidate wins the popular vote nearly every time, pretty much irrespective of who the candidates are. The only way for the Republican to win is to pull off an electoral college victory. This is basically impossible to do on purpose, it’s happened all of five times and every time it’s basically been an unforeseen event. Nobody really angles for an EC-only win. This means that realistically speaking the only viable way to pull it off in the 2016 election is to do it the way it actually happened: get working class white voters in Midwestern states to break Republican by addressing their demographic and economic anxieties. Donald Trump was the only Republican candidate doing this, so Donald Trump was the only potential nominee who could have defeated Hillary Clinton

            We can’t say with certainty, but, no, this isn’t likely. Actual polls done prior to the nomination process closing up showed all of the major GOP candidates (Cruz, Bush, Rubio, Kasich) faring better against Clinton than Trump. Which isn’t surprising, because Trump has massive unfavorability, and even today is horrifically unpopular despite the incredible economic performance.

            We don’t know how those polls would have changed if there were an actual general election campaign between HRC and the other candidates. However, simply conceding that the Democrats are going to win the popular vote is really, really odd, because the polling clearly indicated that several specific GOP candidates were outpolling Hillary. In actual elections, Dubya won a solid majority of the vote in 2004, barely “lost” the popular vote in 2000, and Romney lost by 4 points against a President who came in with favorability ratings only exceeded by Eisenhower and JFK.

            It’s also worth noting the following totals from Ohio:
            Obama: 2.8 million
            Romney: 2.6 million

            Trump: 2.8 million
            Hillary: 2.4 million

            Here’s Michigan:
            Obama: 2.564 million
            Romney: 2.111 million

            Trump: 2.279 million
            Hillary: 2.268 million

            So, no, Romney (IE generic GOP candidate) would have been competitive and within victory in practically every state that Trump “flipped.” This has nothing to do with Trump, and everything to do with Hillary being insanely unpopular.

            As for “energy,” Democrats are raising an incredible amount of money. They might lost a single seat in the Senate, despite the fact that they are defending 27 seats, and the GOP is defending eight. All of these places were the “Trump train” is supposed to deliver ungodly momentum like PA and WI are going to be retained by Dems. Maybe the GOP might pick up FL or MO, but what’s the likelihood they will pick up WV or MT? Single digits?
            I think the people living in a bubble are the commenters who are not seeing how incredibly pissed off Trump makes Democrats, and how that makes them much more likely to organize and vote, and vote party-line, and how that will screw-up the downballot for other candidates.

            Literally nobody likes Rubio and his ilk, except committed Democrats like you who like him because you know he will lead the GOP to continual failure.

            Yes, yes, I know, I live in a bubble, etc. etc. I hear it from my in-laws and my conservative friends who also hate John McCain for being a RINO, and how Flake is a Democrat, and also do you remember Seth Rich?
            Those people already tend to vote in most elections, it’s my liberal friends who aren’t as interested in politics who are more likely to vote because the guy in office is practically a caricature of everything wrong with the world.

          • Chalid says:

            “Trump is very popular among Republicans”

            it will always be true that a president will be very popular among members of his party, for the simple reason that if people don’t like him, they stop identifying with his party. (Which is why that “unskewed polls” nonsense always falls flat on its face.)

          • Lillian says:

            @A Definite Beta Guy: The reason why i am certain of a Democratic popular vote victory irrespective of the candidates is that i believe in the Allan Lichtman’s Keys to the White House model. It views the Presidential election as being fundamentally a referendum on the ruling party, so the individual candidates usually don’t matter. According to the Keys, the Obama Presidency was successful enough to secure the people’s support for another Democratic term.

            The only way the Republicans could have won the popular vote is if they had nominated someone as charismatic as Reagan, or if there was a third party candidate who could serve as a spoiler by managing at least 5% of the vote. The first one could not happen as no such person was available as a candidate. The second is harder to predict, but i expect without Trump third parties will do worse rather than better. That is why i believe that an Electoral College victory was the only way the Republicans could win the election. And as i can tell, only Trump had was appealing to the demographics necessary to pull this off.

            Oh also, if things continue as they have been, the Keys predict a 2020 popular vote victory for Trump. They’ve been predicting Presidential elections since 1984 and they haven’t been wrong yet. At least not for the popular vote, unfortunately the model just doesn’t work at all for modelling the EC. Frankly, i don’t think there’s any model that could predict how the EC goes, since i think that it diverging from the popular vote mostly amounts to random noise. In my view, Trump still loses most runs of the 2016 election, we’re just in one of the realities where he didn’t. Still, if don’t want eight years of Trump, you’d best pray for a recession in 2020.

        • beleester says:

          That, or maybe not committing crimes in the real estate business is a lot easier than you think it is?

          Like, maybe we should try the simple explanations before proposing that there are tons of “enormous obvious crimes” that simply aren’t getting prosecuted for whatever reason?

          • engleberg says:

            Yes, New York real estate’s crappy reputation is probably overblown in flyover states, like where I’m from.

          • ana53294 says:

            Why is NYC train so disfunctional then, and why can’t they fix it? I always thought the answer was corruption.

          • The Nybbler says:

            @ana53294

            Why is NYC train so disfunctional then, and why can’t they fix it? I always thought the answer was corruption.

            Which one? The subway is only mildly dysfunctional, and the answer is a combination of ancient infrastructure, state/city animosity (the subway is run by the state), and corruption. Metro North (serving the NY suburbs north of the city east of the Hudson) is apparently not all that dysfunctional. I don’t know about the Long Island Railroad. NJ Transit (serves New Jersey suburbs and a few NY suburbs west of the Hudson) is an absolute disaster due to a combination of incompetence and corruption, and it’s hard to tell where one starts and the other ends.

            Both the MTA (runs the subways, LIRR, and Metro North) and NJ Transit claim the problem is a lack of funding. But somehow if any additional funding becomes available, it just vanishes with no observable improvements. That’s corruption. It’s possible the agencies actually do need more money, but adding more money with all the corruption is like pouring water into a bucket with no bottom.

      • cassander says:

        I feel the same way about the anti-trump crowd. I don’t like the guy. I dislike a lot of things that he does, but dammit his opponents make it hard for me to support them.

    • Matt M says:

      I did not vote for Trump last time around, but since the election I have become entirely and unabashedly a supporter of his and will likely vote for him next time.

    • Conrad Honcho says:

      Do we have a any out and out trump supporters that are regular commenters? Not “I held my nose and voted for him” Not “well he was better than hillary”, but a straight up supporters?

      I started supporting Trump in July of 2015 when I read his immigration whitepaper, and I own MAGA hats in red and camo.

      Anyone against gay marriage?

      Eh. I’m basically on the fence. I have no problem with gay people, but gay politics has burned a lot of social capital with me. In years past I voted in favor of gay marriage. Today if it were made illegal I would probably shrug.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      Anyone against gay marriage?

      I’m against issuing homosexual marriage licenses, yes. Now if supporting happy, swashbuckling marriages became a Culture War issue, I’d be all in.

      • Nick says:

        I’m more for grim marriages.

        Wedding, what’s a wedding? It’s a prehistorical ritual where everybody promises fidelity forever, which is maybe the more horrifying word I’ve ever heard of, which is followed by a honeymoon where suddenly he’ll realize he’s been saddled with a nut and wanna kill me, which he should!

    • rlms says:

      We’ve definitely got Trump supporters, including some very prolific commenters. I agree they aren’t red tribe though; given that SSC is a high IQ place and red tribers on average have below average IQ that’s not too surprising.

      • Mark Atwood says:

        “red tribers on average have below average IQ”

        [*] citation needed

        • fion says:

          A study found a related result. Here it is reported in a… uh… not very left-wing British newspaper: link.

          • nkurz says:

            Thanks for posting a source. I’m still not sure if you actually believe that there are few red-tribers on SSC because not enough of them are smart enough, or whether you are posting sarcastically. Further, even if there was an substantial IQ difference between political supporters in the US, it would have to be enormous for there not to be significant overlap between the individuals in the groups. If sarcasm, please stop, it’s unhelpful.

            But if this is something you believe, could you point to the specific part of the linked article that you think supports your case? I thought it was a good article, but as it was mostly about rural/urban IQ in Europe, and mostly about how that gap has closed in recent years, I don’t really see the relevance to SSC participation rates by Trump supporters (which is what I presume is close to what is meant by red-tribers). It does mention that the “data would indicate that a non-trivial slice of the white farmboys of the 1970s suffered from clinical mental retardation”, but follows to say that this is implausible.

          • I can see why people found Unz interesting.

      • HeelBearCub says:

        @rlms:
        No.

      • Conrad Honcho says:

        I crown myself “King of the Retards.”

      • quanta413 says:

        This was a little stronger than your other attempt. I’d give it a 4.5/10.

  38. Hoopyfreud says:

    Reasons why certain individuals are tiring to engage with, as someone who is liberal but not progressive:

    Willingness to tie social discussion in the comments back to homogeneity arguments – see people who took the NIMBY post and blamed BART stations being bad on the US not having the racial homogeneity of Japan here. This has the tendency to derail comment chains, which is exacerbated by maximum comment depth and the accompanying inability to hide side-conversations. This is incredibly tiresome to repeat ad nausaem, and there’s more than enough information available that anyone can claim that anyone else is ignorant on the topic. That’s not a problem on its own though – the problem is people who treat any related discussion as a chance to discuss their pet issues, and who take any opportunity to do so. In a dream world, there would be a “rabbit hole” comment chain that I could hide at the top level, but instead these sorts of discussions, *while not making up even a plurality of posts*, are nonetheless ubiquitous, and therefore more frustrating than their frequency should warrant, at least to me.

    Machiavellianism – I complained about this last OT, but there are a lot of people here (not just right-wingers either) who deny that anyone including themselves is actually in favor of liberalism. This usually accompanies arguments that privilege incentive-based arguments over endorsed values; as someone who has a history of voting for endorsed values over incentives, this is frustrating to run into, and often leads to people assuming bad faith and terminal values that are not only mismatched, but actively opposed, since as far as I can tell the assumption goes that endorsing opposed terminal values raises your social status over the outgroup. The practical upshot is the ability to assume that anyone arguing for things you don’t like is doing so to attack you, and to respond in kind. See: here. I don’t know how to respond to this, and from previous interactions it seems not worth doing; in turn, when this happens, I have no response to make, other than to note that gulag jokes aren’t common here, and that while I could “less of this please,” I perceive there being enough of a norm in place that I’m actually the one who’d be wrong to do so.

    I don’t want to be seen as attacking particular users here, and I genuinely believe that I’m not – I think that there’s a norm of behaviors that have made discussion here moderately more unpleasant for me, and I’m attempting to explain why. To that end, please refrain from discussing individual users’ comment patterns unless it’s salient to your point. I don’t think that these behaviors warrant official censure, but I do find them frustrating, and request that anyone who wants me in the comments more take these points into consideration when formulating theirs. Maybe that’s pretentious, but really that’s the only reason why moderation is likely to be appealing – and I’ll remind people that “SSC is the best place to discuss CW topics because of the good-faith discussion” is a opinion that, if you hold it, should encourage you to promote more good-faith discussion in turn.

    • quanta413 says:

      I don’t want to be seen as attacking particular users here, and I genuinely believe that I’m not

      You probably shouldn’t link examples containing the same person twice then. It’s not hard to find two different commenters here behaving rudely. It’s not even hard to find left wing commenters behaving rudely.

      FWIW, I think the NIMBY threads were the worst topics I’ve seen here in years though.

      • Hoopyfreud says:

        You probably shouldn’t link examples containing the same person twice then.

        I admit that laziness won out over willingness to look for more examples, but I’ll note that what I consider to be the most egregious comments came from 3 different people. And I think I made it clear that the problem as I see it is not rudeness.

        • quanta413 says:

          I was using rudeness as shorthand for your long description. Any word you like suits me.

          I suppose Machiavellianism is the one you chose.

      • rlms says:

        Perhaps some people are just genetically predisposed to a tendency to make low quality comments, and therefore there’s no problem if they show up disproportionately frequently in lists of low quality comments.

    • ilikekittycat says:

      “America is too diverse to have nice things” is rapidly becoming a thought-terminating-cliche around here. It’s like ad-libbed evo-psych on a certain part of the internet 10 years ago, it just shuts down discussion and further thinking without ever being an interesting argument. It’s a form of just-so story easy enough to grasp in an intellectual way that it gets applied to 10x the number of situations where its relevant

      • idontknow131647093 says:

        I don’t really understand what you are saying here?

        What I have generally thought about the “diversity is a cause of XXX” discussion is that it is generally used as an Occam’s Razor type of thing. If you want to say there is a different line of causation isn’t the burden to disprove the obvious ones (IQ, Income, Personality) first?

        • quanta413 says:

          I don’t think that’s it.

          I think ilikekittycat is talking about the gloom and doom of some people. It’s not all people here, but definitely some.

          Personally, I think it’s pretty good here, and the U.S. already has most of the nice things you could want. Not distributed evenly but even the bottom fifth of the U.S. has a high standard of consumption. It’s relatively way below the top fifth, which has a crazy standard of consumption. But it’s still a lot in an absolute sense compared to the not so distant past.

          The doom and gloom is overwrought. The near future will probably be a lot like the recent past. Which is pretty good.

          • idontknow131647093 says:

            I was saying that “diversity is why we can’t have nice things” is a parody of the argument people make against people arguing for huge and complicated solutions to social problems, like homelessness, high gini coefficients, criminality, etc.

            If you are arguing for complex social solutions (or at the very least discussing what you think are the causes of social problems, I.E. institutional racism) its not unfair to force you to rebut obvious causes for the problem before accepting your causes and solutions.

          • Matt M says:

            “Diversity is why we can’t have nice things” is not a scientifically valid explanation for every ailment in society, no.

            But it does strike me as a very plausible first response to people who spend all their time demanding to know why we don’t have things like they do in Japan or Finland.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @idontknow

            its not unfair to force you to rebut obvious causes for the problem before accepting your causes and solutions.

            The problem here is that people believe that “black people live there” is an “obvious cause” of the BART being unpleasant that can be definitively rebutted. From the discussions I’ve had here, it’s actually a pretty complex argument without enough data to support (or squash) it, and the implications of it on policy are more complex than its use seems to suggest.

            Being asked to do so is a lot like being asked to argue against the “obvious” case for hard determinism when discussing philosophy, or evo-psych alpha bullshit when discussing whether you should interrupt people. And it often seems to be the case that the guardians of the racial argument are ready and willing to jump in with the same shit that we’ve already agreed a week ago is, in fact, complicated.

            In practice, almost any thread can be sidetracked into this discussion, and going through the comments can become an exercise in having discussions that aren’t about whether black people inherently make San Francisco a worse place to live. I don’t really care. I have engaged with the evidence being presented in these discussions already and have formed an opinion; the same is probably true for most people here. I reject the idea that the explanation is both simple and worth defaulting to (not the same as rejecting it outright) and I therefore don’t want to spend time in every tangentially related thread explaining why for the umpteenth time to the same people.

            This isn’t helped by comments like Matt’s in this thread which put the burden of explaining why ANYTHING from Japan, China, Finland, or Kenya would work in the US given the racial makeup of the country on me. I’m beginning to suspect that if I argued for employing wardens to watch over the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep, someone would suggest that it wouldn’t work in America because 97% of the Kenyan population is from the same region of Africa (this is a joke).

          • idontknow131647093 says:

            I am not familiar enough with BART to comment, but when it comes to public transit in general a huge problem with it (in cities I am familiar with like Chicago and Boston) is the ingrained corruption from old Big City Machines. Those machines used to prey on/rely on the Irish/Italian immigrants of the 1880s-1920s.

            I don’t know what to do with this information for you other than to present it as, IMO, the most plausible reason for BART’s failures until you show me another reason.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Matt M

            The problem then becomes that you can look across the border to Canada, and see a generally lower homicide rate, lower incarceration rates, probably nicer public transit, less polarized politics… in a country that isn’t ethnically homogenous like Japan or Finland or wherever. The difference between Canada and the US clearly can’t be diversity, right?

          • Matt M says:

            dndrsn,

            I’ve already made this point elsewhere in this thread, but I believe Canada has a merit-based points system that regulates its own immigration and diversity, the likes of which were loudly shouted down as racist and fascist when Donald Trump suggested we try and implement something like that.

            It results in a very different form of “diversity” than the “anyone from the third world who can manage to sneak across our largely unguarded border is allowed to stay and use public services” kind. And it’s probably worth keeping in mind that Canada doesn’t have a border with the third world.

            All that said, if someone wants to say “Why can’t we have X like they do in Canada” then my first response wouldn’t be to point to diversity as a reason. I only use that claim when people point specifically to ethnically homogeneous nations, not when they point to any non-US nation. That said, I recall reading somewhere that if you go state-by-state, there are many US states that compare well to Canadian numbers in terms of mass shootings, and they’re mostly the ones you’d expect…

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Matt M

            I’ve already made this point elsewhere in this thread, but I believe Canada has a merit-based points system that regulates its own immigration and diversity, the likes of which were loudly shouted down as racist and fascist when Donald Trump suggested we try and implement something like that.

            The US immigration system is a mess compared to Canada’s, but I think your presentation of the Trump proposed system is a little disingenuous. It didn’t just bring in a points system, it also cut legal immigration really heavily. When Canada has higher per-capita legal immigration than the US.

            It results in a very different form of “diversity” than the “anyone from the third world who can manage to sneak across our largely unguarded border is allowed to stay and use public services” kind. And it’s probably worth keeping in mind that Canada doesn’t have a border with the third world.

            That “anyone” is limited, because the undefended land border is only with one third world country. The statistics I’ve seen for crimes and other such badness done by illegal immigrants and their descendants are that they are kinda a wash compared to the US average. So clearly they can’t be the problem.

            All that said, if someone wants to say “Why can’t we have X like they do in Canada” then my first response wouldn’t be to point to diversity as a reason. I only use that claim when people point specifically to ethnically homogeneous nations, not when they point to any non-US nation. That said, I recall reading somewhere that if you go state-by-state, there are many US states that compare well to Canadian numbers in terms of mass shootings, and they’re mostly the ones you’d expect…

            Look, first, if this is darkly hinting, it’s not even good darkly hinting. My mental model of how to stay safe in the US is basically “avoid Borderer type stuff and be suspicious of those Cavaliers too” to be honest, which includes a lot of old-stock Anglo-Americans. And who said it’s about mass shootings, either? (I can’t remember if, relative to the Canada-US homicide gap, there’s a narrower gap for mass shootings, or a wider gap)

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            I’ve already made this point elsewhere in this thread, but I believe Canada has a merit-based points system that regulates its own immigration and diversity, the likes of which were loudly shouted down as racist and fascist when Donald Trump suggested we try and implement something like that.

            A merit-based points system was also attempted by a Democratic White House and Senate, but failed in the (Republican) House not because it was racist and fascist, but because “Border Security and Interior Enforcement Must Come First”–if you’ll click on the link to the bill, you’ll see that Title I was Border Security, and Title III Interior Enforcement. So, it’s not just lefties who have opposed attempts to move the US to a points system.

            I’ll also note that while Canada’s points-based system certainly controls its own immigration, I’m not sure it controls its own diversity: other than for speaking French or English, there are no points I know of that are awarded for any criteria that I think have much to do with diversity (i.e., there are no cultural or religious points, or anything like that). And Canada does in fact take immigrants from countries likely to increase its diversity: over 10% of immigrants in 2016 were from Syria, 3.8% from Pakistan (5th place overall), and Eritrea took 10th place with 1.6%.

          • quanta413 says:

            Japan and Finland are overrated anyways. Mean crime in the U.S. is higher, but many people can avoid that outcome by just not living in the high crime parts of the U.S. It’s not like it’s evenly distributed. Also, we’re significantly richer than Japan or Finland.

            And I agree with comments above that diversity is not necessarily a long term problem. Diversity causes friction but is often resolvable even when immigrants are some large (but less than 1) fraction of the population. Like .1-.2 or so. Like in the U.S. in the early 1900s. On the other hand, Yugoslavia didn’t resolve terribly well.

            Even though the Southern border is porous, having to get past the border patrol is a brutal screening of its own. It’d be a lot kinder and better to have a rational system rather than “see if you can get past the armed guards and keep hiding from them”, but we’re not going to get that.

            I think the main complaint that could accurately be levied against U.S. immigration policy is that it’s great for you if you’re rich but sucks if you’re poor. Because of the cheap labor supply it creates.

          • albatross11 says:

            The US has a really good track record of bringing in immigrants from very different cultures and getting their grandkids to all basically be Americans who all work together pretty well. That doesn’t mean that absolutely any immigration policy will work, but it sure does seem like a strong data point against “we can’t have nice things because diversity.”

          • Matt M says:

            I mean look, I agree that overall, we’re doing pretty well compared to Finland and Japan. If I thought otherwise, I’d move to one of those places.

            My point is that when someone says “The subways in Japan are very clean, why aren’t our subways clean?” then the obvious first step is to look at ways in which the US and Japan differ, and ethnic diversity is one of the most glaring and obvious. Surely it’s not the only one, but it’s a decent place to start.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            They also have life time employment and a strong social safety net. They also were forced to completely rebuild their governance 80 years ago and received a massive influx of outside development The fact that ethnic diversity is the first and only thing you think of …

          • ana53294 says:

            Finland and Japan also have higher tax revenue, a lower use of guns and higher PISA scores.

            I can make a very good argument why better education leads to less people shitting on the train. You focus on diversity whenever anything is nicer in other countries than in the US, without trying to look at other explanations.

            Anyway, the US seems to be lower in diversity than Canada, Latvia, Switzerland, Estonia, Belgium and Spain. I do find this quite surprising, but there you go.

          • Plumber says:

            “….BART being unpleasant…”

            @Hoopyfreud,

            The problems with BART are the same problem with the roads and public libraries.

            First, people don’t live where they work and it’s really crowded (in both directions, you see a traffic jam of people leaving San Francisco to go to their jobs in the suburbs, and on the other side of the bridge there’s a traffic jam of people leaving their jobs in the suburbs to go back to their apartments in The City), and the other problem with BART is the same as the problem with public libraries, too many “street people”.

            The West MacArthur BART station in Oakland has less muggings than it did in the 1980’s when there was a giant open air parking lot next to it and it was notorious, now that there’s new expensive apartments and many cafes nearby it’s not like it was.

            The main problem with BART is the other side of the turnstiles on Market Street in San Francisco where you have a great mass that sleeps on the streets and uses the non-paid part of the station and on the street near BART as a latrine, and as a place to throw used needles, and there’s also (just as with the libraries) stinky people who use BART all day so they can have a warm place to sleep.

      • Guy in TN says:

        Yep. It’s interesting to see how certain just-so narratives crystallize. People tell themselves a story like “x leads to y, which incentivizes people to do z…”, without recognizing how arbitrary the variables they choose to focus on. And how many counter “just-so” stories could an opponent theoretically dream up, if he was equally as sloppy?

        The actual reality, of course, is that US states which are most like social democracies (i.e., highest taxes and highest welfare) are also the most racially diverse. So I could come up with some counter just-so stories for explaining why that is, but for some reason I don’t think they’d gain as much traction as the mainstream ones, which say that this shouldn’t be.

        • Nornagest says:

          The actual reality, of course, is that US states which are most like social democracies (i.e., highest taxes and highest welfare) are also the most racially diverse.

          This isn’t clearly true; see here. The most diverse state by any reasonable measure is Hawaii, and it’s fairly liberal policy-wise, but Texas and Georgia are also in the top 10 if you sort inversely by % non-Hispanic white. Also Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, which are swing states but definitely aren’t the most social democracy-like.

          The racial classification that correlates best with Democratic politics at a state level is Asian, with nine of the top ten most Asian states going Democratic in the last election. The classification that correlates best with Republican politics at a state level is black, with seven of the corresponding top ten going Republican, or eight if you ignore DC. Obviously this doesn’t mean those populations are voting Democratic and Republican respectively, but it’s still interesting to note.

          • Guy in TN says:

            They are outliers, but I think the trend is pretty clear. If we take the Cook Partisan Voting Index as a proxy:

            The top 10 most racially diverse states (as measured by % white population)
            HI: D+18
            NM:D+3
            CA:D+12
            TX:R+8
            GA:R+5
            NV:D+1
            MD:D+12
            AZ:R+5
            FL:R+2
            NY:D+12
            Average:D+3.8

            Top 10 least racially diverse states
            VT:D+15
            WV:R+19
            NH:0
            ME:D+3
            MT:R+11
            WY:R+25
            IO:R+3
            ND:R+17
            KY:R+15
            SD:R+14
            Average:R+8.6

          • Nornagest says:

            I don’t see a trend. I see a bunch of regional tendencies that look sorta like a trend if you turn your head and squint, but which don’t get you to the quote in the ancestor.

            Note for example that the least diverse states there are mostly in the mountain West, in Appalachia, or in New England, which are culturally very different and skew in opposite directions politically. You can’t make sense of that with a general trend saying more diversity->more Democratic, but you can by talking about their regional cultures.

            Some states, of course, have more than one regional culture. If anything I think that’s what’s reflected in the high-diversity states you show above — you can describe NM, TX, GA pretty readily as multicultural states, and they all show notably weak political trends. It’s HI, CA, MD, NY there that’re the outliers, and those are unified not by being similarly diverse but by being similarly urban.

          • quanta413 says:

            Hawaii is really different in a lot of ways even from the other left wing states on the list. It’s an island chain. It hasn’t been majority white ever. It’s way more beautiful…

            Like yeah, most people live near Honolulu, so that’s kind of like New York but otherwise…

          • Guy in TN says:

            Its weak evidence, sure. But its a superior counter-argument to an evidence-free assertion that diversity causes people to vote for more capitalist economic institutions.

            A flimsy correlation confounded by a thousand variables is still better than nothing at all.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @Guy

            Is it really? I’d think that’d lead to the creation of just-so stories held with higher confidence than is warranted. In such a case it seems better to try to identify all reasonably strong correlations than to pick one and run with it.

          • Guy in TN says:

            A “just so story” is another way of saying an “untested hypothesis”. Logical hypotheses are good to formulate, and its good to investigate them. What is not good, is to come up with a hypothesis, and then rely on the hypothesis itself as your argument.

            My argument isn’t intended to serve as an actual explanation of reality. But rather, its a means to discredit a particular ideological meme, by showing that since a cursory first-glance doesn’t support their claims, Occam’s razor does not apply.

            This meme is the untested hypothesis we routinely hear is formulated as “diversity leads to social anxiety, which reduces cohesion, and thus causing people to vote for non-social democratic policies”.

  39. theodidactus says:

    Hey everyone,
    This is a post from that guy that wrote Synchronicity (the semi-rationalist urban-fantasy/mystery story) and Tingalan (the horror text-based adventure game). Both seemed to get pretty good reviews around these parts, so I thought I’d tell you about my next project, which is up for an interactive fiction competition:
    It’s called “Six Silver Bullets” and it’s basically a spy/noir text-based adventure game with…some extraneous elements I’m not going to tell you about.
    https://ifcomp.org/ballot/#entry-1856

    More broadly, you can play (and rate!) any game on that list, many of which are VERY VERY good. If you like interactive fiction, take a look around.

  40. Scott Alexander says:

    Should I make the visible thread into the no-culture-war one? It might have better optics, it might encourage people to hunt down the hidden ones, and I wouldn’t have to explain what “off-weekend” meant after two weeks.

    • cassander says:

      I’d just be happy with a strictly sequential numbering scheme.

    • axiomsofdominion says:

      It might be easier to just put “no CW” or “no culture war” in the title. It would be impossible to miss that way. You have to engineer for the LCD on the internet.

      Alternatively you could have a no CW and a CW thread at the same time. The way some forums have General Discussion and something like The Cesspit, where divisive issues are allowed.

      • Evan Þ says:

        Alternatively you could have a no CW and a CW thread at the same time.

        I oppose that idea. It’s good to have a half-week where we just don’t discuss the Culture War, and it’s good not to have the CW-allowed threads degenerate into “all culture war all the time.”

    • Hoopyfreud says:

      I like CW-free threads, but I think that it’s not likely to solve problems with underlying norms; CW content has, I think, reached a sufficiently critical mass that OTs don’t have much of a chance of steering the ship. I’d expect a CW jubilee (with the *exception* of OTs, possibly only the hidden ones) to do better at steering, but have no sense of the appropriate duration.

    • Personally, I’d like to see you get experimental and do things like ban CW topics in all threads for months at a time so we can see what would happen.

      • That’s not going to work. The CW-free thread is mostly self-enforcing. That’s a lot less likely to work if all of them are.

        • Matt M says:

          Agreed. I tend to respect the no-CW rules because really, it’s not so much a “no CW” rule as it is a “no CW for four days” rule, and I have the patience and self-control to abide by that.

          Make it over a week and eh….

      • Nornagest says:

        I hardly ever read the subreddit, but I read it enough to know that it has a rule against waging, as opposed to discussing, the culture war.

        Considering that it always seems to be exploding with some kind of culture-war drama, I think that worked about as well as you’d probably expect.

    • johan_larson says:

      Two OTs per week, one CW-permitted and one CW-forbidden, would be my preference. I’m seeing a lot more CW stuff than I’m interested in.

      Or maybe stick a cork in some specific topics that just go on and on and on.

    • SamChevre says:

      I think making the visible Open Thread the/a no-culture-war one would be a good idea.

      I like the idea of one CW, one no-CW open thread per week.

    • quanta413 says:

      Definitely. I think that will do more to improve the optics than anything else you could do short of mass banning right wing commenters until you’ve managed to tilt things the other way.

      • Matt M says:

        Can I just say that I find the idea that there’s some sort of imperative on Scott to “improve the optics” by hiding/squelching/silencing right wing opinion a little insulting?

        Do sites that are known for being mostly left-wing feel any sort of imperative to “improve the optics” of their spaces by rejecting leftism and making the environment more welcoming for conservatives?

        • Brad says:

          If there was a site run by someone that considered himself on the right he might well feel uncomfortable if his site was known for mostly being left-wing.

        • quanta413 says:

          Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying Scott should engage in mass banning. I think he shouldn’t. I was saying that it would solve the problem he feels he has.

          Improving the optics is also good for all of us because it’s preferable we aren’t considered nothing but a coven of witches. To reduce the motivation for someone or some group to take a random crack at ruining the comment threads here by flooding them with spam.

          • Matt M says:

            Improving the optics is also good for all of us because it’s preferable we aren’t considered nothing but a coven of witches.

            Maybe it’s worth trying to make the argument that being a right-winger does not make someone inherently evil?

            And maybe the people best positioned to make such an argument aren’t right-wingers themselves, but people who have some credibility with the leftist establishment?

          • quanta413 says:

            I think the left-coded people would just go down with the ship even if they tried. Doesn’t sound very likely to work.

            A significant chunk of Scott’s writing is along the lines that right-wingers, Trump voters, etc. aren’t witches though so I think that ground has been tread. Although not so much recently as a while ago.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            He also has devoted a significant amount if time claiming the left wing is composed of lots of witches.

            Call me crazy, it might be part of the problem that he is much less inclined/willing to be charitable to the left.

          • Matt M says:

            Call me crazy, it might be part of the problem that he is much less inclined/willing to be charitable to the left.

            If true, why would he view the issue of having “too many” right-wing people on his site as some sort of “problem” that must somehow be “solved.”

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Matt M:
            Uncharitably, because his main interest is in seeing those he thinks are left wing witches burn….

            Less uncharitably, he has said in the past his intended audience is/was the left.

          • Matt M says:

            OK, I think I get it now.

            Your claim is that Scott’s main goal is to convince the moderate left to reject the heresy of the SJW-left, and that in order to have any credibility with the moderate left, he must first ensure he isn’t viewed as a rightist (or as an enabler of rightism?)

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Matt M:
            He has to have a left wing audience to convince them of anything….

          • Matt M says:

            Well, you’re still here…

          • Brad says:

            Maybe it’s worth trying to make the argument that being a right-winger does not make someone inherently evil?

            And maybe the people best positioned to make such an argument aren’t right-wingers themselves, but people who have some credibility with the leftist establishment?

            Scott is no doubt a very talented writer, but given material like this,

            Given Scott’s description of BART stations, it sounds to me like SF could probably use a great deal more police brutality…

            what exactly do you expect him to be able to do. Even plenty of people on the right are going to see a pro-police-brutality post as cartoonishly evil.

    • liate says:

      I thought that it already was no-culture-war, and that was part of the reasons for the non-visible ones; would be fine with the visible thread being culture-war-free (and switching one of the hidden non-visible culture-war-free threads to culture-war allowed)

    • pontifex says:

      Making the visible OT non-culture war would be good, I think.

    • idontknow131647093 says:

      I made a similar comment on the subreddit when they locked the discussion of the Hoaxing of Gender Studies as culture war:

      If that is culture war, it is immoral to have culture war-free threads because you are just banning incredibly important discussion of an incredibly important (and growing) part of academia because??? Because it might offend the NYT op ed page?

    • CarlosRamirez says:

      It might have better optics

      Who do you want to impress?

      It would definitely encourage me to hunt down the hidden thread, I never bother to do so.

    • Plumber says:

      “Should I make the visible thread into the no-culture-war one? It might have better optics, it might encourage people to hunt down the hidden ones, and I wouldn’t have to explain what “off-weekend” meant after two weeks”

      @Scott Alexander,

      Sure, that’s fine. We can talk Dungeons & Dragons and Tudor guilds for a while instead.

      As far as recent threads go, the “NIMBY”/”YIMBY” threads seemed the most “culture war” to me (old vs. young) and I found them very interesting and I was grateful for the topic change away from the Kavaugh stuff.

    • dodrian says:

      I think it’s worth trying, but you might want to explain what you mean by culture war a bit better.

      In the hidden culture-war-free threads we regularly get people asking what is meant by culture war. I think the regulars get the idea, but if the open thread becomes culture-war-free I would bet this conversation would be rehashed every OT.

      Maybe you could link ‘culture war free’ to a comment or page where you explain what you mean, or what your goal is in asking for these topics to not be discussed on the OT.

    • bean says:

      This doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me, although I’d leave the .5 thread as CW-free too. And write up something explaining a bit more clearly what the policy is, because that question comes up a lot.

      Another thing which might help is temporary topic bans. The Kavanaugh nomination took over all but the .5 OTs for the last few weeks, and it wasn’t particularly fun wading through. Next time, maybe we just say “right, going forward, this topic is banned from future OTs until further notice”, with such notice happening when things have calmed down. I’m not sure this is a good idea/would work, but it might be worth trying.

      • albatross11 says:

        +1

      • AG says:

        Shitpost proposal: How about extending the tragedy-talk stays to all CW topics? We can’t talk about anything CW that didn’t happen over a week ago.

        • bean says:

          A part of me very much likes that. Another part thinks it would be somewhere between confusing and impossible to enforce. The advantage of the “no politicizing tragedies” rule is that it’s usually fairly obvious when a tragedy has happened, and the tragedy stops happening fast enough that it doesn’t raise tricky questions for this policy. But how would that rule apply to the recent hearings? Do we have to talk about it on a three-day (or week) delay? That seems impossible to enforce if we allow any discussion at all. Are we forbidden from discussing it at all until three days after it’s over? That seems unnecessarily limiting. Do we have to stop talking about it after Ford comes forward, and it shifts to high-CW? That’s hard to determine. Saying “please don’t talk about the nomination in this thread, talk about it in OT 111.25” is pretty easy to understand/enforce.

          • Nick says:

            Saying “please don’t talk about the nomination in this thread, talk about it in OT 111.25” is pretty easy to understand/enforce.

            I think bespoke delays like that would work pretty well, yeah.

          • Nornagest says:

            Shitpost-but-also-kinda-serious answer: anything you think is a tragedy is a tragedy for purposes of the politicization rule.

          • AG says:

            To continue with the more absurd track, it would be rolling. You can only talk about Kavanaugh events that happened over a week ago, any HOT NEW DEVELOPMENTS are off limits.

            Theoretically, this would incentivize people to wait until things play out more, anyways, since it becomes less satisfying to talking about things that are still playing out and being unable to talk about the way they’re currently playing out.
            In practice, people write their HOT TAKES at the time, and just post them unedited a week later. But again, theoretically, the week delay would introduce sufficient back-and-forth elements that such HOT TAKES look silly, which we currently can’t know because there’s no hindsight to contrast them with.

          • Nornagest says:

            In practice, people write their HOT TAKES at the time, and just post them unedited a week later.

            I don’t think people are that deliberate with their outrage. Not on a board like this, at least. I can see this pattern happening for full-length blog posts.

    • John Schilling says:

      Probably only a minor improvement, but certainly wouldn’t hurt.

    • rlms says:

      Would be quite nice.

      Related semi-serious proposal: sporadic interminable argument open threads, for discussion of classic topics like “is libertarianism right-wing?”, “who’s worse, Nazis or commies?” etc.

  41. imoimo says:

    Can someone argue for Ted Cruz over Beto O’Rourke for me? I dislike that I’ve heard zero actual comparison of their policies (even after googling) other than “make Texas blue!”

    • axiomsofdominion says:

      Ted Cruz is a fiscally conservative evangelical, as least publicly, with a history of successfully arguing the cause of the right before the Supreme Court and he is also ostensibly a strict constitutionalist.

      Beto vs Ted can’t really be argued. Its an issue of preference. Which do you prefer?

    • Deiseach says:

      While you’re at it, can anyone tell me is it true Beto O’Rourke is fond of bending his elbow? Given all the discussion about Kavanaugh’s drinking habits, I saw some kind of reference to O’Rourke being in a car accident due to drunkenness, and naturally the pro-O’Rourke people were defending him staunchly against all the false accusations and mistaken details (that these were much the same people who were excoriating Kavanaugh for lying about his drinking only made the gloriousness richer).

      Plainly with a name like O’Rourke he’s keeping up my nation’s tradition of liking a pint or two, but is he a drunken danger to society who should be kept out of public life as we’ve been told recently persons seeking high office should be, if ever they drank to excess?

    • Ted Cruz is a Princess Bride fan, enough of one to have memorized chunks of dialog. That surely should count for something.

    • Matt M says:

      Beto is in favor of much stricter gun control.

      Which is a bad idea in general, but is an especially bad idea if your goal is to win an election in Texas.

      I tend to believe the conspiracy theories that he doesn’t intend to win this election – he’s just trying to get himself famous to take a run at some sort of federal appointment or something down the road. If you’re trying to win an election in Texas, you simply don’t make the sorts of comments or take the sorts of positions he has been taking, “blue wave” or no.

    • rlms says:

      Only one of them is the Zodiac killer.

  42. dndnrsn says:

    The announcement of greater tolerance for “leftists” reveals part of the problem, just in the way it’s formulated. “Leftist” is used here a lot as a synonym for “left-wing.” Of the two people listed, one is a self-identified socialist or something, the other as far as I can tell is a fairly normal mainstream American left-winger (“liberal” in American political parlance). These aren’t the same thing. The standards of charity and clarity drop remarkably when “leftists” or “the left” are discussed, and it’s not uncommon to see attitudes in which mainstream left-of-centre types and leftists are seen as merely different tendencies within a unified team (this is not the case).

    The target audience here includes a lot of people for whom a particular sort of left-winger (shouty critical theory lefty activist types) is the outgroup, and perceive them as not merely annoying, but extremely threatening. You could argue these people are leftists, or not leftists. They carry that over to thinking about the left in general, sometimes. Interestingly, though, leftists with an economic focus do just fine here: Freddie, for example. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen mild Stalin apologism once or twice (and I suspect if someone showed up and started posting about how eggs must be broken to make an omelette, etc etc, they’d do better than if someone showed up and started posting standard-issue Intro to Gender Studies stuff; the last time I brought up this hunch on my part, I was told that unlike Stalinists, the campus shouty types were dangerous). It’s not that the opinions here are, median, right-wing overall; I suspect that if most people here were shown the platform of the Canadian Liberals (the most boring soulless slightly-left-of-centre centrists there are) they’d approve for everything except the SJ-flavoured stuff. It’s that the people here tend to find a particular sort of person on the left threatening, and this colours their view of politics in ways that I think are profoundly distorting.

    I would encourage people to solve this problem by remembering that outgroup homogeneity bias is not, in fact, just something the outgroup does.

    EDIT: This is something different from a general right-wing drift, too. If I had to guess based on archive binging and posting here, there’s considerably fewer right-wingers of the, shall we say, Very Edgy variety, than there once were. On the other hand, maybe the percentage of people who can roughly be considered “right wing” has increased. So, it’s not a uniform thing. I think this backs up what I think I have perceived: that there’s just a real sloppiness where left-wing stuff is concerned.

    • CarlosRamirez says:

      unlike Stalinists, the campus shouty types were dangerous

      But that’s obviously true, Stalinists are basically lunatics rambling in street corners, they have no chance at all of realizing their vision, unlike campus shouty types, who could realistically achieve all their anti-free-speech and anti-presumption-of-innocence ideology.

      • dndnrsn says:

        1. Past behaviour does count for something. And who knows, maybe there will be another revolution somewhere and it can come back in style.

        2. On university campuses? Sure, the hypothetical median campus shouter might get everything they want, although I think that a total win is less likely (there’s already a backlash, you’ve got guys suing universities for unfair treatment where Title IX is involved and having some success, etc). In society in general? Unlikely.

        • CarlosRamirez says:

          The Kavanaugh affair was almost a victory for throwing out presumption of innocence in society in general, and they do get other victories in that arena, such as James Damore being fired, and that thing with the physicist at CERN.

          • Brad says:

            Was there ever a presumption of innocence for society at large? I don’t recall anyone being particularly hesitant to label OJ a killer both before and after his acquittal.

          • Was there ever a presumption of innocence for society at large?

            I don’t think so. If I believe someone has a fifty percent chance of being a rapist that’s not a sufficient basis to lock him up but it’s more than sufficient to try to keep my daughter from dating him. A twenty percent chance that someone has stolen from his previous employer is a good reason not to hire him for a job that would make it easy for him to steal from me.

          • The Nybbler says:

            @David Friedman

            What chance of guilt does a bare accusation with no evidence, and an equally bare denial, reach?

          • pdbarnlsey says:

            Nybbler, it probably depends on the demonstrated credibility of the two parties.

            I, for one, am disinclined to question anyone who has achieved the distinction of Renate Alumnus, which carries with it the guarantee of a high level of personal integrity.

            Still less would I impugn the honor of someone selected only after an unprecedented level of consultation with people from every walks of life.

          • Thomas Jørgensen says:

            … Very high. Guilty people will, in the absence of hard evidence more or less always deny, as will the innocent, so a bare protestation contains no information whatsoever and false accusations are very rare, so the probability estimate goes well north of ninety in most cases, depending mostly on the odds of honest mis-identification, at which point we are into the weeds of general eyewitness reliability.

          • Glen Raphael says:

            … Very high. […] false accusations are very rare, so the probability estimate goes well north of ninety in most cases

            Isn’t the relevant reference class false accusations against famous people? As somebody becomes more and more famous, the odds that a sufficiently determined search can find somebody accusing them of some nefarious behavior approaches one, and that certainly extends to accusations of nefarious sexual behavior.

            David Letterman had the woman who thought she was married to him and kept breaking into his house. Cartoonist Scott Adams has his Canadian stalker who thinks he sends her secret messages via his comic strip. Would you assign their stories “well north of 90%” likelihood of being true?

            The toxoplasma selection mechanism ensures that if you have heard of an unproven accusation, it’s probably not nearly as solid as a charge that wasn’t selected for by an outrage-driven media hunting to support salacious stories. The more famous and high-status the person being accused, the more likely they will accumulate false charges you have heard about. This is due partly to salience – people can only have weird fantasies or false memories naming others they’ve heard of so the more people have heard of you, the more likely your name will come up in their dreams/fantasies/hallucinations/false memories. But it’s also due to media bias – charges involving people we’ve already heard of are considered more newsworthy by reporters.

            So a priori I would tend to assume extremely low odds of guilt given an uncorroborated charge against a famous high-status person which I have heard about in the news. It’s certainly not fair that already-famous people deserve extra benefit-of-the-doubt with regard to accusations. But mathematically speaking, they do.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            How much does Dr. Ford resemble the false accusers in those cases?
            Tbh, this form of argument makes her seem more credible to me: false accusers of high-profile men (to be clear, going only by your examples, I’m not pretending to accurately summarize the actual facts here) exhibit delusional behaviour, and have clear mental health issues.

            Since Ford does not share those characteristics, I update away from her being a false accuser of a high-profile man.

          • Thomas Jørgensen says:

            I read the question was not about this case, but about how I viewed “naked” sexual assault allegations in the general case. Which, just by the numbers is “Either guilty, or unfortunate physical resemblance to rapist”. – Because looking at the cases of people cleared of false rape charges, it was essentially never the case that the charge was made up, but instead cases of the police arresting the wrong guy.

            That is, of course, terrifying, and why just one witness is not really enough for a court case, but there is no real risk of ending up in jail because someone lies about these things. Your risk of ending up in jail for a rape you did not commit is essentially the same as your risk of ending up there for a burglary or robbery you did not do. – It can happen if your local law enforcement sucks donkey balls, but it is not generally a thing to worry about.

            … In fact, rapists get away clean far too damn often, especially since it is typically a serial crime. We are not very good, as a society, at catching rapists.

          • The Nybbler says:

            Very high. Guilty people will, in the absence of hard evidence more or less always deny, as will the innocent, so a bare protestation contains no information whatsoever and false accusations are very rare, so the probability estimate goes well north of ninety in most cases

            To me, this is just plain insanity. People make up crap about other people all the time; this is much of what we call “gossip”. Known false accusations of sexual assault _made to the police_ are not “very rare” — that’s your 2-8% estimate, which I would call “rare’ but not “very rare”. But so are convictions; most sexual assault cases fall in neither bucket. For a simple accusation to be >>90% the way to certainty is a Salem Witch Trial level of error.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            Is gossip generally supposed to be false? I think it’s often unconfirmed, or exaggerated, but most of the gossip that gets passed around in my circles is mostly true, if maybe exaggerated to highlight the salacious details.

          • Thomas Jørgensen says:

            The statement of the accused is a null-data point, because it does not depend on underlying reality at all.
            Odds of the accuser maliciously lying or being out and out insane, sub five percent in the general case according to the numbers. That gets you north of ninety percent.

            Its possible I should assign higher odds for “Rape victims misidentifying the perp due to eye-witness testimony not being all that great”. Do you have good research on how often people finger the entirely wrong person out of lineups in general criminal cases, because that would interest me.
            But I do not see how “Overwhelmingly likely to be true, even if not beyond reasonable doubt” is a crazy statement.

          • The Nybbler says:

            Odds of the accuser maliciously lying or being out and out insane, sub five percent in the general case according to the numbers.

            That is _not_ what the data says. The usual range is 2-8%, for accusations of sexual assault _reported to the police_ that are _conclusively determined to be false_.

          • Thomas Jørgensen says:

            Yhea, I do not give a shit about accusations made to your exs new boyfriend or whatever, the relevant stat is the police reports.

            National average of 4.3 percent of the police finding a charge of rape groundless. And that does not prove it is false.

            https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story

            Look, reporting a rape is a horrific experience. Nobody sane does it for funsies. Crazy happens, but is not common.

            Most rape victims do not report because they would rather let the perpetrator get away with the shit they did to them than go through the experience of reporting, it is that bad.

            This even goes beyond just misogyny – Male rape victims are possibly even more reluctant to report.

            There just is not any epidemic of false reporting of rape. That is not a social or justice problem that exists.

            Here is a major problem we do have: Rape, and shitty, shitty enforcement of the law as regards rape.

            The victim surveys and the surveys of perpetrators line up, and say the same thing – Rape is terrifyingly common, rapists are rare, but also most rapists are serial offenders who victimize terrifyingly large numbers of victims each. Because we are just shit at catching them.

            This is a major enforcement problem, it is very hard to enforce laws without reporting.

            Which is the whole point of “believe women”. Nobody is saying the accusation should suffice to convict. Because eyewitnesses suck.

            The point is that you should believe and investigate to find some actual evidence.

          • ana53294 says:

            From what I have heard about rape cases, in order to get physical evidence of rape, a woman who was raped needs to do the following:

            Immediately report to the police.

            Don’t shower or change.

            Be subjected to a medical examination. A rape kit will be used. That means somebody putting their hands the parts of your body that were just now violated.

            After they get the evidence:

            The police will interview you.

            The prosecutor will interview you.

            Months after that, you will need to relieve your experience, and do it in front of a judge, with an unfriendly lawyer being allowed to ask all kinds of ridiculous questions about your life.

            The defense may hire a PI to dig up dirt on you.

            Evidence that is incriminatory (such as other ongoing cases for the accused rapist), will be discarded, while evidence of the victim going on with her life will be used in court.

            After having physical evidence, videos of the incidence, and a case anybody would see was rape, the rapists may still not be accused of rape. And the judge may state in his opinion that he thinks the incident was to the joy an pleasure of all involved.

            At least this is what happened in Spain, with the gang rape victim who was raped in all kinds of ways by five men during the San Fermines.

            After seeing that happen, the last thing I would want to do would be to report something like that.

          • The Nybbler says:

            National average of 4.3 percent of the police finding a charge of rape groundless. And that does not prove it is false.

            I don’t know where that data comes from. The number I’ve seen for “unfounded” (which means the report was determined through investigation to be false or baseless) is 8%. But that does not mean the other 92% are true, either.

            Most rape victims do not report because they would rather let the perpetrator get away with the shit they did to them than go through the experience of reporting, it is that bad.

            As with any factor that preferentially discourages true reports, this raises, not lowers, the probability that a given report is false.

          • cassander says:

            @Thomas Jørgensen says:

            Yhea, I do not give a shit about accusations made to your exs new boyfriend or whatever, the relevant stat is the police reports.

            Can I assume, then, that you don’t care about the kavanaugh accusations and think they aren’t worth discussing because they were never the police? Because that seems like a bold stance.

          • What chance of guilt does a bare accusation with no evidence, and an equally bare denial, reach?

            Depends on the people and the incentives.

          • albatross11 says:

            Thomas Jorgensen:

            The known-false accusations (the ones the authorities decide are false) have both kinds of errors–sometimes, the police are discarding a real accusation because it looks fake, but also sometimes the police are accepting a false accusation because it looks real. We don’t know the fractions in either of those cases.

            We know that a lot of women who are raped or sexually assaulted don’t report it, typically because they expect that there’s not enough evidence for the police to do anything about it, sometimes because they don’t think it’s worth the hassle to them. (Kavenaugh’s alleged assault on Dr Ford might very well have fallen into that category.) We get that from victim surveys. Some of those people are probably wrong/lying in some direction, too, but at least there’s not much incentive for them to lie.

          • albatross11 says:

            I know a number of women whose word I trust who have told me that they have been sexually assaulted or raped. Every one who went to the authorities with the accusation felt like it was a worse experience than the assault/rape, including the woman I know where her attacker got prison time. Lots didn’t bother reporting it.

            This makes me want to know: Are there other countries where rape/sexual assault cases are handled better? Where it’s not a horrible ordeal to accuse someone of rape or sexual assault? Are there ways we could make our justice system work better that would improve this?

            Putting more rapists in prison for long enough to keep them from committing more rapes is a win, but the way we do it still puts the victim of the crime through the wringer.

          • ana53294 says:

            Are there other countries where rape/sexual assault cases are handled better? Where it’s not a horrible ordeal to accuse someone of rape or sexual assault?

            IIRC, Sweden has one of the highest rates of rape reports*. They also are one of the countries that defines rape by the lack of consent, without a requirement for violence or intimidation that we have in Spain.

            *I have seen plenty of right wingers interpreting this as Sweden having a higher rape rate. I don’t think it’s that, but that more rape victims report it.

          • Baeraad says:

            *I have seen plenty of right wingers interpreting this as Sweden having a higher rape rate. I don’t think it’s that, but that more rape victims report it.

            That, and, as you alluded to, more things are legally classed as “rape” here than elsewhere.

        • AnonYEmous says:

          1. Past behaviour does count for something. And who knows, maybe there will be another revolution somewhere and it can come back in style.

          eh, as Frederik De Boer himself pointed out, today’s governments are much more stable and well-armed than Russia was back then. A revolution is unlikely to succeed. Compare it to supposed campus revolutionaries; Obama wasn’t as bad on identity politics as some make him out to be, but he had a good amount of intersectionality stuff going on (buying into the wage gap, Title XI changes, probably some stuff I can’t remember).

          Point is, the revolution necessary for Stalinists to succeed is something along the lines of a successful mass armed revolt; campus radicals can win a pretty big victory just by having Kamala Harris or someone win in 2020. Maybe not as big as I think, but still, Stalinists are nowhere near that type of victory, and I think campus radicals can win outright without needing anything like a mass revolt.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @AnonYEmous

            I don’t know if that’s “intersectionality” in the technical meaning of the term. The wage gap and the Title IX stuff are both pretty “single-axis” along the line of gender; there’s no intersection going on.

            EDIT: And with regard to the “revolution” comment, sure, the developed world is unlikely to see that. There are plenty of unstable places, though.

          • AnonYEmous says:

            yeah, sorry, there aren’t a lot of good / accurate terms to describe this sort of thing

            well except “SJW” which is both good and accurate, but somehow people seem to object to it…

            anyways, the developed world is unlikely to see revolution and Stalinists aren’t close to seizing power any other way. “SJW”s? Kind of closer to the throne there.

      • John Schilling says:

        1. Past behaviour does count for something. And who knows, maybe there will be another revolution somewhere and it can come back in style.

        But that’s what it would take; an actual revolution. And one in which a dark horse faction with minimal support won an astounding victory. This is possible, yes, maybe it could happen. But the path to victory for “campus shouty types” is vastly more likely to actually happen.

        And the same is true on the other side of the political spectrum. Nazis are dead and gone, and they’re not coming back except as a joke. Trumpists, have won real and substantial victories and gone about doing some dangerous and harmful things. And neither focusing on the Nazis in hope that this would stop the Trumpists, nor calling the Trumpists “Nazis” in the hope that this would motivate the opposition, worked.

        Stalinists and Nazis both should be mostly ignored, with an occasional reminder that they are nasty, spiteful jokes. This frees people up to focus on the actual dangers.

        • dndnrsn says:

          @John Schilling

          So, I’m not saying that Stalinism in the US is remotely likely. Or even somewhere else (eg, the hot new Bordurian rebels are Stalinists, and they successfully storm the capital). I just think it’s strange that the emotional reaction here to Stalinists is so much less dramatic than the emotional reaction to campus shouters. I think there is a miscalibration; the amount of worry and the emotional reaction are both excessive.

          Also: what does “victory” for the campus shouters look like? I would argue that they are both incapable of getting something others would see as victory (so, in practical terms), in society in general and perhaps even on campuses or wherever. They are certainly incapable of getting something they would see as acoomplete victory (because their 100% win-all-the-trophies full-completionist victory condition is probably impossible).

          • AnonYEmous says:

            I think there is a miscalibration; the amount of worry and the emotional reaction are both excessive.

            i think so too but my emotional reaction is such that I don’t want to fix this at all

            you’re not wrong that there’s something off about it, possibly even beyond Scott’s conception of fargroup vs. outgroup, which could otherwise explain it pretty cleanly

            anyways, campus shouters are unlikely to win total victory, but winning partial victory is, uh, something they already did. No, seriously, it is. So could that victory become more partial? Currently it’s becoming less partial, but that’s really down to people emotionally overreacting to them in my eyes, so there’s that.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            See, I think the opposite, that the reaction to Nazis is completely overblown, and the reaction to Stalinists is about right. They can both be safely ignored because they both have zero chance of coming to power. I think the people who take to the streets whenever Richard Spencer shows up somewhere are the crazy ones, because no one cares what Richard Spencer has to say, he has no path to power, and all the activists are doing is drawing more attention to him. Tankies can have their gatherings too, but without protest, because they are correctly perceived by the right as irrelevant.

            On the other hand, the Kavanaugh hearings are an example of the campus Title IX sex assault courts manifesting themselves in the highest halls of power in the US. And as an example of the seriousness of Trumpism, I’d point to, well, Trump.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @AnonYEmous

            What do you mean by “more” and “less partial”? It’s a bit unclear. Are you saying that the backlash against them is effective in reducing their victory?

            EDIT: @Conrad Honcho

            I would argue that the Kavanaugh hearings are a clear example of the opposite. Had Kavanaugh been a guy (hell, even a girl, women are getting hit by Title IX-type stuff occasionally, and it’s happening to grownups on campus too) at university accused by another student (let alone with other complainants showing up) he would have been out on his ass. The standard of proof that would be needed to stop a confirmation is clearly higher than the standard that would be needed to get a guy in serious trouble on campus; the evidence for this is that he got confirmed.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            The standard of proof that would be needed to stop a confirmation is clearly higher than the standard that would be needed to get a guy in serious trouble on campus;

            Not for lack of trying.

            the evidence for this is that he got confirmed.

            By the skin of his teeth.

            I’m not saying the Kavanaugh hearing is proof the campus shouters have won. I’m saying it’s proof they have a big impact at levels of national importance.

            You’ll notice we did not have to have weeks of discussion to examine Kavanaugh’s commitment to the dictatorship of the proletariat or the purity of the Aryan race. This is because the concerns of the Stalinists and the Nazis are not relevant, while the concerns of the campus shouters ground the political and media apparatus to a halt.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Conrad Honcho

            First, he was probably gonna get confirmed by the skin of his teeth, without the allegations. He was not cruising towards a landslide confirmation until the accusations showed up.

            Second, I think you’re misidentifying the source of a lot of the anti-Kavanaugh hate. Sexual assault in general is quite common, rape specifically is less common but still pretty common, and these are crimes which are far more male-on-female than the reverse (even if one counts “made to penetrate” or whatever the term is as rape as opposed to general sexual assault). “Bundled” with this is the fact that the sexual ecosystem in universities is pretty bad for young women, which I think adds to the (in many ways legitimate) generalized sense of grievance that women have today (especially younger women, and especially for university-educated women: the Republicans may lose married university-educated white women, whereas up until now married white women regardless of education vote 50% or more Republican).

            The campus shouters are a minority, and would probably be happy with nothing less than a less-than-the-balance-of-probabilities standard. There’s a lot of women who think that’s nuts, but who nevertheless share those grievances above. The fairly hardline “believe female accusers formally and automatically” position gets used as rhetoric, when the actual ask is much smaller; this is fairly typical in politics.

            Even on campuses, anonymous accusations circulating don’t bring guys down unless everybody disliked that guy anyway for other reasons: I went to a majority-female, left-wing school, and there were guys who were known (in a gossip sense) to be sexual predators of one sort or another (most, but not all, predating women). Whether or not a guy actually got in any trouble (even just people-don’t-like-him social sanctions) depended far more on whether he was popular in general than the seriousness or veracity of what he was accused of. Heck, the shouters themselves have internal harassment, abuse, and assault problems, to the point that there’s a book about it and how to deal with it (I read it, and it didn’t make me confident their proposals would work to deal with the problem – for example, the solutions to abusers are accountability-based processes that would be very easy for a manipulator to bluff their way through).

            (As an aside, related to that last point, I think there’s an interesting pattern of cases where someone who is an asshole, harasser, power-abuser, etc, but not in a sexual fashion necessarily, or generally rather than specifically sexually, getting taken down by fairly thin harassment or whatever claims. See the Ronell case, the Kimmel accusations, the Weir case in the NDP, probably the sexual harassment allegations against Tambor: “this professor treats grad students like shit” or “this politician is an asshole” or “this actor regularly berates people in an extremely abusive fashion” all merit three quarters of a shrug; sex-related allegations get more attention.)

          • Gazeboist says:

            these are crimes which are far more male-on-female than the reverse (even if one counts “made to penetrate” or whatever the term is as rape as opposed to general sexual assault)

            No.

          • Plumber says:

            “….I would argue that the Kavanaugh hearings are a clear example of the opposite. Had Kavanaugh been a guy (hell, even a girl, women are getting hit by Title IX-type stuff occasionally, and it’s happening to grownups on campus too) at university accused by another student (let alone with other complainants showing up) he would have been out on his ass. The standard of proof that would be needed to stop a confirmation is clearly higher than the standard that would be needed to get a guy in serious trouble on campus; the evidence for this is that he got confirmed”

            @dndnrsn,

            Yes, those colleges sound like “hostile environments” for the boys who go to them, so here’s a solution: stop attending those colleges and just leave them as a “safe space” for girls.

            Let women have the “professions” and come into the “trades” along with your brethren. 

            Problem solved. 

            Or you know, re-establish some all male colleges, that could work too (women only colleges still exist so why not?).

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Gazeboist

            It seems fair to me to use “far more” to describe a 2 or 3 to 1 disparity. How would you describe such a disparity?

            @Plumber

            The thing is, it seems like the campus sexual environment is hostile to everyone. On mixed-sex campuses, the sexual culture isn’t very friendly to women; the combination of binge drinking and casual sex sold as the key to enlightenment, the increasingly lopsided sex ratio (giving men a market advantage of sorts; I think this lets guys get away with bad behaviour they might not otherwise), the number of men who seem to have only number of sexual partners by which to measure their masculinity (which does not inculcate a habit of consideration for those sexual partners). Meanwhile, the supposed solution to this is to make it easier to get people in trouble for sex-related misconduct (which seems to nail people who are often dubiously guilty, and which might not actually make sexual offences less likely).

            Single-sex schools might not be a solution either; it’s not like all-male schools don’t have a long history of sexual abuse of boys and young men both by other students and by faculty, and there’s stories about female-on-female sexual assault at women’s colleges too.

          • Matt M says:

            women only colleges still exist so why not?

            Are you seriously this naieve?

            I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is a troll account.

          • Jacobethan says:

            Are you seriously this naieve?

            Which part do you find naive? That college-aged men would want to attend a single-sex school, or that such a school would actually be any better in terms of improving the environment around sex on campus?

          • Matt M says:

            That such a school would be allowed to exist in today’s political environment.

          • Jacobethan says:

            There are three remaining all-men’s colleges: Wabash (Ind.), Hampden-Sydney (Va.), and St. John’s (Minn.). So far as I know all three are basically flourishing institutions in the broad mainstream of higher ed.

            Of course, that doesn’t tell us much about what the optics would be of trying to start an all-male institution de novo in the current climate. Then again, the country is full of all-boys private high schools, which so far as I can tell contemporary progressivism has shown surprisingly little interest in trying to make coed. (I could be wrong about that, but if there is a push I haven’t really heard about it.)

            Given that there isn’t really a coherent norm against single-sex education, but rather a muddle of seemingly inconsistent assumptions for different ages and contexts, I’ve sometimes wondered if one outcome of the current blowup might be some kind of movement back toward the idea of single-sex colleges. My guess is it’s unlikely, but not inconceivable we’d see something like that.

          • ana53294 says:

            My understanding is that you cannot have a high status male-only college.

            So, schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford are gatekeepers into certain well-paying jobs.

            I don’t think feminists will give a damn about Low-Status 4 Year All Male Community College. But as soon a LS4YAMCC gets into the top #100 in rankings, then there will be a demand for co-ed.

          • Jacobethan says:

            Yes and no.

            Wabash is ranked #56 liberal arts college; near peers in the rankings include Trinity, Bard, and Sarah Lawrence. The other two are lower (#95 and #113), but still respectably mid-tier.

            So we’re definitely not talking Harvard, Princeton, Stanford-level gatekeeper status, and I’m sure being small and in flyover country helps keep them under the radar, but Wabash at least could be vaguely described as an elite institution.

          • Gazeboist says:

            CN: heavy discussion of rape, etc

            Note: everything below is discussing the US. I don’t know what the stats look like elsewhere, and wouldn’t be too surprised if they were quite different in, say, Japan.

            It seems fair to me to use “far more” to describe a 2 or 3 to 1 disparity. How would you describe such a disparity?

            I’ve got multiple objections to this, because you’re conflating victimization rates and perpetrator ratios while also minimizing both. Your apparent dismissal of the preferred method of female-on-male rape does you no credit either.

            Most basically, “far more”, especially the way you are using it, implies that the minority is essentially negligible. I read your statement as one that almost all rapes have a male perpetrator and a female victim. That does not seem like a fair description of the 20-25% of rape victims who are men, according to the report in question (which has since been superseded, but I’m going to start by focusing on it).

            The ToT post says, “Except for rape by penetration, non-contact unwanted sexual experiences, and stalking, the majority of perpetrators of every type of sexual and intimate partner violence against males are female.” This is noteworthy but not particularly specific.

            Taking a look at the actual report (the link in the blog post only goes to the executive summary) discussed in the ToT post, I find the following noteworthy data points (from page 24 of the report, which is page 34 of the pdf):

            – 98.1% and 92.5% of female victims report exclusively male perpetrators of rape and “other sexual violence” respectively. This is essentially as expected.
            – 93.3% of male rape by penis or penis substitute victims report exclusively male perpetrators. Again, pretty much as expected.
            – For “unwanted sexual contact” and “non-contact unwanted sexual experiences”, a slim majority (53.1%) and substantial minority (37.7%), respectively, of male victims report exclusively female perpetrators. A bit more than half of the male non-contact victims report at least some female perpetrators; the CDC doesn’t give enough data to figure out the at-least-some numbers for the other items.
            – 79.2% of male victims of rape by envelopment report only female perpetrators. Similarly, 83.6% of male victims of sexual coercion report exclusively female perpetrators. Again, the percentage reporting at least some female perpetrators is a mystery.

            Looking at the definitions on page 17/27, the following things jump out to me:

            – “Made to penetrate” for female victims is defined exclusively as being forced to perform oral sex on another woman. For male victims, it includes rape by envelopment, forced performance of oral sex on a woman, and unwanted receipt of oral sex. Female victims who receive unwanted oral sex seem to be binned as unwanted sexual contact victims rather than rape victims, but it’s hard to tell. In any case, they don’t appear to be counted as rape victims.
            – The “made to penetrate” and “rape” definitions track each other exactly except where describing the sex act the victim is forced to perform or participate in.
            – Victims forced to manually stimulate the perpetrator aren’t counted as rape victims at all, in either definition.
            – These definitions are going to count essentially every gay rapist, but could plausibly miss a fair number of lesbian rapists, especially given the emphasis placed on male rapists penetrating other people with their penises.

            With those caveats in mind, here’s a simple back-of-the-envelope estimate of the ratio of male-on-female rapes vs female-on-male rapes. We’ll round penis-or-penis-substitute rapists up to 100% male. This is basically accurate for female victims and a bit of an undercount for male victims, but it simplifies things by getting rid of the overlap problem. Rape by envelopment perpetrators we’ll round off as 80% female. Assuming roughly equal male and female populations, 18.3% of women and 4.8% of men being rape victims means that a bit less than 21% of rape victims are men. Multiplying this by 80% and we have a lowball estimate that a bit less than 1/6 of all rapes are female on male.

            1/6 is a minority, but it’s a substantial one. For reference, the 2015 ACS has african americans at about 1/8 of the US population. If you don’t think it’s reasonable to say there are “far fewer” black americans than non-blacks (and I don’t), then I don’t think you can say that rape is “far more” male-on-female than it is female-on-male.

            The 2017 report, which covers 2011 and 2012 in addition to 2010, says 1.2% of women and 1.5% of men were raped in the 12 months prior to the survey (and comes quite close to admitting that the men in question were in fact raped, surprisingly). It also has 2.1% of women and 1.7% of men experiencing “unwanted sexual contact” in the same period. Given the caveats above about counting the victims of lesbian rapists, I’d bet that the actual current (as opposed to lifetime) rate of rape victimization is about the same for men and women, as is the case with intimate partner harassment and violence.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Gazeboist

            1. I’m not dismissing female-on-male rape; I think that envelopment-without-consent or whatever we should call it should be counted as rape, legally speaking.

            2. If I’m doing the math right (which I easily might not be) about 7/10 rapes are male perpetrator, female victim (.75 female victims x ~.95 male perpetrators). If 1/6 rapes are female-on-male, and 7/10 rapes are male-on-female, then male-on-female rape is about 4x more common than female-on-male (10/60 vs 42/60). I would say that is “far more common.”

            3. I think you’re misidentifying my position. I already had as my prior that about 1/4 of victims of rape are male (including, as I do, envelopment as rape). I think it’s wrongheaded to conceive of rape and sexual assault as “women’s problems” (for one thing, some men might conclude they’re not in that corner; for another, it limits useful discussions of how consent works) just as one would not look at the statistic that around 4/5 of homicide victims are men, and conclude that getting murdered is a “man’s problem.” However, would it be fair to say that “far more” men are murdered than women? I think it would be.

            EDIT: I would say that there are far fewer members of a group that is 1/8 of the population than the other 7/8. I would also say there are far more people living in Vietnam (just under 93 million) than in Belgium (just under 11.5 million).

          • Matt M says:

            Eh, I went to grad school in Indiana and Wabash is just barely known and respected in-state. I can’t imagine it carries much cache outside the midwest at all.

            (That said, I should have remembered it was all-male, that’s my mistake and I was wrong to say that such institutions are not “allowed to exist.”)

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Matt M:

            You may be thinking of some prominent cases that required all male public (military) schools to start admitting women.

          • I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is a troll account.

            And I am confident it is not.

            Plumber does not fit into any of the patterns we are used to here which makes his views seem at first glance odd but also makes him interesting.

          • Nick says:

            Didn’t he say he stopped by one of the SSC meetups? I’m sure the people there can verify he’s real.

          • Plumber says:

            “…The thing is, it seems like the campus sexual environment is hostile to everyone…”

            @dndnrsn,

            From what I’m reading it seems like that, but my “college” was mostly spent in a welding booth, and my wife dropped out of Boalt in the very early 1990’s after she met me, so I don’t know anything about it first-hand. 

            Are you seriously this naieve?…:

            @Matt M,

            I was sincere about “…stop attending those colleges…” and “…come into the “trades” along with your brethren. Problem solved…”, and while “…re-establish some all male colleges” was an after thought that others are focusing on, I was sincere there as well.

            In my unions apprenticeship classes I had a couple of women classmates in a couple of classes but they were outnumbered more than 20 to 1 and they didn’t complain about any harassment from other apprentices (just the same job stuff I did), at Mills College in Oakland all the undergraduates are women but they’re a few graduate student men, but I know of no he-said-she-said tales from there, instead where I hear about such stuff is U.C. Berkeley which is majority women, but not overwhelmingly so like Mills.

            Notice a pattern? 

            “My understanding is that you cannot have a high status male-only college.

            So, schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford are gatekeepers into certain well-paying jobs.

            I don’t think feminists will give a damn about Low-Status 4 Year All Male Community College. But as soon a LS4YAMCC gets into the top #100 in rankings, then there will be a demand for co-ed”

            @ana53294,

            You’re probably right, but I don’t want those elite institution “gatekeepers” and “certain well-paying jobs” to exist anyway, so the idea of an all-male-boycott of them pleases me.

            EDIT:

            “….Plumber does not fit into any of the patterns we are used to here which makes his views seem at first glance odd but also makes him interesting”

            Thanks @DavidFriedman, I also find your views interesting, and I also find them educational.

            “Didn’t he say he stopped by one of the SSC meetups? I’m sure the people there can verify he’s real”

            @Nick,

            I was very briefly at a Less Wrong/SSC meetup on Brannan Street in San Francisco a month or three ago, but my nights and weekends are spent with family so it’s not likely I’ll find time to do that anytime soon, but if someone wants to meet (beer or coffee is on me) near the San Francisco Hall of Justice, or Berkeley, California e-mail me: HOJ [dot] plumber [at] gmail [dot] com (no spaces), and I’ll give you my phone number and we can meet somewhere “during rush hour” (Mondays are best for me, but another weekday could probably work).

            I don’t know much about coffee, but I’m not cheap when it comes to beer.

          • ana53294 says:

            Instead where I hear about such stuff is U.C. Berkeley which is majority women, but not overwhelmingly so like Mills.

            This is a well-known statistical trend. IIRC, in colleges with more than 60 % of women, a hook-up culture is established, with loose sexual morals and plenty of alcohol. This is slightly less in overwhelmingly female colleges located in big cities, with plenty of other options. Colleges with more men than women have a culture of long-term dating (I saw statistics where the higher the percentage of men, the more stable the relationships).

            If a place is almost fully female, I guess women will not bother lowering their standards and getting involved in hook-up culture and easy sex if there is no chance of getting a relationship out of it.

    • Plumber says:

      @dndnrsn,

      I’ve known some folks who actually were Stalinists when Stalin was alive (one of whom, the former Vice President of my union local when I asked about it told me with a smile “I will neither confirm or deny..” and when I said “if not you’d have to be the fellow travelist of fellow travels” which got a laugh out of him), and by their tales some of then were very “shouty” in their youths.

      To your larger point, what little I know of current “campus leftists”, and their lectures on pronoun usage and the like, make them sound so very anti-working-class people and culture that just like “liberal” and “conservative” the meaning of “left” seems unrecognizable to say a 1948 definition of “leftist” or “progressive” (do they even know who Henry Wallace was?).

      As for thr right-wing?

      You tell me.

      • dndnrsn says:

        You find very few working-class students on campus, of any political persuasion. The interests of the working class on campus are not really represented (at least in part because their interests would be served by “raise the tuition and spend all the extra money on wages for the support staff, administrators not included.”)

        • ana53294 says:

          I thought that would be “fire most of admins, increase support staff salaries”. You can keep the professor’s salaries stable.

          My understanding was that most of the price increases are administrative bloat.

          • dndnrsn says:

            That would be good too, but it’s harder to cut down on bureaucracy of any kind, than it is to raise the price of things.

    • Deiseach says:

      In my (limited) experience, there’s a large overlap between the Stalinists and the campus shouty types; the Marxist-Leninists are out in positions of (trying to have) influence in the Real World and the Maoists are only slowly making a comeback.

      I’ve had the pleasure of watching a minor Tumblr spat between one of the American “Communism is what we need” types fighting with real Eastern Europeans who grew up in post-Communist countries, whose families had lived under Real Communism, and who while not enthusiasts for Full-On Capitalism were certainly a lot better informed about the failure modes of Real Communism. Needless to say, American Student Communist was all (a) That wasn’t Real Communism (b) America is different and it would be different here! (c) You guys know nothing about how Real Communism works!

      That’s the kind of ‘shouty campus type’ I’m thinking of, though as ever YMMV.

      • Aapje says:

        @Deiseach

        In my (limited) experience, there’s a large overlap between the Stalinists and the campus shouty types

        And yet colleges discriminate against Asians, but not against the bourgeoisie. Is it surprising that these middle-class-or-above students don’t actually want to discriminate against all their friends and family?

    • Uncorrelated says:

      I’m one of those people who, at least emotionally, find the “shouty critical theory lefty activist types” to be “not merely annoying, but extremely threatening”. But I don’t think any of the reasons that other posters have given for that feeling, mostly in contrast to Stalinists, described what causes me to feel that way. (Or I missed them.)

      I’m not quite a Rationalist, but certainly adjacent, and the threat that I feel is to standards of rationality, evidence, and such. So while I’m troubled by them getting some particular policy decisions made, which on their own may lead to what I would consider bad outcomes, I’m much more concerned about damage being done to decision making processes and making all of our future decisions worse. Actually, even where I agree on specific policies, and there are some I agree with, I’d rather we get the specific policies wrong than risk letting our collective thinking skills get any worse than they already are. And given the prevalence of critical theory and related thinking in academia this happening does feel more plausible than Stalinists getting their way.

      I want to emphasize the use of “emotionally” and “feel” above. I’m not sure how real the threat is and more than one reasonable/knowledgeable sounding poster here has pointed out that a lot of us aren’t properly understanding post modernism or critical theory. But I think this is the right explanation for my immediate, gut reaction to the people in question. And, given the Rationalist connections of SSC, I’d guess that applies to some other people here.

      I’d like to mention that something in this area has change recently. I’m some variant of Libertarian, and have never felt comfortable with either Democrats or Republicans (I’m in the U.S.) but in the past was less uncomfortable with Republicans and part of this was the above mentioned shouty types. But recently I’m feeling pretty similar about Trumpy types.

      • albatross11 says:

        The thing is, most of us are far more likely to get Twitter-stormed or hassled by HR for our heterodox opinions than we are to be sent to a gulag or a death camp. Thus, SJW activist types are more threatening to us that Stalinists or Nazis, even though Stalinists and Nazis have killed mountains of people whereas SJW activist types just call people nasty names and maybe have an occasional riot or get someone fired.

    • Robert Jones says:

      I know a lot of left-wing people and none of them self-describes as “leftist”. What I find surprising is that people (even Scott!) use it without apparently recognising that it’s a boo-word. It always suggests to me that the person concerned has limited engagement with actual left-wing discourse.

      To some degree it must be outgroup homogeneity: in reality people on the left mostly fight among themselves, and they identify as socialists or anarcho-syndicalists or liberals or whatever.

      • What would be an appropriate term to describe what you call “people on the left” if “leftist” is inappropriate?

      • Lillian says:

        How is leftist a boo word? It’s just a shorter way of saying “people on the left wing”.

        • HeelBearCub says:

          Not in the typical usage. That’s “on the left” , “left winger”, “left of center”. Consider that there are no “rightists”.

          The most typical usage of leftist is a reference to hard-left, communist or otherwise anti-capitalist.

          • Lillian says:

            Okay, so leftist is just a shorter way of saying someone on the far left. Still doesn’t make it a boo light. It’s a descriptive term.

            Also there are no rightists because that word sound stupid for some reason. It’s aesthetically displeasing. There’s some blogger who tried to fix this by using “lefties” and “righties”, which does produce a nice symmetry, but unfortunately accomplishes this by making both of them sound equally stupid.

            Personally my favourite term for the farther right wing was always “wingnut”, from back in the Bush years. However seeing as that was a contraction of “right wing nut”, it’s a pretty unambiguous boo light, so it’s not a fair counterpart for leftist. Still, i wish the modern leftists were using it instead of calling everyone a nazi white supremacist though.

          • albatross11 says:

            Let’s return to the early 2000s labels of wingnut and moonbat!

          • Brad says:

            I don’t know about Freddie but I don’t think I’m reasonably described as far left along any axis.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            If I use the term “wing nut” to indicate everyone right-of-center, I am definitely employing it as a boo-light. So, if you people referring to the broad left as leftists, it’s a pretty good bet they are employing it as a boo-light, or copying someone who has (intentionally or not).

            ETA: left for a future discussion is how much of the Republican Party has actually been caught up in threads of said nut….

          • Matt M says:

            The most typical usage of leftist is a reference to hard-left, communist or otherwise anti-capitalist.

            I will admit that this is how *I* use it.

            A leftist is someone who is actively and seriously committed to left-wing values. This is a different category from someone who just so happens to slightly prefer Hillary to Trump, or who happens to be on the left-wing side of most issues.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Lillian

            Whether it’s a boo light or not, using a term that accurately describes the far left to refer to the entire left is bad. It removes information from the conversation – when someone says “leftist” how are you to know whether they mean a revolutionary, or a mainstream Democrat (not very left by any reasonable standard) who would probably be up against the wall in any revolution? It leads to the conception of the former and the latter working together in some sort of good cop-bad cop act.

          • To my ear, both “leftist” and “left-winger” suggest someone well to the left of the population center.

          • Randy M says:

            To my ear, both “leftist” and “left-winger” suggest someone well to the left of the population center.

            Mine as well, and “left winger” sounds vaguely derogatory, but there seems to be consensus, or at least one person consistent, on the position that if you have to refer as a group to those with positions advocating social change (striving for maximal fairness here) then it is as good as any.
            Personally I switched to progressive when HRC claimed the label in the primaries some years ago, but it does seem like giving away the game a bit.

          • Nick says:

            Personally I switched to progressive when HRC claimed the label in the primaries some years ago, but it does seem like giving away the game a bit.

            I sometimes deliberately use progressive in place of liberal or leftist or whatever too (I don’t know about here, but definitely elsewhere). I think it has two advantages:
            1) it avoids all the stupid arguments over what liberal/neoliberal means vs. classical liberal/liberal in non-US;
            2) it’s more naturally the opposite of “conservative,” which is often enough what I want to contrast with rather than with “Republican” or “Trumpian populist.”

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Anything can be turned into a slur, and I’ll grant that “s/he’s a right/left winger” could be employed in an aggressive fashion.

            “on the left”
            “part of the left [wing]”
            “is left of center”

            I don’t mind progressive, but I see lot’s of people trying to falsely say today that anyone claiming the mantle of progressive is embracing an ideology that leads to eugenics. Certainly the [broad] left and the right both have to own the history of eugenics.

          • I don’t like the term “progressive” because it implies that the particular changes being advocated are progress, which is precisely what people disagree about.

            “Conservative” is pretty bad too, since a lot of the argument is about what features of the present society you want to conserve. But at least it doesn’t have the built-in assumption that the people the label is applied to are the good guys. One can argue that conserving some things is bad. It’s hard to argue that progress is bad.

          • Matt M says:

            Yeah, I think “progressive vs conservative” is a framing that is incredibly generous to the left, given the connotations of the two terms in common usage…

          • Plumber says:

            When I was a youth in the 1970’s and ’80’s a right-winger was someone to your right (so an anarchist or a communist would call a social democrat a “right-winger”), Democrats were “liberal”, but “classical liberalism” and “neo-liberalism” made that confusing, and a “progressives” were some but not all Democrats, as well as “leftists”.

            A leftist was a self designation, and it was rare for anyone to be one and support the Democratic Party as anything other than a “lesser evil” and call themselves a “leftist” (and many argued that Democrats were a greater evil because of “false consciousness”, and good lord I’m now remembering my Trotskyist self-described “enemy of the state” Dad’s rants about this stuff).

            A “rightist” was someone like Pinochet, no Americans (that I remember) were called one, and a “left-winger” was someone to your left.

            “Conservative” was a self designation as well, and my friends in the Young Republicans would call themselves this, but never “right-wingers” though sometimes they’d say “I’m right wing”.

            Young Democrats would say “I’m a moderate”, a “liberal, or sometimes a “progressive” but not a “leftist”.

            No one called themselves an anything “winger” except as a joke.

            Yes, I knew all these flavors, Berkeley High School had over 3,000 students, and believe it or not as a teenager I shook hands with Ron Dellums, Ed Meese, and Barry Goldwater, as well as knowing a guy who had known CPUSA leader William Foster, and helped with the jury selection of Angela Davis (and without that guy’s help I probably wouldn’t have my current job, so yes I owe a dept to a former Stalinist).

            It’s a weird world.

          • Dan L says:

            @ Lillian:

            Okay, so leftist is just a shorter way of saying someone on the far left. Still doesn’t make it a boo light. It’s a descriptive term.

            As is frequently shown when this discussion comes up, various people on this board use “leftist” to mean either the US Left political coalition, or the ideological extremist of the same, or the ideological descendants of certain economic theories, or a broad swath of economic theories that include the vast majority of the voting US population.

            Add a disinclination for non-leftists to conflict over their definitions and a negative affect on one of those groups, and you’re looking at a textbook motte and bailey.

      • Garrett says:

        One of the inherent problems is that there’s no good name for the school of thought which predominates in left-wing thought in America these days. The word “liberal” used to be thrown around a lot, but it doesn’t really follow from the liberal school of thought. Likewise for progressive, etc. SJW is a limited-focus descriptor of some of the actions, but it certainly isn’t comprehensive to the underlying philosophy. Neo-Marxist could do some of that, though I’ve not heard that used in a self-description for the mainstream left-wing thought.
        So what do we have left? Leftist: stuff in the left direction.
        It would be a lot easier if those on the contemporary left could come up with a proper name for their school of thought. For whatever reason, the right-leaning schools of thought all seem to have usable names.

        • Matt M says:

          Yes! This is exactly why I use “leftist” the way I do. I suppose “progressive” would also work, but that term has way too much undeserved positive PR and I see no particular obligation to use my enemies’ preferred descriptors over my own.

          • Plumber says:

            “….This is exactly why I use “leftist” the way I do. I suppose “progressive” would also work, but that term has way too much undeserved positive PR and I see no particular obligation to use my enemies’ preferred descriptors over my own.”

            @Matt M,

            I usually put “so-called” before “conservative” for much the same reason, in that those called “conservatives” have been agents of much of the radical change in my lifetime (I suppose “reactionaries” would work, but by the dictionary I’m also a reactionary, we just choose different years).

            As for so-called “progressives” I just call them collegians, when I don’t call them “annoying insular distractions”.

            And feel free to call me a “leftist” but please don’t call me a “progressive” as I think much of the cultural, and most of the economic and political changes in the United States since February 1973 have been bad.

        • Dan L says:

          One of the inherent problems is that there’s no good name for the school of thought which predominates in left-wing thought in America these days.

          For whatever reason, the right-leaning schools of thought all seem to have usable names.

          Unless you have a good explanation for the asymmetry, I’m going to chalk this up as a case of overly-broad language promoting outgroup homogeneity bias.

      • Plumber says:

        “I know a lot of left-wing people and none of them self-describes as “leftist….”

        @Robert Jones,

        I’ve known many who’ve called themselves “leftists”, my Dad for one, though I admit no one under the age of 45, but I don’t know well many people that young (as far as youngsters go I know my sons, and three co-workers, everyone else that I know well is older).

        Anyway here’s a guide:

        Sanders = Left

        Clinton = Center

        Reagan = Right

        Candidate Trump was a little confusing but the tax bill he signed puts him square in the Right.

        What makes it confusing is how things shift, President Johnson and “liberals” were hated by “the Left”, and President Nixon was “Right-wing”, but now both Johnson’s and Nixon’s policies are called “Leftist”.

        • Matt M says:

          Bill or Hillary? I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton is a leftist, but I can see an argument for Bill (of the 90s at least) being a centrist figure.

          • dndnrsn says:

            Find an anarchist, communist, even a democratic socialist; ask them if they think Hillary Clinton is one of them. They will not say yes, and it’s not because they’re trying to conceal the extent of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.

          • Nornagest says:

            Find an anarchist, communist, even a democratic socialist; ask them if they think Hillary Clinton is one of them. They will not say yes, and it’s not because they’re trying to conceal the extent of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.

            This whole thread is just people outgroup homogenizing at each other, but I think this trick deserves some more specific pushback. It doesn’t say anything objective about a politician; it just means you’ve been able to find a group for whom they aren’t good enough. You can do it with just about anyone.

          • dndnrsn says:

            Hillary Clinton isn’t even on the left-wing of mainstream Democrats. She’s corporate-friendly, fairly hawkish, etc. With regard to Culture War issues, she’s a chameleon by and large. I think this is fairly objective: in most European countries, she would not be part of a left-wing party.

            To categorize her in the same group as various types of socialist, anarchists, etc, is bizarre.

          • Nornagest says:

            Groups can be broad; that’s no trouble. The real issue here is that almost everyone uses words like “leftist” or “right-winger” relative to their own personal Overton window, and to where they see themselves in it. Pretending like they have some sort of objective definition might make sense in the political-science world, but out here it flies in the face of actual usage. I think we’d save ourselves a lot of trouble if we just accepted that.

            In that light, Plumber seeing Hillary Clinton as a centrist and Matt M seeing her as a leftist is perfectly consistent with their respective backgrounds. I doubt they’d disagree on where to place her relative to other politicians, and where they would, it’d be because of differences in what they emphasize on the political spectrum (probably labor issues for Plumber, probably culture war issues for Matt).

          • dndnrsn says:

            I think that if one limits “leftist” to those who want to do away with capitalism, as opposed to just tax and regulate it more, that clears up a lot of the confusion.

          • Matt M says:

            To categorize her in the same group as various types of socialist, anarchists, etc, is bizarre.

            For the record, my position on Hillary Clinton is that she, in her heart of hearts, absolutely agrees with just about everything in the Bernie Sanders platform, she just chooses not to say so because she (correctly) estimates that saying so would result in her having less political power.

            Now, I will concede that this is all speculative, and someone could easily turn the tables on me by saying “Susan Collins absolutely agrees with Trump on everything, she just doesn’t say so for political reasons” and I would probably disagree with that assessment, and be unable to prove it wrong.

          • Nornagest says:

            I think that if one limits “leftist” to those who want to do away with capitalism, as opposed to just tax and regulate it more, that clears up a lot of the confusion.

            You’re free to think of it that way, of course, but I don’t see much value in trying to coordinate on it. It’s been tried; it turns out to generate far more heat than light; let’s just let it go.

          • dndnrsn says:

            I think that having a category which encompasses everyone from “I think we should have 50% women on corporate boards” to “full communism now; gulags were actually super nice” without acknowledgment that it’s a vague category produces more heat than light.

          • Nornagest says:

            No matter what, people are going to find it useful to have that category. Mostly right-leaning people, because outgroup homogeneity, but so it goes. We’re just quibbling over whether to call it “leftist” or “left-leaning” or “left of center” or something else.

            And yeah, outgroup homogeneity does produce more heat than light, but trying to get rid of it is tilting at windmills. You can point it out when you see it, but there are better ways to point it out than “that word that you and all your friends use to mean X actually means Y”.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Nornagest:

            “leftist” or “right-winger”

            If you are trying to say that “leftist” is equivalent to “left-winger”, then we are basically just back to arguing about definitions.

            In my experience, “leftist” and “left-winger” aren’t synonymous. When they are used as if they are synonyms it is either because you are on the the right wing attempting to portray your ideological opponents as all radicals (a common strategy), or you *think* it just means left-wing.

          • Nornagest says:

            If you are trying to say that “leftist” is equivalent to “left-winger”, then we are basically just back to arguing about definitions.

            The point I’m trying to make is that arguing about these definitions is tedious and counterproductive and we shouldn’t be doing it.

          • dndnrsn says:

            Well, then, what do you think is the solution to the problem I perceive? Is it not a problem? I find it extremely frustrating that a lot of discussions have to involve someone like me pointing out that Jeff Bezos is not on the same team as the commies.

          • Nornagest says:

            In this case, no, I don’t think there is a problem. You don’t have to bring it up. Scott was clearly using “leftist” to mean “left-leaning” or some other word that encompasses both (market-friendly moderately woke East Coast liberal) Brad and (some kind of socialist) Freddie, and that’s fine. Half the board — probably more than half — draws the lines the same way, and I’d like to be able to talk to them without constantly scrolling over semantic arguments that take dozens of posts and never end with anyone being convinced.

            Now, there isn’t always going to be so little ambiguity. I can see a case for making the distinction if someone says something like “leftists think [something woke]” or “leftists say [socialist jargon]”, and it isn’t clear from context just how left they mean. But in a case like this, it just seems unnecessarily pedantic.

          • Eponymous says:

            The obvious way to define right/left would be to ask peoples’ opinions on a large number of policy questions, extract the first principal component, then define left/right by where someone falls on the resulting distribution.

            In other words you want position relative to the population distribution of views.

            I think this is roughly what people mean when they use the terms in an informative (rather than rhetorical) way.

          • Plumber says:

            “Bill or Hillary? I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton is a leftist, but I can see an argument for Bill (of the 90s at least) being a centrist figure”

            @Matt M,

            I was thinking Bill, Hillary has been on so many sides that @dndnrsn characterization of her as “a chameleon” seems apt.

            Anyway @Nornagest well convinced me that I should have prefaced my “guide” with “seems to me that” as it’s subjective. 

            In Berkeley, California Obama was called “conservative”, in San Jose, California he was called “liberal”.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Nornagest

            I frequently encounter a use of it used, not in a way to gesture at the left-of-centre, but to say or at least imply that the revolutionary socialists are on the same team as Justin Trudeau or whoever. The use as a synonym for “left-wingers” unfortunately reinforces the former.

          • Brad says:

            (market-friendly moderately woke East Coast liberal) Brad

            I don’t think moderately woke accurately describes my post history. I don’t use funny pronouns, talk about the patriarchy, racism as a power structure, heteronormativity, or so on.

            The social positions I’ve advocated have been being bog standard for my age, race, gender, and class. I think it’s unreasonable to label everyone that thinks racism (against African-Americans) and sexism (against women) are still a problem in the US as moderately woke. Certainly well to the left of the commenting frequency median poster here, but comfortably inside the fat part of the bell curve on these issues nationwide.

  43. Plumber says:

    In responding to a post on one of the multiple NIMBY/YIMBY threads I looked up and found lots of stuff backing up my “YIMBY”-is-just-a-ploy-to-destroy-rent-control-force-existing-residents-out-college-students-and-college-grads-ruin-everything narrative but I also actually found two hopeful things that I thought I should share:

    A San Francisco landlord/developer

    agreed to let old displaced residents stay on in the new apartments,

    and more recently there’s

    building in Mountain View that is actually approved!

    When I worked construction in “Silicon Valley” 2000 to 2011 (included doing some pipefitting work inside Apple’s headquarters, and inside Intel), what I saw was post war suburbs of incredibly low density and mile after mile after mile of single story “office parks”, lots of commercial and some industrial building, but other than a little bit of apartment/condo construction by a Cal-Trans station in San Jose, I saw nothing like the massive amounts of new housing in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco in the last six years, and between the private busses, and thd evictions it really looked like a hostile-takeover/conquest of the San Francisco bay area to me, and so that called “YIMBY’s” were dupes at best and shills at worst  but judging by the two articles I linked, just maybe I was wrong and they are some real YIMBY’s doing good.

    I hope to find more stories like that.

    • nweining says:

      FWIW the Mountain View housing approval was in part the result of a long campaign by Silicon Valley YIMBYs, many of them employees of the large tech companies, to change the composition of the Mountain View city council. And every YIMBY I have talked to supports statewide measures like SB 827 precisely because SF and Berkeley should not bear the whole weight, or even most of the weight, of the task of alleviating the greater Bay Area housing shortage.

  44. johan_larson says:

    In some weird reverse of Conquest’s Law, any comment section that isn’t explicitly left-wing tends to get more right-wing over time.

    Is that true? Perhaps the center of politics is farther right than you believe. That would account for comment sections seeming righty to you.

    • Brad says:

      It wouldn’t explain a perception of a consistent drift rightward though. If movement were random then even if most comment sections at any given time seemed to be righty to a given observer we’d still expect some to move in the leftward direction over time.

      • Plumber says:

        @Brad,

        I’m really surprised to see Scott Alexander describe you as “left-wing”, as from the posts of yours that I’m aware of you seemed another one of the college grad libertarians.

        I was starting to imagine you as wearing a monocle and top hat and twiling a moustache, what have I mis-read?

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          Brad’s alignment on the political spectrum depends on the relevant issue. A consequence of a common cultural understanding of politics with only one axis. Also in every country besides America libertarianism is a leftist political position.

          • Salem says:

            Don’t be silly. Libertarianism is right-wing in the UK (Conservatives), Germany (FDP), Australia (Liberals, Liberal Democrats), and New Zealand (Nationals, ACT New Zealand)*. I have less familiarity with other countries, but I suspect this is true in plenty of other places too.

            The kernel of truth in what you’re saying is that in plenty of countries, including throughout continental Western Europe, the major centre-right party has almost nothing to do with libertarianism.

            *I am obviously not claiming that the British Conservatives, Australian Liberals or New Zealand Nationals are libertarian parties. Rather, they have significant libertarian factions, and are the major repositories of libertarianism in those countries. This is identical to the situation in the USA – the Republicans are not a libertarian party either.

          • Also in every country besides America libertarianism is a leftist political position.

            Do you mean “the positions held by American libertarians are considered left wing,” which I am pretty sure is false? Or do you mean “‘libertarian’ is the name of a left wing political position quite different from what is called ‘libertarian’ in the U.S.,” which is to some degree true?

            American libertarians are what used to be called liberals, some of them more extreme than the 19th century liberals but in the same direction. In the U.S., the term “liberal” got adopted by opponents of classical liberalism, so people with what used to be called liberal views needed a new label and ended up calling themselves libertarians.

            In much of the rest of the world, “liberal” retained its old meaning and “libertarian” was used for left anarchists.

            Due to the internationalization of political culture and the large visibility of American culture, I think the American pattern is to some degree spreading, that in many other parts of the world some people who call themselves “libertarians” are using the term in the American sense—but those people are mostly not thought of as on the left.

          • rlms says:

            Please can we not have the “is libertarianism right-wing” argument again?

        • Brad says:

          On economic issues I’m on the technocratic left which can end up sounding like libertarians because it’s unsentimental and doesn’t necessarily buy into long-standing economic left truisms about what does and doesn’t work and who are and aren’t the bad guys.

          It’s left rather than libertarian because the end goal is something like maximizing human flourishing rather than liberty. But it’s about as far as one could possibly get from the “hardhat” left (which is where I have you pegged, correct me if I’m wrong) and still plausibly be called left.

          But none of that is why I’m generally thought of as on the left. Rather it’s because, while I’m not a campus social activist I don’t think they are evil incarnate and an imminent danger to civilization. My outgroup are not them, but instead Trump supporters and Trump supporter apologists. That’s what really makes me stand out.

      • johan_larson says:

        If movement is actually balanced, but Scott is a left-winger who thinks he’s center/moderate, he would notice rightward shifts more than leftward ones, because they annoy or outrage him more, which in turn occurs because where they end up tends to be farther from his own position. That would explain why he thinks there are more rightward shifts than leftward shifts.

    • Thomas Jørgensen says:

      The entire internet is set up to facilitate grouping discussion of subjects along lines of interest. That is fine if you want to discuss the biochemistry of photosynthesis or the finer points of python coding, but when it comes to politics, it means everything has a tendency to turn into an echo-chamber. Often along much narrower lines than just “left” and “right”. And those echo chambers have a disturbing tendency towards sliding towards the extremes.

    • AnonYEmous says:

      watch as I simply explain what is going on, and be astounded:

      uh, right-wing people are more eager to speak out, probably because they feel like their opinions are less well represented. As a left-winger, you have a lot more people that will bear your standard for you, so you don’t have to be that person yourself.

      at least that’s how I feel

      • The Nybbler says:

        If that were all it is, it would be self-correcting.

        • AG says:

          It self-corrects on a scale larger than the blog. Those that leave in an evaporative cooling create their own space, which balances the larger system, but doesn’t stop the place they left from remaining evaporatively cooled.

  45. Furslid says:

    Is it just me or was the FBI Kavanaugh investigation troubling. There were only two feasible outcomes.

    1. The investigation comes back with no evidence of the accusations. Senators confirm Kavanaugh based on the investigation rather than their own judgement.
    2. The investigation comes back that Kavanaugh mislead people to minimize his misbehavior as a young man. Senators reject Kavanaugh without making their judgement.

    The problem is that either outcome could have been written up using the facts known before the investigation. So how did the FBI decide which way to spin the evidence?

    If the decision was made by investigating agents, this is troubling. The decision to confirm Kavenaugh was made by someone in the FBI rather than the elected officials. If it wasn’t, then someone else decided how the investigation should go. Who made that decision? Did the senators know how the investigation would end when they authorized it? How often are FBI investigations manipulated like this?

    • CarlosRamirez says:

      It was. I would have much preferred if the allegations had come out a month or two ago, or 36 years ago, so the investigation could have run longer. As it stands, the 7th Kavanaugh background check could easily have dragged on past the elections, which seems to have been the cynical realpolitik goal here.

      • axiomsofdominion says:

        What possible purpose could have been served by accusing a rich well connected man at a prestigious school of attempted sexual assault 36 years ago? Considering the almost inevitably massive social consequences for the girl and the almost inevitably non-existent legal, or even social, consequences for the man you’d have to be pretty much totally insane as an 18 year old girl to try and press charges. Hell even if you won best case is a year or two in jail while you face 2-3 years of full on social assault in highschool, and given the rarified air involved, probably significant consequences in college. The only upside is probably that social media didn’t exist back then.

        On the other hand it would have been better for the accusations to come out a few months earlier in the present. Though I doubt it would have made a difference in the outcome.

        • Deiseach says:

          He wasn’t a man at the time; he may have been well-connected, but there was only a two year age difference and they moved in somewhat the same social circles. And when she began to have a career and success of her own, why didn’t she raise this with any authorities? It’s all very well to say “His family were powerful enough to have any charges quashed” but were they? And why leave it for thirty-six years? If she felt all along that, as he became a judge and climbed the ranks, that there was nothing to be gained by going to the police, why go now?

          That’s what makes it look like a politically motivated action. If the whole thrust of your argument is “oh he’d have practically gotten away with it, slap on the wrist at most if she tried back then”, then what point in bringing it up now?

          • phisheep says:

            That doesn’t seem to me to be sufficient grounds for a claim of political motivation.

            As to why it wasn’t raised before – well, we’ve seen lots of cases where sexual assault was not raised at the time: for fear of not being believed, fear it was somehow ones’ own fault, or being cold-shouldered.

            As to why it was raised now – consider the plot of Lee Child’s “Without Fail”, which hinges on just such an old event emerging once a perpetrator reached national prominence. Being fiction it isn’t evidence of course, but it does a good job of explaining the psychology behind it.

      • John Schilling says:

        What possible purpose could have been served by accusing a rich well connected man at a prestigious school of attempted sexual assault 36 years ago?

        The same purpose that is served whenever “rich well-connected men at prestigious schools” are accused of attempted sexual assault today. This is a thing that does happen, as you might have noticed. Some people care about justice. Some people want a shot at vengeance. And some people are pretty sure they’ll get away with the lie.

        you’d have to be pretty much totally insane as an 18 year old girl to try and press charges.

        So, according to this theory, all (young) women who press rape charges are insane. I think I would like to see some supporting evidence before signing up for this theory.

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          The circumstances now are much different than they were 36 years ago. 36 years ago accusing a rich well connected young male of attempted sexual assault at a party was not rational. The cost/benefit even in the best case was terrible.

          “You’d have to be insane” is a well understood idiom. I suppose its clever of you to feign thinking I was implying that she would have to be literally mentally ill. And also that that would apply to something contemporary.

          • John Schilling says:

            The circumstances now are much different than they were 36 years ago. 36 years ago accusing a rich well connected young male of attempted sexual assault at a party was not rational.

            And yet people did it. Seriously, “36 years ago” puts you solidly in the era of Date Rape being a high-profile thing to be taken seriously for a change, of privileged white men not being able to force themselves on women without consequence just because the woman chose to go to a party with them.

            Not every victim filed a complaint, in 1982 or now. I am not surprised that Dr. Ford is one of the ones who didn’t, and I think that carries only small weight in assessing her credibility now. But when you assert that it was then “irrational” or “insane” for a woman to complain in 1982, you’re going way over the top and I’m wondering what you were doing in 1982 to have come to such a conclusion.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @John Schilling:

            Last week my wife treated a woman who accepted a ride home from a social gathering from someone. As she got into the car, several other men got in as well. They drove her to a parking lot, dragged from the car, and gang raped her on the ground

            She is not reporting her rape. My wife, who is in Ob/Gyn care, was completely and utterly unsurprised by this.

            Two years ago she treated someone who did report after being drugged and gang raped, there was even surveillance video, nothing came of it.

            I’m not sure it’s rational NOW to report, let alone back then.

          • AG says:

            Lili Loofbourow:

            Look, our culture doesn’t even think men should be punished for rape when it’s proven in court. I stumbled on two examples just in the last week. Last week, a Texas doctor was convicted of raping a woman who had come in with trouble breathing. She’d been sedated and kept overnight, and when he pressed the nurse’s button to call for help, it was disconnected. He was convicted, but he got no jail time.

            Last Wednesday, a guy in Anchorage who offered a woman a ride strangled her until she was unconscious and masturbated on her, was convicted of kidnapping, assault. He got no jail time. In fact, the district attorney said that he felt that guy had suffered enough because he lost his job working for the federal government. He called that a life sentence.

            https://www.kansas.com/news/nation-world/national/article216985870.html

            https://apnews.com/4fabb980e14c48eeb3094f9819f30032

          • Two years ago she treated someone who did report after being drugged and gang raped, there was even surveillance video, nothing came of it.

            Do you know enough about the case to tell why nothing came of it? Did the surveillance video show enough to provide serious evidence of the crime?

    • idontknow131647093 says:

      The FBI made no conclusions in their report. They took interviews and made notes about what people said and whether those people supported the claims made and previous statements.

      The Senators had no authority to direct an FBI investigation, and I would think its actual contents swayed no one. All it did was provide another layer to the same evidence we already had with an FBI stamp (which I suppose some people find more credible than the sworn statements to Congress).

    • Edward Scizorhands says:

      Republicans pointed out, prior to Flake going along and asking for one, exactly that the FBI wouldn’t really change anything, and that they don’t come to conclusions. (Cue Joe Biden video.)

  46. CarlosRamirez says:

    I want to do an adversarial collaboration on the conflict between #believewomen and presumption of innocence. I would hold up the presumption of innocence side.

    • axiomsofdominion says:

      An AC is not particularly necessary. The dispute can be settled in a few sentences in plain language. One side presents what is essentially a deontological where the goal is to have as few innocent people convicted as possible. Another side argues a utilitarian argument where you compare the net harm suffered by women who are sexually assaulted vs the harm caused by a certain likely number of false convictions and asserts that the current standard has a net loss in total utility. Essentially, 100 correct convictions and 10 false convictions is a better outcome than 10 correct convictions but no false convictions. The actual numbers may very from the example but those are the terms of the debate. As a rule men tend to support the side of the argument that results in them benefiting while women support the side that benefits them.

      Typically people who oppose #believewomenover men support #believecopsoverblackpeople. You don’t see nearly the furor from people on the right end of the spectrum about cops lying or framing black people as you do women lying or framing men even though one of them is definitely more common, specific numbers aside.

      An adversarial collaboration would seem to be pretty ineffective considering that both sides start from very different foundations.

      • CarlosRamirez says:

        utilitarian argument where you compare the net harm suffered by women who are sexually assaulted vs the harm caused by a certain likely number of false convictions and asserts that the current standard has a net loss in total utility

        That utilitarian argument is suspect, as there is no rigorous way to calculate whether the harm of being raped is worse than the harm of being falsely convicted. Also, it’s easy to argue that almost all the harm of rape is socially constructed, as Germaine Greer does, such that it’s probably better in an utilitarian sense to downgrade the badness of rape, by which she means not just how bad society regards it, but also how bad women who have been raped feel about it, such that rape is about as harmful as a mugging. It would be a win for women to be less vulnerable to sexual crimes.

        There’s also the issue that false accusations are rare in general, not just for sexual crimes, so if that utilitarian notion were to be followed, it would result in throwing away presumption of innocence entirely.

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          Rape involves bodily penetration though, not just physical assault. The difference between stabbing or hitting or maybe a gun to your chest vs one to your mouth. Or rubbing grime on your body vs in your mouth. Even if you follow the social construction aspect. Also it often involves transmission of potentially disease transmitting fluids or potentially pregnancy, things which are not the result of mugging or assault and its generally an add on. You don’t get raped or assaulted, its both.

          That aside, its true that its hard to argue the consequences of rape vs false conviction, but only in the sense that everything is hard to evaluate against something else. So that’s more like a rejection of utilitarianism in general.

          Since this is in the context of the value of an adversarial collaboration, it seems that what you wrote is only supporting my point that such a thing would be pointless.

          Compared to something like whether gifted programs or tracking are beneficial.

          • CarlosRamirez says:

            Hmm, yes, rape carries additional risks that non-sexual assaults typically don’t have. If in a particular case the risks do manifest, these could be punished in addition to whatever punishment in is meted out for the rape, same way we have gradations of violent assault and even murder. Wouldn’t surprise to find that things like, ‘victim contracted AIDS as a result of this rape’ are already being priced into the punishment.

            As to the utilitarian deal, yes, it’s true that I pointed out a sticking point of that ethical framework, but that could be the entire basis of our adversarial collaboration: try to hash out which is greater, the harm of being convicted versus the harm of being raped.

            There is no rigorous way to do this, but that’s basically true of all moral precepts, and regardless society has to make important moral decisions, so it’s better to make an attempt to reason these things out,

      • brmic says:

        Speaking for myself, I’d add that I came to doubt the presumption of innocence in the particular cases where it’s one person’s word against another’s. Take for instance marital rape, it’s pretty hard to convict someone of that, because there’s usually no one else around and traces are ambiguous. If we want to enforce the laws against it, and I want to, then we might need to adjust elsewhere. Presumption of innocence should only be lowered as a last resort, but I’m all for trying various other thing people and legislatures have been trying. E.g.: Lower standards for consequences that are not criminal conviction and incarceration. E.g. attempts to add consent culture to the laws etc.. No one has a silver bullet yet, but ‘do nothing’ and let the predictable consequences of the presumption of innocence in this particular area of life run its course is not a satisfactory option for me.

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          Its weird. As I noted in a comment, we are often willing to take a cop’s word about what a minority male did and convict on that basis, but not a woman’s word on a man in a sexual matter. Yet the number of frames committed by police is much higher than the number of false rape accusations and the consequences to police are far less than the consequences for a woman, on average.

          • cassander says:

            Yet the number of frames committed by police is much higher than the number of false rape accusations and the consequences to police are far less than the consequences for a woman, on average.

            I’d love to see a citation backing up that claim, because if it were even vaguely close to true, I would be positively astounded. And before you go and say “well, how am I supposed to get accurate stats about cops who lie?” I ask you to consider carefully how you plan to get accurate stats about women who lie.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            And here we run into the problem; the information is impossible to get, and any priors are nearly impossible to effectively update because sharing evidence that violates those priors requires the violation of social norms.

            If you suspect that most of the people who #metoo’d did so for political reasons and that most of them haven’t been personally raped, you’re unlikely to be persuaded that rape is/has been relatively common, despite the number of people telling you they’ve been raped. Try seeing yourself in a world where rape is as common as is claimed. Can you tell the difference? How long would it take to persuade you that this change has occurred?

            If I were to tell you to believe women, I’d do it to tell you that your updating is broken. Consider carefully the *actual* incentives that people have to lie about these things, and ask yourself what your response would be given those incentives and your endorsed values. This is probably a decent proxy for what the people actually doing this do.

          • brmic says:

            I’d love to see a citation backing up that claim, because if it were even vaguely close to true, I would be positively astounded.

            I’d argue from base rates. Most women never accuse anyone of rape and I’d guess after more than a handful of such accusations any women is going to receive extra scrutiny to determine whether she’s just really, really unlucky or a false accuser. Conversely, cops probably ‘accuse’ someone at least once per week and even if they’re super scrupulous and dillgent, it’s almost certain they’ll screw up at some point in their career. In the real world, most aren’t that dedicated, plus there’s the incentives and then there’s the cops that don’t even try, that are fine with framing people (who deserve it).

            To approach it from the other end: I assume, like me, you know almost no women whom you consider capable of false rape accusations. Now imagine a world where for some reason all those women you know end up constantly having to make true accusations and receiving a high level of deference and presumption of truthfulness when doing so. Do you think the number of false accusations would go up or down under those circumstances?

          • axiomsofdominion says:

            Its estimated that only 10% of sexual assaults/rapes are reported. There are ~90k reports a year of forcible rape from 1990 to 2017. ~5% is the standard figure for false claims. Approximately 4500 false claims a year vs 90000 reports and 900000 total forcible rapes. Sexual assault is even more common than forcible rape.

          • cassander says:

            @brmic

            I’d argue from base rates. Most women never accuse anyone of rape and I’d guess after more than a handful of such accusations any women is going to receive extra scrutiny to determine whether she’s just really, really unlucky or a false accuser.

            that the number of women who accuse someone of rape is relatively low is totally irrelevant to the question what percentage of accusations are false.

            Conversely, cops probably ‘accuse’ someone at least once per week and even if they’re super scrupulous and dillgent, it’s almost certain they’ll screw up at some point in their career.

            Hence the existence of a massive justice system designed, in part, to protect people from false accusations. A system the #believeallwomen crowd seem determined to tear down.

            To approach it from the other end: I assume, like me, you know almost no women whom you consider capable of false rape accusations.

            I also know few cops who I consider capable of false accusations. Anecdotes are irrelevant.

            Now imagine a world where for some reason all those women you know end up constantly having to make true accusations and receiving a high level of deference and presumption of truthfulness when doing so. Do you think the number of false accusations would go up or down under those circumstances?

            Of course they would. hell, it’s not even me making that argument. #believeallwomen explicitly makes they claim, arguing precisely that doubting women leads fewer to come forward. They, of course, leave out that lowering the burden of proof will also lower the burden for false accusations, but you can’t have one without the other.

            @axiomsofdominion

            ts estimated that only 10% of sexual assaults/rapes are reported. There are ~90k reports a year of forcible rape from 1990 to 2017. ~5% is the standard figure for false claims.

            Estimated by advocacy groups with a decided interest in maximizing the number. And that much quoted 5% figure, IIRC, was only reports made to the police, which they thought were worth investigating, and which they definitively ruled as false. There is a whole hell of a lot of ground left uncovered there. For example, if false, none of the accusations made against Kavanaugh would qualify.

          • Eltargrim says:

            @cassander: You should take a look at Statistics Canada data. Statscan generally produces high-quality statistical data on Canada and Canadians. Based upon this source for the self-reported sexual assault rate (22 per 1000) and this source for the police-reported assault rate (order of 60 per 100 000), it would appear that the reporting rate is on the order of 3%.

            You may also be interested in this report, which pegs the unfounded reporting rate of sexual assault at 14%, 7%, and 9%, for level 1, 2 and 3. Definitions are contained within the article. As always, this is a hard subject to get truly accurate statistics, but Statscan does put in some effort.

          • Matt M says:

            Has anyone ever attempted a survey asking men whether or not they’ve ever been falsely accused of something sexual?

            Because it seems perfectly plausible to me that we’d see similar results, inasmuch as “voluntary response” would indicate 10x more false accusations than actually go “formally reported”

            There are plenty of reasons people don’t bother reporting plenty of various crimes. Every barfight doesn’t result in a police investigation, either. And that’s not because of sexism or patriarchy or whatever. I imagine this is particularly true in cases where there’s no clear financial gain to be had by reporting, and the animus for doing so would almost entirely be one of justice and/or retribution. Meaning, I’d bet thefts (even small ones) get reported a lot, because the victim hopes to recover their stolen property – but minor assaults resulting in no medical bills probably do not.

          • albatross11 says:

            axis:

            To lower the temperature on this discussion, I propose a friendly amendment: In general, I think we’re willing to take a policeman’s word on what *anyone* does–it’s not just minority males.

          • brmic says:

            @cassander
            May I remind you, we are talking about:

            Yet the number of frames committed by police is much higher than the number of false rape accusations and the consequences to police are far less than the consequences for a woman, on average

            So your response

            that the number of women who accuse someone of rape is relatively low is totally irrelevant to the question what percentage of accusations are false.

            moves the goalposts. Substantially.
            I don’t care to convince you, I wanted to provide reasons why someone would consider the first statement ‘vaguely close to true’. To reiterate, the reasons is that police make many more accusations.

            I mean, you second line response

            Hence the existence of a massive justice system designed, in part, to protect people from false accusations. A system the #believeallwomen crowd seem determined to tear down.

            again moves the goalpost, we were talking about police, not the criminal justice system and the slur against #believeallwomen is both irrelevant and uncalled for.

            The next bit

            I also know few cops who I consider capable of false accusations. Anecdotes are irrelevant.

            makes me wonder whether you really did not get that this wasn’t an anecdote. (To add an actual anecdote: I know several cops who admit to having witnessed and not reported either police brutality or framing. I know no women who have admitted to false rape accusations.)

            Finally, with

            Of course they would. hell, it’s not even me making that argument. #believeallwomen explicitly makes they claim, arguing precisely that doubting women leads fewer to come forward. They, of course, leave out that lowering the burden of proof will also lower the burden for false accusations, but you can’t have one without the other.

            you apprently failed to notice, that this exactly concedes the point. The burden of proof is lowered for police, who are believed more than ordinary citizens, even by the criminal justice system, and it has predictable consequences.
            That is, before we even get to the problem of the sheer number of accusations.

          • cassander says:

            I don’t care to convince you, I wanted to provide reasons why someone would consider the first statement ‘vaguely close to true’. To reiterate, the reasons is that police make many more accusations.

            Your original definition was “framings”, which I take to mean deliberate attempts to convict the innocent. You’ve since broadened to include possibly erroneous reports. We’ve both moved the goal posts, let’s shift them back.

            makes me wonder whether you really did not get that this wasn’t an anecdote.

            IF you don’t have actual data, it’s an annecdote.

            you apprently failed to notice, that this exactly concedes the point. The burden of proof is lowered for police, who are believed more than ordinary citizens, even by the criminal justice system, and it has predictable consequences.
            That is, before we even get to the problem of the sheer number of accusations.

            You’re overstating the case. Policemen cannot go around accusing random people, there is a process that they must go through, a rather extensive and explicitly adversarial process. It takes seriously the things police say, but it is far more than just their say so.

        • CarlosRamirez says:

          Germaine Greer is of that opinion, namely, that sexual crimes, and even rape should have much lighter punishments. I can get behind a lower standard of evidence then: if society decides sexual crimes are not deserving of severe punishment, then the standard of evidence can be relaxed for them.

          Greer’s reasoning about the rape thing is that there is no reason women should believe having an unwanted penis in their vagina is cause for extremely severe distress. If you think about it, the belief that rape does critical harm has sexist roots, and is itself sexist in the sense that it is a belief that makes women more vulnerable.

    • Philosophisticat says:

      It’s a mistake to think that the charitable interpretation of “believe women” and the charitable interpretation of “presumption of innocence” are in conflict so you’re not off to a good start.

      • Statismagician says:

        Could you spell the charitable interpretations out a bit more concretely? As I’ve generally seen the two portrayed, ‘believe women’ means something like: ‘this is an unpleasant experience for accusers, by all available information the false-accusation rate is quite low, it’s therefore reasonable to weight specific cases towards the positive as a consequence.’

        Similarly, I usually see ‘presumption of innocence’ meaning something like ‘it’s almost literally the founding principle of our legal system that none of that matters; we have historically been explicitly committed to not convicting people for things they didn’t do even if that means we miss some -many, even! – people who are in truth guilty,’ which seems fairly contradictory. Have I got my definitions wrong?

        I think a lot of the frustration from the presumption-of-innocence side is that nobody seems willing to admit there’s a conflict between the two positions [if there is; again I may have my definitions wrong], or that when it comes down to any specific case you still have to judge it on its own specifics if you don’t want to fall into an ecological fallacy, which sort of limits the practical significance. What, specifically, are we supposed to do here? How are the legal and social realms of this question to be handled differently? Are they at all? These are really important questions that don’t seem to be adequately addressed, and I for one am a little leery of massively reforming the judicial system until I see some evidence that somebody’s thought about them for at least five minutes. [NB, totally possible somebody has and I missed it, in which case I would very much appreciate reading material.]

        • ordogaud says:

          I was confused by Philosophicats statement as well, what you said was basically how I see the two sides of the debate.

          The only thing I can think is that the Charitable interpretation of #BelieveWomen is that we should still presume innocence, but if the only evidence is the testimony of the victim and there’s no reason to believe the victim is lying (no overwhelming and documented motive for revenge, no history of false accusations, etc.) then that should be enough for a conviction.

          i.e. If it’s a “he said she said” situation and there isn’t much hard evidence either way then we should side with she said, and that should be enough to convict.

          Personally I’m uncomfortable with that becoming an absolute norm of the justice system, especially because I don’t think we could set a precedent where this norm would only apply to sexual assault cases, and I think that would really open up our justice system to a lot more abuse from bad actors. Though I will admit the statistics have convinced me it would be the better way of finding justice for sexual assault.

          Still something tells me if our default was to always convict without extra evidence, the false accusations rate would go way up. There would need to be a change in our attitude towards sentencing and stigmatization for cases that aren’t violent rape and/or don’t have explicit proof, so that those who are falsely accused don’t have their lives mostly ruined while those who are guilty still face some consequences.

          • albatross11 says:

            The basic utilitarian argument (offerred by axisofdominion above) seems stronger for the tribunals on campus that can only expel an accused rapist, not put him in prison.

            However, people are people. If you make it possible for any woman who’s been on a date with a man to get him expelled, you’re going to have a fair number of women who decide to get even with a guy they feel has done them wrong. Our current situation is that women who make the accusation get beaten up so much by the system that it’s a terrible ordeal for them, and so they rarely want to make the accusation. Make that lower cost, and you’ll get more of both true and false accusations.

          • rlms says:

            i.e. If it’s a “he said she said” situation and there isn’t much hard evidence either way then we should side with she said, and that should be enough to convict.

            This is not the charitable version. It’s likely not a strawman, but it’s certainly a very weakman.

            The charitable version is that you shouldn’t dismiss someone who accuses your friend of rape because you know he’s a good guy. In a he-said-she-said situation, it should be the rapist who loses friends; that certainly doesn’t mean they should go to prison without further evidence.

          • The Nybbler says:

            Why should I ditch a friend because someone I don’t even know accuses him of rape? To me this is more than he said/she said; presumably I have some measure of the character of my friend and believe he wouldn’t do such a thing.

          • rlms says:

            @The Nybbler
            There should be separation between my sentences. You don’t have to instantly ostracise your best friend of 20 years when she’s accused of rape by a stranger, but you should take the allegation seriously. And if it’s two people you know or don’t know equally well, you should tend towards the supporting the accuser not the accused.

          • Evan Þ says:

            @rlms, sure, but what should “taking the allegation seriously” look like? I can see a spectrum of examples there, some of which I’d agree with and others of which I wouldn’t.

          • Statismagician says:

            It kind of doesn’t, sorry. I have no reason to believe a lot of people are lying about having experienced a sexual assault, but clearly at least some people somewhere are and I have some very strong reasons to think that changing the standards of evidence and basic underlying philosophy of the whole American legal system might have some unfortunate effects on incentives.

            If you want us to go to a ‘he said / she said’ standard, or more generally an ‘accusation is sufficient evidence to convict’ standard, then that’s explicitly saying ‘I am okay with [n] people being imprisoned unjustly, where we can be pretty confident [n] in five years will be at least a bit bigger than [n] today.’

            Decreasing stigma, excellent. Improving resource allocation and forensic methods, also excellent. Replacing a foundational legal-philosophical principle with literally the ecological fallacy, less so – or rather, we can have that discussion, but let’s be explicit about it instead of papering over the issue.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            The issue isn’t legal as I see it, but one of belief. Maintain the legal standard as it is, but do better at making decisions based on things that aren’t the legal standard. The problem is not that consequences are dealt out with an eye towards skepticism – this is fine, as far as I’m concerned – but that people who claim to be victimized are often asked to meet a standard of conviction in order to be believed. I believe many things that do not meet a standard of no reasonable doubt (by estimating a probability that they are true, and defending them in a way that is fitting, given my degree of belief). In many cases, women have been asked to meet a standard of conviction in order to be believed when they say that they have been raped. I think that this is a bad thing, and that barring specific factors which make the claim substantially unlikely to be true, the person claiming to have been assaulted should be met with an amount of skepticism proportional to the realistic probability that they are lying. I also think that if your prior that they are lying is above ~25% (again, for a random person. Also, this threshold is really the maximum I think anyone could reasonably have and not representative of my belief), you have probably not been updating properly at this point.

            So yeah, decreasing stigma, increasing support, examining your priors, and actually acting in accord with your estimated probability of victimization. All important, all connected directly with “belief,” none requiring the judicial system to be reformed, and all under-enacted currently.

          • Statismagician says:

            It is concerning to me that I said ‘hey, let’s maybe not increase the Type I error rate by more than absolutely necessary,’ and you said ‘it’s fine, it’ll just be for unimportant stuff like losing your job or your entire social circle.’ If you accuse me of stealing your car, you’d better believe I’m going to insist you actually prove that before accepting punishment for it, or doling out punishment to somebody else if they’re the one accused. Why is this different?

            It’s a formal logical fallacy to draw individual conclusions from group data, and serious accusations with serious consequences require serious evidence. So, assuming any kind of logical rigor at all, either a) rape isn’t a serious accusation, b) rape shouldn’t have serious punishments [formal or informal; being fired under suspicion of rape is less-bad than prison for twenty years, but still not ideal], c) we can adjust the threshold for taking action as you suggest, knowing that a nonzero-and-increasing number of people are going to have their lives ruined for no reason, d) none of this has any practical significance at all, or e) something doesn’t quite add up. It’s all well and good to say ‘believe women,’ but what does that actually mean as a normative value?

          • cassander says:

            @Hoopyfreud says:

            In many cases, women have been asked to meet a standard of conviction in order to be believed when they say that they have been raped.

            If you tell me that person X made lewd comments toward you, I’m inclined to believe you on just your say so, but if you’re accusing someone of a serious crime, it’s not unreasonable to ask that you meet a criminal burden of proof. If you tell me that person X killed someone, or stole a significant amount of money from you, I would make exactly the same demand. I fail to see why rape should be treated differently.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            ‘hey, let’s maybe not increase the Type I error rate by more than absolutely necessary,’ and you said ‘it’s fine, it’ll just be for unimportant stuff like losing your job or your entire social circle.’

            This seems like a deeply uncharitable interpretation of what I wrote, but on the chance that I’m just bad at saying things…

            The bit about individual conclusions from group data makes sense if you ignore the fact that I’m talking about the balance of probability. I’m not saying that you should treat an accused rapist as though they were a rapist. I’m saying that you should treat them as though you believed they were a rapist with [your estimate]% confidence. If X is 50%, maybe don’t accept a drink from them. If X is 80%, maybe don’t invite them to the sort of social event where people who don’t know each other well go home together in the dark and intoxicated. If X is anywhere north of 10%, maybe refrain from putting that person and the person who accused them in a room together.

            Additionally, a “conclusion” is a very conclusive thing. If this person is in your social circle and you have strong opinions as to their character, apply your reasoning and estimate downwards if appropriate. If you interact with this person regularly and they show no evidence of rapey behavior, revise your estimate downwards if appropriate. Be careful about the kind of evidence you consider, and remember that exhibiting charisma is not the same thing as being not-rapey.

            This isn’t about punishment, judicial or not. Don’t throw someone who you think is 75% likely to have raped someone in chains. Don’t kick them out of their job, unless you know that if you don’t, one of the people involved will definitely leave. In that case, do what you think is just (this is hard, and very personal). If they’re your friend, don’t block their number. There’s a 25% chance they’re completely innocent, and doing so would be needlessly cruel. That’s not what this is about. This is about making a careful assessment of the likely state of the world and making a conscious decision about the appropriate magnitude of personal response. I am not telling you to unconditionally believe women; I am making the normative statement that when women tell you they have been raped, that should move the dial pretty dramatically on how likely you think it is that they have been raped. How you act at that point is up to you and your conception of justice, but even if you refuse to take any action against the accused rapist without conclusive proof, I don’t think that implies that you should assume that the accuser is lying.

            Here is some practical advice, if you want to know how I think “believing women” should work in practice. If you think there’s a 75% chance that a woman you know has been raped and there is no corroborating evidence, I would suggest that the appropriate response is to exercise empathy. Offer your sympathy for what you believe has happened to her, offer her as much support as you’re willing, give her advice on how likely it is that she will obtain justice, and try to keep the woman and the person she accuses of raping her apart as much as possible if it is in your power to do so. Expect that if you associate with the person she accuses of raping her and don’t stop, she will distance herself from you. Remember that she is (probably) nearly 100% certain that the person she has accused has raped her and encourage her to act in accordance with the strength of her belief, even if that means hurting you in some tangential way (hurting you directly is pretty unacceptable, of course). Do not expect her to structure her life around the assumption that the person she has accused is innocent; it is unreasonable for her to do so, just as much as it is unreasonable for you to stay friends with someone who you caught (but can’t prove you caught) poisoning your dog. Try your best to put yourself in the victim’s shoes and do not disparage her for doing things that you think would make sense to you if you were in their place. Try to understand what it might be like to be a victim of a traumatic event, and do your best to treat people who credibly claim to be suffering from trauma in a way that you would want to be treated if you were suffering from trauma.

            This all goes for men too, of course. But we aren’t included in #believewomen by default, and we’ll probably have to do this again some time in the future. Still, that doesn’t mean that the charitable interpretation isn’t a worthwhile project.

            E: also, @cassander
            Someone stole my wallet a few weeks ago. It had a couple hundred dollars in it and some personal treasures that I deeply miss.

            How likely do you think it is that I’m telling you the truth? I will tell you that nobody who I’ve told this to has demanded to see a photo of my wallet or search my room and person for it.

          • Jiro says:

            Someone stole my wallet a few weeks ago. It had a couple hundred dollars in it and some personal treasures that I deeply miss.

            How likely do you think it is that I’m telling you the truth? I will tell you that nobody who I’ve told this to has demanded to see a photo of my wallet or search my room and person for it.

            You didn’t name any potential thief. I’m pretty sure that if you named a thief, and there was no evidence that he ever had your wallet or that you even lost your wallet, the consequences to him would be light or nonexistent.

            Even if you had named a potential thief, most of the reasons for false accusations of rape don’t apply to wallets.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @Jiro

            I don’t know his name, but I could probably recognize him. If I ran into him, I’d be very willing to make a fuss about it, but I haven’t seen him around since. I certainly wouldn’t have any compunction about telling his family he stole my wallet.

            Nonetheless, I’m (again) talking about belief. Not prosecutability. My point is that, for people to believe that my wallet has been stolen, I have not been asked to meet a standard for criminal burden of proof despite the fact that I’m claiming to be the victim of a crime! Moreover, I can’t think of anyone whose first response to someone claiming to have been mugged is a demand for proof; same goes for burglary, assault, or most crimes in general. The accused isn’t always (or even usually) immediately fired/jailed/convicted, but there’s a hell of a lot more immediate and undoubting sympathy for the victim, even from people who never see a police report.

            Finally, I freely admit that there are incentives for falsely reporting rape that don’t necessarily exist for other crimes. That said, what is your prior for a female coworker who you don’t know particularly well telling you she’s been raped and telling the truth? Mine is probably around 85%. That’s lower than it would be if she claimed someone had stolen her purse, but much, much higher than it would be for alien abduction. It’s also much higher than the threshold for “I need you to overcome a criminal burden of proof for me to act in any way as though I believe you.”

          • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

            @Hoopyfreud,

            Your wallet stealing example just isn’t very good here.

            When someone I know tells me that they were mugged or raped I generally believe them unless I have a good reason not to trust their account. And even when I have good reason to doubt them I don’t call them out on it.

            When someone I know tells me that someone else I know mugged or raped them, then I need to be a lot more discerning. Is it more plausible that the accused is a violent criminal or that the accuser is mistaken or lying? Sometimes I lean one way, sometimes the other, depending on the details as presented to me.

            That’s not a consequence of ideology. I don’t agree with the reasoning of letting ten guilty men go free to spare one innocent; sometimes it’s more important to punish ten innocents in order to ensure that one guilty man is brought to justice. It’s a consequence of having to make important decisions with imperfect information.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @Nabil

            Additionally, a “conclusion” is a very conclusive thing. If this person is in your social circle and you have strong opinions as to their character, apply your reasoning and estimate downwards if appropriate. If you interact with this person regularly and they show no evidence of rapey behavior, revise your estimate downwards if appropriate.

            I don’t think we disagree at all, then. My point is that the charitable interpretation of #believewomen isn’t “blindly believe women in all cases and disregard any knowledge you may have that should tell you otherwise.” Instead, it’s “do not default to reacting to a claim of rape you have no special reason to doubt the veracity of with skepticism, and make your probability estimates carefully.” I think that if you look you’ll find that there are a lot of people whose prior on a rape claim about which they have no information being true is terribly low, and these people are the ones targeted by the slogan.

            Note that here skepticism doesn’t refer to a refusal to come to a conclusion with insufficient evidence, but to the refusal to believe someone unless they present overwhelming evidence. This latter attitude is, by many accounts, distressingly common for women to run into.

          • The Nybbler says:

            It’s not just about priors. My prior on the Jackie story as I first heard it summarized — that a girl had been raped by multiple guys at a frat party at UVa — was that it was most likely true. Mostly because I was rather prejudiced against frat guys. But when I read the story, I changed my belief to “almost certainly false” based on the unlikely horror-movie elements. “BelieveWomen” would have had me discard the internal evidence of the story and still believe Jackie.

          • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

            @Hoopyfreud,

            If that’s the actual ask, the #believewomen crowd has done absolutely everything in their power to give the wrong impression.

            It seems like a classic Motte and Bailey here.

            If #believewomen means that men should rely on our own judgement to decide how likely an accusation is to be true, then it’s so obvious and banal that it’s not worth saying. It doesn’t even address your own complaints because all of the men who didn’t believe victims of rape already did exactly that.

            If #believewomen means what it’s generally understood to mean, that men need to shut up and nod whenever a woman says that she was assualted or raped (even if he himself is the target of the accusation*), then it actually has some teeth. It’s utterly insane but it addresses the complaints that you brought up and is internally consistent.

            *I’m searching for links now but I’ve seen several different people make the argument that if a woman accuses you of something you should apologize for it regardless of whether or not you actually did it. Most recently, that Kavanaugh defending himself was wrong even if he had never assaulted Ford.

          • Matt M says:

            “do not default to reacting to a claim of rape you have no special reason to doubt the veracity of with skepticism, and make your probability estimates carefully.”

            Who actually does this, though?

            Generally speaking, most people believe the claims of others they know and trust. As many people have already said, if a close female acquaintance of mine claims to have been assaulted, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe them*.

            The people who are skeptical are generally people who have a unique requirement to be skeptical. Namely: Police, and other authority figures that have an ability to punish the alleged perpetrator. For people in those roles, skepticism is appropriate and necessary. I would also add that asking for elaboration on the story is not necessarily skepticism. When the police ask a victim where they were, who they were with, what time the attack took place, could anyone verify these things, etc. it may come across as “skeptical” but ultimately these basic facts are necessary to proceed along the path to justice.

            But I’m not aware of some mass phenomena of men generally reacting to claims of assault from women they know and trust with “Whatever, you’re probably just making it up.”

            *Note that I think this is what explains the completely partisan divide on whether one believed Ford or Kavanaugh. Rs saw Kavanaugh as the equivalent of “their friend” and so were inclined to trust him. Ds saw Ford the same way.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Matt M

            You’re in a social setting like a college or something, something fairly tightly-knit. The gossip is that a guy you know vaguely sexually assaulted a girl you know vaguely. Do you still invite him to parties? Do you still invite her to parties? Adjust this for you knowing one better than the other, liking one better than the other, one being prominent on campus, etc.

          • Matt M says:

            Adjust this for you knowing one better than the other, liking one better than the other, one being prominent on campus, etc.

            So, controlling for five variables that are never, in real life, actually equal?

            It’s too absurd of a hypothetical to answer. I would side with whichever one I trusted more, which almost certainly would map to whichever one I knew/liked better.

            Just like I did with Kavanaugh and Ford. Just like everybody did with Kavanaugh and Ford.

          • dndnrsn says:

            Say that you like both equally, just as a hypothetical. I mean, this isn’t the comment section to complain about silly hypotheticals, eh? If it’s 50-50, do you pick one over the other? Do you flip a coin?

            If the accused is somebody you like, do you consider that maybe liking someone isn’t a great proxy for trusting them? Or that they might be trustworthy in some circumstances, but not in others?

          • Matt M says:

            I mean, this isn’t the comment section to complain about silly hypotheticals, eh?

            Yeah, I know.

            But what I’m saying here is that I would find a way to decide who I trust more, and that this method would be determined based on criteria such as “how long have I known them?” “how much do I like them?” “what is their credibility in various situations?” and NOT criteria such as “Are they male or female?” or “Are they the accuser or the accused?”

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @The Nybbler, @Nabil

            If anything, I feel that I’m the one being motte-and-baileyed. I don’t really think I have, since these comments have mostly come from different people, but still. I have consistently maintained that this is what I believe to be the charitable interpretation of #believewomen, and I have been defending against claims that I read as saying, “I should act as though I have high confidence that someone accused of rape is innocent if conclusive evidence to the contrary is not available.” I have myself argued against the egregious “strong” versions you’re talking about. This is the charitable interpretation that was requested.

            It’s also therefore true that this is not necessarily a representative interpretation, especially if you’re going to be looking at op-eds and twitter, but it’s the sentiment expressed by most women I’ve talked to. See parallels in #blacklivesmatter and Campaign Zero. Just because the people who want something reasonable aren’t the loudest doesn’t mean you get to ignore them and still claim good faith.

            @Matt M

            I’m not aware of some mass phenomena of men generally reacting to claims of assault from women they know and trust with “Whatever, you’re probably just making it up.”

            Then you’re not listening to the people who are telling you about it. And if you add the people who react with variants on, “well, I’m sure you [deseved it] for [leading him on]” it’s an even bigger one that women are and have been trying to tell you about for literal years.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Matt M

            I suppose my steel man of the whole thing is that maybe it should be nudged a little in the direction of believing the person who said the thing happened, if there’s no good reason to disbelieve them. The alternative to this – the status quo in social spaces like a college or whatever – isn’t to cast hate on the victim, necessarily, but to sort of shrug and say “we will never know the truth.” We need to fight our natural preference for “keeping the peace” – I’ve heard both second-hand and first-hand accounts of women being sexually assaulted and doubting themselves in some way.

            To consider that predators aren’t all easily spotted, etc, is a good thing. That I like someone doesn’t mean that they’re incapable of ignoring someone else’s non consent, etc.

          • Matt M says:

            I’ve heard both second-hand and first-hand accounts of women being sexually assaulted and doubting themselves in some way.

            To the extent that “sexual assault” now includes things like “we were both drinking and maybe I wasn’t in a position to consent” and “well I didn’t say no or make any effort to stop the escalation in any way but I still would rather have not it happened,” man, I know this is going to sound cruel or whatever, but maybe in those scenarios, the women should be doubting themselves in some way.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            @Matt M

            Let’s restrict our discussion to cases in which one party claims to have not under any circumstances done anything that could be interpreted as giving consent, then. The fuzzy edges of the definition of rape can be very easily ignored for this sort of discussion.

          • dndnrsn says:

            The stuff I’ve had recounted to me second-hand, or had female friends tell me first-hand happened to them, didn’t fall into that category. My point is that the primary assumption should not be “oh well but women’s studies has decided anything is sexual assault so maybe they should doubt themselves” or whatever.

            Like, I’ve also had female friends recount tales of bad sexual encounters in which the guy was an asshole or whatever, in which they acknowledged they wouldn’t have done xyz if totally sober – without claiming that it was nonconsensual.

            Are there people who interpret the former as the latter? Sure. But the women I am friends with know the difference between those things.

          • lvlln says:

            Then you’re not listening to the people who are telling you about it. And if you add the people who react with variants on, “well, I’m sure you [deseved it] for [leading him on]” it’s an even bigger one that women are and have been trying to tell you about for literal years.

            I’ve listened to such people and continue listening to them, but I haven’t seen them present any actual empirical evidence on this. Mere personal testimony are roughly worthless when it comes to determining the existence of “mass phenomena of men generally reacting to claims of assault from women they know and trust with ‘Whatever, you’re probably just making it up.'” At best, it can determine if there are any men who react in such a way. This is still valuable to know, and it’s not unreasonable to argue that such men shouldn’t react like that, but without actual data gathering, it’s impossible to say whether or not this constitutes a “mass phenomenon.”

            Without actual evidence that this is a real “mass phenomenon,” the charitable interpretation of “believe women” seems rather vacuous.

          • albatross11 says:

            The steelman here seems reasonable. If you come to realize that:

            a. Women often don’t move forward with formal charges after a rape or sexual assault, because the process is brutal even if the bastard ends up in jail.

            b. What limited evidence we have doesn’t support the idea that there are a lot of false formal accusations.

            c. In most social contexts, claiming to have been raped or sexually assaulted is a huge lose for the victim. (Probably worse for men than women, but women pay a large social cost in most contexts.)

            Those things should cause us to assign a somewhat higher probability to the “she’s telling the truth” possibility than we’d normally do. It basically says that any accusation of sexual assault/rape, and especially a formal accusation of sexual assault/rape, is fairly strong evidence (though not 100%) that it really happened.

            Further, most of the known false accusations seem to come down to either mistaken identity (I think common in violent rapes where the victim doesn’t know the attacker), crazy people, or people who are in some really nasty situation and think they may be able to get out of it by making the accusation. If you know the person making the accusation, probably you have a pretty good idea whether they’re crazy or in some desperate situation (pregnant at 16, say) that a rape accusation might save them from. If a woman confides to you that “that bastard over there tried to rape me when we went on a date last year,” and you know she’s neither crazy nor likely to benefit from that accusation, it’s a really good bet she’s telling the truth. Not 100%, not enough to lock anyone up, but enough that you ought to take it seriously.

            All IMO.

          • Matt M says:

            Right. For the sake of argument, let’s travel back in time to the 1970s. An era wherein women were no longer considered to be male property, but sufficiently pre-dating MeToo such that drunken sex wouldn’t be considered rape, etc.

            As far as I can tell, throughout the decade of the 1970s, over 500,000 rapes were prosecuted in the US.

            This means that at least 500,000 victims were believed (by the police, whom I’ve already pointed out should justly have a higher standard of credibility than a general friend/family). Presumably many more were believed enough to start an investigation, but sufficient evidence to convict was not forthcoming.

            So it strikes me as a little bit implausible to say that we had a widespread cultural attitude of “just ignore rape victims and assume they are making it up.” Like, if that were true, how did half a million rapists end up in jail?

          • The Nybbler says:

            @albatross11

            Your point a. does not argue for the proposition. If the process is exactly as brutal for true accusations as false, it reduces accusations but does not change the proportion of true to false. If the process is more brutal for false than true, it increases the proportion of true to false. But if the process is less brutal for false than true, it reduces the proportion of true to false.

            At least one of the mechanisms usually given for the process being brutal — causing the accuser to re-live her trauma — applies only to true accusations.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            This data is from 1989, which is about as old as I can find; hopefully Matt will find this acceptable.

            Link

            Golding et al find that ~2/3 of rape victims who tell a friends or family members about their experience (which is also 2/3) find them helpful.

            That’s a majority, but a shockingly small one. Thanks to Matt, assuming these numbers held in the 70s and assuming that all victims who found the police “helpful” had their cases prosecuted successfully (let’s assume that this generous estimate will envelop all the false accusers), we can calculate that we’re talking about approximately 12,500,000 victims of rape, of whom 7,500,000 told friends/family. Of those, approximately 2,475,000 did not find their friends or family helpful. Feel free to take 50% off of this figure for the sake of argument; it still leaves us with over 1 million.

            To wit.

            It strikes me as a little bit implausible to say that we didn’t have a widespread cultural attitude of “just ignore rape victims and assume they are making it up.” Like, if that were true, how did two and a half million victims receive no support from their families and friends?

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Matt M

            I can’t speak for the people who hold the harder-core versions of the whole thing, but what I remember from university (left-wing school, majority women, yet somehow still guys who were straight-up rapists running free) was that the generic reflex was to not make waves. “No drama” was kind of the rule, or, drama only happened over small stupid stuff. The charming guy who made a habit of going after women who were really, really drunk? Nobody really said much, aside from gossip.

          • Matt M says:

            At this point I feel like we’re kind of talking past each other.

            If your overall message is that the point of “Believe Women” is something like “If a woman you know well and know to be generally trustworthy claims to have been raped, and you don’t know the accused any better or know them to be more trustworthy, you should believe her,” then well, Mission Accomplished (insert smiling photo with banner and thumbs up here). That’s already something I would have done. Every male I know (and I run in some far right circles mind you) would do the same. The notion that anyone would do otherwise is so foreign to me that I find it incomprehensible.

            So the steelman here is irrelevant – everyone already agrees with it.

            But let’s make this more tricky and go back to Ford. I don’t know Ford. I have no particular reason to trust her. The one thing I do know about her is that she is a Democrat and that her closest public ally is Diane Feinstein and that the stated goal of her coming forward is to do damage to a political ally of myself. This is so far away from the hypothetical discussed above, that why should I believe her? It’s a completely and entirely different scenario.

            That said, I totally empathize with and understand Democrats who do believe her. Because the limited information they have on her is that she’s a distinguished professor with no criminal record and no history of mental illness. The accused, meanwhile, is a privileged frat boy with a history of alcohol abuse and a judicial record that clearly establishes he is anti-woman, who was appointed by the single biggest force for evil in the world, Donald Trump. Of course someone with that perspective would reflexively believe her.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            No, Matt, let’s not talk about Ford, and let’s definitely not take the bait in your last paragraph. I’m not interested.

            I’m sorry for being rude, but I can’t help but feel that there’s no other way to address the fact that for you,

            The notion that anyone would do otherwise is so foreign to me that I find it incomprehensible

            Whereas for millions of women, the reality is very different. Model, if you can, the second-order effects of this lack of support, and take those second-order effects into account when judging the likelihood of rape. Given that you’re as willing as you claim to believe women when they tell you they’ve been raped despite not being friends with any people you suspect would rape women, I don’t see why it would be so hard for you to believe them when they tell you that nobody around them cares when they claim to have been raped, despite not being friends with anyone who you think wouldn’t care if a woman they knew were raped.

          • idontknow131647093 says:

            Hoopyfreud

            The problem, IMO, is you are losing people because separating punishment for the action (whether it is prison, losing a job, kicked from school, ostracized from a group) is not really possible.

            If you have a 6 person friend group and Jill accuses Bob of drugging her and raping her, this is now a 5 person friend group. Either Bob is cast out as a rapist or Jill is as a liar. You cannot believe and support Jill without shitting on Bob, and shitting on him heavily. If its a 10 person workplace they both can’t keep working there. Even if its Wal Mart, someone is getting transferred, at the least.

            So, your idea of separating support and belief from punishment is just unworkable.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Matt M

            Your response to my saying I had firsthand accounts from women and secondhand accounts also, in which women had shit that was at a minimum profoundly ungentlemanly behaviour – and honestly I could call sexual assault, legally speaking, in each case – happen and to some extent doubted themselves was to say “well maybe they should.” Perhaps you have a bit of a blind spot here? Like, if a female friend told you a guy semi-forcibly made out with her without asking and she didn’t know if she’d somehow signalled interest by accident and kinda blamed herself, would your response be that? Would your internal dialogue be that? Or if a female friend told you about something worse happening to a mutual acquaintance. Or, hey, a male friend, it’s 2018.

          • Matt M says:

            I’m sorry but I won’t just let Kavanaugh go. Kavanaugh is very important and instructive here as the extreme test case of what’s going on. And it’s relevant to this discussion specifically because people are invoking “Believe women” as a mantra suggesting that one should trust Ford’s version of events over Kavanaugh’s.

            I think this is an obvious motte and bailey situation. The motte being “If your sister says she was raped by a random stranger, you should believe her” (which is completely and totally uncontroversial – everyone either already does this or believes everyone should), with the bailey being “If your brother says he was falsely accused by a random stranger, you should believe the stranger” which goes so strongly against human instinct that demanding it is, quite frankly, absurd.

            dndnrsn’s anecdotes of “I know women who said they were assaulted and nobody believed them” seem to be self-disproving. Because you seem to believe them. Are you the only non-sexist person these women know?

            I’d be really interested in hearing some detailed accounts of women who claimed to be assaulted and were disbelieved by their close friends, family members, etc. Especially if the person they accused was unknown to or disliked by the friends and family. And especially in hearing the logic or explanation for why they didn’t believe (e.g. I am close to a couple people that I wouldn’t believe over a random stranger – mainly because they have a long and established history of mental illness and intentional lying)

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Matt M

            dndnrsn’s anecdotes of “I know women who said they were assaulted and nobody believed them” seem to be self-disproving. Because you seem to believe them. Are you the only non-sexist person these women know?

            That’s not what I said. I said:

            We need to fight our natural preference for “keeping the peace” – I’ve heard both second-hand and first-hand accounts of women being sexually assaulted and doubting themselves in some way.

            Stuff like women who drink too much and get wasted and end up getting fucked by guys who are known slimes (whether or not this falls into the legal category of rape, which differs by jurisdiction, to me it is morally wrong and is why I think of these guys as slimes), and they’re too embarrassed by the whole thing, they don’t want to cause a scene or open some can of worms or whatever, so they find themselves thinking, well, what if they did contribute to the thing in some way.

            With regard to Kavanaugh: sure, that’s a special case. Kavanaugh is weird; reading the Atlantic or the NYT or whatever, you see a lot of articles where the reasoning is basically “this stuff happens to women a lot, this guy is accused of this stuff, therefore you betray women if you don’t defenestrate this guy.” This is weird reasoning, but it makes emotional sense; there’s a lot of women out there who have had bad experiences ranging from “ungentlemanly conduct” to “straight-up rape” and a smaller (since cads are outnumbered by those they take advantage of, and rapists are outnumbered by victims) number of guys who do shit ranging from “shitty dude” to “serial rapist” who never see any consequences. Hey, there’s plenty of male victims out there, plenty of female perps, the former aren’t going to see justice, the latter aren’t going to see consequences. The whole thing stinks. What’s popped up is basically the left-wing version of the 70s-era tough-on-crime “I can’t walk downtown in what used to be a nice city without maybe getting mugged; we should throw the book at these thugs” attitude. It’s a terrible impetus for policy, but the victimhood is by and large real.

            If your brother were accused by a random stranger, you shouldn’t automatically believe the stranger, but you shouldn’t base your thinking on “well, he’s my brother, and this is just some random stranger” because that isn’t especially relevant to whether or not your brother did the thing.

            False allegations of the “definitely-false-got-spotted” variety seem to follow a pattern, and mental illness is definitely overrepresented in such accusers. I imagine there are similar patterns in the “something maybe ungentlemanly gets turned into something Real Bad” (eg, l’affaire Ansari, a decent chunk of campus stuff that ends up on FIRE or wherever), because my experiences tell me that most women do not want to “cause drama” by accusing the guy who actually raped them of doing it, let alone go after the unsatisfying jerk they hooked up with for rape.

            “Believe women” and “believe survivors” are loaded and there’s some stuff getting smuggled in there, but I absolutely support remembering that our instinct is often to keep the peace, that so-and-so being a great guy who’s a blast to be around can still be a rapist or just a shitty dude where sex is concerned, etc.

          • lvlln says:

            I’m sorry for being rude, but I can’t help but feel that there’s no other way to address the fact that for you,

            The notion that anyone would do otherwise is so foreign to me that I find it incomprehensible

            Whereas for millions of women, the reality is very different. Model, if you can, the second-order effects of this lack of support, and take those second-order effects into account when judging the likelihood of rape. Given that you’re as willing as you claim to believe women when they tell you they’ve been raped despite not being friends with any people you suspect would rape women, I don’t see why it would be so hard for you to believe them when they tell you that nobody around them cares when they claim to have been raped, despite not being friends with anyone who you think wouldn’t care if a woman they knew were raped.

            (bolding mine)

            Is this actually true? Obviously polling millions of women would be rather difficult, but I imagine some polls of representative samples could give us a decent indication of whether or not millions of women actually do experience this. Of course, there are something like 3 billion+ women in the world, so it wouldn’t be surprising if even 0.03% (approx 1 million / 3 billion) of them experienced something, but also in that context, whether or not something is a problem for “millions” of people is much less meaningful, since we’d be talking about a small overall proportion of people.

            Now, if we presume that we did actually go out there and poll some significant portion of women and some significant portion of those did say “that nobody around [me] cares when [I] claim to have been raped,” it would certainly raise the likelihood that there’s some cultural problem that the charitable interpretation of “believe women” is addressing. But complicating this would be the fact that believing “that nobody around them cares” is so subjective as to be almost meaningless; the issue could be completely in the woman’s perception – e.g. everyone cares deeply and does everything possible to express this and act on it, but that still fails to live up to the standard that the woman expects – or the issue could be completely in everybody around them – e.g. everyone ignores her and/or calls her a liar/slut who deserved it – or the issue could be somewhere in between. Without figuring that part out, it’d be hard to say whether an effort to modulate the behavior of everyone else – like the charitable interpretation of “believe women” – rather than the perceptions/expectations of the women in question would be worth the costs.

          • Matt M says:

            the issue could be completely in the woman’s perception – e.g. everyone cares deeply and does everything possible to express this and act on it, but that still fails to live up to the standard that the woman expects

            I think this is also a very plausible explanation.

            Volumes have already been written in the pop-psych arena about the differences in communication styles between men and women. I’m thinking specifically about how women talk about problems wanting emotional support, but men usually interpret it as them asking for a solution to a problem and attempt to provide one.

            So to answer dndnrsn’s hypothetical, if my sister came to me with a sob story about an unpleasant experience where she was kinda drunk and maybe sent the wrong signals and it wasn’t outright rape but she feels a little violated, I might very well ask her questions about what she was doing, how she was behaving, etc. I might even say something like “Maybe you should consider not drinking so much in public without friends nearby” or “Some of those things you were doing would definitely be interpreted as sexual interest by the average man.”

            And I can see a world where she responds very negatively to that, thinking that I’m blaming her and not trusting her version of events. But in reality, I’m trying to solve her problem – I’m proposing mitigation actions she can take to minimize the risk of such scenarios occurring in the future.

          • Randy M says:

            The whole thing stinks.

            Hence the push back on the movement perceived to be enabling the stench.

            If your brother were accused by a random stranger, you shouldn’t automatically believe the stranger, but you shouldn’t base your thinking on “well, he’s my brother, and this is just some random stranger” because that isn’t especially relevant to whether or not your brother did the thing.

            I agree with you here, but I think Matt was implying “My brother whom I have experience with being upright and moral”. I have brothers whom it would take a lot of evidence to convince me of wrong doing and others … less so. I have female relations who my first instinct would be to take vengeance on the bastard, and female relations whom I would have to place strong odds on the accusation being a scheme of some kind. Hence why I couldn’t get behind a slogan of “believe all women” even if you can propose a strong version of the movement.
            (I just checked Google auto complete, and “believe a” completes to “all women”; hardly strong evidence, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t mentally inserting the all into the slogan like I feared)

            [eedit]

            the issue could be completely in the woman’s perception – e.g. everyone cares deeply and does everything possible to express this and act on it, but that still fails to live up to the standard that the woman expects – or the issue could be completely in everybody around them – e.g. everyone ignores her and/or calls her a liar/slut who deserved it

            lvlln, like usual, makes a good point. As stated earlier,

            ~2/3 of rape victims who tell a friends or family members about their experience (which is also 2/3) find them helpful.

            But what kind of help are they looking for? Sympathy? If so, it is sad that so many were unwilling to help. Or some specific aid in getting over trauma or seeking justice? In many cases, I don’t know what the family could do.

          • Matt M says:

            I agree with you here, but I think Matt was implying “My brother whom I have experience with being upright and moral”.

            I’ve said it many times already but I will repeat – my mental model of what happens in a he-said/she-said situation is that everyone tends to believe the person they know and trust more.

            Note that I said know and trust. There may be people you know that you have good reason to mistrust. Also, I explicitly reject a “what if you know and trust them equally” scenario as implausible and not actually occurring in real life.

            The alternate interpretation, advanced by the “believe women” crowd seems to be that there are large numbers of people (presumably mostly men) who automatically side with the man/accused over the woman/accuser regardless of personal relationship, trust, etc. And that for the sake of evening things out and making them more fair, men should make a conscious effort to automatically believe the accuser instead.

            I would suggest that recent events confirm my model, and reject the alternate theory. My model is completely sufficient to explain why 90% of Republicans believe Kavanaugh and 90% of Democrats believe Ford. They are siding with their friend and/or against their enemy, period.

            Notice that what we don’t observe is 90% of women believing Ford and 90% of men believing Kavanaugh. The split occurs almost perfectly down party lines and not at all on gender lines. There are a ton of Republican women who believe Kavanaugh, and a ton of Democratic men who believe Ford.

          • dndnrsn says:

            Hence the push back on the movement perceived to be enabling the stench.

            Plenty of the stench is coming from the fact that sexual assault is pretty common and pretty easy to get away with relative to severity. This isn’t some mass hallucination.

            I agree with you here, but I think Matt was implying “My brother whom I have experience with being upright and moral”. I have brothers whom it would take a lot of evidence to convince me of wrong doing and others … less so.

            Say it’s not a brother (who, after all, you’re stuck with) but a friend – someone you voluntarily associate with. A lot of people will give their friends too much leeway, or too much benefit of the doubt, just because they like them.

            I have female relations who my first instinct would be to take vengeance on the bastard, and female relations whom I would have to place strong odds on the accusation being a scheme of some kind. Hence why I couldn’t get behind a slogan of “believe all women” even if you can propose a strong version of the movement.

            Nobody actually believes and practices the strong version of “believe women” or “believe survivors” 100% because if anybody actually believed and practiced the strong version as much as they professed, you wouldn’t for example have abusers and the like existing in predominantly left-wing spaces and even specifically lefty activist spaces, right? The extreme version is a rhetorical device. There’s plenty of versions not the most extreme that are still unworkable or problematic (eg, when due process in courts or universities suffers, it ain’t those dang rich white guys who get it the worst).

          • Randy M says:

            Plenty of the stench is coming from the fact that sexual assault is pretty common and pretty easy to get away with relative to severity. This isn’t some mass hallucination.

            The stench in this particular case?

            Nobody actually believes and practices the strong version of “believe women” or “believe survivors” 100% because if anybody actually believed and practiced the strong version as much as they professed, you wouldn’t for example have abusers and the like existing in predominantly left-wing spaces and even specifically lefty activist spaces, right?

            So you’re saying that when people say “believe women” I shouldn’t believe them?
            Generally my stance is to argue with what is actually said, but not punish people who refine their positions into one actually workable. I think in the end this improves clarity and communication, even if it annoys people up front when they are treated seriously.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Randy M

            The stench in this particular case?

            Generally speaking, sexual assault is pretty common. Common enough that if somebody had shown up and said “Brett Kavanaugh tried to murder me” it would have been considered far less plausible. This doesn’t reflect on Kavanaugh personally; I find the “this happens to a lot of women, so this guy must have done it” reasoning bizarre. But there’s a general stench.

            So you’re saying that when people say “believe women” I shouldn’t believe them?

            Believe that they’re expressing their preferences, but be aware that it is highly unlikely that they’ve grappled with what they’re saying means in any substantive way, unlikely they practice what they preach, etc.

          • Randy M says:

            I find the “this happens to a lot of women, so this guy must have done it” reasoning bizarre. But there’s a general stench.

            When you said “The whole thing stinks” I thought you meant that in particular the line of thinking that punishing one particular guy because some other guys did something bad. Rather than the whole miasma about sexual assault.

            Anyhow, maybe it is a strawman; I almost saw someone seriously argue for Believe Women but it seemed to be quickly walked back.

          • Matt M says:

            Generally speaking, sexual assault is pretty common.

            No it isn’t. Based on the stats I pulled above, current rates are ~40 per 100,000 people per year (in the US)

          • dndnrsn says:

            @Matt M

            Check out the NISVS numbers, though. Most women will experience being groped, etc, at least once; a solid minority of women will be raped. The numbers are a lot higher for men than a lot of people would guess, too.

          • johnstewart says:

            Generally speaking, sexual assault is pretty common.

            @Matt M:

            No it isn’t. Based on the stats I pulled above, current rates are ~40 per 100,000 people per year (in the US)

            I tried to find your citation upthread, but failed.

            But depending on your definition of sexual assault, which as a matter of law includes things that are not rape / penetration, it is vastly more common than that.

            A couple of weeks ago (coincidentally, the day of Ford’s testimony in front of the Senate. Or perhaps not coincidentally), my girlfriend was sexually assaulted, in my presence, TWICE.

            Some asshole was pushing through the crowd at a concert, grabbing women’s asses. It happened to her (twice!), and it happened to at least one other woman, because we saw him as the crowd was getting out, being pushed by someone else reacting angrily. I would be very, very surprised if he hadn’t done it to dozens of other women that night.

            Initially, I wrote it off… usually in a crowd of drunk people, the best thing is to just chill out and let things be, not confront a roided-up asshole. But as I (and my girlfriend) thought about it, we got more and more angry and shaken up. Like, fuck this guy.

            No, it’s not rape, but it literally is sexual assault (4th degree, by WI statute). And it’s the sort of shit that women have been putting up with for decades.

            When I posted details to Faceybookey, asking for details (and asking people report similar issues to the police), one reply was from someone else where the SAME NIGHT, at a different concert, the SAME THING happened.

            It is NOT fucking uncommon.

          • Nornagest says:

            Ass-grabbing and similar is no doubt a lot more common than formally reported sexual assault, but spinning that into some kind of intolerable culture of sexual violence seems like a stretch. I mean, I’ve gotten my ass grabbed by strangers in crowds, several times. All women, as best I remember and could tell at the time.

            There is a pretty big gap between the standards in law and the standards in culture, and I’m not sure changing the culture to more closely conform to the law is the way to go here.

          • johnstewart says:

            @Nornagest

            There is a pretty big gap between the standards in law and the standards in culture, and I’m not sure changing the culture to more closely conform to the law is the way to go here.

            The sexual assault I witnessed, and you seem to be dismissing as no big deal (because it happened to you, and you didn’t seem to mind?), is already illegal.

            You seem to be suggesting that we should keep/support a culture where grabbing people’s asses is considered acceptable behaviour?

            I’m going to have to strongly disagree with that.

          • Nornagest says:

            I’m saying that applying an overly literalistic definition of sexual assault doesn’t tell us much about the actual damage being done.

            The logic I’m reading from your post seems to be something along the lines of: (a) the people coming forward with sexual assault claims seem pretty traumatized, (b) we have a broad definition of sexual assault on the books, (c) we can reasonably project that that definition applies to a lot more people than those coming forward, therefore (d) a lot of people must be getting pretty traumatized, and so (e) we need to enforce those laws more strictly, and encode their expectations more explicitly into culture.

            But there’s a big gap there, and “it’s illegal” isn’t sufficient to cover it. The people you see coming forward aren’t traumatized because something happened to them that broke the law; they’re pressing charges (mostly) because they felt traumatized, and the laws are written to empower them to do so. The definition is broad because it’s difficult to make a narrow one that covers enough, not because every instance of behavior matching it leads to trauma.

          • Controls Freak says:

            I’ve said it many times already but I will repeat – my mental model of what happens in a he-said/she-said situation is that everyone tends to believe the person they know and trust more.

            Note that I said know and trust. There may be people you know that you have good reason to mistrust. Also, I explicitly reject a “what if you know and trust them equally” scenario as implausible and not actually occurring in real life.

            The alternate interpretation, advanced by the “believe women” crowd seems to be that there are large numbers of people (presumably mostly men) who automatically side with the man/accused over the woman/accuser regardless of personal relationship, trust, etc.

            FWIW, I’d like to add a personal anectdata point. I have a brother who was accused of sexual assault (he denied it) and a close friend who told me about an assault that happened to her (and that I was the first person she told). I believed both of them right off the bat, as I know them and trust them. That’s along the lines of Matt’s hypothesis and contrary to his proposed alternative model (this all happened well before #metoo). At this point, I’ll refrain from adding the further information that I acquired as time went on, because I think the claim is primarily concerning the initial reaction.

            Moving from the descriptive claim to the normative claim, I would like some clarification if there are folks who think that my behavior displayed a moral failing.

          • johnstewart says:

            @Nornagest

            I’m saying that applying an overly literalistic definition of sexual assault doesn’t tell us much about the actual damage being done.

            I agree the definition of sexual assault doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the damage being done. “Overly literalistic” is a weird way to describe the actual law, which is pretty simple and explicit.

            I didn’t at all make the points A-E, so perhaps you’re confusing me with someone upthread.

            On B, “we have a broad definition of sexual assault on the books”, I agree if you omit “broad”. I’m not sure why this would be controversial. The assault I witnessed is defined as fourth degree sexual assault, which is a class A misdemeanor.

            The only point I made at all was to rebut the idea that sexual assaults are rare. They’re not. And I’m certain that many more of the ilk I described above do go unreported. They’re not rapes at knifepoint, but they do still cause harm, yes.

            As to point E, I didn’t make it above, but I do agree that we should support a culture where it’s not, in fact, socially/culturally acceptable to grab random people without their consent.

            Do you disagree?

          • Nornagest says:

            If you think it matters what kind of misdemeanor this is, then you don’t understand the point I’m making. Laws like this are broad by design. There’s a lot of discretion built in around them, and the purpose of that discretion is so we can focus our efforts on the cases that actually do damage, which distinction might not be particularly amenable to codification (that is, legible, in the Seeing Like A State sense).

            Maybe your girlfriend’s case is one of the damaging ones and mine isn’t, I don’t know. What I’m saying is that, when dealing with a highly discretionary law, you can’t assume that any incident you can identify that matches its definition corresponds to a significant harm.

          • BBA says:

            @Randy M

            You were right – I think I’m Kevin C’s evil twin. Wait, would that make Kevin good? I know I’m evil but I have a hard time seeing him as good…

            Anyway. I had a bad few weeks mentally, probably an adverse reaction to coming off Zoloft. But I’m feeling muuuuch better now.

          • johnstewart says:

            The point I made was that sexual assault is not rare.

            As I understand you, you’re making the point that “sexual assault” is so broad that it includes incidents where no actual harm was done.

            I’ll concede this is true, yes, even if only tangential to my point. (But I’ll also point out that nearly every aspect of the enforcement of almost any law includes discretion, from the people reporting the crime, to the police investigating, to the DAs prosecuting.)

            @Nornagest

            I’m not sure changing the culture to more closely conform to the law is the way to go here.

            What do you think we should do?

            Again, I would indeed prefer to live in a society where it is NOT, in fact, acceptable, to grope people without their consent. I thought, in fact, we did.

            Again, I ask you, do you disagree?

            Secondly, let me say I think this thread is an example of what those who say “believe women” are looking for to change in our culture.

            I mentioned a scenario in which a woman was groped multiple times, an act which is both illegal and despicable.

            You responded by saying that you had been groped, and it wasn’t a big deal for you, implying you don’t think it should be a big deal for her.

            I do think this is a culture we should change.

            It doesn’t mean I think people should be rounded up to the gulag for slapping someone in the ass. But to dismiss someone else’s description of being assaulted as unimportant, as your first reaction… that seems wrong to me. I think empathy should be our first reaction.

          • dndnrsn says:

            I would agree with johnstewart here. Getting groped shouldn’t be normal, for starters. Worse stuff than that obviously shouldn’t be normal.

            @nornagest

            Consider also that if men were grabbing your ass, men big enough to beat you up, on the regular… You’re ignoring that the average man is a threat to the average woman; it follows naturally that women would find this threatening in a way you or I wouldn’t find a woman grabbing our ass (which has happened to me, although I seem to have attracted more ass-grabbing from other guys than you). And even if it doesn’t bother you as much, why should you have to put up with it, or anyone?

            You keep your hands off of others without their permission; a lot of adults seem to think it’s OK to violate this basic kindergarten rule.

          • quanta413 says:

            @dndnrsn and johnstewart

            I think you’re both fundamentally incorrectly modeling Nornagest here.

            He’s not claiming that ass grabbing in general is harmless or that your (johnstewart’s) girlfriend’s having their ass grabbed was not harmful.

            He’s claiming that some significant number of cases covered by the law would not be considered (very) harmful by the person they occurred to. And thus punishing every incident that fulfills the specifics of the law would be a mistake. Even (or perhaps especially) if that doesn’t involve using the law itself as the punishment. The law system has many built in protections for the accused that don’t exist outside the legal system as well as certain norms of process so if you just move the technical rules of how a specific law is written outside of the framework of the law, that won’t translate well.

            This isn’t a hypothetical. At my university, according to the sexual assault training I am required to report anything that I think might fulfill some criteria of sexual harassment even if the person who might have been harmed doesn’t want it reported and seems unaffected. Even if I hear about it secondhand as a rumor I’m supposed to report it. This is a bad system ripe for abuse.

          • Nornagest says:

            Yes, thank you, quanta has it right.

          • Randy M says:

            Re: culture change to make ass-grabbing less common:
            I agree that this is wrong behavior that probably happens not infrequently. I’m not sure it connects to “believe women” in a legal or administrative rape-accusation context, but more importantly, I think we need to try to dissuade it without convincing women who have been victimized by it to retain trauma from it, which I fear the moral outrage machine might be prone to do.

            @BBA
            You know, there wasn’t much reason to link that here. I wasn’t intending to call you out here or anything. Sorry.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @quanta413

            An ass grab is unlikely to result in a court case, even though it is generally against the law. It’s something that should be dealt with at a less serious level: being told not to do it, social consequences, institutional consequences, etc. People shouldn’t feel OK to grab other people’s asses. A lot of people evidently do; leaving aside locker-room shenanigan type stuff, I’ve had my ass grabbed a few times over the years, primarily by men, but it’s always been some guy I knew who was drunk, and never a guy I wouldn’t have been able to defend myself against. I can imagine it being extremely unpleasant to someone to whom it frequently happens, from total strangers, in public, who is almost always smaller and weaker than the people doing it. So the idea that this thing is not really serious – I think it is serious. It’s not worth imprisoning someone over with the exception of some edge cases, but it is not something that should be commonly accepted as just one of those things that happens, nbd.

            Your university’s framework is bad because it is likely based in a combination of CYA legalism and certain social-studies ideas that are very accurate in perceiving the existence of a problem but generally bad at quantifying it, explaining it, or proposing solutions. All it does is take “the sexual environment is really unpleasant, there’s a fair bit of sexual assault and a ton of asshole behaviour, this seems to fall especially hard on young women” and add to that “every now and then a thunderbolt falls on somebody, could be for actual sexual assault or could be for asshole behaviour or occasionally a false allegation, usually a guy.” The punishment isn’t sure, whether or not somebody did something is only one factor in whether the whole process begins, and universities are not equipped to investigate sexual assault, nor to adjudicate cases, nor to punish felonies, nor to rule over its students’ social lives.

          • quanta413 says:

            @dndnrsn

            No one is saying it is ok to grab a stranger’s ass. Why does this keep coming up?

            Are we all agreeing then? Having universities or companies build pseudo-legal systems to punish infractions is a terrible idea as currently occurring because they are not incentivized to do it right. In a similar way to how universities and companies have only weakly aligned incentives to solve the problem of jerks.

            I honestly don’t see the disagreement except in so much that we may prefer different solutions or may believe the frequency of the problem is somewhat different. The frequency of the problem varies a lot from social scene to social scene.

          • dndnrsn says:

            @quanta413

            There are people who think it’s OK to grab people’s asses; by and large they are those that do the ass-grabbing. It becomes harder to make it clear that this isn’t OK when other people say, eh, no big deal.

          • quanta413 says:

            There are people who think it’s OK to grab people’s asses; by and large they are those that do the ass-grabbing.

            I think there is more than one meaning of “OK”.

            I don’t think most people who grab asses think it’s morally acceptable in general, just like people who commit muggings probably aren’t confused about the broad moral acceptability of their acts. Sure, they can probably justify it to themselves by saying they really needed the money and the other person didn’t, but that is not the same as being in the state of confusion where something is actually unclear.

            They benefit from their actions somehow and think they can get away with it.

            It becomes harder to make it clear that this isn’t OK when other people say, eh, no big deal.

            You have a much kinder mental model of people than I do. I think ass grabbers know what they are doing is wrong and don’t care. They wouldn’t care if everyone said that it was really terrible, the same way that almost everyone lies sometimes even though almost everyone says that lying is terrible.

            They care when they pay a real cost. That’s why it’s so easy to find them in certain social situations. Higher levels of anonymity are good for perpetrators because they can hide more easily. More drugs and alcohol is good for perpetrators because it fucks with memory and inhibition. Large social circles are preferable to a perpetrator because it’s harder for everyone to catch on and disseminate what’s going on.

          • dndnrsn says:

            I think lying and ass-grabbing are different: there are good reasons to lie, and there are understandable times where while the reason isn’t good, it doesn’t really affect anyone else. Nobody grabs asses in order to deceive the political police as to the fugitives in the basement (except in really fringe pornography, I suppose).

            Situations that don’t have comparable non-sexual violations of personal space occur less often. At the university I went to, it was accepted that ass grabs would happen; it wasn’t highly thought of and it wasn’t great to have a reputation as such, but the guy who grabbed my ass? Oh, that’s just how he is (and all the women try to avoid being drunk when he’s around). If he’d tried to fight me, he would have gotten in trouble (unless he’d been so drunk it had been hilarious).

            So while people might consider it not OK, they also seem to consider it not something worth doing anything about.

          • quanta413 says:

            @dndnrsn

            I was talking about unacceptable lies. Not hiding the Jews in the basement from the Nazi lies. I think noble lies are rare, but lots of people tell self-serving lies that harm others.

            The acceptability of ass-grabbing varies vastly from circle to circle. Since I left high school, I’ve spent little time with people that I think would have reacted that way to ass grabbing. It wasn’t even like I made it a goal or something. Neither did I hang out with people who would have found someone who got into fights funny.

            In ten years, I can think of one guy who found it funny who I knew for about a year, but he only serially harassed one other man as far as I know. The other man was the closest thing he had to a friend. It was very strange. So yeah. My social circles have not been like yours.

          • dndnrsn says:

            I think my university experience was fairly typical? The guy who grabbed my ass? That was just what he did. The more serious stuff he did? Got whispered about.

          • quanta413 says:

            I don’t know how typical or atypical it is. I don’t think it’s that atypical but neither do I think it’s so typical that it can’t be avoided or stopped. I also think the people who do it almost always know it’s wrong. They’re not confused on this point. They’re just jerks. Or they’re drunk jerks, in which case they shouldn’t be drinking.

            A few guys I knew in high school certainly grabbed each other’s asses although it wasn’t like the central examples people worry about. I don’t totally get it, but jocks playing ass-grabbing games with each other is a pretty distinct type of behavior.

            Some of them were/are definitely crude to or about women, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them grabbed someone’s ass at some point. But most of the people at my high school didn’t go to university. They stayed home and got a job or a two year degree at the community college, etc. The type of people I’ve met at university have been fairly different. In some ways better and in other ways worse.

            But I still think the people I’ve known even if crude would know they were doing something broadly unacceptable if they grabbed someone’s ass. Even the people who played grab-ass didn’t do it randomly. I don’t remember anyone who would grab just anyone’s ass. And it wasn’t out of kindness or something, because some of them would certainly physically harass or hurt someone just for fun.

        • Gazeboist says:

          Here‘s a good framework for this stuff, or at least for thinking about the ideas pointed at by ‘believe women’. The nuanced/charitable version of ‘believe women’, I think, amounts to the claim that we as a society have lots and lots of mediators, but a shortage of advocates for victims/accusers. There are a few corresponding charitable ‘presumption of innocence’ claims: that there is in fact a shortage of mediators, or that we are moving from an all-defense-advocates situation to an all-prosecution-advocates one.

          As usual, the charitable interpretations are compatible with each other in theory but difficult to reconcile in practice and/or tend to lead to conflict without significantly more care than is generally exercised in culture war discussions.

          • Statismagician says:

            Thanks – thinking about implications now.

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            I really like that. We need all three of 1) advocates for accused, 2) advocates for accuser/victim, and 3) independent truth-seekers.

          • CarlosRamirez says:

            We need all three of 1) advocates for accused, 2) advocates for accuser/victim, and 3) independent truth-seekers.

            Isn’t that just defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges/jury in order?

          • The Nybbler says:

            @CarlosRamirez

            No, in the US system of justice, judges do not act as independent truth seekers. In an inquisitorial system they are supposed to…. but that name has bad connotations for a reason.

          • Gazeboist says:

            Isn’t that just defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges/jury in order?

            Yes, mostly. Judges and juries are less “independent truth-seekers” than they are mediators; part of TUoC’s claim is that an adversarial system with good mediators is much better at finding the truth than an individual or even a team investigating on their own in a general way.

            The ‘believe women’ argument is a twofold claim: first, that the American law enforcement and criminal prosecution apparatus is very bad at its role as an advocate for victims in many rape and sexual assault cases, and second that non-law-enforcement investigations (whether they are formal investigations as to whether a person should be ejected from or rejected by a private group or informal inquiries about a friend or acquaintance) should either emphasize the victim-advocate role or at least de-emphasize the accused-advocate role, relative to current norms.

            Personally, I believe as to the first that American law enforcement displays remarkable incompetence in and disinterest towards its basic task of figuring out who is responsible for a crime and holding the actual perpetrators to account, and I’m not at all surprised that this harms victims as well as whatever random unfortunates the police happen to settle on. As to the second, I think dealing well with sexual misconduct is hard and even harder in informal contexts, and I’m again unsurprised that we consistently get these questions wrong in ways that favor abusers of one sort or another.

          • Matt M says:

            I think it’s very important we look at things, for a second, from the police point of view.

            The police (and other similar such authority figures) have to balance two major objectives.

            1. The pursuit of the truth and the distribution of justice
            2. The effective management of scarce public resources dedicated to objective 1

            It’s clearly a major public benefit that the police not dedicate a great deal of time and effort to false accusations, and to accusations that clearly lack sufficient evidence to secure a conviction. From the “effective management of scarce and valuable public resources” perspective, a false accusation and a “completely true but zero evidence exists” accusation are virtually the same. In both cases, additional expenditures of time and effort are actively harmful to the public at large.

            Therefore, the police are required to engage in a fairly strenuous effort to determine quite quickly whether a crime actually occurred at all, and to make a quick assessment as to whether the circumstances will allow for sufficient evidence to be gathered.

            The unique problem with sexual assault seems to be the strong desire on the part of victims to be trusted in a case where physical evidence rarely exists. But the police aren’t there to be your mental health counselor. Maybe that’s what you need, but that’s not what their actual job is. Perhaps we need to hire public mental health counselors to talk to assault victims before they speak with detectives, I don’t know. But as far as I can tell, if someone walks in and tells a cop “I was just raped,” the cop immediately asking “What proof can you provide this actually happened” is completely and entirely in keeping with the actual job they are required to perform.

            I might also suggest that police who quickly shut down cases where no evidence exists might be doing the victim a favor. As gruff and unfriendly as you think the detective is, how do you think the defense attorney is going to treat you in trial? Would it be good for the mental health of a victim to allow them to proceed in a lengthy trial where the odds of success are zero? Even if it were, would that be an effective use of public resources?

        • AG says:

          They are not mutually exclusive because presumption of innocence is not the same thing as disbelieving the accuser.

          The root complaint has been that reporting rates have been so low because the accuser (of either gender) is treated as a hostile witness by police interrogators, inconsistent with the way they treat accusers for other crimes and those that claim trauma by other means.

          Did anyone claim that the investigators and prosecuting attorneys involved should be filtering their investigations and strategies through presumption of innocence in all crimes? Hell no. Investigators find leads, come up with theories for those leads, and investigate the evidence for that theory until it is disproven.

          When investigators are gathering the facts, there is no obligation for them to treat the victim witness as hostile. Rather, their interrogation approach should be towards drawing out as much information from them as possible, to investigate as leads. The “believe victims” approach stemmed from the norm of police investigators harshly interrogating accusers in ways that would re-trigger their trauma, and so muddling their ability to provide useful information.

          It also stemmed from the norms of institutions covering up allegations, preventing them from getting full investigations at all, such as the current Church or Sports abuse scandals coming to light. To address these issues is not incompatible with the traditional legal presumption of innocence. The accused are still not arrested by the police until a legal case can be made. Brett Kavanaugh didn’t spend a day in jail during this entire thing, as it should be, and is not incompatible with not actively disbelieving Ford’s allegations.

          That’s the motte.

    • dick says:

      Eh, ACs are supposed to be over opposing policy positions. #believewomen is not a policy position, it’s a hashtag. Literally anyone can say anything about it, that’s how they work. Why not just ask for an AC with someone who is willing to argue against the presumption of innocence for rape accusations?

      • Matt M says:

        It sure seems like a whole lot of people using the hashtag want it to be a policy position.

        You could easily frame the AC as something like “In cases of sexual assault, guilt must be assumed and the onus should be on the accused to prove, by preponderance of the evidence, that they are innocent.”

        • dick says:

          You can frame it however you like, but I’m pretty liberal and generally down with #believewomen, and I wouldn’t take that position and I don’t know anyone that would.

          More generally, the idea that someone who is strongly pro-skub is not ideally situated to articulate the anti-skub position is sort of the whole point of an adversarial collaboration. If you imagine yourself to be the the exception to that rule, great, cut out the middle-man and just write both sides.

  47. jhertzlinger says:

    “In some weird reverse of Conquest’s Law, any comment section that isn’t explicitly left-wing tends to get more right-wing over time.”

    Is there a statistical analysis of this?

    Another statistical analysis that’s needed: Is there any difference between the judicial decisions of judges who belonged to fraternities vs. judges who didn’t?

    • albatross11 says:

      It seems to me that it’s not clear how to measure this.

      Suppose on one forum, you have many people arguing for a moderate Republican position, like (say) requiring e-verify for all employers. On another, you have fewer people arguing for that moderate Republican position, but a few arguing for some extreme position (build a wall and shoot anyone who tries to climb it, say). It’s not clear to me which of those is properly considered more right-wing.

      I have a vague model that says that we each have an Overton window of reasonable positions. When we see a people advocating positions outside of our window to the right, we’re likely to feel like the forum is becoming more right wing, even if most of the people on the forum are arguing against those positions. (I’m specifically thinking of Matt M’s arguments w.r.t. immigration, but probably mine on human b-odiversity work the same way.)

  48. Aging Loser says:

    My impression is that the comments here are overwhelmingly Progressive.

    I don’t recall anyone here ever conveying any disturbance whatsoever at the thought of the century-old massive and accelerating female invasion of male space. I don’t recall anyone here ever suggesting that homosexual marriage is merely the final step in the Feminist destruction of marriage.

    Not that women are to be blamed for this or anything else. Men got rid of all intra-male distinctions (priesthood, aristocracy, gentry, industrialist) reflective of natural differences among males, and so it was only to be expected that the male-female distinction would become the final object of contempt.

    Now, as for Adversarial Collaborations — they assume a Utilitarian statistics-gathering commitment from both “adversaries” and are therefore inherently Progressive. No one should imagine that any Conversation Across the Right-Left Divide occurs within them.

    • The Pachyderminator says:

      What do you mean by the “female invasion of male space”? Women in the military? Women in traditionally male sports or on traditionally male teams? Male-identifying people with XX chromosomes in men’s locker rooms? I don’t think there’s any shortage here of people opposed to any of those things.

      • Aging Loser says:

        Law, Medicine, Politics, Accounting, Engineering, Academia, Corporate offices, Security Personnel, Road Crews, Banks — anywhere where the presence of women would have seemed ridiculous in 1913. (World War I was the end of the West; we’re all specters wandering the Undead Lands now.) Female cops and soldiers is just the final snort of contempt.

        It’s kind of funny that the phrase “the Good, the True, and the Beautiful” — indicating everything that Progressives want to destroy — comes from Plato, with his amusing vision of female Guardians and Warriors. But then people ignore Socrates’ accompanying claim (which I don’t accept) that women are simply worse than men at everything, while fitting into the same natural categories.

        • Evan Þ says:

          Yes, by 1900’s standards we’re all Progressives, just like by 1850’s standards we’re all radical abolitionists, and by 1200’s standards we’re all radical pacifists and secularists (even us professing Christians). So? If you want to change our standards in any of those directions, please offer an argument or point us in the direction of an existing argument.

        • Deiseach says:

          Law, Medicine, Politics, Accounting, Engineering, Academia, Corporate offices, Security Personnel, Road Crews, Banks — anywhere where the presence of women would have seemed ridiculous in 1913

          Oh sir, I’m afraid you leave it much too late by 1913! Women were firmly established in medicine by then; I would quote you a story from 1894 about the disgraceful influx of female persons into the healing arts (advance warning for chunk of text to follow):

          It was, then, with a feeling of some surprise and considerable curiosity that on driving through Lower Hoyland one morning he perceived that the new house at the end of the village was occupied, and that a virgin brass plate glistened upon the swinging gate which faced the high road. He pulled up his fifty guinea chestnut mare and took a good look at it. “Verrinder Smith, M. D.,” was printed across it in very neat, small lettering. The last man had had letters half a foot long, with a lamp like a fire-station. Dr. James Ripley noted the difference, and deduced from it that the new-comer might possibly prove a more formidable opponent. He was convinced of it that evening when he came to consult the current medical directory. By it he learned that Dr. Verrinder Smith was the holder of superb degrees, that he had studied with distinction at Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and finally that he had been awarded a gold medal and the Lee Hopkins scholarship for original research, in recognition of an exhaustive inquiry into the functions of the anterior spinal nerve roots. Dr. Ripley passed his fingers through his thin hair in bewilderment as he read his rival’s record. What on earth could so brilliant a man mean by putting up his plate in a little Hampshire hamlet?

          But Dr. Ripley furnished himself with an explanation to the riddle. No doubt Dr. Verrinder Smith had simply come down there in order to pursue some scientific research in peace and quiet. The plate was up as an address rather than as an invitation to patients. Of course, that must be the true explanation. In that case the presence of this brilliant neighbour would be a splendid thing for his own studies. He had often longed for some kindred mind, some steel on which he might strike his flint. Chance had brought it to him, and he rejoiced exceedingly.

          And this joy it was which led him to take a step which was quite at variance with his usual habits. It is the custom for a new-comer among medical men to call first upon the older, and the etiquette upon the subject is strict. Dr. Ripley was pedantically exact on such points, and yet he deliberately drove over next day and called upon Dr. Verrinder Smith. Such a waiving of ceremony was, he felt, a gracious act upon his part, and a fit prelude to the intimate relations which he hoped to establish with his neighbour.

          The house was neat and well appointed, and Dr. Ripley was shown by a smart maid into a dapper little consulting room. As he passed in he noticed two or three parasols and a lady’s sun bonnet hanging in the hall. It was a pity that his colleague should be a married man. It would put them upon a different footing, and interfere with those long evenings of high scientific talk which he had pictured to himself. On the other hand, there was much in the consulting room to please him. Elaborate instruments, seen more often in hospitals than in the houses of private practitioners, were scattered about. A sphygmograph stood upon the table and a gasometer-like engine, which was new to Dr. Ripley, in the corner. A book-case full of ponderous volumes in French and German, paper-covered for the most part, and varying in tint from the shell to the yoke of a duck’s egg, caught his wandering eyes, and he was deeply absorbed in their titles when the door opened suddenly behind him. Turning round, he found himself facing a little woman, whose plain, palish face was remarkable only for a pair of shrewd, humorous eyes of a blue which had two shades too much green in it. She held a pince-nez in her left hand, and the doctor’s card in her right.

          “How do you do, Dr. Ripley?” said she.

          “How do you do, madam?” returned the visitor. “Your husband is perhaps out?”

          “I am not married,” said she simply.

          “Oh, I beg your pardon! I meant the doctor — Dr. Verrinder Smith.”

          “I am Dr. Verrinder Smith.”

          Dr. Ripley was so surprised that he dropped his hat and forgot to pick it up again.

          “What!” he gasped, “the Lee Hopkins prizeman! You!”

          He had never seen a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in revolt at the idea. He could not recall any Biblical injunction that the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse, and yet he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed. His face betrayed his feelings only too clearly.

        • Law, Medicine, Politics, Accounting, Engineering, Academia, Corporate offices, Security Personnel, Road Crews, Banks — anywhere where the presence of women would have seemed ridiculous in 1913.

          Surely an exaggeration. Arguably the most important political figure of the 19th century was Queen Victoria. Women were rare in academia in 1913 but not nonexistent. A Supreme Court case in 1873 held that it was not unconstitutional for Illinois to deny law licenses to women, but there were already a few female lawyers in the U.S. by then, and in 1879 a law was enacted allowing female lawyers to practice in federal court anywhere in the U.S. In 1879 a woman argued a case before the Supreme Court.

          So “unusual in 1913” yes, ridiculous no.

    • Plumber says:

      <b

      “….I don’t recall anyone here ever suggesting that homosexual marriage is merely the final step in the Feminist destruction of marriage…..”

      @Aging Loser,

      Fine I’ll say something about “homosexual marriage”, I don’t like the anti-democratic way it was made legal in California, as I think judicial fiat is dangerous.

      As for the ‘destruction of marriage’?

      That was done in the 1970’s by divorce.

      The cultural shift towards the common acceptance of parents getting divorced was a great evil that the homosexuals had little to do with, and what’s worse is how fast the divorce wave was.

      I well remember how within just a few years almost all of the parents of my classmates in elementary school got divorced.

      I haven’t forgotten and I haven’t forgiven.

      That was the un-fought “traditional family values” fight that should have been, but instead the silence was deafening.

      Everything else “family values” is far too little, and way far too damn late.

      • HeelBearCub says:

        I think judicial fiat is dangerous.

        I think in other contexts, your complaint would be that the courts are too deferential to the powerful (where powerful has various meanings).

        • Plumber says:

          @HeelBearCub

          I think in other contexts, your complaint would be that the courts are too deferential to the powerful (where powerful has various meanings).

          I think that comments like that (which I didn’t catch earlier) make me strongly suspect that you’re a wiser person than I am.

    • David Shaffer says:

      @Aging Loser

      What harm is caused by the “female invasion”? If a woman wants to do a job, and is qualified to do so, the benefit to letter her is obvious. What’s the harm? Or if you’re going to claim that it’s not harmful but should be considered bad anyway (because of purity, authority or some other supposed moral foundation?), why should we care about a rule if breaking it hurts no one? And if she’s not qualified, then let her lack of qualifications keep her out, not her sex.

      Why should we value marriage? There are actually answers to this one-some people consider it worthwhile for religious reasons, or they want to publicly celebrate their love, or they want a committed partnership to raise their children in. But none of these reasons sanction the law getting involved with a marriage (unless you want the law trying to “protect marriage” by forbidding divorce, which results in horrifying levels of abuse and very little benefit to either parents or children), and none of them are eroded by gay marriage, polyamorous marriage, or any other kind of unconventional marriage being added to the legal roster! The one “harm” done is that by expanding the definition of marriage, we weaken the old idea that there is a sanctified tradition of marriage. But you’ll have to explain why that tradition is worth more than the happiness of millions if you want to use that as an argument.

      Certainly the erosion of male-female distinctions is a continuation of the trend of eroding distinctions in general; you got that one right. But you seem to view it as a mistake. Certainly it can turn into a mistake, by assuming everyone has to do the same things, rather than simply being given the option, or by becoming so “pro-woman” that it metastasizes into misandry, as has happened among SJs and their ilk. But the basic principle of giving people opportunities, and valuing people regardless of class/sex/whatever other distinctions is sound; indeed, the very evil of social justice is that it disregards this, and becomes a leftist counterpart to genocidal fascism.

      And if statistics are “inherently Progressive”, you’re not making a case for the Right buddy.

  49. Nicholas Weininger says:

    Content note: potentially CW loaded issue.

    What is the redeeming social value of jock culture? What are the gains to human flourishing from rewarding those who excel at competitive team sports? Of those gains, which would be the hardest to replicate with competition and/or teamwork in other areas?

    I’m familiar with the idea that you get better soldiers by rewarding jockish accomplishments– “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton” and all that. I think this has probably gotten less important given the current state of military tech and will likely continue to get less important, but I can see its historical force. Is there anything else?

    This is an honest question and I apologize if it comes across as trolling. I am attempting to do a Chesterton’s Fence analysis on my strong and likely nerdiness-biased prior, strengthened further by recent news events, that jock culture is basically worthless and evil and that, for example, high schools and colleges should not field competitive sports teams.

    • Squirrel of Doom says:

      Participating in sports is one of the best things young people, maybe especially boys, can do.

      You get physically fit and healthy, you learn to cooperate an work as a team with others, you learn to work hard to achieve goals, and you typically make a lot of friends.

      • Nicholas Weininger says:

        Physical fitness can be achieved without the team aspect, though, and without the competing-against-other-teams aspect, and without lionizing quarterbacks and the like. Cooperation and hard work can be taught in plenty of non-athletic contexts. What’s so special about sports teams relative to these alternatives?

        • albertborrow says:

          Humans are stupid apes and we don’t often visualize non-athletic competition in the same way that we visualize competition that is a struggle of strength. This seems like the most obvious explanation to me, anyway. “Mental fortitude” remains strictly a metaphor in our heads, even if it represents a very real aspect of mental effort.

          • nweining says:

            Well, this makes me even happier with the way that shows like the Great British Baking Show are making such visualizations possible, then.

        • Squirrel of Doom says:

          Well, we’re primates and have strong urges to compete in hierarchical structures. Especially for boys/men, since girls/women really prefer to mate with those on top of those hierarchies.

          So those structures might as well be established in a way that makes people physically healthy.

          You have a theory that all these good things could be done in non-athletic ways. I can’t really think of any practical examples?

        • idontknow131647093 says:

          Sports teams combine all the things into one while also providing happiness incentives to do things most people otherwise find boring and tedious.

          Physical fitness. Yes you can workout without a team goal, but having teammates pressures you into being better and provides an accountability mechanism (you don’t want to be so slow that your team loses a game because you at ice cream instead of running windsprints).

          Your assertion that cooperation and hard work can be taught in non-athletic contexts, to me, seem like an assertion with very thin evidence. The sort of compelled group projects in school don’t teach cooperation so much as they engender resentment. When it comes to group work in the work environment you also notice that this is more of a resentment-generating environment, and groups without enough ex-athletes IMO tend to not work well together (probably a reason that impedes female advancement in the workplace).

          In addition sports, due to the coach-captain structure teach both leadership and respect for authority at the same time.

          One last thing is that the objectivity of sports having winners and losers is particularly important. A lot of the world only has nebulous feedback, and feedback that can be easily thought to be biased. When you lose a game or even make an error on a single play, you get the feedback and can discover where to improve. Other group projects usually don’t have this kind of individual + team accountability.

          I feel like your comment essentially is similar to a person asking, “why do full body lifts like snatch when you can do iso machines for each individual muscle worked in the snatch.” To whit I would respond, not only is that going to take 10x as long and be way more boring, it won’t have the same effects.

        • quanta413 says:

          I’m going to say some things below in a negative way, because if all the standard justifications didn’t click for you and you’re an unusually nerdy guy you may need to hear the justification more bluntly.

          To be blunt and uncharitable, many men (especially when they are young) are somewhat inclined to violence and have poor self control. They’re probably much more violent than you are (just guessing from how you sound very mystified by all this). I’m probably much more violent than you are, and I think I’m probably a little below the median for a male.

          Sports provides a socially approved outlet for young boys and men to direct their energy that trains them to work together towards a purpose, keeps them in good shape, and keeps them off the streets. It helps them develop self control and channel competitiveness, violence, etc. into something productive. If you think jocks are a negative culture, you probably aren’t realizing how negative a culture can get with young men who don’t have adults supervising them for vigorous exercise 10-20 hours a week. Lord of the Flies isn’t too far off.

          What is your proposed alternate activities that these kids will do instead of team sports? Individual athletes aren’t known for sterling behavior.

          I was one of the nerdiest people at my high school, and I wrestled. It was one thing keeping me sane, because school was nowhere near challenging enough. In retrospect, wrestling was probably the healthiest thing I did during high school.

          I think you’re assuming that football causes bad behavior, but I haven’t seen any real evidence that kids who play high schools sports behave worse than the similar type of kids who don’t. At my school, it was the opposite. Sports at least forced a kid to have a C-average and got them to show up somewhere every day at a fixed time of their own free will. Unlike school which is more like prison in that you have no choice. I know some kids needed the motivation of a sport to not just fuck off.

          EDIT: For clarity, I think my reasoning only really applies strongly to high school and earlier sports. I don’t think college sports are as easy to justify. Anyone who makes it to college is already a bit older, and probably somewhat together already. And college sports interfere more with academics.

        • Matt M says:

          The fact that sports pits young people in zero-sum competitions against each other is a feature, not a bug.

          Suffering failure and defeat is a huge part of life and youth sports is a great way to experience and get accustomed to it in a low-risk environment early on. I think a whole lot of the mental health problems experienced by a whole lot of young people these days are attributable to an inability to handle explicit failure – largely due to the fact people are now sheltered from it until very late in life.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            My son is too young for team sports yet (although we’re planning to find him a baseball team next year) but I have noticed his attitude has improved markedly since he started playing video games and chess. He used to get very upset when things did not go his way. But once he started losing games over and over again, and working to eventually overcome the challenges, he has a healthier attitude towards failure or disappointment in other aspects of life. (usual disclaimers, N=1, etc)

          • Nick says:

            Tangent, but Conrad, how’s the chess going?

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            Good! He’s still very much into it and has not been losing too horribly at the school chess club (keep in mind, though, he’s the only kindergartner). It seems like it’s sticking. He understands the rules and knows what all the pieces do. He didn’t really get into lichess, though. I set up an account for him, but I think he prefers the physical board. If he’s using electronics to play a game, he wants to play a real video game.

            Thanks again for your extremely informative post a few weeks back.

          • Nick says:

            Good to hear!

      • INH5 says:

        You get physically fit and healthy, you learn to cooperate an work as a team with others, you learn to work hard to achieve goals, and you typically make a lot of friends.

        On the other hand, it can also give you brain damage.

        • Conrad Honcho says:

          If we’re talking about the physical and emotional well-being of young people here, does this matter? Does anyone get hit hard enough to get brain damage outside of the NFL?

          • Brad says:

            I’m not an expert but my understanding is that repeated concussions are a serious concern. I haven’t been involved in high school sports in *redacted* decades but back then people were definitely getting concussions despite decidedly not being at the professional level.

        • Squirrel of Doom says:

          As a European immigrant to the US, I have learned to enjoy watching American Football, but I find it insanely violent and would never have considered playing it even before the concussion data came out.

          So we can agree on that particular sport.

    • Rack says:

      Sure, there are negatives (there are almost some downsides to everything), but the positives I’ve experienced over the years of both participating in and watching competitive sports have been massive. Sometimes – like now – when it seems as if the world of “important” things is just too relentless and loud to deal with, focusing on competitive sports can be one of my few psychic escapes. In fact, some of my most potent memories are of the extreme joys of victory and agonies of defeat. I feel I would be diminished without those emotional experiences.
      “Of all the unimportant things, football is the most important.”

    • albatross11 says:

      There are a lot of people for whom team sports are a huge source of joy and meaning and success. For a fair number of people, their best years center around being the captain of the football team in high school, before they (say) try to walk onto the football team at State and work their asses off for a couple years before flunking out, and end up working in their dad’s construction company. Some people derive great joy from being on a sports team with their buddies, and make lifelong friends there. All that seems like a pretty good argument for why it’s worthwhile.

      • Nicholas Weininger says:

        The joy people derive from playing sports is a fine argument for pickup games. It’s not a good argument for the Friday Night Lights type experience, with cheering sections and ingroup-outgroup dynamics and all that.

        • CarlosRamirez says:

          There aren’t any stakes to pickup games, it doesn’t provide the same adventure and thrills of formally competing in front of hundreds. I’m not sure there are other things that do, and I say this as someone who isn’t a jock at all, and who in fact, is quite prejudiced against them.

          • Sebastian_H says:

            You may not be playing in high quality pick up games. Also, long standing pick up games in a neighborhood have almost all of the same characteristics of league games with the added value of binding you to the neighborhood.

          • Tarpitz says:

            It seems to me worth noting that America is very unusual in the extent to which high school and college sports are spectator activities. School sports matches in the UK are typically attended by perhaps 10-20 parents of the players and no-one else. The only televised university sporting event I can think of is the Oxford vs. Cambridge boat race. I don’t think this makes the matches less competitive, or reduces the team-building or fitness benefits. I do think it substantially reduces (though certainly doesn’t eliminate) the link between sporting ability and social status.

            I assume this is largely a product of America’s size. There are very few places in England that are not within an hour and a half’s drive of a Premier League football team, and even fewer that don’t have at least a lower level professional outfit nearby. There’s no need for amateur sport to meet the demand for live viewing. For many Americans, on the other hand, there’s no professional sport within a reasonable travel distance.

        • Orpheus says:

          I believe that in many ways this sort of thing is a replacement for the kind of militant religion that went out of style in the modern age. Once you can’t get up on a pulpit and say “Those godless (Catholics/Lutherans/Sunnis/____) are corrupting our youth and poisoning our cattle, let’s kill them all!” you need to direct those energies somewhere.

    • Robert L says:

      You need to clarify your hierarchy of values. What is “human flourishing” (and why does proficiency in killing people on battlefields contribute to it, as you seem to imply)? There is a strong tradition in Western culture (Homer, Pindar, the ancient and modern Olympics) for regarding the pursuit of sporting excellence as an end in itself, not a means; if you think it isn’t you have to explain why not.

      High schools and colleges tend to have symphony orchestras as well as sports teams. Can we re write your post to ask what the gains are to human flourishing from rewarding those who excel as first violins and if not, why not?

      • albatross11 says:

        There are certainly times when the continued flourishing of *your* society depends on the efficient killing of enemies on battlefields. Maybe not *human* flourishing, but the humans who end up owning your stuff / running your country will be the ones who had people working for them who were good at killing enemies on battlefields.

      • Nicholas Weininger says:

        Excellent first violinists tend to be less violently aggressive toward their fellow human beings, and musical excellence is arguably cognitively and culturally superior to athletic excellence.

        • Uribe says:

          Perhaps first violinists are less violent than quarterbacks. That is yet to be proven. Even if violinists are less violent than football players, there remains the question of whether these football players would be less violent if they didn’t play football.

    • Hummingbird says:

      While the question of ‘what is the positive value of jock culture?’ is not synonymous with the question ‘what is the positive value of masculinity?’, they are similar enough to inform each other.
      Enumerating the many negative aspects of masculinity would be tedious, so I’ll not mention them here. Positive aspects of masculinity, applied in appropriate situations, could include independence, self-reliance, hard work, and confidence. These aspects are not exclusive to masculinity. Furthermore, while comradery is not exclusive to men, the comradery of male friendship that expresses these values can be quite valuable. Those who grow up with similar kinds of cultural pressures (parental expectations, gender roles, media consumption) may find solace and companionship with each other.
      I consider ‘jock culture’ to be an unreflective breed of masculine bonding that fails to purpose positive human and masculine aspects toward positive ends, and a breed which often becomes self-glorifying.

    • Uribe says:

      1) Learning to work with a team.
      2) Learning to lead a team.
      3) Becoming goal oriented.
      4) Learning to postpone rewards until after hard work has been done.

      As for why these benefits may be hard to replicate in other areas, I think the main issue is motivation. For those who enjoy playing sports, they will voluntary and happily participate. Many youth find sports more fun than much else on offer.

      • nweining says:

        If that’s the case, then team sports should need less of a social status reward than other fields of team-oriented endeavor in order to induce participation (since you get intrinsic fun instead of status). Instead, they almost always get more status reward, which is part of what I’m trying to figure out how people justify.

        • CatCube says:

          You’re saying this like you think that there’s a Council of Status somewhere that is deciding to award social status to sports stars for some inscrutable reason, even though they don’t need to award social status to get people to play sports. This is exactly backwards.

          That people like to join sports voluntarily is the reason that people care about sports and that caring is why there’s high social status attached to those who are good at it. (That people like to watch TV and movies as a primary form of entertainment is the reason that people care about actors.) If nobody cared much about sports, nobody would care much about those who were good at them.

        • idontknow131647093 says:

          You have the causation backwards. Being good at sports conveys social status because everybody else knows that sports has all these good qualities and are extremely physically demanding in ways that most people know they are not able to do.

          Even outside of team sports this is obvious. If your friend runs a marathon you are impressed because (most likely) you find the idea of training for a marathon both boring and painful.

        • Sebastian_H says:

          Doesn’t it potentially work the other way? Society has learned to reward a play activity with high positive externalities by giving it high status? I say this as definite non jock. And I’m not at sure it’s right.

    • sentientbeings says:

      I think that to get a worthwhile response to your question, you would need to define what “jock culture” is.

      As a general note in relation to cultural/behavioral subsets, I think that you have a methodological problem in asking:

      What are the gains to human flourishing from rewarding those who excel at competitive team sports?

      I can think of a few off the top of my head that are pretty easily substantiated. It might not really matter though, because you might have erred in suggesting that this question needs to be “decided,” or by anthropomorphizing society into an agent. Competitive team sports are an example of people doing and being rewarded for a thing that people like.

      Based on the way you phrased your comment (e.g. “redeeming”) I think that it is possible that you have attached the term jock culture to some already-decided problem space, rather than define the culture space and then evaluate it. That would make it basically a straw man and susceptible to a lot of argumentative flaws, like goalpost-shifting, appeals to purity, and motte and bailey arguments, etc.

      • nweining says:

        Fair enough, I’ll make the implicit definition explicit: jock culture is the culture in which those who excel at competitive team sports get exceptionally high social status, status which is not just about people liking sports but is reinforced by a whole institutional structure. In particular, I’m asking what upsides of this grant of social status could possibly outweigh the downsides, notably

        (a) that social status given to sports-excellers isn’t given instead to those who excel at arguably more prosocial, culturally enriching, and productive activities
        (b) that sports-excellers, even more than other high-status figures, seem to be very commonly able to use their status to get away with violating rules of decent social conduct that others couldn’t get away with.

        Because the high social status flows largely from the institutional support given to competitive team sports, and is not simply an emergent cultural phenomenon, it could be changed by changing those institutions; so it’s worth asking why we shouldn’t urge agents who could change those institutions, e.g. school administrators who could deemphasize their athletic programs, to do so.

        • Matt M says:

          (a) that social status given to sports-excellers isn’t given instead to those who excel at arguably more prosocial, culturally enriching, and productive activities

          I want to pick on this a little bit.

          Would you consider acting in a play to be a prosocial, culturally enriching, productive activity?

          Sports is entertainment. The same as theater, painting, or playing the piano. Based on its obvious popularity, it’s a very important and valuable form of entertainment in our society.

          It’s also more organized and hierarchical and easier to objectively quantify skill than other forms of entertainment. In other words, the best football players in high school are clearly the best players, so it’s easy to grant them status, whereas “who is the best actor in the theater troupe” is often harder to quantify. Whether any of your classmates has the potential to become a world class violinist is more difficult for the layman to assess. Other forms of entertainment seem to be a bit more “random” and hard to predict – especially when “high status athlete” in the NFL looks a lot like “high status athlete” in high school, whereas “high status musician” doesn’t look like a great violinist, but looks more like Lady Gaga or Kanye West or whoever – both of which I’m assuming weren’t obvious prodigies (thereby commanding status) in their teenage years.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            Your basic point here is right, but your comparison of sports to football is wrong: whether a classmate could be a world-class violinist may be difficult to evaluate, but it’s not the correct comparison to “who is the best football player in high school”–you should compare “who is the best violinist in school” to “who is the best QB in school”, both of which seem like easy things to determine; or you should compare “which classmates could go pro at violin” to “which classmates could go pro at football”, both of which I’d guess are difficult for laypeople to judge.

          • Matt M says:

            both of which I’d guess are difficult for laypeople to judge

            I don’t think this is quite right, but I admit to being completely ignorant as to how high-level musical talent is identified and selected.

            But in football, I think people generally know who has great potential and who doesn’t. Detailed statistics are kept, even at the high school level. College scouts/coaches start showing up at games. And most importantly, you can watch them dominate the competition with your own eyes. Even the casual sports fan can observe a dominant performance.

            I don’t think the casual listener can determine which violinist is the best. Not even close.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            Again, there’s conflation here: of course coaches and scouts have the ability to identify pro-level talent, but those aren’t average laypeople. I’m sure a music scout (is there an actual name for such a person?) could identify top violin talent as well.

            A high school QB is dominant against other high school teams; the relevant comparison for violinists is, could you tell which 8-year-old violinist is on a path to the pros by comparing them against the other musicians at their school; I would bet that laypeople would reliably recognize that difference in talent.

            More generally, this list of musical child prodigies suggests that there is plenty of information available to determine which children will be professional-level musicians at an early age.

        • Civilis says:

          Coming from a very decidedly non-jock, I think there’s a false assertion that high social status for athletes is an artificial construct. Especially at the adolescent level, social status comes from your peers; it’s not something that society (in its form as the school administration) can provide via institutional support, and often clumsy attempts to build status by the administration backfire. The high school I attended made an effort to give social status to non-athletes in the form of recognition and awards, and in general it did not last (and when it did, it was for the same reason sports were popular). That institutional support exists for sports is because sports are popular, not the other way around.

          Athletics is a natural magnet for social status. To start with, it’s something that is generally enjoyable for most people to watch, and the social status of a particular sport correlates with the amount of public enjoyment from spectating. Spectating in most major sports is an active activity; you’re cheering and waving and working with your fellow fans to show support for your team. Athletics is also something that most people can recognize skill at both the individual and team levels via objective criteria. Athletes are physically fit, and physical fitness is definitely a factor in physical attractiveness, and in high school physical attractiveness definitely corresponds with social status. And the team forms a natural nexus for a social network to build around, and the size of the social network is almost certainly a strong factor in the value of the network.

          I attended one high school football game, and although I was bored, I could understand why so many of my classmates were there; it’s an experience you can’t replicate otherwise. What are the other options for social status? The mental competitions are not as entertaining for outsiders and certainly don’t permit much active spectating. I did attend a number of school theater productions, and the more talented student actors did have some social status, but since there is no real active participation, there’s nothing to the experience that can’t be easily replicated by watching a movie. I would suspect the same applies to band concerts, with even less opportunity for an individual to stand out.

          • March says:

            This is such a weird post for someone like me who comes from a country where high-school sports are just not a thing.

            Sure, students jockey for social status. But athletics is done outside of school. If you’re a great soccer player, sure you may be getting high social status at your soccer club. You may spend hours upon hours training and need to get exemptions from school to be able to work around training and tournament schedules. You may be scouted by a big-league club and get ridiculously rich at an age where you’re still too stupid to do anything useful with that money.

            But it doesn’t really give your rock-star status like it does in the US. More the other way around – that new rising star in the junior leagues? Oh yeah, he sits three rows behind me in history class. Didn’t even know he was doing so well at his sport; good for him.

            The only people who go to people’s matches are their friends, their parents and people who are somehow fond of watching 14-to-18-year-olds play sports, which is a total niche hobby even for the so-called ‘national sports’.

            Same at the college level, really.

            So the fact that this is treated like some inevitable feature of human nature and not a result of a very particular culture is very strange to me.

          • Glen Raphael says:

            @March:

            This is such a weird post for someone like me who comes from a country where high-school sports are just not a thing.

            To be fair, it’s not universally a thing in the US either. For instance, my US high school had a football team and some people probably cared about it but I never attended a game, had no interest in doing so and had no idea who the players were – their lives never intersected with mine. I cared about the chess club (which I competed in) or the theater crowd; others cared about glee or the student paper. Different groups had different status hierarchies, most of which didn’t much overlap with athletics.

            Sports movies are necessarily told from the point of view of people who care about sports so they overemphasize sports importance in the culture at large. Maybe at a tiny school in a tiny town there’d be nothing to do but watch the game and the players would be in your classes and their winning or losing would matter, but at a bigger school they can get lost in the shuffle…and schools have gotten bigger over time.

          • Civilis says:

            I think to some degree that the popularity of sports in the US at the high school level is to some degree self-perpetuating. When you enter high school, the students in the higher grades who dominate the school’s culture are obsessed with sports, and so in order to get in at the bottom of the social ladder you need to be ‘in’ with them as well. By the time you are in your senior year, you are dominating a social hierarchy founded on sports (assuming you’re a member of the ‘in’ crowd).

            To some degree, the idea of school spirit might be akin to a junior version of nationalism/patriotism; both of which seem very differently between the US and Europe. Perhaps European schools don’t need to emphasize school unity like American schools, or in the absence of student athletics it takes a different form. It could also be that athletic fandom has a much more lower-class feel to it in Europe; it’s something the class of people that run the European education system don’t do.

            Different groups had different status hierarchies, most of which didn’t much overlap with athletics.

            My experience in this regard might be abnormal; our high school quarterback at a large high school was a gifted classmate of mine in elementary school (and was taking at least one AP class at our arch rival school his senior year)… and also the class president. The football coach also taught AP Calculus.

          • March says:

            @Glen Raphael

            We don’t really have chess clubs or theater clubs or glee clubs in school either. The student paper is usually kinda anemic. We have PE, but that’s just all kinds of random sporty stuff a couple of hours a week – even if you’re the star soccer player scouted by a real club, that’s not going to give you that much of a lead in, say, baseball, except in general conditioning and probably physical talent. But if you’d go full-out in a PE soccer match, people would just think you a show-off. Kids do all these things in their spare time, with kids who aren’t necessarily in their school. I guess US high schools have a bit of the mall-like quality of US shopping areas – the tendency to gather functions that we spread around the city into a large building?

            @Civilis

            Interesting phrasing: “Perhaps European schools don’t need to emphasize school unity like American schools, or in the absence of student athletics it takes a different form.”

            In my experience, European schools (or rather the schools in my particular European country) just DON’T emphasize school spirit and that’s just fine. School is just something you go to. If you’re lucky, it’s a decentish experience with enjoyable enough things to learn and nice enough classmates. There’s a little school spirit in the fact that kids are naturally going to think their school is ‘better’ than that ugly school a couple of neighborhoods over or that weird school at the other side of town, but that’s basically meaningless.

            In fact, I wouldn’t know why American schools would ‘need’ to emphasize school unity at all. Seems to me they just choose to.

            Athletics fandom is kinda class-segregated here, that’s true. Soccer is the ‘national’ sport but elites tend to favor tennis or hockey. But all these sports have their own clubs not linked to any school.

          • idontknow131647093 says:

            I agree civilis. The idea of the “dumb jock” is more a myth than a reality. Coaches at my school were more likely than average to be in the top 25% of teachers and also more likely to teach AP classes. My AP STEM classes were about 50% male, but of those males it was easily over 75% jocks.

            TBH, I feel like this is an attempt to defend a straw man that doesn’t really exist. An ethereal “jock culture” that mostly shows up in movies and the nightmares of people who over-dramatize high school (remember if you ask any actress she will tell you she was awkward and unpopular in HS, even if that is not possible).

          • The Nybbler says:

            Plenty of dumb jocks in my high school. Wouldn’t call the gym teachers the brightest bulbs either. And the jocks would indeed have raucous drunken parties, resulting in us losing a few football players each year to drunk driving accidents. Much like Kavanaugh, only dumber and with more sex (I went to a public school) — much boasted to, but at least some actually happened based on the girls who got pregnant.

    • axiomsofdominion says:

      The vast majority of commenting posters are not sincerely interested in answering your question. They support “jock culture” purely for irrational reasons and their sole purpose will be to engage in apologia.

      Jock culture is like the pick up artist movement. The only real benefit to being involved in that culture is the act of asking out many girls. Basically faking confidence till you make it. There are a whole bunch of associated parts of the culture that are either neutral, or more likely negative and which could be removed with minimal loss of function.

      Similarly with jock culture the hazing and hierarchical aspects, the worship of athletes and the focus on physical achievement are all negative aspects of the culture. The positive aspects generally consist of enjoying physical activity, which could easily be achieved through casual jogging or friendly pick up games where who wins is not a central focus, social interaction and learning to organize with others, whose viable substitute goods are too numerous to list, and some measure of learning to deal with hardship and engaging in dreary activity in the pursuit of a long term goal, the practicing part basically.

      None of those 3 major benefits are exclusive to activities with excessive competitiveness, douchy behavior, nasty social dynamics, an excessive focus on physical ability, etc. The overall environment has some positives but it also has a lot of not strictly necessary downsides that you could remove without harming the goals.

      Notice that most of the right wing commentators who post here actually ignored your actual question, about the benefit of jock culture, by discussing the merits of sports, particularly team sport.

      • John Schilling says:

        The vast majority of commenting posters are not sincerely interested in answering your question. They support “jock culture” purely for irrational reasons and their sole purpose will be to engage in apologia.

        This is in no way helpful.

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          Well perhaps the implication of insincerity was unkind. Its true though. as evidence by them answering a question that wasn’t asked. I guess the sticking point is whether it was necessary and thus passed the 2/3 test?

          • Robert L says:

            Patronising and wrong. You seem to have only noticed one of the three questions posed in the second paragraph of the original post.

          • Nicholas Weininger says:

            For what it’s worth I actually think most of the respondents have in good faith addressed at least some important aspect of the question I was asking, so I’d rather encourage them to keep doing so, thanks.

      • Nornagest says:

        Sure is a lot of bare assertion here.

      • Glen Raphael says:

        Jock culture is like the pick up artist movement. The only real benefit to being involved in that culture is the act of asking out many girls.

        FWIW, briefly studying and engaging with PUA made it easier for me to hug my own parents and made me more comfortable speaking in public. Physical confidence is a trainable skill; being more physically demonstrative in a way that makes people comfortable around you is also a trainable skill. These kind of skills – learning how to present yourself more attractively – can enrich your life even if you never use them for “asking out many girls”.

        • Sebastian_H says:

          Pick up artist culture has a lot of horrible things about it, but one of the reasons why it works at all is it encourages you to try something lots of times—and you stop being afraid of it as much.

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            I’m not afraid of writing and I used to do a lot of it when I was younger. However, I sucked at it really badly, didn’t improve, and so gave up on it.

            Doing something a lot of times doesn’t build mastery if you do it wrong every time. Repeated failure without success can also drain your confidence, or you could end up pouring a lot of time into a project that will ultimately fail.

            Possibly Related, one of my friends was great at getting dates because he was decently attractive and had a good job, but bad at interacting with women: he went on something like 50 or 60 first dates in a year, and one second date, and he immediately fell for that girl, who immediately milked him for cash for her college charity. That was about 2 or 3 months.

            I had another friend who had a different problem, which was that he liked to text girls too much in the first couple dates. So the girl would always lose interest. This problem was immediately solved when he started dating two girls at the same time and could not respond to all of their texts: he ended up dating the girl he texted less for about 4 years until it blew up. Now his personality is “IDGAF” and he runs what is effectively a soft harem.

            But them doing the same thing a bunch of times yielded approximately zero results until the stars aligned, even though both were confident, even though neither one was afraid.

            PUA is about making the stars align, so your relationship choices are no longer built of desperation, as both of theirs were. My first friend is married to the only girl who would have him, my second friend can make his own choice (but now in his early 30s the choices are rapidly becoming worse).

    • Eric Boesch says:

      Pro athletes are incredibly good at their jobs. (It helps to have coaches and a skill that can be measured fairly accurately.) They are usually much better at what they do than other people would otherwise believe possible. There aren’t many other fields where the best are so obviously so good at what they do. Watching athletics gave me a higher opinion of what people are capable of than I would otherwise have.

      A few scandals are imaginary — remember the scandal that there was exactly one murder by a college lacrosse player in recent memory, which just meant college lacrosse players have a very low murder rate? Other college athletic scandals are just the consequence of athletics reflecting a wider cross section of humanity than colleges in general. Except for sexual assault, which is almost impossible to compare in a fair way because standards in and outside college differ, violent crime is much less common on college campuses then among people of the same age who don’t go to college. Before accusing college athletes of being more criminal, try comparing them to their old high school classmates instead of just their new peer group in college.

      In high school I felt football and basketball helped people. The players could show how tough they were without picking fights. You hear occasional notorious examples of people being let off from criminal behavior because they were athletes, but I believe the much more common case is of people trying to keep clean so they can stay on the team. Granted, football in particular is looking a lot more questionable now, given the rate of traumatic brain injury.

      • Matt M says:

        a skill that can be measured fairly accurately

        IMO this is a huge part of it. Not only is it easier to just eyeball who is a good quarterback vs a poor one (as compared to assessing who is a better actor, musician, or even CEO), but the whole point of the enterprise of sport is repeated experimentation to confirm this fact.

        This is interesting, appealing, and exciting even to nerdy types who are not at all athletic themselves (like me). IMO, sports is the entertainment branch of science. It’s incredibly well suited to geeking out over.

    • arlie says:

      I share your priors. In particular, I would like to know why, in high school, people who had talent for sports got public recognition for doing their thing, as well as school support in doing it – whereas people with any other talent sometimes got school support (they did attempt to teach those of us academically inclined, after all), but got almost no recognition.

      I understand it better with regard to professional athletes – there’s money to be made, and you need star players to make it. With most of your population already socialized to enjoy watching a bunch of fit people kick a ball around, and care about the outcome, someone’s going to provide them with games to watch, and lionizing the athletes will be part of the process of extracting money from the fans.

      All this is separate from jock culture. I distinctly recall reading claims of an entirely different, gentlemanly athletic standard, which I find much more palatable than a culture of hazing, blackout drinking, sexual braggadocio, and rape. (I honestly can’t see any redeeming value in that second version of “jock culture”. Much of it seems to me like good reason for jailing the perpetrators.)

      I don’t think the boys being publically recognized in my highschool conformed to significant parts of the hazing, drinking, and rape variant of jock culture – but I was in the library, not in the locker rooms with them, so how can I be sure?

      But theoretically at least there seem to be 3 questions
      – recognizing amateur athletes, particularly in schools – especially if not recognizing anything else
      – professional athletics
      – “jock culture” in its (to me) disgusting expressions, many of them occassionally resulting in actual criminal charges.

      It seems to me that you were asking about the third of these, and most of the answers so far are about the first – unless they are quietly assuming that the third is required to enable the first.

      • Gazeboist says:

        When and where did you go to highschool?

        In my experience in suburban NJ a bit less than a decade ago, nobody got school-wide recognition for anything. Band kids knew who the good musicians were, art kids knew who the artists were, academic kids knew who the smart kids were, and $sport players knew was best at $sport. There was overlap (my general-nerd-and-academic social circle was packed with fencers, for example), and not every possible interest was popular enough to sustain a dedicated social group, but there was never a single “status” hierarchy that you could use to rank individual students, much less social circles. Some people had trouble making friends, but that was usually because they had trouble making friends as an object-level problem, not because they had failed to accrue a sufficient number of status points on an invisible scoreboard in the hallway.

    • What is the redeeming social value of jock culture? What are the gains to human flourishing from rewarding those who excel at competitive team sports?

      One possible answer is that it’s a competitive activity in which there is an objective definition of success–you either did or didn’t win the game, jump higher than your rival, or whatever. To the extent that a significant part of the inputs to success in sports are also inputs to success in other activity, it then generates a useful signal.

      I’m thinking about an argument I saw somewhere wrt college recruiting of athletes. The claim was that successful athletes, very few of whom end up as professional athletes, have higher incomes than other people because the same characteristics that gave them success in sports led to success in their later careers. Colleges like to have successful alumni since with luck they will give money to the college.

      Failing to engage in sports is a very weak negative signal, since success in sports also depends on irrelevant characteristics, such as how tall you are or how fast your reactions are. But success may still be a pretty strong positive signal.

    • ana53294 says:

      I don’t know how teen team sports work in other countries, but in my hometown, team sports were a good way of motivating young men who did not care about grades to study harder. Essentially, most of the teams had a requirement to pass all the courses, and they would kick out or exclude players from games until they got their grades in order.

      The team spirit and the motivation of being there for the team would make these kids work harder in their studies, and get their high school diploma. After which they can go on to get their apprenticeship, which is less academically oriented.

    • SamChevre says:

      I’m very much a non-jock, so this is to some extent an argument for a culture I don’t share.

      Competitive team sports are valuable in the following ways:
      1) They have objective standards for success which everyone understands. This is important, because it enables several of the items below.
      2) They require working as a group, including doing things with no personal payoff to benefit the group. Objective standards mean this benefit is non-arbitrary.
      3) They teach people to be part of a hierarchy that’s not designed to be good for the guy at the top, but for the group as a whole. Again, the objectivity helps here.
      4) They require a lot of things with indirect, long-term payoffs (lifting weights for football players for example). This helps people develop ta long-term, indirect-payoff structure of thinking and habit.

    • idontknow131647093 says:

      Jock culture, as you define it, is a result of sports being the closest thing we have to a pure meritocracy, outside of other bullshit, and people naturally gravitate more towards things that are meritocratic. On top of that, it is the most entertaining meritocracy to see in action. People also give great chess players great praise, its just that chess is boring to watch (generally). In modern times people who are good at video games are gaining social status (and money) from people watching them play and paying for merchandise. But you know what no one watches? The old farts division of Fortnight. Because no one cares about 50 year olds who would get smoked in the real games.

      • Gazeboist says:

        Commentary and analysis often help with entertainment value, and chess and other intellectual games are often much better analyzed after the fact, where you can easily do things like run through alternative lines of play and what-if scenarios, while physical sports and competitive video games are usually at least somewhat, and often very, amenable to live commentary.

    • pdbarnlsey says:

      the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton

      I read recently, in the Economist I think, that Eton lacked playing fields at the relevant point in time.

      Slightly more relevantly, I think there’s a deep-seated need among humans, especially human males to compete and to engage with the physical competition of our chosen champions. There’s too much parallel evolution of relatively similar physical competition to believe otherwise.

      You could probably shape the form this takes somewhat (less concussions! less nil-all draws!) but it’s hard to see Chomsky’s “why can’t people be as interested in the rules of politics as they are in the rules of baseball” generalising outside some pretty specific audiences, some of whom do treat politics more-or-less exactly like a sporting league.

      This bothered me a lot in high school (college sports aren’t a big thing in Australia) and rather less as a grow more distant from the whole thing. We/I probably spend too much time thinking about the historical significance of Lebron James, but I like doing it, and it’s not obvious that i’d otherwise be devoting my mental energy to James Baldwin or whoever.

      Competition, exercise and teamwork are good skills to develop, and we probably don’t get to choose the activities which most effectively motivate them. But we should remain aware of our collective tendency to overly venerate sports and sports people and encourage other avenues where practical.

      • AlphaGamma says:

        I read recently, in the Economist I think, that Eton lacked playing fields at the relevant point in time.

        The first documented ruleset for what is now called the Eton Field Game is from 1815. The better-known (largely due to its weirdness) but much more rarely played Eton Wall Game is significantly older (and has always been played on exactly the same site). The regular cricket match between Eton and Harrow was first played in 1805.

        So while Wellington almost certainly didn’t say that, and Eton may well not have had official playing fields,* team sports were an important part of life at Eton and other English public schools in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Though I don’t think they really became part of the curriculum, as opposed to a recreation organised by the pupils, until later in the 19th century- probably as part of the tendency of reforms begun by Thomas Arnold at Rugby from 1828, though Arnold himself didn’t make sport part of the curriculum.

        *Westminster School’s playing fields, at Vincent Square, were claimed for the school by William Vincent who was headmaster between 1788 and 1802. The area had previously been waste ground used by Westminster pupils as a sports field.

      • moscanarius says:

        To make it even funnier, here’s Wiki:

        He went to the diocesan school in Trim when at Dangan, Mr Whyte’s Academy when in Dublin, and Brown’s School in Chelsea when in London. He then enrolled at Eton College, where he studied from 1781 to 1784.[12] His loneliness there caused him to hate it, and makes it highly unlikely that he actually said “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”, a quotation which is often attributed to him. Moreover, Eton had no playing fields at the time. In 1785, a lack of success at Eton, combined with a shortage of family funds due to his father’s death, forced the young Wellesley and his mother to move to Brussels.[13] Until his early twenties, Arthur showed little sign of distinction and his mother grew increasingly concerned at his idleness, stating, “I don’t know what I shall do with my awkward son Arthur.”[13]

        A year later, Arthur enrolled in the French Royal Academy of Equitation in Angers, where he progressed significantly, becoming a good horseman and learning French, which later proved very useful.[14] Upon returning to England in late 1786, he astonished his mother with his improvement.[15]

        So actually, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the riding fields of France 🙂

    • Plumber says:

      “….What is the redeeming social value of jock culture? What are the gains to human flourishing from rewarding those who excel at competitive team sports?….”

      @Nicholas Weininge,

      My co-workers often talk about “the game” ( baseball, basketball, football, and sometimes the Olympics and the Worldcup) which usually bores me, but the last couple of weeks they talked about something else: Kavaugh.

      The sports talk was far less divisive, and I see the value in it now.

      I was dubious that the “culture war” much existed for anyone besides professional pundits and internet commenters, but I was wrong.

      Sports keeps the peace.

    • J Mann says:

      I was never a jock, and spent most of my time orthagonal to or oppressed by jocks (usually the former), but here’s my steelman.

      1) Most jocks seem to enjoy it relative to the alternatives. For some of them, that’s what they have – we nerds go on to good colleges, make six figure salaries, and then we look back and say “Hey, that one thing you’re good at that we’re not? Let’s stop valorizing that.”

      2) The people who enjoy watching sports get enjoyment out of it.

      3) Many of the values encouraged, like fitness, teamwork, hard work, and the ability to lose without having a breakdown, are admirable. Especially the ability to lose. One of the best things anybody ever learns in my kids’ martial arts classes is when they don’t get a belt. The kids cry, the instructor encourages them, they practically ooze out of the class like they’re a human puddle, and they come back stronger the next time.

      4) I wonder if you’re blaming the wrong thing. One thing we’ve learned from MeToo is that successful politicians abuse women, successful media figures abuse women, successful agents abuse women, and successful comedians abuse women. From what I read, Judge, Kavanaugh, Squi and the rest were smart, good looking hard working strivers with chips on their shoulders because they didn’t go to St. Albans with Al Gore. Judge’s memoir makes a good case that their youth was a wasteland of alcohol abuse from which some emerged and some didn’t. Is the problem really that they played basketball, or was it that they were good looking, had enough money to afford cars and kegs, and were smart enough to think they knew everything? If you took basketball away, do they get more respectful?

      It’s a little bit like astrology – if you can look at Louis CK’s, Matt Lauer’s, Alex Kozinksi’s, Jian Ghomeshi’s behavior and tell me which ones played sports and which ones didn’t, then you might be more right that sports is a substantial part of the problem.

      5) Now if it turns out the problem is masculinity, not athletics, then maybe they’re covariant, but you would still need to look at whether reducing sports would reduce masculinity.

    • AG says:

      Sorry to get into definition debate territory, but I think there are benefits to separating “sports culture” from “jock culture.” The former is what most people here have enumerated as the benefit of promoting sports.

      But “jock culture” has a “jocks vs. non-jocks” exclusionist bent to it that is not so foundational to sports culture. In addition, to be a jock is to take a particular attitude towards sports that is not strictly necessary for athletes. Think of how sports anime aren’t really a thing in the US, and how few of said sports anime feature jock characters, just those enthusiastic for their chosen sport. For that matter, consider how there are swaths of Olympic athletes and sports that do not fall to jock culture.

      So I’m all for sports culture, and have participated in it myself a few times. But to extoll the athletes in a specific way within the limited context of a single school, as superior vs. some other groups of their fellow students, rather than characterizing the various extracurriculars as apples and oranges, that’s dangerous.

      (Hah, so we can look at High School Musical as the solution.)

    • NostalgiaForInfinity says:

      I’ve seen people argue that having many subcultures in a society is a positive because it allows more people to be/have higher status. So one benefit might be to allow less academically gifted people to be lauded and excel at something noteworthy. The smart kids might have a worse time at school, but they’re likely to earn all the money and do higher status jobs as adults.

      This isn’t an argument in favour of jock culture (as you’ve defined it here) getting quite so much prestige. But it’s an argument against abolishing it I think.

    • Statismagician says:

      This is a definitions problem, and one which I think I might actually be pretty well positioned to address.

      ‘Jock culture’ as portrayed in teen movies really is complete unjustifiable garbage. Similarly, there is absolutely no excuse for the amount of money spent on high school and college sports in America… except as a specific reaction to the specifically-dysfunctional state of American education, where the local school board will only fund a new football field and college alumni donations spike after a major win. Blank-slate, yes, obviously this is crazy, but [coordination problems].

      Athleticism, the real thing Hollywood started out exaggerating for [melo]dramatic effect and has now somewhat poisoned, has nothing to do with either of those. I was fortunate enough to spend my childhood and adolescence very involved in fencing, which is a direct personally-competitive sport centered around deliberate physical violence, with a great deal of ambiguity on certain rules questions, and with a small enough population base that you see the same faces over and over at all competitive events. This ought to lead to the most toxic possible atmosphere, if all athletic competition looked like Hollywood thinks it does, but actually what happens is that pretty much everybody is broadly on good terms with everybody else, referee incompetence mistakes are treated as a natural obstacle, and nobody holds much of a grudge except in really egregious cases.

      I kept myself fit, made quite a few good friends, acquired a reasonable degree of physical confidence, and if sabre duels ever come up, I’m all set. I’m also the sort of person who posts on this board and has a statistics pun as a user name; I was and am very much a gigantic nerd. Nerdiness and athleticism have basically nothing to do with each other before probably the 1950s, and are only presently opposed to each other because of accidental Hollywood meddling.

      If you want to substitute ‘the set of all things weird about America and American education since WWII’ for ‘Hollywood meddling,’ I won’t object. Basically, fitness is tautologically good; persistence is obviously but not quite tautologically good; confidence is good when present at a vaguely realistic strength and direct competition is useful for building tuning mechanisms for this; and there’s no particular reason why competition has to lead to combat social or otherwise. All of these things come from athleticism. Jock culture is largely an artificial perversion of athleticism.

    • nimim.k.m. says:

      I don’t know it this in support or against to your claim, but it appears that the particular institution / subculture / collective memetic phenomenon in American high-school / college level educational institutions that is commonly referred as “jock culture” is to a large extent an uniquely American creation, and consequently it is fairly unnecessary to remove team sports altogether. Some elements and characteristics are common throughout because cultural osmosis and human biology, but there are several degrees of freedom how the biological predispositions manifest.

      Thus, removal serious organized sport at the colleges and high school level would bring the level of jock-ishness of American jock culture down towards the baseline of “culture of young human [males] who like team sports”. The ambitious ones who would be captains of school football team could still be captains of $local_football_clubs_age_appropriate_youth_division.

    • rlms says:

      As has been said, “jock culture” is an American thing. In the UK (at least in my experience) it’s pretty rare for people to spectate high school/university sports games unless they are e.g. related to the players. Being good at sports doesn’t really convey status.

    • Gazeboist says:

      What is “jock culture”, here? What are the traits that are a fundamental part of the culture, and thus not subject to change except by destruction of “jock culture” generally, which lead you to believe that people, generally, will be better off if “jock culture” is cut out of the existing cultural ecosystem and prevented from perpetuating itself and/or evolving?

    • nweining says:

      (apologies for account variance; stupid WordPress assumptions about what account I am appear to be different across different machines)

      Thanks to all respondents for a very interesting and stimulating discussion with many thought-provoking common themes. This is one of the reasons I love SSC. I am persuaded by the totality of the responses that reducing institutional support for team sports to European levels, removing what really does seem to be a US-specific level of school sponsorship in particular, would address my objections, and that there are more significant upsides to having competitive team sports than I thought, though I think still outweighed by downsides. To be fair, though, some of the downsides may also diminish over time; it may well be, for example, that school sports team members enjoy less impunity in the US today than they did 35 or even 20 years ago.

      I should have clarified that I was referring *only* to team sports: I have *zero* objection to people being socially rewarded for running faster, or swimming faster, or fencing better, or playing better tennis than anyone else. These kinds of athletic endeavors provide many of the upsides noted insightfully by respondents (incentive to build physical fitness, objectively measurable excellence standards, winners and losers, ability of spectators to gawk admiringly at extraordinary achievements, requirement to delay gratification and control oneself in order to achieve excellence) for those people who are less inclined to programming contests or chess games or science fairs or the like, and they do not have the downsides I see.

      The team part is specifically what I object to because the team part is what gives rise to ingroup-outgroup dynamics. I like competition as much as any free-market type, I just want people discouraged rather than encouraged to participate in contests of Our Guys against Those Other Bums. It corrupts the spectators at least as much as the players– and this is true in Europe too at the professional level, cf. football hooliganism. It is indeed extremely popular entertainment, but I think it’s bad entertainment that civilized society should discourage, as we now discourage e.g. cockfights.

      • Matt M says:

        I should have clarified that I was referring *only* to team sports: I have *zero* objection to people being socially rewarded for running faster, or swimming faster, or fencing better, or playing better tennis than anyone else.

        I don’t really understand this at all. The only reason “jock culture” doesn’t permeate individual sports quite as much is because individual sports are less popular. But there are definitely certain schools and environment in which the swimmers or tennis players or golfers or whoever are just as much entitled jerks as football or basketball players are at others.

        Team sports have the obvious benefit of teaching teamwork in a way that individual sports cannot. This is quite a valuable skill and probably especially valuable for people who may be enjoying more status than we might think is reasonable. The star running back still has to drop back into pass protection when the coach tells him to, in order to help the team win. Individual sport athletes will never be faced with a demand like this.

        The only real point I see in your favor is that you seem to be concerned that some team sport athletes may be “free riding” off the success of the team – that is to say that they aren’t particularly athletic themselves, but derive status solely from being on the team where other great athletes are present. I think this is a minor concern. On any school sports team that actually derives status, a minimum level of performance is required. Truly poor performers are cut. And among those who do make the team, not everyone is given equal status. People generally understand and appreciate that the star players are mainly responsible for the success, and give them higher status accordingly.

      • AG says:

        Problem: even sports that don’t have a team kind of have a team, in that tournaments have limited slots per school. Jock culture for non-team sports still emerges via who is varsity, who can letter, etc. And then you still have sport-vs.-sport as much as sports-vs.-non-sports outgrouping.

        I’d even argue that jock culture emerges in non-sports, in the extracurricular is large enough. You can certainly have a jock culture within marching band, or drumline.

  50. Squirrel of Doom says:

    Honest question: What is patriarchy?

    I mean, what kind of thing is it, in the mind of people who talk about it?

    For example, I doubt anyone thinks it’s an organization, with a Head Patriarch at the top making decisions.

    When people say they want to destroy capitalism, I have a decent understanding of what they mean: Abolishing private property and a free market economy. Which amounts to a different legal system.

    I don’t think that’s what most of “Patriarchy” is though. It seems, from usage, to be something more metaphysical, similar to “evil” or “the devil”. Things that I don’t think can ever be defeated or “smashed”.

    I understand that different people can mean very different things with the word. I’m not terribly interested in what people who hate it think others mean. But what do those who actually use the word mean by it?

    • benwave says:

      When I use the word patriarchy, it’s generally as a short hand for something like ‘the ensemble of power relations that, after controlling for various other factors, deliver power to men at the expense of women in aggregate’ – which is a bit of a mouthful. It’s also not, as you rightly identify, a very concrete and touchable thing.

      A couple of specific examples of individual power relations that may be included in the above: Cultural norms allowing female workers to be saddled with more work than male workers without complaint. Existing disparities in current wealth between men and women. Bias in hiring women to board and executive positions.

      • albertborrow says:

        I feel like it is really easy to turn this into a motte and bailey, even unintentionally. When I hear the full explanation of the term, it seems perfectly reasonable, but when people blame their problems on patriarchy the actual resentment is funneled towards men rather than some kind of vague cultural stew.

        • benwave says:

          It probably is. For better or for worse, it seems to be a feature of human beings that it is more effective to get them to identify with a tribe and fight against other tribes than it is to get them to cooperate with people of other viewpoints and identify and solve systemic problems.

          • toastengineer says:

            Every time I look at feminist ideas, I get the impression of something a lot of very smart, good people built carefully for a good cause, paying careful attention to the reality around them, a very very long time ago, and then a million self-centered idiots took over and shat all over it with hatred and bigotry and advertising and self-serving lies. When I listen to the broad strokes it always sounds like “oh, that’s an interesting perspective, I want to understand this,” and then I focus in on the details and it turns out the entire edifice is made of crap.

            I know a woman who was raised in the USSR, who emigrated to escape an abusive husband, who seems to have grown up in what I presume the word “patriarchy” originally meant. She is pretty much completely dependent on her husband; he husband asked her “what’d you do with the phone bill I gave you” and she said “I threw it out, why did you expect me to know what to do with that?” She doesn’t understand and doesn’t seem to understand anything or have any interest in understanding anything outside of cooking and cleaning and sewing.

            So if something like that existed in the U.S. at some point, and a bunch of people got together to organize to get rid of it, well, I’m damn glad they did.

    • bullseye says:

      I’m not an expert on this, but I’m a liberal and I have a lot of leftist friends.

      The gist of it is that patriarchy is part of how we treat each other. So “smash the patriarchy” amounts to “let’s fix some problems with our culture”.

      Patriarchy includes explicit sexism (e.g., the idea that women shouldn’t be in charge). It also includes more subtle things. Men tend to interrupt and talk over women, with the result that the men talk more, even as they perceive the women as talking more. Men tend to take women less seriously than they would take another man in the same position.

      Patriarchy is also the idea that we have to fit our gender roles. I mostly see this presented as something that’s harmful to men (“patriarchy harms men too”), because we’re required to bottle up our emotions in an unhealthy way in order to show toughness.

      • The gist of it is that patriarchy is part of how we treat each other. So “smash the patriarchy” amounts to “let’s fix some problems with our culture”.

        You’ve got to admit that things would go so much better for them if they actually said that. Smash the patriarchy probably started as a pretty good rallying cry and they ideologically had a definition of patriarchy that made sense, but eventually a word becomes too tarnished with the implications it has built up and needs to be retired.

      • ec429 says:

        Men tend to interrupt and talk over women

        In my experience, men (or at least, me) tend to interrupt and talk over other men as well. Anecdatally I’ve not noticed any tendency for men to be more interrupt-y towards women, and if anything there are a few rules in (at least English) culture pushing the other way, quite possibly as a cultural adaptation to the comparative unwillingness of women to interrupt.

        In short, the gender differences are mainly in the interrupter, not the interruptee.

        I’d be interested to see studies examining this, if they exist.

        • Ketil says:

          Gender caricature: men gain status from dominance, women gain status from networking. Boys who are bullies will beat you up, girls who are bullies will sabotage your reputation. Men interrupt in part to show off or to gain social status.

          Yeah, it’s obviously not as simple as that.

          • Matt M says:

            Men interrupt in part to show off or to gain social status.

            Agree. I find it entirely plausible that men interrupt women more often than other men. Not in the “they are intentionally being sexist” sense but in the sense of “Men interrupt people lower status than them, and more often than not in professional environments, the higher status people happen to be men” sense. Whether the fact that higher status people are usually men is attributable to sexism is open to debate, of course, but I don’t think the interrupting part is. I would imagine that men interrupt female CEOs no more frequently than they interrupt male CEOs.

          • baconbits9 says:

            @ Matt M

            That position doesn’t square with the anecdotes that I have heard, the ones I hear are typically from women who ought to be status equals or superiors by rank in their company getting interrupted by guys. Specifically I have heard complaints that (some) men do it more often and are more dismissive as they get promoted especially if they are promoted above the men.

          • John Schilling says:

            the [anecdotes] I hear are typically from women who ought to be status equals or superiors by rank in their company getting interrupted by guys.

            “Ought to be status equals or superiors” according to whom? Just themselves?

            If you’re saying that they objectively are equals and superiors by rank and tell anecdotes about how they don’t have the status that corresponds to that rank, then, first, “equals and superiors” suggests mostly not actual superiors and we’re talking abut relative status within the same nominal rank. Second, there’s an implied assertion that status is supposed to exactly track rank, which is rarely the case. And third, yes, getting away with interrupting people is a status move or at least a status metric, and that’s not likely to change. And letting yourself be interrupted, costs status.

            If the choice is between teaching the interrupters to not do the thing that actually is giving them status, and teaching the interruptees to not do the thing that is costing them status, then one of these things is a lot more likely to work than the other, and that’s going to remain true no matter how stridently you point out the unfair gender balance of the two populations.

          • baconbits9 says:

            “Ought to be status equals or superiors” according to whom? Just themselves?

            According to their title with the company and or seniority/experience.

          • baconbits9 says:

            If you’re saying that they objectively are equals and superiors by rank and tell anecdotes about how they don’t have the status that corresponds to that rank, then, first, “equals and superiors” suggests mostly not actual superiors and we’re talking abut relative status within the same nominal rank. Second, there’s an implied assertion that status is supposed to exactly track rank, which is rarely the case. And third, yes, getting away with interrupting people is a status move or at least a status metric, and that’s not likely to change. And letting yourself be interrupted, costs status.

            This is an unfair characterization as you are functionally assuming that interrupting means higher status. This might be the case for some situations (I would guess the military) but is clearly not the case for others (my kids interrupt me more than I interrupt them) and is at least not the case for my wife (the complaints of whom I am the most familiar) who does not complain that the highest stats men interrupt her (the CTO and CEO specifically.

            Further the complaint isn’t that men interrupt her its that men interrupt her and the other women more than they interrupt other men*. Preventing a lower status person from interrupting you would prevent a low status man from interrupting a higher status man, but not the reverse. If men are interrupting here but not interrupting other men then the only conclusion is that those interrupting her are higher status than she is but lower status than the other men, and that women are therefore at the bottom of the status heap in terms of interruptions. This would be odd because the women I know don’t claim to be on the bottom of every status heap in the office, but this one in particular.

            *Taking for the sake of argument that their observations are generally true and not biased which is clearly an option.

          • John Schilling says:

            This is an unfair characterization as you are functionally assuming that interrupting means higher status.

            I am assuming that interrupting means higher status in roughly the same way that giving orders and having them obeyed means higher status. Because it does, and not just in military hierarchies. And that’s what interrupting is; a special case of giving an order and having it obeyed. “I order you to cease talking about what you want to talk about, and listen to me talk about what I want to talk about”.

            If you do that and get away with it, then you have more status than you otherwise would have. Even if you are a child talking to a parent. If you let someone interrupt you, then you have less status than you otherwise would have. Even if you are a parent talking to a child. Each successful interruption, transfers a quantum of status from the interruptee to the interrupter.

            Men are more likely than women to take advantage of this if they think they can get away with it. Women are more likely than men to let people get away with it. You can deal with this, or deny it. Your choice.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @John Schilling:

            I agree that is how it works with men, at least to some extent.

            But, when I observed all female study groups when my wife was in nursing school, I was struck by how utterly different that conversation flow was to any other communication process I had ever witnessed. It was completely collaborative. I really do think that, generally speaking, we see different preferred communication styles from men and women, whatever the reason.

          • idontknow131647093 says:

            @Heelbearcub

            If we are going with anecdotes, I find that female-dominated groups, at least study groups which is where I have the most exp are not really collaborative so much as anti-argumentative. The classic trope of a bunch of women not decided whether to get pizza or chinese is basically backed up by this, and while they won’t really argue about it, it will just be a bunch of, “I don’t cares” until someone gets tired of the passive game and just orders 5 pizzas.

            When it came to study groups this meant that, in the female dominated ones, I was often the only one who objected when someone offered an idea that was incorrect (or disputable) whereas the male dominated groups are more argumentative, but also less likely to allow falsity to go unchallenged.

          • baconbits9 says:

            @ John Schilling

            assuming that interrupting means higher status.

            I am assuming that interrupting means higher status in roughly the same way that giving orders and having them obeyed means higher status. Because it does, and not just in military hierarchies. And that’s what interrupting is; a special case of giving an order and having it obeyed. “I order you to cease talking about what you want to talk about, and listen to me talk about what I want to talk about”.

            This only holds if the purpose of talking is getting heard now, and as soon as possible. Then you can argue that interrupting is a sign of status, but if goals are beyond this then they can be achieved in multiple ways which include interruptions and concessions, they might be achieved by striking out on your own or by forming coalitions.

            There are few places where there are single metrics of status, and there are multiple ways with dealing with status breaches.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @idontknow131647093:

            I’m taking it that you are male as it seems from your comment? Your participation specifically invalidates the “all female” part of what I said. Yes, it’s anecdote, but I really meant “all female” and not even “19 females and one male”.

          • idontknow131647093 says:

            But how can you observe such an environment? Did they put you behind glass?

          • Nick says:

            Did they put you behind glass?

            Don’t be ridiculous. It was a one-way mirror.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @idontknow131647093:

            My wife, in nursing school, held study groups at our house.

            I was in no way a participant, but observed their interactions casually.

          • idontknow131647093 says:

            By that measure I would evaluate my girlfreind’s interactions with her friends when they come over and I do something else. The pattern is more or less the same with the only consensus ever being that once they do choose pizza or whatever, that I should be the one who goes to get it.

          • John Schilling says:

            This only holds if the purpose of talking is getting heard now, and as soon as possible.

            Giving an order and having it obeyed, wins status points no matter what the purpose of the order is. Even, perhaps especially, if there is no purpose beyond claiming status.

            In the latter case, it is likely to be a negative-sum game because even if status is conserved, other harm is being done. In the case of irrelevant interruptions, communication is being degraded. So if you can have a norm of not interrupting without good cause, that’s worth having. But it’s going to take some sort of enforcement mechanism to do that, because “please don’t take all the status points we’ve left unguarded on the table” isn’t going to cut it.

            Not even if you phrase it as striking a blow against the evils of the Patriarchy.

          • It was completely collaborative.

            At a considerable tangent to something I was thinking about recently.

            Collaborative games seem to be a reasonably new development. Were there any fifty years ago? If not, was it just someone coming up with a neat idea or has something changed that makes them work now when they wouldn’t have worked in the past?

            And, to get closer to the thread topic, might part of the change being more women playing games? Are collaborative games more popular with women than with men?

          • Gazeboist says:

            @DavidFriedman:

            I assume you mean boardgames and tabletop roleplaying. As someone who started with D&D 3.5 a year or two before Eberron, I do find it jarring how explicitly oppositional the relationship between the GM and the players is often framed by TSR-era books and (some of) the gamers who grew up with them.

            I think the generally accepted modern progenitor of all of these games was Tactics, created in the early 1950s. Tactics is explicitly a war game, as were most of the early boardgames, and their more distant ancestors included “games” that were developed to train military officers (and provide organization for young boys playing with toy soldiers…). D&D was an outgrowth of a miniatures wargame from the same family tree as the modern Warhammer; many of its near-contemporaries had similar origins. My guess is it just took a while for the design space to grow past its wargame origins. It might alternately be rooted in the internet unifying and expanding the audience, similar to the diversification that’s been seen in serial video media since the days of MASH, Dallas, and a dozen family sitcoms.

            In any case, I think the increasing proportion of women in the audience hasn’t caused more collaborative gaming styles to get popular (among designers or players); at best they’re two effects with a shared cause.

            (Note: unfortunately, the text I own on the subject is in storage and I can’t refer to it.)

          • engleberg says:

            Re: Collaborative games seem to be a reasonably new developement-

            Fifty years ago, we had drawing room theatricals and religious plays. Sacred games.

          • @Gazeboist:

            I wasn’t talking about D&D and similar games but about board games in which the players are working together against a fictional opponent whose moves are generated by game mechanics–card draws and the like. Sentinels of the Multiverse would be an example.

          • Gazeboist says:

            Sorry, my comment wasn’t very clear. I think the shift away from adversarial GMing in RPGs is fundamentally the same trend (or, perhaps, a very similar phenomena happening in a closely related ecosystem) as the rise of collaborative boardgames; both to me seem to be rooted in designers being more willing to stake out their own space, rather than sticking to the turn-based warfare simulator. This is a bit of an oversimplification, since obviously there are other ways to vary from that baseline besides going to a fully collaborative model, but I think the more collaborative games are mostly just examples of how broad the design space has become, not a trend in themselves.

          • Nick says:

            It was my impression that in boardgames the more collaborative style was a European thing. Same with games being designed so players aren’t eliminated during play. (Settlers of Catan comes to mind in both cases, though by collaborative I’m just referring to the trading mechanics.)

        • INH5 says:

          Anecdotally, I’m a man on the Autism Spectrum with social anxiety issues, and I get interrupted and talked over by other men all the time, especially in group conversations.

          • Baeraad says:

            Same here.

            Which does put me in the odd position of generally agreeing with feminists that loud-mouthed men should sit down and shut up more, and being constantly frustrated at them lumping me in with said loud-mouthed men.

          • albatross11 says:

            Despite the fact that I find a lot of feminist writing I see online pretty unhelpful, I’ve found the public discussion about men talking over women very useful. The reality isn’t always men talking over women, but the set of people who get talked over skews heavily female.

            That has definitely affected how I behave in meetings, and how I interact with (especially younger) female coworkers. And it’s fairly common for me to be basically steering a meeting, and I’ll make an effort to see to it that the people who often get talked over manage to get heard.

        • fion says:

          Interruption is a two-way street. It’s much easier to interrupt somebody successfully if they’re not much of an interrupter themselves. An interrupter who gets interrupted will sometimes continue talking, perhaps even louder or faster. A non-interrupter who gets interrupted will fall quiet.

          Tangent: I am a man who never interrupts anybody and I think it’s one of the rudest things a person can do. I’d be interested to know: do you interrupt because you disagree that it’s rude? Or do you think it’s rude but you think there are benefits that outweigh the costs? Do you see it as a bad habit that you have but can’t help? Do you think the world (or at least, your conversations) would be better if other people interrupted more? Do you do it to gain comparative advantage? Sorry for all the questions, but this is the first time I’ve ever encountered somebody who admits to being an interrupter and I’d like to understand better.

          • Matt M says:

            I interrupt sometimes. Honestly, it’s not really intentional and usually I don’t think about the context or what or why I’m doing it. It’s usually a simple and quick instinct of “I just had this thought I think is important and needs to be addressed right now.”

            The steelman of this behavior is something like “Someone just made a point that is incorrect, and the rest of what they have to say is likely based on that point, therefore it is important we settle the facts on this point right now before going on to the rest of the topic.”

            At the risk of “blaming the victim” I would add that if you find yourself being interrupted frequently, there are probably things you can do to change your style of communication to have it happen less. Get to your conclusions/suggestions quickly. Avoid discussing controversial items early in your statement. If it can’t be avoided, anticipate potential objections/disagreements and address them yourself, early. Avoid the “surprise you at the end” style of storytelling – because some people won’t be able to wait until the end.

          • Gazeboist says:

            I interrupt in two ways (that I’m aware of), and in both cases it’s a brief interruption made with the assumption/intention that the person will continue afterward essentially as they were, not that they will take my interruption as an argument or a claim that it’s “my turn” in the conversation, and certainly not as a status grab – it’s a stupid way to claim status to a third party, and I don’t really see the point of asserting status over the other person in a one-on-one conversation.

            First, I sometimes interrupt to express an opinion on a smaller part of a larger point, usually surprise. Again, I don’t argue against the point, at least not while the person’s in the middle of a larger argument; all I want to do is highlight it as something that catches my attention, and I clarify that if I need to.

            Second, I often finish the other person’s sentence/argument based on my understanding of what they’re saying. Depending on tone and suchlike, this can be a request for clarification/confirmation, an expression of agreement, or just a signal that I get this part of whatever they’re saying and they don’t need to explain it in any great detail. I don’t use interruption for disagreement, and I agree that it’s kind of rude to do so (though not maximally so – maximal rudeness is probably interrupting/bothering people you aren’t already talking to, absent context that invites participation).

            I also tend to speak with a lot of long pauses, especially when I’m trying to make an argument or state a position, since I try very hard to be precise and avoid getting my position confused with more extreme (or just similar-seeming) views. That tends to lead to me getting interrupted a lot; I’ve generally found that “let me finish” is sufficient to get people to back off if I need them to, and I frequently don’t.

          • disciplinaryarbitrage says:

            I guess I fall under this category.

            Is it rude? Often but not always. I have good friends/colleagues where our conversational flow includes a lot of interruption because we can see where the other person is going with something and steer it in another direction (“no, not that, I mean more like this”) or acknowledge shared understanding (“yeah, you got it, and so…”). But that’s not typical; with people with whom I don’t have such good rapport I acknowledge it’s rude, or a necessary evil at best.

            I don’t think I used to interrupt so much, and don’t think I do it in a boorish way, but it’s a bad habit that I think I’ve developed in response to social contexts (mostly at work) where if you’re not willing to interrupt you can’t get a word in edgewise. Honestly I think I just have the conversation equivalent of bad rhythm–it’s hard for me to find the right gap to jump in with, especially in larger groups with fast talkers.

          • fion says:

            Interesting to read; thanks.

            I admit I forgot about parenthetical interruptions, where the interrupter just wants to add something before expecting the interruptee to continue. I agree that these are definitely a lot less bad than “it’s my turn now” interruptions. I think the biggest downside of parenthetical interruption is that it often makes the other person lose their train of thought or become less confident in what they’re saying.

          • Matt M says:

            Of course, occasionally there are times when someone needs to be less confident in what they are saying.

            If someone is saying something that I know to be incorrect, is it wrong for me to stop and correct them? Does it become more or less wrong if the speaker happens to be female?

        • The Nybbler says:

          My experience at Google with the interrupting thing was that it is often used in bad faith. The “interrupting” style of conversation is very common among male software engineers (even if no women are present) — it’s an interrupt culture; thus, claiming that this style is hostile to women can just be used as a bludgeon against male software engineers. Also, the opposite of an interruption is a filibuster, and there are definitely people who will use a norm against interruption to go on and on (I personally wouldn’t be surprised if interrupt culture among software engineers developed as a reaction to that). So the proposed “remedies” — usually almong the lines “don’t interrupt women” — would simply make male software engineers second class citizens in a culture now foreign to them.

          But the biggest reason I think it was used in bad faith is because it was brought up in the context of men dominating mailing lists. Mailing lists, of course, do not allow interruption by nature (and filibusters can be handled by skimming or skipping). So… the conclusion is “not your true objection”.

          • J Mann says:

            I made a conscious effort to stop interrupting a few years ago, and observe:

            1) A lot of people filibuster, which is to say they don’t end their sentences or pause for at least several sentences in a row.

            2) Last week I was in a conversation with two people who were both filibustering and interrupting each other, and literally spent a ten minute conversation with two questions I wanted to ask and no opportunity to ask them. The conversation ended when one of the other people left the room, and I literally didn’t have the chance to interject one syllable.

            3) I often try to jump in when someone pauses at a place that logically could be considered the end of a sentence, at which point they then start a new sentence talking over me. At that point I stop talking, but I’ve been in conversations where the same person does this to me several times.

          • fion says:

            @J Mann

            I can relate to all three of those very strongly. :/

            It’s not quite so bad for me, because in most of my circles people tend to be interested in what I have to say and don’t talk over me very often, but I notice it happening to other people all the time and it drives me nuts.

          • Nick says:

            Last week I was in a conversation with two people who were both filibustering and interrupting each other, and literally spent a ten minute conversation with two questions I wanted to ask and no opportunity to ask them.

            In my experience, some folks are good at noticing when another person has something to add, and others aren’t. I try to keep an eye on it, as well as if I’m losing my audience (say, telling too long a story over lunch). I do wonder to what extent it’s a cultural clash versus lacking a skill vs just not caring if someone else has something to say. If you have someone from an interrupt culture, can they tell when someone else wants to interject? Will someone from an interrupt culture be inclined to filibuster if no one’s interrupting them, or is filibustering independent of culture?

        • AG says:

          I’d be interested to see studies examining this, if they exist.

          http://time.com/4837536/do-women-really-talk-more/
          Less about the article itself than the studies they link, but also makes the point that interruption occurs because the interruptee yields the floor. An incident may not count as an interruption if the the original speaker persists, and the interrupter desists.

          https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_68785_7/component/file_506904/content
          https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5544/d3807421fcae3888157a4381221a84bcd75d.pdf
          https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1525/si.1984.7.1.87
          http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/who-takes-floor-and-why-gender-power-and-volubility-organizations

          And the key answer to your question: https://newrepublic.com/article/117757/gender-language-differences-women-get-interrupted-more
          It seems that the gender differences are mainly in the interruptee.

        • AlphaGamma says:

          @David Friedman- Collaborative board games may have grown out of both D&D and a parallel tradition of board games where one player plays against several others who have to cooperate to win. The rules in these are asymmetric, but (unlike RPGs) they still constrain the single player’s actions so that the game is balanced, rather than relying on a GM to only make the players face challenges they can defeat.

          The earliest one of these I know about is Escape from Colditz, first published in 1973, in which one player controls the German guards and others control groups of Allied PoWs trying to escape- the game’s designer actually had escaped from Colditz! It was followed by Scotland Yard (1983) and Fury of Dracula (1987). Arkham Horror (also from 1987) is AFAIK the first game in which the “opponent” is part of the game so all the players are working together.

          The more recent trend of collaborative games probably started with Reiner Knizia’s Lord of the Rings (2000), Shadows over Camelot (2005) and Pandemic (2008).

          • littskad says:

            @AlphaGamma:

            Avalon Hill first published Outdoor Survival in 1972, and it had both cooperative scenarios (such as a group of players is trying to rescue someone who is injured and low on supplies before he dies) and group vs single player scenarios (an escaped prisoner is trying to make it across the wilderness while a group of pursuers is trying to recapture him).

        • Gazeboist says:

          One other thing I think I should add, that only occurred to me because of the sidebar on boardgames:

          I have a fairly strong habit that I refer to as “the instinct to respond”. This can trip me up in 3+ player games, because I sometimes lose track of or forget the turn order and start trying to take my turn as soon as somebody else’s ends. It’s only now occurred to me that it works pretty well to explain how some people come to dominate meetings. I’ve actually noticed myself sort of sliding into a central position in group discussions in the past, but I never really understood it because discussions of that sort of thing tend to focus on interrupting and talking over other people, which are things that I don’t do and view as rather rude (except the parenthetical interruptions mentioned in a different subthread).

          I think this “instinct to respond” is a pretty powerful explanation of the feeling that people are describing, especially if it’s combined with pro-interruption one on one conversation norms. It amounts to (subconsciously) treating a group interaction as a pair interaction – I wind up taking turns with “everyone else” as a single unit, instead of following a more egalitarian structure. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if that resulted in at least some people feeling talked over, even if I never literally did that.

          I don’t see an obvious way to stop myself from doing it, unfortunately. In games I can rely on other players catching me and just apologize when I screw up, but obviously that doesn’t work if we’re just having a conversation. Anyone have any ideas (more concrete than “check in with people who haven’t said a lot”, ideally)?

          • Matt M says:

            I think I have a bit of this – one way I noticed it manifest is in educational settings. You know those awkward classes where the professor asks a lot of questions to the group, and everyone just sits there silently. Generally speaking when that happens, I feel so bad for the professor that I raise my hand and offer an answer. Apparently at one point this got me known as “the guy who answers every question” and some even suggested I was trying to be a know-it-all or was “dominating the discussion” to which my reply was “I’d happily stop raising my hand if anyone else actually was willing to raise theirs

        • corpusvak says:

          I have a (male) gay friend who often complains that I talk over people and interrupt to much, for explicit ‘men do this too much’ reasons.
          After a while, I started paying attention to his speech patterns, and while there’s a certain amount of bias here, I find that he ends up talking over people and that his point is the most important in the room far more than I do, but nobody calls him out on it.

    • axiomsofdominion says:

      Patriarchy is an environment where men have an amount of power disproportionate to their share of the population. This power then allows them to engage in activities that create significant harm to women. Its generally stipulated that men gained this power through physical force beginning at some point in the BC era and have used their power to maintain their higher status all the way forward until the current time even if it has arguably eroded somewhat in the modern period.

      Depending on the individual there may be some sort of intersectionality involved, where skin color and gender issues and so forth are also involved even though that doesn’t fall under the strict dictionary definition of patriarchy. Like all umbrella political concepts, being pro-capitalism is a good example, there’s no single agreed upon definition or standard which can cause issues when discussing patriarchy.

      • Patriarchy is an environment where men have an amount of power disproportionate to their share of the population.

        Defining a metric for power is hard. It makes sense to say that men work more or fewer hours than women. It makes sense to say that single men have a higher (or lower) level of consumption than single women. It makes sense to say that women have a higher life expectancy than men.

        But how do you define power in some way that lets you, at least conceptually, quantify it, average it, compare?

        • flame7926 says:

          I think that at least some leftists are opposed to quantification and a need to quantify and measure things. You explicitly don’t and can’t quantify power.

          • fion says:

            As a strongly pro-quantification leftist, I want to say that I get the impression that almost everybody in the world seems to be opposed to quantification and it drives me mad. I don’t think it’s a particular problem of the left.

          • Squirrel of Doom says:

            Let’s start by finding out exactly how many people oppose quantification!

          • quanta413 says:

            What fion says is riiiiiiiiight.

            Even a shockingly large number of scientists verge on being opposed to quantification. Not a majority obviously, but more than I would have expected.

            Although it sometimes is hard to tell when someone is anti-quantification more broadly and when they’re trying to say you’re quantifying something the wrong way.

          • AG says:

            To offer a motte, in that power is inherently context-dependent, it can’t really be measured directly. Instead, the disparate impacts are measured and that serves as the evidence of power. What does it mean, power-wise, for a king to be weak vs. an opposition leader? You have to measure it through whose policies are being executed, and the wealth of their followers.

            Power itself has to be made into sub-categories to be measured in any way. Military power, political power, social power, etc. Just as generalized capital cannot be measured as a whole, but perhaps political capital, physical capital, investment capital, etc. can.

          • quanta413 says:

            That’s a pretty good motte. Well, except the disparate impact part. I wouldn’t make that part of the motte. Too many obvious cases where it’s not true that a difference has anything to do with power.

            Since one type of power cannot always easily turn into another type of power, we’d expect the impact of power to vary with the type of power.

          • AG says:

            @quanta413:

            The disparate impacts thing would be the means of attempting to measure overall power (does group A have more meaningful power across the various sectors of it than group B).

            You can measure the different subcategories, but to account for their interactions (the power to speak softly because of the big stick, for example) there comes a point at which measuring directly-correlating impacts does not suffice.

            That’s why I’m way more swayed by claims that group X is oppressed because they have average economic situation Y and health outcomes Z, no matter how much supposed cultural soft power they appear to have.

          • That’s why I’m way more swayed by claims that group X is oppressed because they have average economic situation Y and health outcomes Z, no matter how much supposed cultural soft power they appear to have.

            But that gets you into the question of whether the different outcomes might have a cause other than oppression.

            To take the most obvious example, women have a substantially higher life expectancy than men. If you were looking for a single clear outcome measure, that’s probably the best candidate, since unlike things such as income or consumption it doesn’t run into the problem of allocating within families.

            One could conclude that men are oppressed. Or you could conclude that there are biological reasons why women, under the same circumstances, live longer than men. Doing that is much more popular than concluding that male/female or black/white wage differences are due to reasons other than oppression, but the logic is the same.

          • albatross11 says:

            Another one along those lines is that I believe hispanics in the US have lower infant mortality than whites. It’s not really plausible that hispanics are oppressing whites in some way that makes us more likely to have our babies die. Probably some mix of genes and culture explains the difference, but if the numbers happened to be the other way (as with blacks, who have higher infant mortality than whites), then the oppression explanation would sound pretty plausible.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @albatross11:
            The non-Hispanic white infant mortality rate is 4.9, U.S Mexican is 4.8. U.S Hispanic rate is 5.0.

            The Black infant mortality rate is 10.9.

            All US infant mortality dropped between 2000 and 2014 from 6.9 to 5.8, but Black infant mortality dropped from 13.8(!) to 10.9

            Access to healthcare in the US is far more dependent on socioeconomic status than it is in other developed countries. The argument around healthcare from the left has concentrated on socioeconomic status overall, where ethnicity is simply one piece of that puzzle.

          • AG says:

            @David Friedman:

            Using a disparate impact means of determining if a group is oppressed does not necessary finger an oppresser, as it looks at correlations and not causations.

            The situation you state says to me that, yes, men are more oppressed than women to a certain extent, but not necessarily by women. The mechanism of oppression is likely the “men are cannon fodder” mindset.

          • quanta413 says:

            @AG

            I really doubt that’s what’s causing higher male mortality at least in the older age brackets. I’d have to check, but I think men have higher mortality even if you remove mortality due to the military, job accidents, etc.

            Ignoring periods of mass warfare, I think men have high mortality when young because their brains are more likely to decide to do stupid things.

            And when old, maybe some combination of poor decisions they made when young catching up with them and biological factors.

            This sort of thing is why I don’t like having disparate impact in the motte.

            Not saying men can’t be oppressed, but I don’t think oppression is the cause of many problems for most European-ish looking males in the U.S.

          • My own view is that “men and women are the same in characteristic X” shouldn’t be the default assumption, at least for anyone who believes in Darwinian evolution. We are as if designed for reproductive success and the central difference between males and females is their role in reproduction, so there is no reason to expect the optimal design to be the same for both.

            Hence the default assumption should be “men and women may well be different in characteristic X, although we probably don’t know what the difference will be.”

            So while the difference in life expectancy might be due to the sorts of things mentioned in the thread it might also be built into the biology, with men for some reason aging a little faster than women. And the same is true for outcome differences that appear to favor men.

          • AG says:

            Yeah, I guess it starts getting into the weeds of “is this actually oppression, or just an unfortunate state of events?”

            In which case, then it’s still back to “what do you quantify?” Life expectancy may not correlate to oppression or power, but certain other outcomes do.
            But also, gender is a particularly noisy category to try and quantify power for, because of the fairly even distribution of cis men and women. However, there certainly have been disparate impacts on other demographic categories.

          • toastengineer says:

            @David Friedman

            And I’d add, probably unnecessarily, that those differences are almost always swamped by the variations between individuals, and by filtering effects. I.e. it’s pretty obvious just by looking at a crowd that women are in general shorter than men, but I’ve met plenty of women who are taller than me, and the average height of woman basketball players is greater than the average height of men in general.

          • And I’d add, probably unnecessarily, that those differences are almost always swamped by the variations between individuals

            Yes. As I occasionally point out, men are supposed, on average, to be better than women at map reading and similar tasks. I used to have a WOW character who would warn other members of his party that he could get lost on a tabletop.

            My wife, when we got married, was a geologist making her living doing three dimensional mapping for Shell.

          • quanta413 says:

            Yeah, I guess it starts getting into the weeds of “is this actually oppression, or just an unfortunate state of events?”

            Yeah, that’s why I’m saying we can’t have disparate impact in the motte.

            The motte should stick to the causal paths. Like in the strongest cases, you just read the laws of the South before the civil war or during segregation, check that historically they were enforced, and be like “well, that’s definitely the usage of legal and political power to oppress others.” Even if that power doesn’t translate into the power to like… not be poorer than the North and thus there isn’t just one number for power, it’s pretty easy to to trace plenty of causal paths of oppression from that particular type of power.

            And it’s not some sort of weird isolated example. Legalized discrimination is more the norm than the exception. But that power is obviously contextual.

            Not saying it has to be legal mind you. Someone could also have more guns, more money, whatever. Then you just show that someone uses the guns or money to obtain something they want at someone else’s expense.

            Disparate impact helps you get some idea of where to look but its existence doesn’t imply oppression nor does the lack of disparate impact imply a lack of oppression.

          • albatross11 says:

            The overlapping bell curves idea really helps make sense of this.

          • John Schilling says:

            I.e. it’s pretty obvious just by looking at a crowd that women are in general shorter than men, but I’ve met plenty of women who are taller than me, and the average height of woman basketball players is greater than the average height of men in general.

            Right, but if someone were to note that undernourishment is a known cause of shortness and therefore men are probably hogging all the food, society should go about transferring food from boys to girls until adult men and women have the same average height, you can see how that might lead to a really bad outcome. You might want to push back on that.

            Saying “of course some women are quite tall right now”, while useful in some contexts, is worse than useless in this one – by affirming that women can be tall, it reinforces any misconception that women are generally supposed to be tall and that something must be artificially keeping them short. The right message, in that context, is “women are genetically predisposed to be shorter than men no matter how much food they eat”.

            You need to be able to say both, depending on what’s being discussed. That statistical differences are almost always swamped by individual variation, is irrelevant when people aren’t talking about individuals.

          • AG says:

            No, I disagree strongly. The whole reason disparate impact became a thing in real life was because the causal paths were not clear. As I said before, to confirm that a group is oppressed does not automatically finger the oppressors.
            For the textbook case of disparate impact, Moloch ensured that the local logical maximum for home loans created a disparate impact against a racial group, due to their correlation with crime and poor socioeconomic situation. You could not have mapped out an oppression causal path in this situation, because the individual steps were indeed done in a race-blind way. You can only find that the group is oppressed when you look at the consequences.

            This is also key to answering John Schilling’s concerns. If we decouple the identification of harms from using reversal-logic to choose an oppressor, then the solutions to address the oppression will be useless. “Penalize white moneylenders” is not going to fix the above issue.

            I guess my opposition to quanta413’s stance is that I perceive it to be starting from a cause and looking for the effect. “Do these laws cause oppression?” But my proposed motte is to look at the outcomes to determine if there is a group lacking power, and not assuming who has the power instead (a power zero-sum assumption). That group A has more power than group B does not mean that that’s because A is using said power against B. B’s lesser power might be due to factor D. D might be less effective against A, but that doesn’t mean D is a part of A’s power.

            I do, however, support some kind of standard where, if there is sufficient overlap, you can’t claim oppression because the portion “coming out ahead” is within the noise region. like we do now with other datasets and confidence intervals. Hence, again, why gender is a particularly bad category for it.

          • AG says:

            Oops, some clarifications:
            My last comment’s “No, I disagree strongly” refers to @quanta413’s assertion that disparate impact shouldn’t be part of the motte of “we can’t directly quantify power, we can only quantify its effects.”

            Sentence correction: “If we don’t decouple the identification of harms from using reversal-logic to choose an oppressor, then the solutions to address the oppression will be useless.”

          • quanta413 says:

            We have significant disagreements as to the variety of reasons why disparate impact became a thing, but I’d rather not get into those weeds.

            But I think differences in outcomes without differences in power are so ubiquitous that if we use disparate impact as the motte then our motte is going to generate endless false positives.

            Disparate impact is a useful heuristic for looking for power differences, but I don’t think it’s a good way of understanding or quantifying power or effects of power.

        • imoimo says:

          The definitions-by-example I’ve heard for ‘power’ in this context are almost all job related. People also bring up stuff like ‘most politicians are male’, but that seems indistinguishable from the job category to me. There’s also little social things like ‘men can do X in social settings, women can’t’, but as you say that’s hard to quantify. (And given that there’s just as many ‘women can do X in social settings, men can’t’ that are equally half-true, I don’t find these types of arguments very convincing.)

        • goedlmax says:

          Conceptually, this should be straightforward.

          Borrowing from standard social choice terminology, under any social welfare function, which maps from the set of all preference profiles (list of policy preferences of every member of the society) to a unique social preference, if my preferences correlate more with the social preferences than yours (where correlation is defined in an appropriate way), I am more powerful.

          In a dictatorship, the correlation is 1 if I’m the dictator.

          In a democracy, the correlation is high if I’m the median voter, low if I’m a member of the political fringe.

          Patriarchy is then a system in which men’s policy preferences are more highly correlated with the social preferences than women’s.

          • Bugmaster says:

            @goedlmax:
            I really like your definition, but, in practice, I think it just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure “social preferences” ?

            I could sort of see measuring “policy preferences”, in some specific cases; for example, we can collect statistically valuable answers to the question “should abortion be banned ?” — although even this seemingly simple question has lots of caveats.

            But how do you measure “social preferences” ? For example, you could attempt to quantify things like “traditionalism” or “modesty” into something like “the length of women’s dresses should be at least X% of the wearer’s height”, but that sounds woefully inadequate to me.

          • pdbarnlsey says:

            I think that’s a good start, but suspect that there’s probably also a procedural element you need to satisfy as well. If women’s preferences around outcomes are being satisfied only because of the acquiescence of men (or visa versa) they might reasonably identify a power imbalance even in the absence of a difference in quality of outcomes. Sort of a Sarte’s coffee situation.

            You could probably operationalise that within your social choice framework by talking about how outcomes change as a function of change in preferences…

          • BlindKungFuMaster says:

            I’m pretty sure that women are on average closer to the median voter than men. I also think that women are much more in the business of setting and enforcing social norms.

            If I can show that empirically, would I have proved the Matriarchy?

          • if my preferences correlate more with the social preferences than yours (where correlation is defined in an appropriate way), I am more powerful.

            That’s an elegant answer, but I think there is a problem. Suppose one percent of the population prefer outcome A to outcome B, ninety-nine percent the other way around. The social preference function, in situations where it has to choose between the two, chooses A two percent of the time.

            The group of people who prefer B have more power than the group who prefer A, but does it make sense to say that an individual member of the group has more power? Might it make more sense to use a definition in which the question is not whether the social choice function correlates with my preferences but whether a change in my preferences produces a change in the social choice function in the same direction?

          • goedlmax says:

            @DavidFriedman

            Thanks. Yes, that is indeed an issue and I think your solution is an improvement on my definition.

      • axiomsofdominion says:

        This is the very basis of the conflict between socialists and the socialist adjacent vs wealthy liberals. Essentially “white feminists” in the parlance of the modern environment. It doesn’t matter whether women and minorities and LGBT people are holding power positions equivalent to their representation among the population because 95% of people will have shitty lives regardless of the demographics of the 1%.

        So we now have an example of 2 of the many, many different definitions of patriarchy, the same way not all pro capitalists support robber barons or w/e. Patriarchy means something vaguely similar to capitalist hierarchy to one section of reformers/revolutionaries. But “white feminist tm” like Hillary Clinton or Lena Dunham or Jennifer Lawrence or Gloria Steinem or Amanda Marcotte do not mean it that way. They only focus on the demographics of the 1%.

      • AG says:

        https://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/tali-mendelberg-christopher-f-karpowitz-are-women-silent-sex

        These authors promote the idea that there is a “critical mass” (more than 50%) at which women in power become more likely to advocate for higher redistribution policies. Before that point, the incentives are to still compete on traditional (masculine) leadership frameworks.

        • Statismagician says:

          I’m pretty sure this doesn’t work, or at the very least doesn’t work in the long term, unless there really are biological differences in mental traits (problem-solving styles specifically) along gender lines; otherwise somebody in the group will defect, or some group will trim the all-views-solicitation process because it’s time for lunch, and you’re right back where you started. Somehow I suspect the authors disagree; am I right about this?

          • AG says:

            If you see the interrupting thread above, people offer anecdotal evidence of how all-women groups speak in a drastically different fashion. The link I posted notes that the effects of women-majority groups (in groups of 5) didn’t kick in until 80%, either.

            https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/women-men-talk-more_n_5591454.html

            I agree that as we further progress along gender equality, then these trends will disappear, because both more women will feel free to act in other ways, and more men will act in what is currently feminine-coded ways.
            The goal is to remove the coding entirely, and move both methods to neutral ground. In that this doesn’t play well with human nature, at the least we can at least just add more modes of masculinity and femininity to the same effect. That is, to promote a collaborator as masculine, and a dominator as feminine, as valid as the other models.

            As per the above, you ironically get this from greater segregation. All-men groups and all-women groups end up with a greater internal diversity of behaviors. It’s not hard to think of all-men situations where they act more collaboratively. So the challenge is to let them still think more diversely in mixed groups, not default to assigning genders roles again when the other gender is present.

    • arlie says:

      I rarely use the word, and when I hear it used, I get out an extra grain or ten of salt, even though I’m theoretically allied with those for whom it’s a thing.

      If I were to use it, it would mean a combination of the following culturally agreed on truths:

      – Males matter more than females. Most important decisions should be made by males. If there’s a tradeoff to be made, between benefits to males/harm to females, and benefits to females/harm to males, the male-favoring choice should be made.
      – Hierarchical organizations are the only kind that work, and the best kind have a single clear leader, not merely a council or a class of decision makers.

      This is a very stripped down version of the usual connotations; I don’t use the term because I’m not interested in being taken to have some rather specific beliefs about prehistory and/or particular close political allies.

      [Edit: you don’t have to explicitly believe “males matter more than females” to routinely act in ways consistent with such a belief. And those actions can reasonably be considered to be part of patriarchy.]

      • janrandom says:

        > – Males matter more than females.
        I disagree with half of this.

        > Most important decisions should be made by males.

        Yes (though whether they “matter” more see below)

        > If there’s a tradeoff to be made, between benefits to males/harm to females, and benefits to females/harm to males, the male-favoring choice should be made.

        Clearly not. The classical patriarchy sees males as expendable (see e.g. the military) while women are to be protected (“women and children first”).

        I would agree that the power is to be wielded by men, but they are still subject to social rules which purposes are acceptable.

        • melolontha says:

          “The classical patriarchy sees males as expendable (see e.g. the military) while women are to be protected”

          ‘Protected’ so they can continue to fulfil their social role, though. Which might not have much overlap with living a happy or fulfilling life.

          • keranih says:

            Which might not have much overlap with living a happy or fulfilling life.

            …for a certain fraction of the female population who felt that they were unable to contribute to their community or be satisfied in their lives, and felt that their unhappiness would change if they had the options of both men and women.

            For most of humanity, I think that *most* women were able to be pretty happy in traditionally gendered occupations, and *most* men were able to b pretty happy in traditionally gendered occupations, and that in most cases, a family life where women were focused on the mirade details of the economics, labor, and social effort of home, villiage, and young children, and men were engaged in striving with/against other men in labor, hunting, or farming…was more satisfying and healthier for nearly everyone.

            Some people were not happy under the old paradigms. I think more people are not happy under the current structure. The problem is that its not the same people who are miserable – and we have decided that the same rules have to apply to everyone.

            There are trade offs involved in everything.

          • Mary says:

            Better than being dead — at least in their opinion.

          • Conrad Honcho says:

            My problem with the smashing of the patriarchy is that it seems to be more concerned with the ways in which people were unhappy/unfulfilled in gendered roles rather than the ways in which they are happy and fulfilled (or unhappy and unfulfilled) without them.

            Yes, we unchained women from their stoves where they were laboring on behalf of their husbands and children, and have instead chained them to the cubicle where they labor on behalf of their boss. This seems less fulfilling, overall, to me. A woman’s husband and children might love her. If her boss loves her, well, we need to get HR in on this ASAP.

            Similar to smashing capitalism. I agree that capitalism is awful. Worst economic system in the world. Except for all the others.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Yes, we unchained women from their stoves where they were laboring on behalf of their husbands and children, and have instead chained them to the cubicle where they labor on behalf of their boss. This seems less fulfilling, overall, to me. A woman’s husband and children might love her. If her boss loves her, well, we need to get HR in on this ASAP.

            Exactly this. Before the Industrial Revolution and modern sanitation, women were chained to their cottage by children, which we naturally model as loving their mothers. “Women’s work” was what their tribe thought could be done while pregnant, with a baby in a chest sling, etc.
            Assuming you weren’t, like, a chattel slave being separated from her children, being a domestic drudge was a lifestyle ordered toward love, while cubicle work is something meaningless you do to get electronic deposits symbolic of green paper you need to keep a roof over your head, food in your belly, and an entertainment budget.

          • Nick says:

            Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t plenty of household work historically not quite fallen under “ordered toward love”? Tim O’Neill’s review of Hild comes to mind immediately, where according to him about two thirds of an Anglo-Saxon woman’s time would be devoted to making textiles.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @Nick: My prior is that making textiles was considered “women’s work” because it was practical to do around small children. So we’re talking about two-thirds of an Anglo-Saxon woman’s time being textile + childcare multitasking.
            Things got messed up in the Industrial Revolution when factory owners hired women en masse for stereotypical “women’s work” by themselves, paid them less than men, and treated them like dirt. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was one famous example.
            Men were also getting killed or maimed at their jobs, but A) that’s as old as the Bronze Age and B) unionization wrangled high wages as compensation for that crap. Note how the Papacy threw itself behind the non-Marxist labor movement, articulating the moral position that wages for the awful but amazingly productive industries unleashed by capitalism and new technology ought to be high enough that only husbands and not their wives had to participate in the horror.

          • Nick says:

            My prior is that making textiles was considered “women’s work” because it was practical to do around small children. So we’re talking about two-thirds of an Anglo-Saxon woman’s time being textile + childcare multitasking.

            Yeah, that may be right—a lot of tasks around the house today are like that—but I’m wary of assuming. I’d be interested in hearing a historian weigh in.

          • albatross11 says:

            Traditional gender roles weren’t really great for men, either. Getting drafted into the Army or being expected to work all day in a coal mine and then moonlight driving a cab to provide for your family aren’t great deals for most men, either.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @albatross11: Yeah, I don’t know why anyone would disagree with that. Traditional gender roles did not come from the land of ponies and rainbows. It’s just that even looking at them with a hard eye it’s hard to say we’ve done better.

          • arlie says:

            @Le Maistre Chat

            We have, to an extent, re-optimized in favour of choice, and thus somewhat at the expense of contentment and/or resignation.

            I’m quasi-libertarian enough to regard this as a good thing. Or perhaps my libertarian tendencies come from a strong belief that I would have been a miserable misfit, if the gender roles my parents were subjected to had been enforced upon me.

            I don’t know whether there’s any set of assigned roles – traditional or otherwise – that would really produce greater average happiness than allowing individuals to pick their own role, or combination of role parts, all else being equal. It “feels” like having to choose causes anxiety of its own, so that such a culture might hypothetically be created or evolve. But evidence is in short supply.

            We can’t compare e.g. the (prosperous) 1950s (in the US) with the (precarious, debt ridden) 2010s – and then claim all the distress is the result of changes to the strength and nature of gender roles.

            And we also need to look at the whole society. The above thread mostly focusses on the lives of women of what we’d now call middle and upper class – those whose families can afford to pay for greater restrictions on their activity, but also for greater safety and comfort. I don’t see desperately poor women as being (successfully) protected, regardless of the system, and regardless of any ideals of women’s natural role. But shit still flows down hill – and they are below even desperately poor men.

            All I really know is that when I was a child in the late 1950s, some of the “happy housewives” I observed were drunks, and quite likely some of the others were on Prozac – and this doesn’t look much like happiness to me.

          • We can’t compare e.g. the (prosperous) 1950s (in the US) with the (precarious, debt ridden) 2010s – and then claim all the distress is the result of changes to the strength and nature of gender roles.

            “Prosperous” makes it sound as though this is a difference in material circumstances. But in material terms, the average household is much better off now than in 1950.

          • arlie says:

            “Prosperous” makes it sound as though this is a difference in material circumstances. But in material terms, the average household is much better off now than in 1950.

            I think we’re heading for duelling statistics here, or duelling definitions.

            What I see is that my working class father could buy a house, retire with financial security, afford a wife that generally didn’t work outside the home, and send three children to college. And those kids got out of college without crippling debt – and immediately found work.

            Now all the news is about precarious employment, crippling college debt, college graduates working as barristas, and people who think they’ll never be able to afford to retire. And I hear much the same story from people I know. I’m not personally living that story – but I’m extremely well paid, as well as fairly frugal – and it’s the generations after me that really seem to have gotten screwed, not mine.

            Of course my father *was* in Canada, which has had a better social safety net than the US throughout this period, and I’m in the US. That may colour my impression somewhat.

            It may be that the average occassionally-employed and college-debt-ridden barrista has all kinds of things that their grandparents never had, or that the things they have (e.g. a computer) are simply valued more than lower tech means of accomplishing the same function (e.g. a typewriter), and that makes statistics look different than the above summary impression.

            I suspect more of the contradiction between our impressions is based on rising inequality, combined with looking at arithmetic means, not medians, or specific percentiles.

            What % of children aren’t adequately nourished in the US today? How does that compare with the percent in the 1950s? What % of adults are homeless?

            The 50s are before the “war on poverty” and similar measures, so those numbers may in fact be as bad as they are today. But I’m thinking about economic security (near permanent jobs with the same employer – what luxury), availability of employment, and such – not how many toys the top 10% or 1% own.

          • You are going on your impression of your father’s life and what you read about current problems. I prefer to look at national statistics. I couldn’t find a webbed series that went far enough, but fortunately I have an old copy of Historical Statistics of the United States to bridge the gap.

            Average Annual Earnings of Employees. Full-time employees, nominal: 1950 $2,992, 1970 $7,564.

            Median household income 1970: 8,733.97
            2016: 59,039.00

            These are not exactly comparable, since I am working from two different sources, but they should be about right. Combining them, the ratio of nominal income in 2016 to nominal income in 1950 is 7,564/2,992 x 59,039.00/8,733.97 = 17.09

            To get the change in real (inflation adjusted)income, we divide that by the increase in the CPI. 1950: 23.500, 2016: 236.916

            So the ratio of real income in 2016 to that in 1950 is about 17.09 x 23.5/236.916 = 1.7.

            There are lots of complications I’m ignoring, since I don’t have a single series that covers the whole period. But that gives at least a rough picture of the increase in real income over the period–about 70%. That’s real income, so is allowing for a roughly ten fold price increase over the period.

          • ana53294 says:

            Yes, but college costs, and IIRC, medical costs have gone up by much more than the CPI.

            And housing in some California seems to follow the same pattern.

          • Plumber says:

            Anecdotally my experience is that immigrants to the Bay Area in California (whether from Mississippi or Moldova) are largly doing better than their parents and grandparents (with some exception like Iranians who’s families were doing well before the ’79 revolution) but almost all of my peers who grew up with me in Berkeley and Oakland are less prosperous than their parents and grandparents were at the same age, most had to move out to cheaper places with worse weather, and I’ve seen one guy from the class of ’86 making a living pushing a shopping cart full of cans.

            My gut is that this has to do with the change in productivity gains since 1973 (my favorite year) and the move away from the “Blue model“, but it may just be that we grew up in an area that’s become absurdly expensive and unwelcoming to those of us not in “the cognitive elite”.

        • benwave says:

          Why do you believe that power is to be wielded by men?

          • Ketil says:

            It’s a bit confusing if we are a) discussing how things ought to be, or b) what it would mean for society to be patriarchal, or c) what are the patriarchal elements of society as it exists today.

            I think it is b), but you interpret it as a).

      • Gazeboist says:

        – Males matter more than females. Most important decisions should be made by males. If there’s a tradeoff to be made, between benefits to males/harm to females, and benefits to females/harm to males, the male-favoring choice should be made.

        I think it’s closer to “all women are children / only men can be adults”, though that still doesn’t feel like an exact statement. And as you say, “patriarchy” generally means the culturally accepted idea; individuals who hold this belief are called “patriarchal” and may or may not connect to a broader patriarchy.

        The term is also subject to an immense amount of abuse; it gets conflated with sexism, misogyny, particular claimed forms of entryism, and (most absurdly, in my view) rentier capitalism.

        • arlie says:

          Yes, it’s possible to have a kind of benevolent patriarchy. Any authoritiarian, absolute ruler can treat his possessions kindly, within his understanding of kindness.

          I think though that I prefer the metaphor of “domestic animals” rather than “children” – children grow up, and even halfway clueful benevolence includes preparing them for independence. Neither pets nor livestock ever graduate to independence.

          • Gazeboist says:

            I think there are enough patriarchal people out there who think children never cease to be children in relation to their parents that “child” can work. Probably worth noting in the definition though.

    • ana53294 says:

      My definition is very subjective, as I basically hold the view that patriarchy has mostly been removed from most Western countries. So, with that in mind:

      Patriarchy is the system of laws and customs that excludes women and young men from economic activities. Not allowing ownership of land, capital, and their own labour. Reducing inheritance rights for women/younger sons. Precluding women from entering the labor force or entering a certain profession* or achieving a certain position. Excluding women from owning money and from decision making about family money. Having parents be able to make every decision about a child**, and excluding children from owning the fruits of their labor. Excluding illegitimate children from the material benefits provided to legitimate children (inheritance and child support). The whole concept of illegitimate kids.

      * I believe that even well-intentioned regulations that preclude women from working in dangerous industries such as mining or in industries that require great physical strength are bad. There are women who are unusually strong, and if they choose to, why not allow them to work there, if there is an employer willing to hire them? And if the job is so dangerous, why is it allowed for men?

      ** Parents making decisions about their kids is natural and necessary, because kids are stupid and make decisions that cause them great injury (drinking gasoline, jumping from great heights, refusing icky medicine, not eating vegetables). However, in Western countries the degree of decision-making parents have is severely limited: they cannot be denied education or food, they have certain rights of body autonomy, they own the fruits of their labor.

      For me, patriarchy is an economic system, and sexism is a separate concept. I mostly base this view on the latin roots of patriarchy, with comes from the word father. So, I understand patriarchy as the system where the father has the power over everybody in the household, including slaves and servants, young children, older children, sons and unmarried daughters.

      But this is just my understanding.

      I also hold the view that once you solve those issues, quite a few of the other ones will be solved on their own, without laws. If a daughter can choose to go and have a job at a factory, why would she obey her father and get married, unless the marriage is a better option?

      I was told a story about a family from Tajikistan who moved to Germany and were very surprised when the woman was required to open a separate bank account so she could get her salary. She did come to understand the wisdom of that law when her husband became abusive, though.

      Having money means you can tell those who want to tell you what to do with your body to go f** themselves. One of the reasons why women stay in places where they are abused is that they don’t have the money to leave.

      • spkaca says:

        “I understand patriarchy as the system where the father has the power over everybody in the household”
        This is the definition I prefer. It has the advantage of fitting the etymology of the word. Once one extends the concept, it becomes hopelessly vague, and arguments turn into poorly-understood wrangles over terminology. (The same could be said about certain other belief-systems or value-systems.)

    • fion says:

      It’s an emergent phenomenon, like temperature or consciousness. Culture is another emergent phenomenon. You have a society of thousands/millions of individuals all doing their thing, interacting with each other according to their psychology and their incentives. The collective behaviour of such a system is not necessarily intuitive based on the psychology of the incentives of the individuals.

      Patriarchy is a collective phenomenon that emerges from a society for reasons only partly understood, which results in the oppression of women. It could be explicit things like laws banning women from holding certain positions, but it could also be very subtle things, like a general feeling that catcalling a woman is acceptable, or that women who accuse a man of rape are likely to be lying, or that women aren’t well-suited to certain positions.

      I think the word is problematic for two reasons:
      1) It is too broad. It could refer to a society in which women are banned by law from holding certain jobs, owning property and voting. Or it could refer to a society in which women are more likely to be sexually assaulted than men. The strategies for improving one of these societies are different to those of the other.
      2) I don’t think it is helpful, strategically, to consider all the injustices and biases against women that exist in society as one homogeneous entity and give it a name. Nobody is “for patriarchy”, and the way we make our society more just to women doesn’t involve any “smashing” or “defeating”.

      I think its main use is as a rallying flag. You don’t shout “smash the patriarchy” because you think doing so will reduce incidence of sexual harassment in the workplace; you do it to signal that you’re a member of the feminist tribe.

    • moscanarius says:

      Charitably, the people I’ve heard using the term seem to mean “the social norms (and institutions derived from them) that create different acceptable roles for the behaviour of men and women, at the expense of women’s wellbeing”.

      “Smash the Patriarchy” usually means “abolish the norms that allow men to behave badly towards women”.

      Uncharitably, people pulling this concept on the street often just mean “the Devil”.

    • onyomi says:

      To my mind, “patriarchy” and “matriarchy” are anthropological descriptors for different sorts of family arrangement that occur at different times and places, but patriarchy doesn’t imply men hold all the power or have it better in all ways than under matriarchy, and matriarchy that women hold all the power, or have it better in all ways than under patriarchy.

      Basically, matriarchy is associated with “forager” societies on Robin Hanson’s definition, and patriarchy with “farmer.”

      In patriarchy, men are leaders of household units and their children become part of their extended family. For this reason, certainty about parentage of the children is more important, leading to stricter mores surrounding e.g. female chastity, and all the rest. Patriarchy is also harsher on men in all the ways farming civilization tends to be: they are tied to their families and expected to take care of them. They may also be tied to the land and some noble whom they’re expected to fight for. They cannot afford to be “layabouts” who leave the gathering and protection of resources necessary for child rearing to the mothers of those children who may or may not be their genetic inheritance.

      The first world today is more patriarchal than matriarchal, but less patriarchal than most farming societies.

      So, I think it’s fair to say “this slut shaming is a relic of the patriarchy!” because it probably literally is. What often gets left out in such discussion seems to be the fact that patriarchy has some advantages for men and women, and wholesale, unreflective return to “forager” mores would probably have a lot of bad consequences, though some pendulum swinging in that direction may be good now that many of the pressures related to “farmer” life have weakened.

  51. Ilya Shpitser says:

    Scott, it’s not that strange. It’s a combination of the generally (not always) poor argument quality from the right here, and “not wanting to be seen in the same room” as some of the folks who comment here. I am trying to dial back my participation here for these reasons, also.

    (I do worry that, for a variety of reasons, right wing positions “in general”, not just here, tend to be more poorly argued than left wing positions, regardless of merit, which I think is unhealthy.)

    Also, “meta-defecting” by advocating for more right-wing positions than you actually believe in, in order to get folks’ opinions to land where you think they need to land is a bad idea, longer term. Folks will not “meta-cooperate” (assume good faith) forever after.

    • keranih says:

      the generally (not always) poor argument quality from the right here

      …This is not my feel for the situation. Not in general, and not here at SSC.

      I do see a bit more of the whipcrack snark than I would prefer, and less of a presentation of the facts of the matter, and I think I see more of that from the right-leaning posters than from the left. (From the left, I see a blinkered assertion that *of course* their assumptions are accurate facts, instead of socially approved opinions & preferences.)

      Having said that – I’d like to see more people pointing out good (quality, not agreement) arguments from all sides.

      • arlie says:

        *sigh* I don’t know whether or not there are really more right wing people here posting The Truth as if they had some evidence for it, to resounding agreement, than left wing people doing the same. (Where the “truth” in question is something commonly believed by only one side of the US schism.) That’s certainly what it feels like, but I’m not taking the time to keep a score card, and my own political opinions would tend to make me see that, whether or not it were real.

        What I see overall is that most people rarely even try to get at the real truth, and those who do find it’s a lot more difficult than it first appears. If they have a strong emotional investment in a particular answer, or if their funding/social survival/friendships etc. depend on what gets investigated, they are unlikely to get anywhere useful. Ditto if they can’t get effective feedback and critique, for any reason. Simply locating all the actually available evidence (and prior work) can be surprisingly difficult.

        People here occassionally make an effort, which make them somewhat exceptional, outside of those few people who can make research into a full time job, and somehow get supported in doing this without running up against requirements to look at “appropriate” things and come to non-taboo conclusions.

        But most commenters, in most threads, surely aren’t making that effort. I’m certainly not; I don’t have that kind of time available. And when it comes to the big issues of US politics, I have a dog in the fight 🙁

        • Plumber says:

          I do notice more right-wing comments,  but not necessarily more right-wing commenters.

          I enjoy reading some of their comments,  especially since I don’t read the WSJ anymore (’cause the price) but continue to read the center-left New York Times and centrist Washington Post I’m curious about that point of view, but there was one area where the preponderance of right-wing comments was getting annoying, that would be this whole “is Kavaugh guilty?” thing.

          A couple of times I posted that I didn’t care if Kavaugh was innocent or guilty and my opposition to his being on the Court pre-existed and had nothing to do with anything that may or may not have happened between him and Ford and I linked to lists of decisions that he’s made as a Federal judge that I dislike and mostly I got “but what about the lack of proof” responses, a few other short responses from those that I perceive to be centrist or leftists, and only one response from someone on the right that addressed those decisions, and that would be @DavidFriedman who tried to explain to me how someone could make those decisions as a matter of principle, not just plutocracy (I still don’t like those rulings, but I’m less likely to just assume class war motives), so there’s one right-winger that my respect for has grown a lot, and the centrists and the leftists reminded me that I wasn’t alone, for which I’m grateful, and most of the rest of the rightist commenters on this Kavaugh thing just kind of blended in my mind and I started to ignore the whole subject since few seemed to be addressing the issues that I cared about instead of some old alleged sex thing.

          • Nick says:

            I think more folks than just David would be interested in a unions discussion. You should make a top level post about it.

          • Matt M says:

            The WSJ is hardly right wing.

          • quanta413 says:

            The WSJ editorial pages were definitely right wing when I used to read them consistently back in the 00’s. Of the big business/libertarian variety. Unless they’ve really changed in the last decade… which I’m inclined to doubt. I’ve read a few since then but not often. Didn’t notice a change.

          • Matt M says:

            I would say that the WSJ is “generally in favor of capitalism.”

            I would not say that this makes one “right wing”

          • HeelBearCub says:

            The WSJ itself is not at this time right wing.

            Their editorial pages are another thing altogether. Seriously.

          • I don’t read the WSJ very often, but my impression from when I did was that the editorial page was moderately libertarian, the news stories were not. I remember being struck by an article about problems with the adoption system, couples who wanted to adopt having difficulty doing so, which described that as a failure of the market system (probably not their words–I’m going on long ago memories). The article didn’t mention that this was a market on which the price was set, by law, at zero.

          • Matt M says:

            Who actually reads newspaper editorials anymore?

            I visit the WSJ on a daily basis as my primary news source and never click on the editorials.

          • Nick says:

            Okay, caveat to what I said earlier: if you make a top level post about unions, folks might prefer to talk about the WSJ instead.

          • Plumber says:

            “Who actually reads newspaper editorials anymore?….”

            @Matt M,

            I do, the columnists I most follow are:

            Ross Douthat, Thomas Edsall, and Paul Krugman. 

            I used to follow David Brooks, and George Will more, but that’s fallen by the wayside. 

            “I think more folks than just David would be interested in a unions discussion. You should make a top level post about it…..”

            @Nick,

            I should, but since that’s pretty damn important to me I’m more nervous about doing a good post than a quick one (and I’m trying to decide if it should be more general information or personal experience).

            “..Okay, caveat to what I said earlier: if you make a top level post about unions, folks might prefer to talk about the WSJ instead”

            Yeah, I’m noticing that my off-the-cuff comments that I didn’t think about much get most of the responses, I imagine that probably do that as well and respond to things that are less than the core of OP’s messages. 

            Anyway, thanks!

      • pdbarnlsey says:

        I’d offer this, from a regular poster earlier in this thread, as exhibit A for why I find digging around in the comment threads somewhat exhausting, even though there’s often a lot of good non-culture war stuff buried here (and, hey, occasionally some good culture war stuff from both sides of the debate too).

        I’m not sure where you’re going to find anyone who things that the libya intervention was a good idea, unless you can get in touch with Hillary Clinton or Samantha Power

        I don’t think that’s the sort of dumb partisan snark someone should feel posting to an educated audience. And it’s pretty standard here.

        • cassander says:

          One, trump apparently made those comments back in 2011. I don’t follow his twitter feed now, I certainly didn’t do so then. Two, I never claimed that people weren’t in favor of doing it in 2011, lots of people were. Few do so today because, three, there’s nothing partisan or snarky about criticizing libya. Barack Obama called it one of the worst mistakes of his presidency, and conventional wisdom has followed suit. Clinton and Power are the only two people who I’ve heard defend the decision to go to war in libya in recent years.

          Those in glass houses….

          • keranih says:

            OK, so…

            …is pdbarnlsey right, and the assumption that Libyan regime change is something specific to a Clinton an unhelpful partisan snark which should be obvious to everyone, or is cassander right, and really everyone except Clinton thought this was a bad idea at the time?

            Or, pdbarnlsey, can you offer a rephrasing that you would have found unannoying in this way, even if not something you would agree with?

          • cassander says:

            @keranih

            or is cassander right, and really everyone except Clinton thought this was a bad idea at the time?

            For the third time, this is not a claim that I made. Lots of people thought it was a good idea at the time. Just about the only people who still claim it was a good decision today are the people who made it, and not even all of them.

          • pdbarnlsey says:

            Cassander, I don’t think “how can I be expected to know that the policy I criticised Hillary for was, in fact, a bipartisan position? That was in 2011!” is a great start to a good faith debate on these matters.

            There’s probably a sensible debate to be had about the degree to which the different factions who initially supported Libyan intervention have changed their positions over time, rather than, in Trump’s case, simply lying about them and hoping their supporters don’t notice.

            It would start, I think, with a recent statement from Hillary Clinton saying she stood behind the decision to intervene, acknowledge that Obama called it a good idea even in retrospect in the 2016 article you cite and at least evidencing an awareness of the chequered, and ongoing, history of support for humanitarian(esque) interventions and R2P on the other side of the aisle, and in the white house.

            That drive-by attempt at painting failed intervention as some kind of exclusively democratic folly really didn’t qualify, and is sort of par for the course.

          • cassander says:

            @pdbarnlsey says:

            Well, one, I know full well that the decision was supported by many people. My comment was about who still supports it today, which is not a lot of people.

            Two, my comment about 2011 was a specific response you citing Trump’s support, something I didn’t care about then, wasn’t talking about now, and don’t see as being at all relevant to the discussion. Your attempt to paint it as a broad indication of me not caring what people were saying at the time of the intervention does you no credit.

            Three, I wasn’t trying to launch a debate about who supported the intervention and who didn’t, because there’s not anything there to debate. The record on that subject is quite clear and uncontested.

            Four, at no point did I even hint that failed as intervention was “some kind of exclusively democratic folly”. I talked about two people in the context of one intervention, and you’ve gone on to invent a whole lot of other positions I don’t believe that and I’ve never articulated. I suggest that you might consider that since of the two of us, you’re the only one talking about party, it might be you doing the drive by partisan hackery, not me.

          • pdbarnlsey says:

            I don’t see that link I asked for Cassander. Is it stuck in moderation?

            I do see a lot of obfuscation amounting to “I have no strong views on the history of humanitarian intervention in Libya or elsewhere, I just really hate Hillary and wanted to say so!”, which feels like we’re back where I came in.

          • cassander says:

            @pdbarnlsey says:

            I do see a lot of obfuscation amounting to “I have no strong views on the history of humanitarian intervention in Libya or elsewhere, I just really hate Hillary and wanted to say so!”, which feels like we’re back where I came in.

            Sigh. Again, I said the opposite of that, and I don’t see much point in continuing to discuss things with anyone so eager to willfully misrepresent what others say.

          • pdbarnlsey says:

            Again, I said the opposite of that

            So you said that you do have strong views on the bipartisan history of humanitarian intervention and that you don’t hate Hillary?

            I’m just… genuinely not sure if you know how “opposites” work. It’s not just a way of telling someone they’re, like, super wrong, you know? It’s a well-defined concept.

            Anyway, as I said going in, it seems like there’s an ecosystem here where a reasonable number of posters enjoy sharing “all Gore invented the internet”-level observations without so much as a link to back them up.

            And they’re sufficiently unused to getting called on them that the resulting interaction produces high dudgeon rather than supporting evidence. It’s exhausting.

          • Lillian says:

            pdbarnlsey, i think you’re ignoring the context in which cassander made his original comment. The matter at hand was not who was for the intervention back in 2011, but who in 2018 will defend it. J Mann wanted to know if there someone here who would, cassander advised him that there are very few people here or elsewhere, except for the likes of Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power.

            As far as i can tell he is correct, and defenders of the Lybian intervention are thin on the ground these days. Trump denies ever supporting it, Obama calls it the worst mistake of his Presidency, and every discussion i’ve seen here and elsewhere has been negative on the subject. Hell you yourself seem to be unwilling to defend it, since instead of putting yourself out as someone who still supports it, you’ve instead chosen to argue matters that are not in question.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            It was deployed as a “boo light” would be. The fact that people aren’t willing to acknowledge this is part of the issue.

            If you wanted to make a point that many people who backed it at the time have retracted, you would say that. If you want to participate in “your side’s” solidarity, you employ boo lights.

          • Nick says:

            It was deployed as a “boo light” would be. The fact that people aren’t willing to acknowledge this is part of the issue.

            Aren’t willing to acknowledge this, or just haven’t acknowledged this? You’re the first person to suggest it was a boo light, and when you responded to that discussion yesterday you didn’t say anything about it. So until just a few minutes ago, you can count yourself among the folks “unwilling” to acknowledge it. I think that’s a broader criticism than you intend to make.

            If you wanted to make a point that many people who backed it at the time have retracted, you would say that. If you want to participate in “your side’s” solidarity, you employ boo lights.

            I think that is what cassander said. I don’t know what grounds you have for thinking it’s just a boo light, which is part of why I’m skeptical that people “aren’t willing to acknowledge this.” The best I can come up with, given Hypoborean’s and alphago’s responses, is that cassander overstated the shift in opinion on Libya. Do you think he did? Are there prominent figures besides Clinton and Power who would defend the Libya decision, especially across the aisle? Would you like to make this case, or dispute cassander on whether alphago’s point is apt, instead of declaring that it’s a boo light and implying we’re all hiding our true estimation of it by not saying so sooner?

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Nick:

            I rephrased “partisan snark” as “boo light”, so it’s not the first time it’s being brought up.

            Compare the following two phrasings of similar points “Only Dick Cheney and John Bolton still think the Iraq War was a good idea” and “I think it may be hard to find a collaborator, as even George W. Bush himself thinks the Iraq War was a mistake”.

          • quanta413 says:

            It’s not odd to view Cassander’s comment as a boo light, but I find the George Bush version of the same remark hilarious, and I think a lot of people here would at least find it amusing.

            I don’t think what Cassander said is actually a good example of left-bashing here. A lot of right-coded people here hate any sort of interventionist foreign policy.

          • Nick says:

            HeelBearCub, fair enough on the first, I interpreted “part of the issue” as you making a criticism distinct from pdbarnlsey’s. But I still don’t see either of those two analogies as boo lights. Boo lights are supposed to be practically empty besides the “booo!” and neither cassander’s nor yours are. And that besides, you’re still assuming that cassander mentally filtered his list down to prominent liberals; that’s why I asked whether there are figures across the aisle he could have been listing instead.

    • Deiseach says:

      I’d like to see more explicitly left-wing commentators, I think we had a few but they seem to have left. I’d also like to know why they got scared off – was it right wing piling on, was it “fed up of trying to convert the unrighteous” and leaving for greener pastures, what?

      I’m biting my tongue pretty hard about the “poor argument quality” remark because if this is a genuine reason (left wing poster thinks engagement is useless because all they’ll get in return is canned talking points) then that’s valuable information, though I can’t resist asking: what counts as worthwhile engagement? Is it when your interlocutor goes “Road to Damascus moment! I now realise all my previous beliefs were nonsense, and I’m leaving the right for the left!” because personally, I don’t think that necessarily follows, but like I said, I’m curious to know what would ameliorate any perceived incivility?

      • benwave says:

        I’m an explicitly left-wing commentator who hasn’t commented here in a while. I have certainly gained something of value from participating in discussion here in the past. On doing some reflection about that, I think some of my more specific reasons include:

        – The comments sections in articles are just so long now. They were already large when I started commenting, but now whenever I load a new article there are routinely 300+ comments already and the amount of effort it would take to give that an honest read through is a bit off-putting to me.

        – I often don’t feel I have a great deal to add. Perhaps this is coincidence that a lot of the more recent posts have been outside my expertise?

        – Related to above, if I see a comment I disagree with, I don’t usually feel like it adds terribly much to post a reply to that effect.

        Do you think I should be pushing myself to contribute more than I currently do?

        • The comments sections in articles are just so long now.

          That’s a problem, but there is at least a partial solution. If you get to a top level comment on a subject you have no interest in, you click the hide button. It’s not quite as convenient as the old Usenet threaded interface, but close. So you can focus your attention on those threads that are of interest to you.

          • Hoopyfreud says:

            A key issue, as I remarked elsewhere, is that max thread depth is small enough that this becomes impossible relatively often, especially given how CW discussion has a way of getting into a large fraction of subthreads.

      • Michael Handy says:

        We’re still around, though I’m currently busy with work and hobbies, so my ability to establish the SSC comments section as a vanguard of socialism is limited right now

      • James Picone says:

        I stopped commenting because I got tired of getting dogpiled with low-quality bullshit (in the sense of stuff that’s not just true, but where it doesn’t even *matter* if it’s true) if I stuck a left-of-centre head above the parapets, particularly on the topic climate change. Also my someone’s-wrong-on-the-internet tendencies aren’t very helpful and mostly just lead to me feeling shitty, so reducing my contact with situations that are almost designed to produce that reaction seemed like a good idea.

        There’s a lot of Bulverism and Bulverism-adjacent stuff around here too that I’m not very fond of. See, for example, this sort of comment. It’s not really doing anything particularly wrong, but seeing that attitude continually grates. It feels frankly hypocritical, given how many complaints there are about seeing that sort of discussion from the left.

        what counts as worthwhile engagement?

        I think one of the more frustrating aspects is that I continually feel like I’m starting at square 1. Imagine there’s some widely-presented talking point in a topic I care about, A, which I consider to be deeply, obviously wrong, with rebuttal B establishing that well. I’d consider it a basic courtesy that if I’ve had an argument with you on that topic that’s gone A -> B, and then we have a second argument, you shouldn’t just start with A but should at least start from a position where you acknowledge the existence of argument B.

        tl;dr: this place doesn’t feel like it’s truth-seeking; it just feels like a collection of dumb gotchas. Twitter, but with tens of thousands of characters per tweet.

        • For anyone here who wants to form an opinion about James Picone and why he stopped commenting, I recommend this link to an old post, and a search for “Lomborg.” Read down the thread and see what you think of him.

          My conclusion, that he was making strong statements about a book he had not read on the basis of reading a book attacking it and was unwilling to admit error when people who had read the book demonstrated that the attacks were strikingly dishonest, was strong enough so that my response to his post here was to locate that thread and reread it.

          I don’t know if that is when he stopped commenting but it was when I formed my opinion of him.

          • James Picone says:

            It’s really strange how utterly blind the SSC commentariat is to professional propagandists like Lomborg. If the man says anything true it’s accidental.

            If people want to form an opinion of David, consider his approach to trend estimation. Take a start and end point, take the difference, divide by the number of years in-between, in incredibly noisy data – in the linked case underestimating the trend by ~50%. David has academic qualifications in economics, so he absolutely should have the statistical understanding to know why what he’s doing there is meaningless. But he doesn’t care, because global warming being wrong is an axiom for him, not a conclusion.

            I pointed that one out to him well over a year ago.

            Yes, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about. If you had a significant hobbyist interest in evolutionary biology and there was a blog written by a thoughtful and interesting thinker whose comments section was, for whatever reason, stuffed full of creationists, creationist-adjacent people, and it just wasn’t a topic of discussion, how seriously could you take their viewpoints?

          • Glen Raphael says:

            @James Picone:

            It’s really strange how utterly blind the SSC commentariat is to professional propagandists like Lomborg. If the man says anything true it’s accidental.

            Do we have to do this again?

            In order to be so confident that Lomborg is unreliable one would at a minimum have to be willing to READ WHAT LOMBORG IS SAYING. So far, every time you’ve identified an alleged “mistake” made by Lomborg you’ve been wrong, and the reason you’ve been wrong is that you never read the original text. You have been trusting third-hand accounts by Lomborg’s enemies. Since his enemies appear to be lazy and more interested in point-scoring than accuracy, every time you wheel out one of their claims you make us all a little dumber.

            Pick a choice. You can EITHER:

            (a) be willing to READ Lomborg and think about what the text is trying to say, or

            (b) maintain your own ideological purity by refusing to go to the library and read a book you might not like.

            If you continue to stick with option (b), you need to reduce your certainly level on statements like “If the man says anything true it’s accidental”. Because YOU DON’T KNOW THAT, and so far the evidence doesn’t even seem to suggest it.

            (Our prior discussion on Hudson Bay polar bear population levels starts here. Upshot: Lomborg made a claim, one of the references he gave for it was an academic paper on a related subject, and the people who disagreed with him didn’t realize the reference backed up his claim because they only read the abstract of the reference. When I read the referenced paper in full I found that it did indeed back up Lomborg’s specific quantifiable claim in the sentence at issue. Thus the prime example YOU picked of Lomborg being wrong turned out to be an example of his detractors being careless or lazy.)

          • Plumber says:

            “It’s really strange how utterly blind the SSC commentariat is to professional propagandists like Lomborg….”

            @James Picone,

            Why is that surprising?

            A quick web search of “Lombard” came up with: “Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish author….”, and since I can’t read Danish why in Hell should I know who he is?!

            The burden is on you to tell me, insults about my ignorance don’t work.

          • A quick web search of “Lombard” came up with: “Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish author….”

            I gather your robot servant has been correcting your spelling again.

            Back when the conventional wisdom was that population growth was going to destroy us, or at least make poor countries much poorer, the one prominent holdout against that view was Julian Simon. He wrote a book titled “The Ultimate Resource,” meaning people. He made a famous bet with Ehrlich, one of the prominent people on the other side, over whether the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials would go up over time, as one would expect if population growth was pushing against resource limits, or down. His opponent got to pick the particular resources and the time period.

            Simon won the bet. It’s probably the original source of the pattern you occasionally see here of someone offering to bet on his views being true. The controversy originated in the 1960’s, the bet was made in 1980, and so far Simon’s view has proved correct–calorie consumption in the third world has trended up, not down, extreme poverty in the world has trended sharply down, not up.

            All of which I mention because Lomborg is more or less the current equivalent of Simon in the climate controversy. He argues that the dangers of climate change are greatly exaggerated, that there are other and more serious problems we ought to be worried about. Like Simon, he is the target of a lot of criticism and a fair amount of hatred by supporters of the orthodoxy, some of which you can see reflected in Picone’s comments. I linked earlier to a thread from a few years back which went into Picone’s claims about Lomborg in some detail.

            (The thread is here. Search on “Lomborg” to find the beginning. There is apparently a way of linking directly to a comment in a thread, but I haven’t figured out how to do it.)

            Lomborg, like Simon, publishes in English, so if you are curious you can read him. I was amused a few years ago to read an article, I think in Nature or Science or some similarly respectable publication, where the author said that of course we now all know that Julian Simon was right, but Lomborg … followed by much the same things that I remember people saying about Simon thirty or forty years earlier.

            I’m not an unbiased source, since I’m strongly on Lomborg’s side–I think it’s an open question whether the net effect of climate change will be positive or negative. I was on Simon’s side—I have a chapter in one of his books, although it was on the theoretical issue of how to compare alternative futures, not on the evidence of what was likely to happen. But the old Picone thread on Lomborg will give you at least some feel for the tone of the controversy.

          • Nick says:

            (The thread is here. Search on “Lomborg” to find the beginning. There is apparently a way of linking directly to a comment in a thread, but I haven’t figured out how to do it.)

            Click the timestamp under “DavidFriedman says”.

          • sentientbeings says:

            For anyone here who wants to form an opinion about James Picone and why he stopped commenting, I recommend this link to an old post, and a search for “Lomborg.” Read down the thread and see what you think of him.

            I think this comment starts the exchange.

            As Nick pointed out, the timestamp is a hyperlink and the link address can be copied.

            I wonder if you have heard news of the recent audit work done by John McLean on the HadCRUT4 dataset? It purports to show some pretty serious problems, some of which are very simple to check. A summary I read claimed that this audit is the first of its kind, which seems hard to believe, but is in some ways more troubling than actual errors (if true).

            Edit: Here is a link to the audit, although it is behind a paywall.

          • I’ve seen a story on the audit, but I find it less persuasive than it sounds. HadCRUT is a lot of data, so it isn’t astonishing if some bits are messed up. On the one hand one would like people to have gone through looking for problems. On the other hand, the more cleaning up of the data you do, the greater the opportunity to tweak it to show what you want it to show, and the greater the opportunity for other people to accuse you of doing so.

            I’m waiting to see what responses that report gets.

        • rlms says:

          I appreciated your comments on climate change.

        • Chevalier Mal Fet says:

          For what it’s worth, coming from someone who was initially very skeptical, I found your posts on global warming among the most informative and persuasive that I’ve read. I liked following your debates with David.

          So, just so you know, it wasn’t totally spitting into the wind.

      • A Definite Beta Guy says:

        I’ve been the sole right-wing commenter in a lot of places. I do not follow all the left-right drama at SSC, but usually it gets annoying replying to numerous people, particularly people who are snarky and exercise little to no charity. It’s not particularly fun, particularly since you have to respond to at least some of these attacks if you want to keep your standing in the community.

        It sounds like left-wing posters at SSC think they are getting dog-piled and many of the arguments they encounter are not charitable. Perhaps there is some truth to that, but it at least can be kept in mind the next time (general) you hits “reply.”

        • Garrett says:

          FWIW, I’ve started and then abandoned a lot of responses, both here and elsewhere. I generally ask myself “is this post going to make a difference?” I don’t believe a lot of the “attacks” will damage status. It’s like being called the devil by the crazy soap-box guy who yells grrrr – you don’t have to yell back to be seen as more respectable. Put another way, I believe that people over-estimate the extent to which minor issues will impact their status.

          Alternative option: roll your eyes when you read something that low-value and move on.

          • One minor thing I like about discussions here is that, quite often, if I look down the thread before responding I find that someone else has already made the point I would have, so I don’t have to.

          • ManyCookies says:

            @Garrett

            When everyone’s eye-rolling I can too, but when a forum treats a low-value post as an insightful comment or a witty retort that gets to me.

            @DavidFriedman

            Yeah having some consistent showing of ideological allies calms my Someone Is Wrong On The Internet tendencies, where I don’t feel the urge to respond to every post I see because someone will at least adequately pick up the slack.

      • fluorocarbon says:

        I don’t know if I count as being on the left, I think of myself more as a weird technocratic centrist. But I have been really hesitant to comment, especially on political things, for three main reasons:

        1 – Dogpiling and snark. Most leftish posts get piled on by right-wing commenters, and not a small number of the comments are wrapped in snark. I’d find it difficult to participate in a forum where I’d spend a long time time thinking and writing something to then have it be treated that way. I’d honestly prefer outright anger or hostility to snark.

        2 – Assuming the left is ill-intentioned. In the past I’ve seen a lot of posts saying things like “the goal of the European left is to destroy Europeans and European culture.” (Fortunately these types of comments seem to be decreasing.) This is pretty blatantly “my outgroup is evil” and I can’t imagine having a fruitful discussion with someone who actually believes that.

        3 – Asymmetric details lawyering. I don’t know if there’s a name for this, but it drives me crazy. Left-wing things are treated as if they’re one example of a broad meta-thing and right-wing things are stripped of all cultural context and analyzed strictly factually. (The posts discussing Steve Sailer compared with posts about academic Facebook below are a good example). If someone were to post “Muslims immigrating will destroy country X,” a bunch of comments would say, “well, let’s look at the evidence: are Islam and liberal institutions compatible? Does country X have the ability to integrate?” or “I may not agree, but this is a valuable viewpoint.” If someone says “the world would be better if all white men were dead” nobody would leave an equivalent comment: “let’s examine the evidence, do white men commit more crimes on average? How do we define better?” or “I may not agree, but this is a valuable viewpoint.”

        I’m not sure how to fix the third point, but the first two could be fixed by people being nicer, less dogpiling, and maybe more moderation for tone.

        • dndnrsn says:

          3 is a better way of saying something I’ve been trying to say. Some relatively extreme positions get treated as things to be dissected dispassionately, while others (even less extreme, relatively speaking) get treated as Extremely Scary. Now, I got nothing against dispassionate dissection, quite the opposite. It’s the double standard that I think is the issue.

          • onyomi says:

            @dndnrsn

            The problem is we all have our own ideas about what is scary; in fact, I think most political disagreements boil down to this: when Tribe A says x is a Very Serious Problem, standard operating procedure for Tribe B is not to carefully, deeply engage with x to find out why it’s serious, nor to wholly deny the existence of x, but rather to say “okay, but let’s have a little perspective about x; we also need to keep in mind y and z.” And Tribe B, in turn will downplay y and z and try to turn every conversation back to x.

            To get less abstract, Red Tribe has trouble discussing in a measured, nuanced way:
            abortion
            immigration

            And Blue Tribe:
            sexual assault/rape
            racism/prejudice

            It’s not like (mainstream) Blue Tribe says abortions are great or that there should be 0 immigration restrictions, it’s that they don’t understand Red Tribe’s sense of urgency about these issues and want to treat them in a careful, nuanced way that takes into consideration factors like a woman’s control of her body and the need for compassion and fairness in immigration policy. It’s not like (mainstream) Red Tribe thinks sexual assault and abuse of innocent minorities by the police never happen, it’s that they don’t understand Blue Tribe’s sense of urgency about these issues and instead call for treating them in a nuanced way that, e.g. is careful to respect the rights of the accused.

            Probably it would be good if everyone tried to have a little more perspective and nuance about the things that scare them while expending more effort to understand the things that cause opposing tribe to freak out but don’t seem so scary to himself. But I definitely don’t see a lot of asymmetry, either on this board, or in general. So far as I can tell, what differs tends to be the content of the double standards on hysteria/nuance, not their existence or absence.

          • dndnrsn says:

            Look, if the comment section here is going to condemn the outgroup for having double standards, it behooves it not to have double standards itself. It doesn’t change whether what they’re saying is true, but it’s silly to propose something as an ideal to be met by someone else.

          • Matt M says:

            It’s not like (mainstream) Blue Tribe says abortions are great

            Is Michelle Wolf not mainstream?

          • Edward Scizorhands says:

            The most likely answer is out-group shunning. Like Scott’s famous post about not being able to say that Hitler is worse than your fellow countrymen who are in the other major political party.

          • onyomi says:

            @dndnrsn

            I’m not sure what you’re talking about? (Not in the sense of a bigger issue; I mean, I don’t know what you’re referencing). Are you saying that the right-wing commentors are condemning Scott’s leftist affirmative action policy? I don’t see a lot of that? Are you saying the right-wing commentors are commending leftist double-standards on some issues while having double-standards of their own on different issues? If so, then that’s basically what I’m saying?

        • Nick says:

          I’d find it difficult to participate in a forum where I’d spend a long time time thinking and writing something to then have it be treated that way. I’d honestly prefer outright anger or hostility to snark.

          I’m not sure what you mean here, because I feel the exact opposite. Anger or hostility would definitely bother me. What do you have in mind by snark here?

          Like, I directed some at Guy in TN here. Is that the sort of thing that would drive you off? Suppose I’d said, “You’re missing the obvious, you moonbat!” Would you really preferred that?!

          (And to Guy in TN: if my comment did offend you, sorry.)

          3 – Asymmetric details lawyering. I don’t know if there’s a name for this, but it drives me crazy. Left-wing things are treated as if they’re one example of a broad meta-thing and right-wing things are stripped of all cultural context and analyzed strictly factually. (The posts discussing Steve Sailer compared with posts about academic Facebook below are a good example). If someone were to post “Muslims immigrating will destroy country X,” a bunch of comments would say, “well, let’s look at the evidence: are Islam and liberal institutions compatible? Does country X have the ability to integrate?” or “I may not agree, but this is a valuable viewpoint.” If someone says “the world would be better if all white men were dead” nobody would leave an equivalent comment: “let’s examine the evidence, do white men commit more crimes on average? How do we define better?” or “I may not agree, but this is a valuable viewpoint.”

          Okay, I’ve noticed myself doing something similar at times. In fairness, I’m a conservative Catholic, so my job right now is justifying implausible interpretations. But seriously, this is difficult to avoid: on the one hand principle of charity says to interpret something in a better light if plausible, on the other hand experience or context might warrant more suspicion. I hereby license everybody to call me out if they think I’m details lawyering in a partisan way.

          • fluorocarbon says:

            Is that the sort of thing that would drive you off? Suppose I’d said, “You’re missing the obvious, you moonbat!” Would you really preferred that?!

            No, it looks to me like you’re engaged in more-or-less good faith debate but got frustrated and put in some sarcasm. I guess in the world of pure and ideal argumentation that wouldn’t happen, but it’s not a big turn off.

            I’m thinking of a combination of dogpiling and dismissive comments. For example, if someone posts “I’m in support of left-wing thing X for these reasons,” they often get a bunch of replies disagreeing (dogpiling). This isn’t that bad, but then at least one of those comments will be a one liner like, “I too want to be sent to the gulags” that doesn’t add anything. It’s a combination of insulting, point-scoring, and not extending any charity.

            I do think this is less common now than in the past (maybe it was mostly a few bad actors who were banned?). I also admit that it bothers me more than it should because it’s a pet peeve of mine. I don’t want to point out specific posts, but comments in this thread replying with “no wonder leftists need affirmative action, their arguments are terrible!” fit the bill. I also remember Scott’s Trump crying wolf posts being full of that stuff, but unfortunately I don’t have the time to go digging for examples right now.

        • Matt M says:

          I think the third point is sufficiently explained by something that has already been discussed – the fact that there are already an endless supply of places you can go to (i.e. every major American university) if you’re interested in a non-emotional and scientific debate over whether it’s worthwhile for society to kill white men, and virtually nowhere you can go (aside from screeching conspiracy theory call-in radio shows) where you can discuss the the potential negative consequences of large-scale Islamic migration.

          Since Scott is willing to host that discussion, people interested in having it flock here.

          • quanta413 says:

            On top of that, notice the supposed asymmetry here is in the questions as well.

            The question in the hypothetical is not something akin to “Should we prevent white people from emigrating to other countries?” or “Would Catholicism ruin the progress the Chinese Communist Party has made in reducing poverty?” Or “does the U.S.’s constant campaigns to ‘liberate’ other countries make those countries even worse off?” Or “does U.S. interference in Latin America make things worse?”

            I am more than happy to debate those sorts of questions even if they start out phrased in a more broad and negative way. In some cases, my position is closer to left wing than right wing.

            The question in the hypothetical is “Would the world be better if all white men were dead?”

            If someone in the comments asked “Would the world be better if all Muslims were dead?” I’d have a hard time engaging without telling them to fuck off.

          • Viliam says:

            I would probably enjoy reading a non-emotional and scientific debate about possible effects of killing all white men. But my impression was that the way American universities teach this topic is quite emotional and non-scientific.

            Is it too much to hope for an adversarial collaboration on this topic? 😀

            EDIT: To clarify, I am hoping for some other two people to collaborate on the topic, not offering myself as one of them. I have neither personal experience with killing white men, nor education in albusmasculusoccisiology.

          • Matt M says:

            But my impression was that the way American universities teach this topic is quite emotional and non-scientific.

            That’s what the gender studies journals are for.

            Just be careful that you don’t read the hoax articles!

    • albatross11 says:

      The “not wanting to be seen in the same room” concerns seem to me to be linked to the phenomenon of attacking someone via guilt-by-association that’s become fairly common online. Basically attack someone as having been a regular participant in some forum where offensive things were said, and count on context collapse to ensure that almost nobody will actually notice that they were the guy arguing *against* those offensive things.

      • HeelBearCub says:

        No.

        No, no.

        No, no, no, no.

        It’s that the fact that, much like stepping in dog poop, the stink lingers and you feel unclean.

        • quanta413 says:

          So internalized guilt by association?

          I don’t see how reading something you disagree with contaminates you.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Imagine a sex act that would be squick for you. Everyone has them. Fucking a dog. Eating feces. Whatever does not float your boat. Better yet, child molestation, since most people have strong moral inclinations, not just purity reactions, about that. Or, male homosexual sex, if you want something less law provoking and you find it objectionable.

            Now, imagine a website where the many of the commenters actively describe and promote these acts fairly frequently. Does that seem pleasant? Would you like hanging out there? Even if they were otherwise erudite?

            …and another thing, it gets exhausting to have to explain what seems to be obvious. This kind of “oh, so you’re just feeble minded” kind of attack is also tiring.

          • quanta413 says:

            Your examples are physical actions. I may or may not feel sadness or discomfort reading something, but it is not a feeling like the one I feel if I fall in a pile of mud or step in something.

            You probably shouldn’t try guessing what I find objectionable either. My sexual mores are not particularly… puritan?

            One difference between what some posters write here and dog shit, is that there is almost nowhere where feces aren’t considered unclean. There is an instinctive reaction to certain sensations (although acclimation may not be difficult). But the ideas and moral taboos you hold come from other people. That’s why I called it internalized guilt by association.

            …and another thing, it gets exhausting to have to explain what seems to be obvious. This kind of “oh, so you’re just feeble minded” kind of attack is also tiring.

            It really isn’t obvious. Well, it isn’t an obvious match for your behavior.

            Also, I think a lot of morality boils down to internalized guilt for whatever that’s worth. I’m not saying you’re weak-minded.

            EDIT: To be clear, not the basis for moral theories. I mean that a lot of people’s moral behavior probably occurs because they’ve internalized the scolding voice of their mother/father/God/whatever

          • HeelBearCub says:

            You probably shouldn’t try guessing what I find objectionable either

            You will note that I explicitly did not, merely offered examples of squick and pointed out that that overwhelming majority of people have things that they consider squick.

            At which point you stopped engaging with my point, and objected to my examples and explanation and my assumed assumptions.

            As to guilt by association, you may be familiar with the fact that this is one of the things that people here are very, very against, and something they consider wrong. So your argument is easily seen as an attack on my position.

          • brmic says:

            I don’t see how reading something you disagree with contaminates you.

            Seriously?
            ‘Someone is wrong on the internet’ writ large. I regularly encounter posters/posts here on SSC for which (a) I think they’re wrong on factual grounds (b) I think their position is therefore wrong on moral grounds and (c) to the extent I feel part of this community I sense a duty to engage these people, but (d) I don’t have the time, energy, spoons and hence (e) feel guilty for not doing my share/not enough.

          • quanta413 says:

            At which point you stopped engaging with my point, and objected to my examples and explanation and my assumed assumptions.

            As to guilt by association, you may be familiar with the fact that this is one of the things that people here are very, very against, and something they consider wrong. So your argument is easily seen as an attack on my position.

            I’ll just stop. You feel the way you do, and I find it strange but obviously I’m not accomplishing anything productive.

            Seriously?
            ‘Someone is wrong on the internet’ writ large. I regularly encounter posters/posts here on SSC for which (a) I think they’re wrong on factual grounds (b) I think their position is therefore wrong on moral grounds and (c) to the extent I feel part of this community I sense a duty to engage these people, but (d) I don’t have the time, energy, spoons and hence (e) feel guilty for not doing my share/not enough.

            Yes, seriously. What you’re describing sounds different to me from what HeelBearCub is describing.

        • Nornagest says:

          And they say the left doesn’t have a purity foundation.

        • MereComments says:

          Truly, a rationalist riposte.

          You seem extremely upset that the very diverse, very charitable, and very varied community doesn’t kowtow to your particular religion, and you seem inclined to throw mud on your neighbors so you have an excuse to call them unclean.

          Frankly, I understand why your ilk needs affirmative action to stay in the conversation circle.

    • Deiseach says:

      “not wanting to be seen in the same room” as some of the folks who comment here

      I was going to make the usual “wretched hive of scum and villainy” joke but that does seem rather alarming. Would you care to elaborate? I’m not expecting you to name names, just give a general indication of what sort of company you would prefer not to keep.

      • BBA says:

        I’ll name a name: Steve Sailer makes my skin crawl. A subtle, polite white supremacist is still a white supremacist, and I’d rather not share any space with anyone like that.

        • That seems a very odd attitude to me. Almost everybody believes he is a good guy. If someone with views that seem horrible to you still thinks he is a good guy surely that’s an interesting puzzle, and solving it would help you understand the world better, have a clearer idea of what your opponents are like and how to deal with them.

          I can understand not wanting to waste your time with someone who is obviously stupid, and it can be uncomfortable to interact with someone who is very hostile to you, but that doesn’t seem to be your issue here.

          If “racist” to you means “someone who hates other people because of their race,” that isn’t very interesting, although it might still be worth understanding in order to predict the behavior of such people. If it means “someone who has factual beliefs relevant to race that I disagree with,” on the other hand, that would seem no more polluting an interaction than any other disagreement, and a useful one. You might discover your views were mistaken or at least only weakly supported, you might be able to demonstrate, to third parties if not to him, that his views were mistaken or only weakly supported.

          Could you expand on the reasons for your attitude here?

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            I suspect the notion of “white supremacist” at play here is not exactly either of the two definitions you propose, DF. Instead it’s something like “Someone who gleefully holds factual beliefs that are unflattering to certain races.”

            Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with noting and being persuaded by scientific evidence in favor of the biological inequality of the races. But I can understand the view that there’s something distasteful about a person who doesn’t begin that inquiry with at least the hope that the races are essentially equal in their genetic traits, and perhaps with a high prior that they’re equal as well. Sailer presents himself as someone who was hoping to find that they were unequal, and is pleased to report that the evidence on this question shook out exactly as he expected.

            I’m not saying his bias on this issue is any stronger than my bias on a number of issues that matter to me. He may even be correct about the facts; certainly he knows more of the relevant science than I do. I also don’t really share BBA’s distaste for being on the same site as Sailor, and I’d be glad to engage him in dialogue, although I’d want to hide that fact from some of my progressive friends. But I can definitely understand why one would feel distaste.

          • pdbarnlsey says:

            Yeah, I’m with Humbert on this one. Sailer’s clearly smart and often interesting, but appreciating that often requires scraping off a thick layer of “this will discomfort the libs”. There’s absolutely a place for hard truths about racial integration offered more in sorrow than in anger. That’s not what this sort of thing is about though:

            Nonetheless, Merkel’s blunderkrieg was more or less accurately foreseen in 1973 by French novelist Jean Raspail in his book The Camp of the Saints, based on his sense of the direction the zeitgeist was headed. In hindsight, Raspail’s prophecy appears brilliant. Still, you can imagine the technical problems in phrasing questions ahead of time to be both broad enough and specific enough. Raspail focused, for example, on a French-Hindu-impoverished-by-sea immersion rather than a German-Muslim-smartphone-by-land hegira. Is that close enough?

            Moreover, Raspail being right 42 years ahead of time isn’t much use in an annual contest that, by its nature, can’t look more than 12 months ahead.

            Also, Raspail missed key aspects of what happened in 2015. He imagined that the refugees would be starving masses who overcame European resistance by their pitifulness. But instead, the invaders turned out to be strutting military-age youths with smartphones, giving Germany’s surrender a weird sexual vibe that nobody yet has explained satisfactorily even in retrospect.

          • cassander says:

            @pdbarnlsey & Humbert McHumbert

            I fail to see anything gleeful or angry in sailer’s rather straightforward prose. Snarky, sure, but it’s hard not to be on occasion. But I think you’re both assuming an awful lot about how he arrived at his views, making an isolated demand for….not exactly rigor, but contrition, I suppose. I read sailor as someone who doesn’t really care much one way or the other if such and such group is better at something, and is simply annoyed at the constant, breathless insistence that a thing could never be true and even to think it is basically a hate crime. How would you feel if your job was showing people photographs of a blue sky in a world where it was considered downright evil to say the sky was any color but pink?

          • keranih says:

            I think that Steve Sailer’s contempt for people who adhere to the idea that there is no behavioral or IQ difference between genetic groups has the appearance of being gleeful that those differences exist.

            I also think that some people are hiding their discomfort about being proven wrong by declaring that SS wins the debates in an unsportsmanlike manner. Which has the advantage (to them) of being true, so that they are not entirely in the wrong.

          • pdbarnlsey says:

            Guys, I don’t think “strutting military aged brown people who have somehow obtained smartphones raping Germany while, according to the book Sailer cites, literally eating sh*t,” has much to do with average-level racial differences in IQ.

            And the fact that “it’s just about racial differences in IQ” is the SSC commentariat’s equivalent of “actually it’s about ethics in game journalism” is itself pretty telling.

            For what it’s worth, Cassander, I think there’s enough history of bad science in the name of neutral inquiry into the inherent inferiority of certain races that it probably does deserve to be approached somewhat apologetically, rather than gleefully, even if there are no gaps in your factual claims. But it’s certainly not something you should be trying to change the subject to when someone points you to an example of Sailer’s racially queasy rhetoric in unrelated contexts.

          • quanta413 says:

            For what it’s worth, Cassander, I think there’s enough history of bad science in the name of neutral inquiry into the inherent inferiority of certain races that it probably does deserve to be approached somewhat apologetically, rather than gleefully, even if there are no gaps in your factual claims.

            I feel like there are two threads that can be picked up here.

            One is how much did stuff like phrenology strengthen racism. I don’t have enough historical knowledge to deal with this question. But maybe you can reach some conclusions with enough knowledge. Maybe someone passed a really terrible law informed by expert knowledge at the time that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

            The second thread which I am more interested in is “Did past scientists being racist cause them to do lots of terrible science?” Talking about scientists we would now group under biology of one kind of another.

            I’m not convinced that racism on the part of past scientists was the primary reason for false or exaggerated conclusions they made. But I do agree that phrenology should make current scientists more careful about their claims.

            I’m sure that some scientists got some conclusions wrong because they were racist. But I doubt that was the primary problem. At a glance a lot of the things they got wrong seem like the sort of details you’d easily get wrong given the information available at the time. The sort of mistakes phrenologists made are not that conceptually different from the sort of mistakes more modern scientists make when studying the same biological systems. Phrenologists thought that you could localize certain behaviors to part of the brain (which you could measure by looking at the skull) and made some overextrapolations (or predictions that you could falsify depending how you want to look at it), and modern biologists had (have?) a distressing habit of thinking you can localize behaviors or traits to a few hormones or genes and making some overextrapolations.

            Neither idea is totally wrong and you can get somewhere useful with each idea, but both ideas are wrong enough that they can mislead you very badly if you extrapolate far. But both ideas are also an advance compared to not knowing that the brain is the center of cognition or that hormones and genes are an important part of causal chains relating to human behavior.

            Some sections of the wikipedia page on phrenology give me reverse deja vu. The popularity of phrenology blending science with mysticism and popular ideas reminds me of certain scientific ideas put forward by modern psychologists.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Almost everybody believes he is a good guy.

            I don’t.

          • Rachael says:

            From context it’s clear David meant “almost everyone believes they themselves are a good guy”, but it’s very easy to misread as “almost everyone believes Steve is a good guy” (because using generic “he” like that is almost obsolete). So now I’m confused which of those statements HeelBearCub is claiming to be a counterexample to.

          • Sebastian_H says:

            I’m a touch on the left, but from a very evangelical family, so I have an affinity with the right (having grown up with it I don’t have the visceral misunderstanding which enables easy demonization that a lot of people on both sides seem to easily fall into).

            However, Sailer really bugs me. I think it is because he will go out of his way to twist vast numbers of unrelated topics back to the IQ/race discussion. The good thing is that it has taught me that overworking your bugaboos can be a huge turn off, so I do it less. But, he definitely overworks the bugaboos in ways that tend to really destroy otherwise good conversations.

          • marxbro says:

            Exactly. I had a couple of Stalinist friends from way back, and not only were they the smartest and most intelligent people I’ve ever met, they also got me to rethink a lot of things politically. Back then, I was blindly anti-USSR, now I know that there’s a lot of good stuff about the Soviet Union.

          • brmic says:

            @DavidFriedman
            Substitute ‘child-rapist’ for ‘racist’. Imagine SSC had someone who openly advocates for the goals of NAMBLA, is very polite, if occassionaly snarky while doing so and is very erudite, a good debater and can defend his position with encyclopedic knowledge.

            Such people exist, you can seek them out, if you want. I for one have spoken to such people, read their materials to satisfy myself I’ve done my due dilligence and would henceforth prefer to avoid them in my spare time. Forever.
            Also, like Scott in his conclusion to the adversarial collaboration contest post, I think there’s a substantial risk here of such people causing updates in the wrong direction, if only because they’re usually more motivated than their opponents.

          • cassander says:

            @brmic

            Willingness to analogize Sailer’s brand of racism with child rape is precisely the thing I’m objecting to. Actual naziism, sure. but “hey I think there might be a biological reason that west africans are the best sprinters”? At worst, sailer’s like a pushy evangelist who won’t stop trying to convert you. And if you don’t like that, fine! I can totally understand that. But I object to the notion that what he’s doing is some innately vile act and should be treated as such.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Rachael:

            You are correct, I misread Friedman’s post. But then his subsequent point makes almost no sense. If everyone thinks they themselves are good guys, why does that make their point more worthy of listening to?

            @Cassander:

            Willingness to analogize Sailer’s brand of racism

            I wonder whether in other contexts you would be so willing to acknowledge that Sailer is a racist pushing a racist agenda? As a more general point, the fact that more people who are (broadly) on the right here aren’t willing to acknowledge these kinds of things (racists exist, they are tolerated and even celebrated, people are perfectly willing to amplify them, etc.) is an issue for honest discourse.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            It’s probably a bit similar to the discomfort you or I might feel at publicly and frequently acknowledging that anti-white racists (like the Facebook friend of mine I discuss in the next sub-thread down) exist within social justice circles.

          • cassander says:

            @HeelBearCub

            I wonder whether in other contexts you would be so willing to acknowledge that Sailer is a racist pushing a racist agenda? As a more general point, the fact that more people who are (broadly) on the right here aren’t willing to acknowledge these kinds of things (racists exist, they are tolerated and even celebrated, people are perfectly willing to amplify them, etc.) is an issue for honest discourse.

            Colloquial usage of the word racist translates as “This person is a witch, burn them!” I don’t apologize for being unwilling to use the term in contexts where that definition will prevail. I am willing to use the word here only because our standard of discourse is usually higher.

            If by racist you mean someone who hates people of other races, or considers them of less moral worth, then I would deny that Sailer is a racist. I wouldn’t deny that such racists exist, but I absolutely would deny that they are tolerated, much less celebrated. They’re even more marginal on the right than out and out stalinists are in the modern left.

            If by racist you mean someone who argues that while human beings are all human, there are variations in behavior among human populations that are rooted in biology, then it’s inarguable that sailer is a racist. But even with this definition, I’d deny that such people are celebrated by the right. This group is perhaps as influential on the right as communists are on the modern left. anyone vaguely mainstream might quietly nod along to what they say, but they’d never say it out loud.

            And if by racist you mean someone who has no real complicated understanding of biology, but by experience or learning has come to have a dislike for or low opinion of one group of people or another, then there are lots of those people, but that it’s left, not the right, that most often makes open appeals to such tribalism.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            If by racist you mean someone who hates people of other races, or considers them of less moral worth, then I would deny that Sailer is a racist.

            What about the definition I suggested above: someone who wants to believe that other races are biologically inferior, or who is happy to believe this and takes comfort in it? Or someone whose biases cause them to interpret the evidence in favor of racial inequality as stronger than it actually is?

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @cassander:

            As I suspected, you actually do think Sailer is a racist. But, if I were to say Sailer is, in fact, a racist, in some other context, you would protest that I should not be using such words, etc. I think this is actually the more general case. Generally people here aren’t willing to admit he is a racist, white supremacist in favor of ethnic segregation or apartheid … but he should still be listened to.

            The idea that blacks are inferior has been a dominant force in American politics since inception. This has cut across “left” and “right” for the majority of the history of the country. The fact that we, as a nation and as political coalitions, also have held and still hold contradicting positions does not make this a less influential position.

          • cassander says:

            @Humbert McHumbert says:

            What about the definition I suggested above: someone who wants to believe that other races are biologically inferior, or who is happy to believe this and takes comfort in it? Or someone whose biases cause them to interpret the evidence in favor of racial inequality as stronger than it actually is?

            “Inferior” is a very loaded word. If I believe that west africans have a propensity to be better sprinters than non-west africans, am I calling non-west africans inferior? As for desiring to believe such a thing, or taking comfort in it, I don’t think that’s something that’s knowable or worth talking about. If you think someone is biased, well that’s rarely a false accusation and I’ll certainly listen to your argument, but it will be a better discussion if we avoid needlessly moralizing the discourse right out of the gate.

            @HeelBearCub says:

            s I suspected, you actually do think Sailer is a racist. But, if I were to say Sailer is, in fact, a racist, in some other context, you would protest that I should not be using such words, etc.

            You probably shouldn’t use the word, just like I shouldn’t (and generally try not to) use a term like SJW, because they create more heat than light.

            I think this is actually the more general case. Generally people here aren’t willing to admit he is a racist, white supremacist in favor of ethnic segregation or apartheid … but he should still be listened to.

            People aren’t willing to admit that because he’s manifestly not in favor of those things, at least in his public writing. And frankly, even if he were, the truth of the underlying facts ought to matter more than the couthness of the presenter.

            The idea that blacks are inferior has been a dominant force in American politics since inception. This has cut across “left” and “right” for the majority of the history of the country. The fact that we, as a nation and as political coalitions, also have held and still hold contradicting positions does not make this a less influential position.

            I think making this claim after the 60s is ludicrous. It’s one thing to argue that blacks still get the short end of the stick in american life, but to argue that actively treating/keeping them inferior is a dominant force in american politics? No. I do, however, think that one political coalition has a vested interest in keeping the belief that it is alive, and does so, to great detriment of everyone.

          • Nootropic cormorant says:

            Sailer is pretty much devoid of all epistemic virtue that characterizes this blog. Yet I believe that many of his beliefs are, sadly, true to an underappreciated extent.

            I remember that some of his earlier writings have a more appropriate solemn tone, but I think he became more mocking and spiteful due to constantly arguing with what appear to be intellectually bankrupt ideologues.

            I still read his blog occasionally to see how high the flames of the culture war have grown, but I am increasingly annoyed by his triumphalism and uncharitability.

          • Imagine SSC had someone who openly advocates for the goals of NAMBLA, is very polite, if occassionaly snarky while doing so and is very erudite, a good debater and can defend his position with encyclopedic knowledge.

            I would consider such a person an asset to the group. Just as I consider the poster who is pro-USSR an asset–I would like to see the best arguments that can be made for that position too.

            If reading his arguments upset me I would skip over them.

          • If everyone thinks they themselves are good guys, why does that make their point more worthy of listening to?

            Because if it seems obvious to me that their position is inconsistent with that belief that’s a puzzle that I would like to solve. Both out of curiosity and for practical reasons–if I understand someone else’s view of the world it might help me improve mine and it will probably help me understand and predict his behavior and that of people similar to him in the future.

            What about the definition I suggested above: someone who wants to believe that other races are biologically inferior, or who is happy to believe this and takes comfort in it?

            My impression is that most people on the left want to believe that their tribe is intellectually and morally superior to the other tribe, are happy to believe it, and take comfort in believing it. Probably most people on the right too.

            That results in people on both sides sometimes reaching mistaken conclusions, which is unfortunate. But it doesn’t make them any more evil than the human norm. The racial version happens to be stigmatized at the moment, but I don’t see it as inherently worse than the political (or religious or nationality based) version.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            @DavidFriedman and cassander:

            My impression is that most people on the left want to believe that their tribe is intellectually and morally superior to the other tribe, are happy to believe it, and take comfort in believing it. Probably most people on the right too.

            That results in people on both sides sometimes reaching mistaken conclusions, which is unfortunate. But it doesn’t make them any more evil than the human norm. The racial version happens to be stigmatized at the moment, but I don’t see it as inherently worse than the political (or religious or nationality based) version.

            As for desiring to believe such a thing, or taking comfort in it, I don’t think that’s something that’s knowable or worth talking about. If you think someone is biased, well that’s rarely a false accusation and I’ll certainly listen to your argument, but it will be a better discussion if we avoid needlessly moralizing the discourse right out of the gate.

            I do think it’s knowable to some extent, although one should be hesitant to judge, certainly. I would just point to the difference in tone between Sailer and someone like Murray, for example. You can tell Murray regrets the fact (as he sees it) of cognitive inequality. Another relevant piece of evidence is that Sailer brings up genetic racial differences all the time apropos of nothing, in contexts where only someone who’s completely obsessed would draw any connection between that and the topic everyone else is discussing.

            On the issue of whether to moralize this, I suppose I am inclined to moralize it to some extent. I don’t consider morality to be the most important thing in life or the most important factor I judge people by. But as far as it goes, I think it’s morally better if someone is predisposed to think well of other individuals and other kinds of people, and vicious if someone is predisposed to have low opinions of people who are different.

            It’s a bit like the principle of charity: it’s better to expect that other people are at least as honest and good at reasoning as you are yourself, than to expect that everyone else is dumber and more dishonest. For similar reasons, it’s kinder and more generous to start from the assumption that other human groups are as capable as your group cognitively, and to hope for a world where that’s true. That emphatically doesn’t mean it’s good to ignore evidence of inequality, but it does mean it’s morally worse to be initially biased in favor of inequality than it is to be initially biased in favor of equality.

          • albatross11 says:

            There’s something a little weird, to me, about putting a moral value on what you hope will be the answer to factual questions. I mean, shouldn’t we all hope that CO2 emissions really don’t mess up the climate, given how disruptive a lot of measures to address global warming could be economically?

            It sure seems like we should want to believe what’s true, a lot more than we want to believe what would be nice if it were true.

          • Matt M says:

            shouldn’t we all hope that CO2 emissions really don’t mess up the climate, given how disruptive a lot of measures to address global warming could be economically?

            Not if you’re the type of person who values “economic disruption” as a positive end, in and of itself.

            I think if it was conclusively proven tomorrow that CO2 emissions are perfectly harmless, about half the country would either vigorously deny it or would be incredibly disappointed.

          • cassander says:

            @Humbert McHumbert says:

            I think it’s morally better if someone is predisposed to think well of other individuals and other kinds of people, and vicious if someone is predisposed to have low opinions of people who are different.

            Thinking well of other people is not the same thing as thinking that they are genetically identical to you in all ways that matter. And thinking that certain groups of people are more or less genetically prone to certain traits is not necessarily “having a low opinion of them”. I used to be amused that I had to say “different does not mean worse” so often to the crowd that was always talking about the wonders of diversity, but I’ve long grown tired of the activity.

          • Viliam says:

            @marxbro

            I had a couple of Stalinist friends from way back, and not only were they the smartest and most intelligent people I’ve ever met, they also got me to rethink a lot of things politically. Back then, I was blindly anti-USSR, now I know that there’s a lot of good stuff about the Soviet Union.

            I know how you feel. I used to be blindly anti-Nazi, having seen all those movies about Holocaust and stuff. But then I met a few intelligent people who identified as National Socialists, and they made me understand and see beyond the Jewish propaganda.

            …nope, I’m just kidding.

            (Also, the analogy is not very good, because if there are any movies depicting Soviet atrocities realistically, they don’t seem to be well known. Which is a grave mistake that should be fixed.)

          • BBA says:

            I don’t consider myself a “good guy.” I often doubt that there are any.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            Thinking well of other people is not the same thing as thinking that they are genetically identical to you in all ways that matter. And thinking that certain groups of people are more or less genetically prone to certain traits is not necessarily “having a low opinion of them”. I used to be amused that I had to say “different does not mean worse” so often to the crowd that was always talking about the wonders of diversity, but I’ve long grown tired of the activity.

            I agree that quite a few people are inconsistent in the way you describe, but you’ll never hear me talk about the wonders of diversity when it comes to cognitive ability. All else equal, I have a higher esteem for someone the more intelligent I believe they are. I’m certainly more interested in listening to the opinion of someone I believe is intelligent. And I don’t get the sense that Steve Sailer is much different from me in this regard.

            I mean, shouldn’t we all hope that CO2 emissions really don’t mess up the climate, given how disruptive a lot of measures to address global warming could be economically?

            In a sense, I suppose we should. But the climate case is very different from the case at hand, because it doesn’t involve assuming good or bad things about other people. If my bias leads me to assume that a red guitar is likely to be a bad guitar, I haven’t taken an unfair attitude, because you can’t really be unfair to a guitar except in a metaphorical sense.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            Let me just add: I’m not saying it’s morally better to be biased in favor of the cognitive equality of races than it is to be unbiased on that question. I’m just saying it’s worse to be biased in favor of inequality.

          • quanta413 says:

            The virtues of intelligence in a single person tend to be really overrated by intelligent people. And by those who think of themselves as intelligent.

            Like I love everyone here, but I’d suspect I’d want to strangle more people if everyone I lived or worked with was like people here.

            Having a well organized group of people with enough intelligent people in the group is pretty great, but you really do need the right organization. It’s not spontaneous. Chinese have higher average IQs than Americans but China in the mid twentieth century sucked and America in the mid twentieth century didn’t. Mostly. I know America sucked a lot for some people. But it didn’t get anywhere near Great Leap Forward or cultural revolution levels of bad. And it’s still true that it’s better to live in the U.S. than China.

          • brmic says:

            @DavidFriedman

            I would consider such a person [a NAMBLA activist] an asset to the group. Just as I consider the poster who is pro-USSR an asset–I would like to see the best arguments that can be made for that position too.

            This may be true of you personally, but I assume for many on here not openly disagreeing with you on that, it’s mostly virtue signalling. Either way, 3 points:
            (1) If you want that, it’s not hard to find. I went and had a look. Face to face is harder, but still doable. Revealed preferences suggest if you haven’t and are over 30, you’re not actually that interested/open minded.
            (2) There are any number of topics where repeated debate is pointless. If NAMBLA doesn’t do it for you, take the veracity of the protocols of the elders of zion or whether the holocaust happened. Rehashing them ever so often adds nothing to the debate, it’s just a drag on everyone but the cranks.
            (3) This isn’t about you. It’s about the preferences of other people, some of whom have apparently already voted with their feet. Some of the ones still here tell you, that you can either have a discussion with them or with the NAMBLA-people in this space (provided the proprietor is indifferent). Saying the NAMBLA-people don’t bother you is irrelevant in this context. You can call their bluff, state the conditions under which you would leave, whatever. To use your own words, you are being offered the best arguments (actually, highly personal and individual ones) why liberals think this space sucks for their side. You can, hopefully learn from that, you might act on it. But unless you’re a liberal who shares the sentiment, you saying ‘but it doesn’t suck for me’ is off topic.

        • onyomi says:

          @BBA and HBC

          Imagine 90% of your Facebook friends and colleagues, who are otherwise wonderful, smart, kind people, are constantly broadcasting opinions on social media that make you feel like you do reading Steve Sailer and you’ll have a sense of what it’s like being a right-wing academic in 2018…

          • Matt M says:

            And yeah, this.

            I mean, I get and I understand that left wing people might “feel icky” here because there are a decent amount of fairly hardcore and unapologetic right-wing posters.

            However, I have virtually no sympathy for this, because as a right-winger myself, this is pretty much the only public forum in which I don’t feel icky.

            I feel icky on Facebook and Twitter and Youtube and every supposedly “neutral” space that exists as a mindless signal-boost of mainstream progressive propaganda. And yet, none of those places seem particularly inclined to change in order to make me feel better…

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            I have great sympathy for this point of view. Indeed, speaking as a blue tribe neo-liberal who agrees with Barack Obama about almost everything, what my academic friends say on Facebook frequently makes me feel icky.

            I have a graduate school acquaintance, now a professor, who frequently says things very close to “I hate white men.” (A recent direct quote is “cis het white men are trash, stay away.”) As gross as I find Sailer, this kind of explicit hatred disgusts me just as much if not more, and seeing it collect like and love reactions from people I know are basically good folks is a double whammy.

            So I’ve concluded that we all (yes, even POC) need to just chill out, stop being so sanctimonious, and swallow down those ick reactions so we can actually try to have some dialogue in this world. Not that I’m going to engage in dialogue with my white-men-are-trash “friend,” who in any case doesn’t really permit white people to post on their wall, but if someone said something similar in content with no anger and a willingness to engage, I would be up for that.

          • cassander says:

            @Humbert McHumbert says:

            I have great sympathy for this point of view. Indeed, speaking as a blue tribe neo-liberal who agrees with Barack Obama about almost everything, what my academic friends say on Facebook frequently makes me feel icky.

            I find this curious. I see neoliberalism as a realization by part of the left that markets were a tool they could use, not an enemy that they needed to destroy, and neoliberal policy as an attempt to fashion policy that tries to accomplish left wing goals by using the power of markets and incentives rather than trying to abolish them. Housing vouchers instead of public housing, encouraging work for those on welfare, etc. My big problem with Obama (foreign policy aside) was that I see none of that in his actual policy making. The forms were occasionally there, the ACA looks superficially like a neo-liberal program, but not the substance. The ACA exchanges aren’t markets. their price and content was dictated by fiat.

          • cassander says:

            @Humbert McHumbert says:

            Ugh, accidentally hit complete and now it won’t let me edit.

            Anyhow, I was going to say that the ACA was the biggest example of this, but I don’t recall anywhere in obama policy that I saw meaningful belief in the efficacy of markets much less successful use of them.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            I haven’t said this in a while, but if you @HBC me, I am far less likely to notice. @HeelBearCub if you actually want a decent chance of getting my attention.

            I agree that messages like “cise het white men are scum” definitely make a space uncomfortable and are not productive for dialogue. Facebook is, frankly, weird. It seems to me it’s mostly some sort of “performative life” space, which doesn’t really interest me, so I stopped going there more than every 3 months several years ago. I know people find it some how essential, but I’m not sure that it actually is?

            As to the broader academic circle, as I have said before, this should give people pause when they say they are in favor of unmitigated free speech. If people wanted to actually attack the problems caused, I’d start with the proposition that being dehumanized by a majority is actually damaging.

            Mind you, I do think of free speech as deeply valuable. But as I have said frequently, it’s a value that is in tension with other values.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            Seems like a bit of a digression from the topic of this thread; if you’d like to discuss whether Obama qualifies as a neo-liberal, maybe we should start a new thread?

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            @HeelBearCub:

            As to the broader academic circle, as I have said before, this should give people pause when they say they are in favor of unmitigated free speech. If people wanted to actually attack the problems caused, I’d start with the proposition that being dehumanized by a majority is actually damaging.

            I’m not completely certain I’m getting the point you’re gesturing at here. Any chance of further elaboration? Or if you have a link to what you’ve said before on this issue, that would be equally helpful.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Humbert McHumbert:

            There are two simultaneous assertions I am seeing. Roughly, one is that inter-sectional feminist claims to be damaged by various forms of harassment, biased acts and speech must be opposed in the name of free speech.

            The other is that exposure to certain elements of their speech is oppressive and damaging.

            If you wanted to effectively argue for moderation of the behavior, the most effective tactic would be to first recognize that the second claim contradicts the first. Admit that speech can be harmful. That it can be oppressive. That it can be chilling to others speech, expression, etc. Then you can still argue for a) better treatment (for everyone!), and b) appropriate space for the free-exchange of ideas.

            But you have to abandon the idea that trolling and harassment aren’t damaging and should simply be ignored as irrelevant.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            @HeelBearCub

            Ah, I see. I don’t myself belong to the brand of “free speech purist” who would say that it’s nonsense to claim that one is harmed by speech. I’m the sort who says that (legal, quasi-legal or powerful social) restrictions on speech are such a great paternalistic imposition on others that they are almost never justified even to prevent harm. In other words, in general it is not my business what you’re allowed to say (or what you’re allowed to listen to) even if you harm me somewhat by saying it.

            By analogy, the main reason I support same-sex marriage is that it is no one else’s business whom you want to spend your life with. Even if the defenders of CA Prop 8 were correct and gay marriage were harmful to the fabric of society, that wouldn’t matter to me. We don’t have the right to control the details of other people’s lives as if they were small children. (That extends to legal control and also to non-legal control. I also don’t think anyone has the moral right to stage a disruptive protest to prevent your wedding. Same goes for your College Republicans meeting.)

            Although I’m completely on board with the claim that slurs and bigoted speech can harm, I am skeptical that any sort of objectionable harm occurs if you choose to go to an Ann Coulter speech on your campus and Coulter predictably says something racist. Similarly, I wouldn’t say I was harmed in any objectionable way by my Facebook friend denigrating my race and gender. I know she’s prone to saying such things and it would be easy for me to block or unfriend her.

          • albatross11 says:

            HeelBearCub:

            I feel about the same way about free speech. I absolutely recognize that many people are hurt by free speech, and that some take a hell of a beating when they’re constantly hearing nasty stuff about people like themselves. I just think that the value of free speech overall is so high that it’s worth the beating people sometimes take. And I think that the power to suppress speech/ideas is one that is so easy to misuse that it’s dangerous to have around.

          • moscanarius says:

            @HeelBearCub

            Admit that speech can be harmful. That it can be oppressive. That it can be chilling to others speech, expression, etc. Then you can still argue for a) better treatment (for everyone!), and b) appropriate space for the free-exchange of ideas.

            Though I largely agree with this specific point, I feel like this is conversation the public already had in the past and that already collapsed because of ill will. Ill will kills it all.

            The first thing is that whatever standard we have has to apply to both sides independently of the topic in discussion; if trolling and harassment are bad, then they are bad no matter who’s doing it. If punching is wrong, then it’s wrong even if you’re punching a Nazi. If giving bad Yelp evaluations to a restaurant you never dinned in because you disagree with the owner’s politics is wrong, it must be wrong regardless of whether he voted Republican or Democrat.

            But over the years what I saw was the Left trying to explicitly have different standards – demanding civility from the Right while excusing bad behaviour from their own as, basically, rightful reactions of the oppressed against privilege. And they got it, mostly; even here, Scott is willing to tolerate worst behaviour from them just because. Worse, this has happened regardless of how bad the Right behaved. Too many people calling Trump a fascist were already calling everyone the Republicans had to offer such, and likely will not stop ever no matter what. Maybe this strong disgust reaction you report plays a role in it?

            The second thing is that reciprocity matters. The good will shown in trying not to offend and harass must be reciprocated by the good will in trying not to feel offended and harassed every time. But too many people (specially, but not exclusively) on the Left have preferred to defect from this tacit agreement by claiming offense and damages at the slightest provocation.

            In these conditions, the dialogue cannot work. It already has not, and I doubt it ever will if one’s opinions are so dependent on the disgust reaction.

            Sorry if a bit ranty and overlong.

          • onyomi says:

            @Humbert McHumbert

            If it makes you feel any better, there are a lot of right-wing comment spaces where the argument quality and/or attitude makes me cringe. And there are right-wing comment sections that tend to be more nuanced, but which are more mono-culture-ish. What makes SSC special is that you can be right-wing, largely express your true opinions in a space with a non-negligible number of left-wingers, and get mostly polite, nuanced feedback rather than outrage and virtue signalling. This is probably why SSC comment space feels like an oasis in the desert to right-wingers, hence the “witch” effect.

            I don’t know if left-wingers have any similar trouble finding places to get non-stupid push-back from right-wingers; I would guess so; to my mind, the major asymmetry is that it is easier for left-wingers to retreat from any online space that includes a significant number of witches to one of many, very popular spaces, like Facebook, where such opinions are largely not welcome, at least among the more urban, coastal types who tend to be my friends.

            @Heelbearcub

            I basically agree with Moscanarius: the biggest problem is the double standard. I am in favor of pretty strong free speech norms, though I also concede that speech can be harmful, if not necessarily in a way I think should be e.g. legally actionable (that is, all the “cis-white-hetero men should die!” posts on tumblr can’t hold a candle to the harm done by e.g. academic admissions and hiring policies biased against those groups). When I was younger, the equilibrium seemed to be “you can broadly express your opinion about almost anything, but white people can’t express overtly racist opinions and men can’t express overtly sexist opinions without getting called on it.” Having mostly succeeded in that, it feels like the virtue treadmill carried right on to “everyone else is allowed to denigrate white people and men, who shouldn’t say anything in their defense.” I don’t know if the former equilibrium was ever really stable, but the problems with this latter state of affairs should be obvious.

            Related, I can accept the value of a speech norm that says “don’t dehumanize broad groups of people,” but the problem is that leftism seems to have evolved in such a direction as to construe any non left-wing opinions as inherently dehumanizing. The myriad attempts to construe any defense of Kavanaugh or questioning of Ford’s credibility as an indictment of rape survivors, or even all women, more generally, for example.

            I’m not sure where the ideal equilibrium between “everybody’s allowed to insult everybody else” and “nobody’s allowed to generalize” lies; I tend toward the “all opinions are okay if expressed politely and not actually calling for violence” end of the spectrum, but Antifa et al. do seem to make their own strongest case that people can’t be trusted with generalizations.

          • Baeraad says:

            @HeelBearCub I entirely agree, and in theory I would like to pick the “being an asshole is bad no matter what side you’re on” option. I don’t think being forced to be polite is any sort of unacceptable hardship as long as in return other people were forced to be polite to you.

            In practice, as several others have pointed out, someone is going to have to enforce that standard of civility. And the people who would likely end up doing the enforcement are the same people who think that white men are bulletproof and can feel no pain. And as a butt-hurt crybaby white man(-child), I absolutely refuse to support an order whereby others can beat me up as much as they want but I’m not allowed to so much as wail and moan about how badly I’m being treated.

            But hey, give me a credible promise that feminists won’t be allowed to be mean to me anymore, and I’ll happily promise in return to never say a harsh word to anyone ever again.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @onyomi @baeraad @moscanarius:

            First off, ill will, inconsistency, and attempts at double-standards are just part of the human package. Any call for elimination of these things before further progress can be made strikes me as naive or disingenuous.

            As to the substance, which is that an effective double standard is in place, some of that is, again, just par for the course. Look at the evangelical right and their support for Trump, which is not actually abnormal. This is not “whataboutism” it’s simply pointing out that these kinds of hypocicies are endemic. But the other thing about the rhetoric that you are missing is that much if it grew as a specific tit-for-tat. Right wing rhetoric has been filled for years with how evil people on the left are. I doubt this struck you as harmful, simply because it wasn’t pointed it you.

            So, yes, I would push back on the rhetoric. But if you treat the rhetoric as more than simply the tail end, I think you are making a mistake. My issue with evangelicals, for instance, isn’t (mostly) their rhetoric, it’s all of the policies they want that I think are wrong.

          • Baeraad says:

            @HeelBearCub

            First off, ill will, inconsistency, and attempts at double-standards are just part of the human package. Any call for elimination of these things before further progress can be made strikes me as naive or disingenuous.

            But as long as those things hold dominance, enforcing civility would not be progress. If you say that feminists will never, ever be prevented from verbally abusing me, then I say fine – then I will never, ever support any effort to prevent others from verbally abusing feminists. If your idea of “progress” is that I get to have it even worse so that you can have it even better, then I’d rather stick with the status quo, for all that I do not like it much.

          • onyomi says:

            @Heelbearcub

            But the other thing about the rhetoric that you are missing is that much if it grew as a specific tit-for-tat. Right wing rhetoric has been filled for years with how evil people on the left are. I doubt this struck you as harmful, simply because it wasn’t pointed it you.

            Can you explain more about how you see a tit-for-tat relationship between calling people on the left “evil” (are we talking about McCarthyism here or what, exactly?) and the SJW attack against cis-white-patriarchy, etc.? I struggle to see a cause-and-effect relationship here, though it’s possible I’m missing some important connection.

          • AG says:

            @onyomi:

            In the past, there was a good mix of right-wing and left-wing commenters interacting with each other in SSC. For example, when Ozy used to defend SJ concepts on the regular.

            To my perception, the reason left wing posters started backing out wasn’t merely because of the presence of witches. On the contrary, having a good-faith discussion with an intelligent opponent is more engaging and interesting to do!
            Rather, a sufficient amount of low-effort responses began cropping up. Less good faith discussions, more pet peeve non-sequiturs, more boo light zingers. Ironically, people on the right doing the Arthur Chu thing and admitting that they promote Dark Arts rhetoric for their side. That’s what made it less worthwhile to keep talking, so most of them seemed to have withdrawn to tumblr, where they continue to…actually critique SJ and define better nuance of its concepts in their own sphere, blocking the uncharitable.
            And this is not just for left-wing posters, as well. There was even an Objectivist who found the rattumb circle more productive talking partners, and stopped posting on SSC for it.

            I’d say the alignment of the SSC commentariat has not necessarily shifted, but the tenor of it definitely has. But, I don’t think Scott’s current chosen strategy is going to help him towards that end.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            Perhaps HBC is referring to the escalating rhetoric that led to centrist Democrats like John Kerry and Obama being referred to as ‘socialist,’ and to Glen Beck and a large fraction of the Tea Party movement suggesting that Obama’s presidency was an apocalyptic event. All this appeared to Democrats like an insane mob, especially when Birtherism entered the picture, and since Obama was an ordinary mainstream politician in every way with the sole exception of his race, the cause seemed to be the election of a black man.

            (I’m not saying it was correct for people to identify that as the cause, but I don’t think they were unreasonable to do so. FWIW, my own best guess about the cause of the right wing’s 2008 insanity spiral is that it actually started much earlier than people think, but was invisible for a long time because a Republican was in office, and the real cause was the 9/11 attacks.)

          • arlie says:

            *sigh* Welcome to real life.

            I’m 60. I remember what inclinations and preferences were required to be considered an OK person, back in e.g. the 70s, in academia and elsewhere. It’s nice to be able to drop certain of the pretences, and not to need to deal with (being perceived as) inadequate over traits I couldn’t disguise.

            But humans being what we are, of course there are new shibboleths – even if I don’t tend to notice them, as they suit my own tastes better. And it would seem that people with your tastes and characteristics are now less normative then you probably would have been when I was 20.

            One thing I do note though – even the radical teens and twenty somethings of the 60s and early 70s took those obligatory opinions and traits more or less for granted. We’ll all feel somewhat less bad once things settle down and become less contested, even those who wind up at the bottom of the social or moral heap, for what all right-thinking (at the time) people agree are self-evident reasons.

            So, for example, we all went through the motions of pretending to be Christian, or at least pretending to have a special respect for Christianity not given to other faiths, let alone to the irreligious – except a handful of e.g. radical atheist gadflies – a position not consistent with overall personal “success”.

            Also, we participated in (or at least neglected to challenge) workplace discussions that totally disrespected or ignored our own hidden inclinations and/or those of people we cared about. And we coped regardless. It’s not fun, but it’s part of the human condition. I’d prefer it were otherwise, and try not to over-encourage it.

            Meanwhile the situation is unsettled, and thus more painful. Hence your extreme reaction, rather than accepting that this is the way of the world, and simply keeping under cover and getting on with your life and career.

            It’s hard. I still feel bad about compromises I need to make in order to earn a living, mostly involving (routine, legal) lying to customers and using psychological research to determine how best to induce them to act in the company’s best interests, even against their own. And that’s something that seems to have gotten worse, not better, over the course of my career.

            You win some, and you lose some. People are emphatically not angels.

          • HeelBearCub says:

            @Humbert McHumbert:

            FWIW, my own best guess about the cause of the right wing’s 2008 insanity spiral is that it actually started much earlier than people think, but was invisible for a long time because a Republican was in office, and the real cause was the 9/11 attacks.

            My southern instinct is to use the phrase “bless your heart”, but know that I mean it with love.

            I’m not sure how old you are, or you familiarity with political history, but this isn’t back nearly far enough. There were conservative, below the radar newsletters about the coming UN takeover in the 90s. The militia movement really blossomed in the 90s as well. The Birchers were in the 50s and 60s. Go back and it’s much the same This kind of stuff never really “starts” and never really goes away. It just waxes and wanes in how much influence it has.

            @onyomi:
            Much like my statement to kerinah about the NYT op-ed, I think that I am unlikely to be able to make you see it. There has been a constant drumbeat from conservatives that if we allow such-and-such a social change it will lead to the weakening and destruction of America. The people who want that change, whether they are a woman, or gay, or Black or Hispanic are demonized. The rhetoric does not bother you. It does not grate at you. It does not make YOU feel demeaned. You don’t even see at it as demeaning. You think the Jim Crow South was harmonious and loving without animosity towards the Black population. You don’t see it at all.

            But that coalition of people, and their allies, do see it. They have seen it and seen it and seen it. At some point, you give back what you are getting. That’s the tit-for-tat.

            Look at how unwilling people are, here, today, to admit that sexual assault is mostly unreported and wrestle with why that is.

          • Matt M says:

            The people who want that change, whether they are a woman, or gay, or Black or Hispanic are demonized.

            Why bring the oppression olympics into this?

            The militia movement doesn’t think very highly of Bill Clinton either. Or Bernie Sanders. Or Chuck Schumer. Or Ted Kennedy.

            The right hates leftists who want to profoundly change American culture and society. The fact that a lot of those are women and minorities is coincidence at best, and an intentional ploy of the left to enable the smearing of all of their opponents as hateful bigots at worst.

          • But the other thing about the rhetoric that you are missing is that much if it grew as a specific tit-for-tat. Right wing rhetoric has been filled for years with how evil people on the left are. I doubt this struck you as harmful, simply because it wasn’t pointed it you.

            Very likely true. I hope it occurred to you that you might be making the identical error.

            I don’t know how old you are, but I am old enough to remember the 1964 campaign, having been a Harvard undergraduate at the time. The attitude of the majority combined scorn and ignorance–anyone supporting Goldwater was obviously stupid, and actually looking at the arguments for his positions wasn’t worth bothering with.

            Part of the difference between our views of the pattern probably comes from which side we identify with, but part may be from growing up in different environments. I have spent essentially my entire life in Academia–most of my K-12 schooling was in a school run by the University of Chicago. I don’t know what environment you grew up in. But the mix of hostility to left and hostility to right may well have been different in our different environments.

          • So, for example, we all went through the motions of pretending to be Christian, or at least pretending to have a special respect for Christianity not given to other faiths, let alone to the irreligious – except a handful of e.g. radical atheist gadflies – a position not consistent with overall personal “success”.

            This links to something I just posted about different views coming from different environments. I grew up (in Hyde Park, Chicago, home of the University of Chicago) assuming that the normal position was not believing in religion in any serious sense, with the main exceptions being a few writers I was fond of such as C.S. Lewis. I have never been a “radical atheist gadfly,” since although the fact that there are intelligent and rational people who deeply believe in religion seems puzzling it’s clearly true. My father had the same views I did, although he described his position as agnostic and I described mine as atheist, and never made any effort to conceal them.

          • Humbert McHumbert says:

            @Heelbearcub

            Sure, I’m familiar with 90s militias and the JBS. I suppose the real issue is what explains the waxing of the crazy right in its media footprint and influence on the US power structure since 2008.

            By the way, in your last comment it sounds like you’re accusing Onyomi of supporting Jim Crow. Is that what you meant to say?

          • moscanarius says:

            @HeelBearCub

            First off, ill will, inconsistency, and attempts at double-standards are just part of the human package. Any call for elimination of these things before further progress can be made strikes me as naive or disingenuous.

            Yeah, I know. And I have not issued any call for the elimination of them. Go read my comment again with a bit less of ill will on your part, if you can manage.

            The thing is, many negative things are part of the human package. Jealousy is. Irrational hatred is. Racism (broadly defined) likely is. But while we cannot hope to eliminate them completely, we don’t just throw the towel. We definitely can modulate their expression in actual human interaction with social rules and personal examples. The level of ill will and double standards is not constant and doesn’t need to be so high everywhere, every time.

            As to the substance, which is that an effective double standard is in place, some of that is, again, just par for the course.

            But the other thing about the rhetoric that you are missing is that much if it grew as a specific tit-for-tat. Right wing rhetoric has been filled for years with how evil people on the left are.

            My English may be failing me, but if by “par for the course” you mean “expected because of bad behaviour on the other side”, then I’m sure you recognize this is kind of a chicken and egg situation. The Evangelical Right can as easily claim be part of an older tit-for-tat where they had been unjustly villified until radicalization. This can make the duble standards be understandable, but not make them right.

            I understand that the standoffs we see are a product of History, and sometimes are unavoidable; what I’m struggling to understand is your take from that. Do you think there’s absolutely nothing you can do, or anything you should do, to diminish the polarization? All you can do is pick a side and fight for the tribe everywhere?

            I doubt this struck you as harmful, simply because it wasn’t pointed it you.

            I hope you’re not betting on it, given how little you know of my life. Can I assume the same about your lack of concern for the previous villification of the Right, or am I going to be banished for insufficient charity?

            So, yes, I would push back on the rhetoric.

            Then please start doing it. Almost everything you write to your opponents is full of gratuitous snark, smugness, and self-righteousness.

          • 10240 says:

            I agree that messages like “cise het white men are scum” definitely make a space uncomfortable and are not productive for dialogue. […]
            As to the broader academic circle, as I have said before, this should give people pause when they say they are in favor of unmitigated free speech.

            Arguably it’s a problem that some people think vile things about white people, black people, or whatever race. IMO if people are not allowed to say what they think, that doesn’t make it any better. If there is a problem, I’d rather know it than bury my head in the sand. (Now I’m assuming that people who say vile things actually think them. If we have a good reason to think they don’t actually think those things, then it should be easy to ignore the vile things they say and to not get offended.)

            One could argue that as long as people think vile things, but don’t actually do really bad things, there is no reason to really worry about what they think, and the only harm they cause may be the offense caused by their vile speech. But, again, if we believe that those vile thoughts are not really a cause for concern, it shouldn’t be that hard to ignore them even when spoken.

            Another way vile speech may arguably cause harm is the possibility that it convinces others of those vile thoughts. But this is a fundamentally different motive to restrict freedom of speech than the above, one which should be admitted, and which could be more dangerous if it lead to policies. It’s not about “I don’t want to hear that”, but “I don’t want someone to speak that, lest others hear it”. Talking about being offended may sometimes be a more innocuous pretense in place of this motive.

            I absolutely recognize that many people are hurt by free speech, […]

            I’d rather say “many people are hurt by offensive/vile/racist/… speech”. Saying that people are hurt by free speech somehow implies that lack of freedom of speech is the default position, and freedom of speech is an option. When freedom is considered to be the natural state of affairs, we don’t say “freedom to do X hurts people”, we just say “X hurts people”. This is a minor phrasing nitpick, not a factual objection.

        • WashedOut says:

          Have you been binge reading Nathan Robinson again?

        • Matt M says:

          Wasn’t Steve Sailer banned months ago?

          But to provide a simple counterpoint, I love Steve, and found him via this comments site. Despite his banning, I continue to follow and engage with him on Twitter which has improved my life by a lot. So kudos to Scott for that one.

          • Lillian says:

            He was banned for two months, three months ago. That he hasn’t posted recently seems to have more to do with lack of inclination rather than lack of ability. If you engage with him on Twitter, perhaps you might encourage him to come back? His viewpoints are different from mine, but they are very well articulated, and exposure to that sort of thing is one of the reasons i like this place.

          • albatross11 says:

            When you can get Sailer to really think something through and write it up, it’s worth reading. But he tends to default to a quick snarky comment way too often for my tastes. And the problem is that snarky comments and sarcasm don’t make it clear what you’re really arguing for. Worse, it’s too easy to play to your fans / partisans. This is something a hell of a lot of opinion writers do when they start to get a following–you can do some hard work and think through some new problem deeply and carefully, or you can toss out some red meat for your base, and both get you the same positive feedback, but one is ten times as much work as the other….

      • ManyCookies says:

        Not here, but for r/slatestarcodex I did eventually switch to my porn/bertstrips/”Things I wouldn’t want an employer or friend skimming my profile to see out of context” reddit account because, well, I wouldn’t want a friend or employer skimming my profile to know I post on r/slatestarcodex without further clarifying context.

        But I really doubt it’s that strong of an effect, I suspect I’m more paranoid than most and I just switched a lower profile account. Plenty of lefties on r/ssc post on their apparent main accounts and rage quit depart for way more pressing reasons. And after all, there’s a fairly big overlap for “people I wouldn’t want to be seen in the same room as” and “people I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as for long”.

    • Guy in TN says:

      Some posters are probably going to be confused on the right-wing assertion, because they are focuses on different political axes. If I recall the last survey correctly, on the “cultural” axis, commenters were generally evenly divided, but on the “economic” axis, libertarians+conservatives outnumbered the left 2:1. So I expect a lot of pushback along the lines of “aha! but what about [cultural issue].”, from those who view the divide primarily on cultural lines.

      My take, with all the biases of being one of the most left-leaning commentators on SSC, is that the comments are somewhat to the left of the median American on cultural-political issues, and decidedly to the right (i.e. libertarian) on economic/role of government issues.

      That means that if you are an economics-focused lefty like Freddie Deboer or myself, you are rather alone. (And if you are economic left/cultural right like Plumber, you are extremely alone, but that may just be a rare combo to begin with)

      At its best:
      SSC is practically the last place on the internet where people who disagree do so with logic and civility. And not only that, they are some of the sharpest people I’ve ever met, with vast knowledge of psychology, economics, political philosophy, and history. If I find myself “losing” a debate, its probably because I am wrong, not because of ad homs, snark, and bad-faith trickery. In the year that I’ve been here, many conversations I’ve had, ideas people have presented to me, have stuck with me for the long term. Props to John Shilling, baconbits9, David Friedman, and others.

      At its worst:
      It’s like going to a model train convention, but you’re not really into model trains. You can’t relate to the convention-goers, and are ambivalent to the debates and discussions they having. There’s no “side” to join in on, because no one is having a conversation you are even interested in talking about. While you might find some amusement by cornering a model train fan, and trying to explain to him why model trains are not all they’re cracked up to be, you mostly find yourself bored and isolated.

      • It’s like going to a model train convention, but you’re not really into model trains.

        Thanks to the “hide” button, you can skip over all that boring model train stuff and just read the threads on AI software for controlling model trains.

        • albatross11 says:

          Bonus points when the tracks can be made out of paperclips!

        • Garrett says:

          There are far too few comments on the Internet which make me really burst out in laughter, and this was one of them. Thank you.

      • baconbits9 says:

        I was very pleased by this compliment and told my wife about it last night as well as a little bit of the background. Her response was

        “People think of you as being on the right?” which was an interesting reaction.

      • Plumber says:

        “…if you are economic left/cultural right like Plumber, you are extremely alone, but that may just be a rare combo to begin with…”

        Oh wow, thanks for the shout out @Guy in TN!

        To clarify, where I’m on the “economic left” is I think the “New Deal” and the “Great Society” were good things, which would be mainstream views when I was born, and where I’m on the “cultural right” is that I think the ‘rights’ to have an abortion or legal homosexual marriage should be achieved (or opposed) by democratic means, not judicial fiat.

        Probably my most “right” view is that the cultural acceptance of parents getting divorced was a great evil, but I seem to be very alone in that.

        Overall, I’m probably more to the left though, for example, while I think Roe v. Wade is bad law that set a bad precedent, I support the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and if I was on the Senate and had to choose between two candidates for one of our nine Kings, how they would rule on Voting Rights would sway me more. 

        As to any candidate for elected office who mirrors my views? 

        I know of none in California.

        I liked Jim Webb in 2016 but then he dropped out (among the Republicans I liked Huckabee, but I haven’t been registered as a Republican since at least 2005), and I had a real hard time deciding who to vote for in the California Primary before I voted for Sanders (canceling out my wife’s vote).

        In the general election I think that I voted for Clinton (I may have voted third-party instead, as I remember having a hard time deciding), but that was a very hard vote to cast as her husband kinda represents both the economic “neo-liberalism” and cultural libertinism I dislike, but the consistently anti-union actions of the Republicans is what ultimately decides my vote.

        • Nick says:

          Probably my most “right” view is that the cultural acceptance of parents getting divorced was a great evil, but I seem to be very alone in that.

          You’ll find quite a few religious conservatives agreeing with it. I don’t know where social liberals stand on this—I know they support divorce laws, obviously, but I don’t if it’s in an enthusiastic “a divorce is never a bad thing” way, or an ambivalent “it has more upsides than downsides” way, or whether they think no-fault divorce specifically is great too, or what. It was long enough ago that we don’t really wage that culture war here, I think.

          • albatross11 says:

            FWIW, I suspect this is a pendulum thing. At one point, divorces were so hard to get that even people who genuinely needed one (say, someone married to a lifelong abusive drunk) couldn’t get one. Then we made them much easier to get, and lots more people got them than probably should have. Over time, as people see that those divorces were very hard on the adults and even worse on the kids, people have learned some, and have become more negative about them. Eventually, we’ll get to a common social view of how acceptable divorce should be that’s about right.

    • Nootropic cormorant says:

      Maybe not poor argument quality as such, but the feeling that you’ve already heard all the arguments that the other person will give, that their whole worldview is predictable to you, creates total disinterest.

      Somehow reducing the number of unoriginal thinkers is the only thing that could help I think.

    • How can anyone possibly take your claim that right wing arguments are worse as anything other than your own bias?

    • Nornagest says:

      Also, “meta-defecting” by advocating for more right-wing positions than you actually believe in, in order to get folks’ opinions to land where you think they need to land is a bad idea, longer term.

      Can you point to some examples of people doing this here? I rarely see people engaging in obvious hyperbole, and when I do, it’s usually in the context of a rant or a joke, not some sort of Machiavellian campaign of deception.

      • Nick says:

        Yeah, that seemed entirely out of left field to me. And looking at what Scott wrote above, I don’t see what inspired it either.

        • rlms says:

          It’s not quite the same, but there’s often tangential verbiage and pedantry applied in a right-wing direction, even by people who I doubt actually support the relevant side. For instance, if gay marriage comes up, a lot of libertarian types will complain about pro-gay marriage rhetoric being misleading, or condescending to religious people; or say something about state’s rights and decentralisation; or just claim that the government shouldn’t be involved in marriage at all; or bring up the complete irrelevant and uninteresting pedantic note that actually gay people could marry (people of the opposite sex) before gay marriage was legalised; or point out that actually Clinton and Obama opposed gay marriage in the past, so what do you think about that eh?!

          My impression is that most of the people doing this are not at all homophobic or opposed to gay marriage, but they feel tribally aligned with the people that do, and for some reason feel compelled to argue in their tribe’s direction even on issues they disagree with them.

          • or just claim that the government shouldn’t be involved in marriage at all

            Isn’t that the natural position for a libertarian to take?

          • HeelBearCub says:

            Isn’t that the natural position for a libertarian to take?

            Sure, if you are actually advocating for eliminating marriage. But not if you only argue this in response to calls for same sex marriage.

          • quanta413 says:

            Sure, if you are actually advocating for eliminating marriage. But not if you only argue this in response to calls for same sex marriage.

            Libertarians were to the left of almost everyone else for a long time as far as accepting homosexuality.

            As you say, libertarians who are actually Republicans or conservatives may be different of course.

          • Not for eliminating marriage—it’s a useful institution. For eliminating state as opposed to social definition of marriage.

            By social definition I mean that I get to decide whether I regard Jane and Mary as married just as a Catholic gets to decide whether he regards divorced John and his second wife Mary as married. I don’t get to make you treat people as married if in your view they are not, you don’t get to make me treat people as not married if in my view they are.

          • ana53294 says:

            I don’t get to make you treat people as married if in your view they are not, you don’t get to make me treat people as not married if in my view they are.

            That would mean that Catholics, for example, would consider people who had a church wedding married unless they went through annullment. So, would that mean that a Catholic judge would give the inheritance to the divorced widow (who didn’t get a Catholic annullment) if they are Catholic?

            Also, the triple talaq divorce is too easy. There are all kinds of reasons why India made it illegal.

            Unless your libertarian community happens to be very homogeneous, and made of exclusively Catholics (who all see people as non-divorced), or conservative Sunni (who see the couple as divorced after the triple talaq), you have to make some kind of rule for mixed communities.

          • John Schilling says:

            So, would that mean that a Catholic judge would give the inheritance to the divorced widow (who didn’t get a Catholic annullment) if they are Catholic?

            A judge of any religion would presumably give the inheritance to the person named in the will as the heir, or barring that to the biological children of the deceased, or barring that to the state. If marriage is not a legal institution, there is not a legal presumption that a spouse inherits if their partner dies without a will.

          • ana53294 says:

            So the default would be, unless there is a will, a living will, or power of attorney, or contract, the spouse (who married through a religious ceremony), would have no more rights than a stranger? Most people suck at writing wills.

            So, a married couple would, to the eyes of the law, be just two people who cohabitate?

            So what about immigration? What if your spouse is a foreigner? I know people who had difficulties with visas and residence permits, and accelerated their marriage plans so they could live together.

          • liate says:

            @ana53294
            Another way it could be thought of is breaking marriage into a cultural thing that is some sort of permenant/semipermenant pair bonding and a legal thing that’s just a standard group of contracts, generally, but not exclusively, between two natural persons.

            A Catholic judge would rule according to whatever contract the two had agreed upon, and triple taliq divorce could just not normally be in a normal marriage contract, if it’s ease is seen as problematic.

            ETA: Not having preferential immigration status for spouses of citizens seems like it would come with lack of marriage as a thing the state does

          • ana53294 says:

            A Catholic judge would rule according to whatever contract the two had agreed upon

            I imagine the standard Catholic marriage contract in this country with no government enforcement of marriage would be unbreakable. My understanding is that most contracts should be fair to both parties, and you should be able to break it.

            If the libertarian country does not have very permissive immigration laws, I am against this. Marriage is too important an institution for me to allow bullshit immigration laws to break it.

          • John Schilling says:

            Most people suck at writing wills.

            Most people also suck at writing marriage licenses, yet the institution survives. I am fairly confident that the Catholic Church has lawyers that can write up perfectly good wills; they already require fairly extensive counseling and paperwork before anyone gets married in one of their churches and this can easily add this to the list.

            Immigration of couples with prior state-sanctioned marriages would be trickier, but if this ever becomes other than a hypothetical discussion there are going to be a lot of tricky edge cases for lawyers to deal with. So long as it is hypothetical, most of the value in discussing it will be from the more central examples like “what happens when two Catholics go to their priest and ask to get married?”

          • 10240 says:

            bring up the complete irrelevant and uninteresting pedantic note that actually gay people could marry (people of the opposite sex) before gay marriage was legalised;

            I don’t concede that’s completely irrelevant. If the claim is that not allowing gay marriage discriminates against gay people, it’s important to distinguish between treating everyone equally, and treating everyone the way they want to be treated. I’d say the latter is less of an obligation (if at all) than the former.

      • Matt M says:

        I admit to occasionally doing this sort of thing. I also admit that it’s bad form, but often a useful rhetorical tactic. I should probably do less of it here because this audience is usually too smart to fall for cheap tricks like that.

      • Dan L says:

        @ Nornagest:

        Can you point to some examples of people doing this here? I rarely see people engaging in obvious hyperbole, and when I do, it’s usually in the context of a rant or a joke, not some sort of Machiavellian campaign of deception.

        A few years ago, a switch flipped in my head and I started parsing hyperbole as either blustering ignorance or malicious rhetoric. So sensitized, it became immediately obvious that it happens extremely frequently, in every community I’ve seen – if you can’t see it, it’s probably because it isn’t aimed at you. SSC is better than most in that regard, but far from perfect.

        (Also, I’ll give you a ton of pushback on any “just a joke” excuse – when people are talking about things like board culture, what is and is not acceptable to make fun of is extremely relevant. I think we’d lose quite a few of the better commentators here if it became normal to joke about e.g. Catholics all being pedophiles.)

        • Nornagest says:

          You can parse hyperbole as whatever you please, but I still don’t see any examples here.

          And I was talking about jokes about your own beliefs, not about others’. Take Multiheaded’s habit of making gulag jokes for example. At least, I hope those were jokes.

          • Dan L says:

            You can parse hyperbole as whatever you please, but I still don’t see any examples here.

            I mean, Matt M admitted to using it as a rhetorical tactic one post above mine. But ok.

            Probably about a third of my posts on SSC are in response to what I see as value-negative hyperbole, feel free to do the site:slatestarcodex.com google if you want some specific examples. There’s enough of a Pareto principle at play though that I fear any collection of direct links would either be a false equivalence or divert attention away from the argumentative form and towards people, neither of which I care to engage in.

            And I was talking about jokes about your own beliefs, not about others’.

            Ah, fair enough then. Still not my favorite, but definitely better than deliberately blowing an Ideological Turing Test.

    • fion says:

      I disagree that the right-wing positions here are more poorly-argued than left-wing positions, but I think it might be true in general. I think there are many very intelligent, very knowledgeable, and moderately respectful right-wing commenters here.

      As a very left-wing commenter, I mostly steer clear of left/right stuff on here. Partly because a lot of the issues are specific US ones that I have little interest in. But also partly because there are many very intelligent, very knowledgeable right-wing people who will put a very strong case against me. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate having my views challenged and I learn a lot from reading the comments on here, but I already waste far too much time on this website, and getting into complicated politics/economics discussions with people who are smarter than me and more knowledgeable than me is a recipe for spending even more time and possibly even getting upset and frustrated.

      • cassander says:

        I, for one, would be delighted if you brought up non-US political debates/conflicts, particularly if the pro/con factions line up differently than the US.

        • Speaking of which, do we have anyone here from Brazil? The candidate who seems likely to win the presidential election is routinely described as “far right” and I’m curious what that means in the Brazilian context and whether it is any more than “a conservative the media don’t like.”

          Brazil is a country not that much smaller than the U.S. and it has a presidential election where it looks like the two final candidates are much farther apart than U.S. presidential candidates usually are–with the most recent U.S. election an exception.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            Not an expert by any means, but I think the strongest support for the claim that he is far-right are his professed views on military dictatorship: you can look it up to find any number of admiring quotes, as well as the opinion that “”the error of the dictatorship was that it tortured, but did not kill”; he expressed a similar sentiment regarding the Pinochet regime: that it “should have killed more people.”
            In the 1990s he said if he ever became president ” I would begin the coup on the very first day! […] start the coup at once, and let’s make this a dictatorship.”
            He also dedicated his vote to impeach Dilma Rousseff to the memory of the army colonel who headed the unit that tortured Rousseff, has said he would prefer a hypothetical gay son to die in an accident, that if he saw two men kissing he would beat them, and that gay children should be whipped.

            Some of this stuff is from a while ago, but I don’t know that there’s any reason to believe his opinions have moderated; it’s also all rhetorical, and I can’t find very much about how he has actually behaved in politics.

            However, I think by North American standards, even the rhetorical stuff puts him further to the right than any remotely plausible political candidate, especially the support for a military dictatorship.

          • moscanarius says:

            @DavidFriedman

            Bolsonaro is… hard to explain. Since this election has become even more polarized than Trump’s in the US, you’re gonna hear all sorts of narratives surrounding him from Brazilians online (ranging from “he’s saving us from the Communists!!1!” to “he’s literally reopening Auchwitz to kill all the gays!1!!”).

            I’m not sure I can say much of substance in a single post (the whole electoral imbroglio requires a lot of context), but I can say for sure that he’s not just a random conservative hated by the media (the opposition candidates from the last three elections fit this profile, though they were not super conservative).

            It’s fair to call him a man of the Right by the usual association criterium: he calls himself a Right-winger, and is broadly recognized as such by most of his enemies and virtually all of his supporters. Whether he deserves to be called “extreme” (a label that can be interpreted as pejorative) depends on your own views and what you consider “the Right” to be. The Brazilian Left and Media definitely call him an ultra-extreme-Righter-than-Right-winger, while his supporters see him as the only Right left on the table – but certainly more to the Right than any other viable option. So I guess this makes him kinda far-Right in practical terms.

            As with all politicians, it’s hard to know what exactly he and his close circle actually believe, a opposed to what they say for the media attention, but here are a couple of points where he is to the right of the traditional Right*

            – He is a retired Captain of the Army, and openly speaks favourably of the Military Dictatorship period (1964-1984) – a huge taboo for the Left and the compliant Right (though not for the common people) – including defending the episodes of imprisionment and torture (not deflecting, defending), even when giving interviews to journalists who were themselves imprisioned at the time. He speaks whatever goes in his mind regardless of who’s listening.

            – He is more anti-gay. Well, this is difficult to precise: he’s not talking about imprisioning or lynching gays Uganda-style, it’s more that he seems to hold very old-fashioned opinions on the matter (he doesn’t like gays, he once said he would beat his son to cure him if he turned out gay, he’s against legalizing gay marriage, and against the so-called Gay Agenda – basically, gay prominence in the media and society). He rose to national popularity in ~2013 by leading the opposition to a project of teaching public school children about homosexuality and gay sex (I’ll leave the details out, this is just a broad characterization). As he’s gotten more popular, he has been softening on the issue, though.

            – He is (nowadays, in the past he wasn’t) very anti-abortion, and promises to keep abortion illegal in the current terms of the current law (there is a strong pressure to make abortion legal nowadays).

            – He is more openly patriotic and Christian (his registered campaign motto: “Brazil above everything, God above all”).

            – He broadly opposes Identity Politics – Affirmative action for Blacks and Indians, demarcation of Indian lands, etc.

            – He leans pro-Israel (context: in the Israel-Palestine question, the political establishment here leans towards Palestine. This debate is just for signaling, as we have almost zero involvement with the real thing. Siding with Palestine carries the connotation of siding with the oppressed).

            – He leans against accepting refugees, especially Muslim ones (again, this is mostly for signalling, we barely get refugees. On the real case of Venezuelan refugees, he proposed a screening to avoid letting criminals in, but did not propose to send them all back).

            – He is openly favourable to toughening the laws to deal with criminals, including some quixotic (IMO) proposals to chemically castrate convicted rapists.

            – He is openly favourable to relaxing the very tight gun laws of Brazil.

            – He is explicitly anti-Communist – that is, anti-Castro and anti-Maduro. Yes, red scare is a thing here, but then consider our neighbours. Bolsonaro’s anti-Communism doesn’t sound like much for a Right-winger, until you know that many so-called Right-wing politicians lamented the death of Fidel Castro and wrote texts praising him, accompanied by pictures they took on visits to Cuba.

            – He has been for years explicitly against the Workers’ Party (which ruled from 2002 to the impeachment of 2016, after which a former ally of them took charge). The traditional opposition to the ruling part has been very meek in popular perception, which is why Bolsonaro got a boost when the Workers’ Party fell in disgrace in 2016 (due to economical crisis and corruption scandals).

            – He employs more forceful and violent rhetorics (“We’re gonna gun down the Workers’ Party”) – Leftwingers think (or pretend to think) he’s serious, even though the record of political violence tells more against them than against him.

            – Speaking of which, Bolsonaro got the dubious honor of being the first presidential candidate to be stabbed by a nutcase (unsurprisingly, a Leftwinger) in some 50 years. This happened one month ago.

            – Economically, he’s been talking libertarian (shrink the State! lower the taxes!), but from his speeches and schooling he’s more into the same State-driven Developmentism that has set the tone in Brazilian economics for the last 70 years at least. Not much of difference between the viable Right and the viable Left on this topic.

            So basically, in my view: he is too much to the Right for the press, the artists, the Universities, and the intellectuals, but actually fills the demand for a Rightwing politician that espouses causes the people feel strongly about – relaxing the gun control, keeping abortion illegal, being openly Christian, and not seeing gays kissing on the street.

            Sorry for the long text; I hope I brought more light than mist.

            *The “traditional Right” being mostly composed of people who were on the Left during the Millitary Rule (1964-1984), but started drifting to the center (away from defending Communism and from the recent identity politics). They are mostly what people call “Neoliberal”.

          • Evan Þ says:

            @moscanarius, what’s “demarcation of Indian lands” look like in Brazilian politics? I’ve heard about it a little in the context of minimally-contacted tribes in the depths of the Amazon jungle, but I’m guessing that isn’t the prototypical example?

          • moscanarius says:

            @Evan Þ

            I’m not an expert, and I don’t even live near Indian land, so my knowledge of this specific topic is not the best. Indian reservations are areas for the exclusive use of Indigenous tribes; usually, this refers to contacted, legally registered tribes with varying degrees of integration to mainstream society. Most don’t live like in the stone age anymore; most are Christians, and speak mostly Portuguese. The uncontacted tribes probably number a few hundred individuals, and there is the expectation that the biggest reservations already cover much of the area where they’re supposed to live. Among the two modalities of reservation, there are already some 1.77 millions of square kilometers (~20% of the territory) demarcated for the Indians; most are located in barely-populated areas in the Amazon, the region with more legally-recognized Indians.

            Demarcation of more Indian land is viewed as positive by the political Left (on the surface, at least; not when it conflicts with other projects), but is unpopular with the common citizens. Most people think the Indians (which are less than 0.5% of the population) already got too much, and that most are “not even Indians anymore” (that is, they no longer live a primitive, isolated life). The fact that one of the biggest land demarcations of the last decade included the expulsion of the “white” (actually mestizo) rice planters from land they bought decades ago certainly didn’t help.

          • Aminoacid says:

            One thing to keep in mind is that Brazil hasn’t really had conservatives as a big exponent (at least on presidential elections) since the end of the dictatorship.
            The
            main split was along liberal/”socialist” since 1988. The Congress and Senate had some conservative presence in the Congress, representing large rural landowners, televangelists and the military police (I believe those are the proper terms), but it was mostly made of conservative people defending their own economic interests, without commiting to conservative worldviews (ruralists didn’t necessarily care about religious topics, priests didn’t have a consensus on public safety).
            During the last decade, conservatism as a political alignment has grown, mostly due to the efforts of Olavo de Carvalho, a Brazilian philosopher who lives in the USA, who grew to prominence due to his harsh criticism of the left-wing parties of Brazil (how much of his ideas are true and how much are conspiracy theories is left as an exercise to the reader).
            While an argument could be made that any conservative candidate would be considered far-right in Brazil’s overton window, Bolsonaro has made outrageous claims in favor of a return to dictatorship, civil war and mass sterilization in the past, and over the past week has said that, if elected, will and any and all forms of “activism” and that he didn’t win the first majority vote due to fraudulent voting machines.

    • Rm says:

      Btw, on an unrelated note (but something I posted on the old LW site a while ago, which you commented on) – here’s the end of the story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DWKmRPr2G0 : the court ruled today that Yehorchenko’s words in Verkhovna Rada were misleading, but that she doesn’t have to pay Teslya 50 000 hrn. Yehorchenko will apellate… all in all, pseudoscience won big.

    • MrApophenia says:

      This thread is basically a perfect microcosm of why people like myself have become uncomfortable posting around here. A thread about “Why do liberals not want to hang around these parts” has already been diverted into an earnest discussion of why it’s not racist at all to think black people are genetically dumber than white people, and actually even calling that racist is the real oppression, man. Why do you leftists always need to moralize a topic like this?

      This shit is why I find myself avoiding the comments section even though I like the blog posts. It’s not that I am afraid to be seen here, it’s that I actually don’t feel like hanging out with people who think this way as a form of social recreation, even online.

      I’ll debate right wingers on tax policy or health care or gun rights all day long, but the race stuff around here is different and increasingly queasy-making.

      The subreddit is this times a thousand. I ran screaming for the hills when someone said, in something like these exact words (I’m not going to go look it up) that non-whites are genetically inferior and we shouldn’t let them into the country because they would spread their less intelligent genes, and that got generally accepted and upvoted. The 14 words have also received general applause from that crowd. I had a sudden realization of, “Oh shit, I’m basically on Nerd Stormfront” and skedaddled.

      Not moderating liberals isn’t going to solve the problem, Scott. You can have a forum community where openly racist ideas are enthusiastically supported (and calling those ideas racist is seen as shocking bad form), or you can have liberals who want to spend time here. You get to pick one.

      • albatross11 says:

        Just as an aside, the data from IQ distributions don’t say whites are superior, they say Asians have a higher average IQ than whites. And Jews of Eastern European descent seem to have a still higher average IQ. Whites do better than Hispanics[1], who do better than blacks. (Note that all of these results are also more-or-less reflected in how those groups do in the US, and to some extent even in how countries made up of those groups do in the world. That gives at least some added plausibility to the claim.)

        It may be wicked or racist to believe this. It may also be factually wrong (but it’s what the current data says, as I understand it.) It may be that it implies the wrong stuff because IQ isn’t quite the same thing as intelligence. But it’s very hard to say that this chunk of knowledge/belief is white supremacist.

        [1] Who aren’t really a racial group, but Asians aren’t really a cohesive group, either–all these racial categories are incredibly broad, and work as well as they do only because the US has a relatively restricted subset of people from each group.

        • Plumber says:

          “…Just as an aside, the data from IQ distributions….”

          @albatross11,

          I remember reading that IQ tests were done of First World War inductee’s and it was found that northern blacks had higher average IQ’s than southern whites, and while it could be argued “Well yeah, their ancestors were smart enough to get out of the south”, but I also remember that early 20th century Jewish immigrants had lower than average IQ’s, but by the 1940’s American Jews had higher than average IQ’s.
          I’m dubiois of there being a dramatic genetic change in just one or two generations.

          • I’m dubiois of there being a dramatic genetic change in just one or two generations.

            So is everyone else. But nobody serious claims that IQ is entirely genetic.

            I tried to Google for the northern blacks/southern whites story and found a modern article on the subject (in JSTOR).

            Table 1 shows, among other things, median black scores and median white scores by state. The highest median black score is in Ohio (48.3–not an IQ but a score on this particular test). That’s higher than the median white score in some but not all southern states. The median black score in New Jersey (lowest of the northern states) is lower than the median white score in any southern state.

            The article doesn’t give a median for all blacks in the north or all whites in the south to compare, so I compared the median of medians for whites in the south (Louisiana: 45.2) to the median of medians for blacks in the north (Indiana: 41.5) it doesn’t support the claim as you reported it. My guess is that the real claim is that there were some northern states where the median score of blacks was higher than the median score of whites in some southern states.

            Reading farther, that is the claim. The original source is an article by Montagu. What it found was that “median black Alpha scores in the five highest northern states were higher than median white scores in nine southern states.” That’s a good deal weaker than your “northern blacks had higher average IQ’s than southern whites.” It obviously implies that race is not the only determinant of IQ, but I don’t think anyone claimed it was.

            The point of the article I found, incidentally (“Race, Region, and Education: An Analysis of Black and White Scores on the 1917 Army Alpha Intelligence Test” by John L. Rury), is to try to tease out what the environmental factors were that affected black test results, white test results, and the black/white difference.

            One complication seems to be that there were two tests, an alpha test intended for literate subjects, a beta test intended for illiterate subjects, and the article I am looking at is only using the alpha test. That might bias the results, most obviously if literate individuals are on average smarter than illiterate, which seems plausible, and a larger fraction of blacks than of whites were illiterate. I haven’t yet found anything looking at that.

            On the subject of Ashkenazi intelligence, I found this:

            The Hughes study is important because it contradicts a widely cited misrepresentation by Kamin (Kamin, 1974) of a paper by Henry Goddard (Goddard, 1917). Goddard gave IQ tests to people suspected of being retarded, and he found that the tests identified retarded Jews as well as retarded people of other groups . Kamin reported, instead, that Jews had low IQs, and this erroneous report was picked up by many authors including Stephen Jay Gould, who used it as evidence of the unreliability of the tests (Seligman, 1992 ).

            I suspect that’s the source of the factoid you remembered.

          • albatross11 says:

            I don’t know the details off the top of my head, but I believe there was a big effort by the Rockefeller foundation, sometime relatively early in the century, to do away with hookworm infections. Those were endemic in the south basically forever until they were more-or-less wiped out. It strikes me as very likely that people who grew up with long-term parasitic infections paid a price in terms of IQ, as well as stuff like height and general health.

            We know IQ is substantially genetic, from adoption studies. We also know it’s substantially environmental, from the Flynn effect, wherein the raw IQ scores went up a little every year in most developed countries. That effect has apparently stopped in most first world countries by now. Probably, the Flynn effect is explained by the same thing as the continued increases in average height over time–we got healthier as we mostly got rid of malnutrition and parasites, did a better job with sanitation, got everyone their shots, and made sure everyone got some schooling.

          • Plumber says:

            “…….I suspect that’s the source of the factoid you remembered”

            @DavidFriedman,

            Good lord that’s impressive research!

            I will change my future “did you know”s’ accordingly.

            Thanks,

      • The Nybbler says:

        Allowing your stomach to be a limit on acceptable discourse seems like a very poor solution. There’s probably quite a few things that would turn stomachs on the opposite side — anything related to homosexuality goes right to the front of the line, for instance.

        • Brad says:

          Allowing your stomach to be a limit on acceptable discourse seems like a very poor solution.

          Poor solution to what problem?

          • Nick says:

            I think he’s saying poor solution to the question of what discourse should or shouldn’t be acceptable. “Solution” was probably the wrong word to use, though; he should have maybe said “criterion.”

        • brmic says:

          Less of this please.
          If you seriously can’t tell the difference between what MrApophenia described and ‘stomach’ (equals ‘gut feeling’ to me, but I wouldn’t want to put that into your mouth, hence the quote) try to paraphrase as best you can, ask for clarification etc.
          Regardless of whether your paraphrase is charitable or not (I think it clearly isn’t) you waste everyone’s time by opening an unnecessary side debate about ‘stomach’. If you want to know whether negative sentiments about homosexuality would fall under MrApophenia’s concept ask? If you want to know whether they’d be similarly respected, ask. (The uncharitable part in me say you know it wouldn’t, because there’s a substantial difference and that you had to move the goalposts to ‘stomach’ to even get the argument in. The part after that say’s you’re straight up sea-lioning, but I’m trying hard to be as chariable as possible.)

          • Nick says:

            If you seriously can’t tell the difference between what MrApophenia described and ‘stomach’ (equals ‘gut feeling’ to me, but I wouldn’t want to put that into your mouth, hence the quote)

            What? The Nybbler’s use of “stomach” here likely refers to disgust reactions. Where are you getting “gut feeling” from?

          • The Nybbler says:

            If you seriously can’t tell the difference between what MrApophenia described and ‘stomach’

            How else am I to interpret “queasy-making”?

          • MrApophenia says:

            Actually, yeah, I think disgust/stomach/whatever is a fairly reasonable characterization.

            And I think it’s the actual answer to the problem Scott is trying to solve. Socializing with a bunch of “race realists” is just an intensely unappealing idea for me, and probably for other folks who feel similar to me. Since Scott apparently wants to know how to keep liberals from abandoning the site, the answer probably does come down to picking which of those two communities he prefers to have stick around.

            There are some contexts where society requires you to tolerate the views of people you find detestable – but recreational posting online just ain’t one of them. So any site that is welcoming to Group A, who Group B finds detestable, will fairly rapidly drive away Group B.

          • brmic says:

            How else am I to interpret “queasy-making”?

            You don’t. You ask. Moot now since MrApophenia agrees with you, but the basic point that parapharases-not-for-clarification are an obstacle best avoided shouldn’t be controversial. (Do you disagree?)

            @MrApophenia
            Thing is, you can get to the same point from a purely utilitarian POV in that it’s a waste of precious spare time.

          • Eponymous says:

            @MrApophenia

            And I think it’s the actual answer to the problem Scott is trying to solve. Socializing with a bunch of “race realists” is just an intensely unappealing idea for me, and probably for other folks who feel similar to me. Since Scott apparently wants to know how to keep liberals from abandoning the site, the answer probably does come down to picking which of those two communities he prefers to have stick around.

            I assume that Scott wants to set a rule for participation in the community that doesn’t reference object-level positions. He probably wants things like thoughtful genuine engagement with opposing views, people backing up their claims with facts, politeness, charitable interpretations of others’ statements, etc.

            So I guess the question is whether there is such a rule that you think would work to make the site attractive to you. Or do you disagree that we should limit ourselves to such rules?

            My model of Scott may also be wrong — maybe I’m just expressing my own preference. To be perfectly frank, the idea of not wanting to participate in a community because smart people thoughtfully advocate position X that I dislike is so alien to me that I can’t really empathize with it. Then again, I know that I’m not cognitively normal, and I’m interested to hear you out on this.

            (Incidentally, I suspect that your comment is substantially correct — that tolerance of “race realists” and some folks with related views strongly repels many potential commenters. I just don’t know what a solution might be that is consistent with what’s good about this place.)

          • Nick says:

            You don’t. You ask. Moot now since MrApophenia agrees with you, but the basic point that parapharases-not-for-clarification are an obstacle best avoided shouldn’t be controversial. (Do you disagree?)

            The Nybbler’s paraphrase was very clarifying. The idea was indeed there in MrApophenia’s post, and he brought it to the fore. And it advanced the discussion, since MrApophenia followed up substantively.

            I don’t think your standard here makes any sense. We have in the original post the words “uncomfortable” and “queasy-making” and calling the racism discussion “[t]his shit.” I not only took this as an expression of disgust, I don’t see how anyone else would arrive at any other interpretations. If this is the sort of thing that requires clarification, then we can never have any conversations because none of us will know what the other means—we couldn’t even intelligently ask any clarifying questions. Your original post, spinning an unusual interpretation of “stomach” as “gut feeling” into claims of uncharitableness, sealioning, and perhaps even bad faith is an interesting example of interpretation going wrong, but given it has no resemblance to the case at hand, I think you should just apologize to The Nybbler for overreacting.

          • MrApophenia says:

            @Eponymous

            To be perfectly frank, the idea of not wanting to participate in a community because smart people thoughtfully advocate position X that I dislike is so alien to me that I can’t really empathize with it. Then again, I know that I’m not cognitively normal, and I’m interested to hear you out on this.

            I think most people (and certainly myself) have some topics they can calmly and rationally engage with even when they disagree, and some that are basically beyond their moral pale and and they are either unwilling to engage with entirely or, more relevant here, certainly don’t find enjoyable to engage with.

            I love arguing on the internet. I have spent probably more-than-healthy amounts of time arguing about topics, from those I just have kind of an abstract interest in to those I feel very strongly about.

            And then there are topics where the automatic reaction is, “Oh, if you actually think that, I’m done associating with you anymore than I am actually required to by circumstances outside my control.”

            Someone compared it to NAMBLA upthread, and I think that nails it pretty well. Imagine lots of people here were not only pro-NAMBLA advocates, but that they brought the topic up any time they could, and were polite and well spoken about it. Constantly.

            The objection in response was that it is unfair to view this topic that way – but that’s pretty much how this topic comes across to me, and I suspect to others who are rethinking their participation. So the question becomes, who do you want to stick around more? The NAMBLA guys, or the folks who don’t want to associate with them?

            If the answer is “We’re open to all topics and those NAMBLA people are following all the rules” then groovy, choice made. But the people who don’t want to spend their time socializing with a bunch of NAMBLA advocates are probably going to leave. I really don’t think it’s possible to create a just-for-fun social environment where you keep both participating.

          • BBA says:

            To speak hypothetically for a minute: Nobody would expect me to tolerate someone waving a tiki torch in my face shouting “JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US!” Yet I’m told I should tolerate someone who constantly brings up cherry-picked facts about fertility and migration among ethnic groups and smugly insinuates that my Jewish heritage might have something to do with why I’m in favor of greater immigration, because they’re not being shouty or hostile. Well, from where I sit those two hypothetical people are equally offensive and their tone doesn’t factor into it one bit. I have no interest in interacting with either of them or in participating in any space where I’m expected to.

            (Let me reiterate that this is a hypothetical example and I’m not accusing anyone here, now or in the past, of holding such views.)

          • The Nybbler says:

            @BBA

            And I’m supposed to put up with people telling me that because I’m a white male it’s OK to discriminate against me in various ways. Yeah, sometimes people with wrong views are kinda disgusting. But there’s a big difference between e.g. writing a bunch of words about “privilege” and literally yelling “male, pale, and stale” in my face. Same goes for the tiki-torch-in-your-face versus the Jewishness-predicts-immigration-support character. Tone and manner actually DOES often matter.

          • Matt M says:

            And the college shouters outnumber the tiki torch crowd about 100:1

          • arlie says:

            A big YES! to several people above me in this thread (Not the person I’m responding to, but responses to them.)

            e.g. MrApophenia:

            And then there are topics where the automatic reaction is, “Oh, if you actually think that, I’m done associating with you anymore than I am actually required to by circumstances outside my control.”

            So the question becomes, who do you want to stick around more? The NAMBLA guys, or the folks who don’t want to associate with them?

            Yep. This applies to me too. And I hadn’t realized that till I read this thread.

            And for those who don’t get it, this has nothing to do with not wanting to be
            seen as associating with my particular bugaboos.

      • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

        I guess I’m too late to the party, blame my increasingly-good impulse control, but the argument from disgust you’re making is missing an important piece:

        This place had a lot of commonplace disgusting opinions way before the Death Eaters and other far-right posters showed up, and nobody really cared.

        Disgust can be subjective, obviously, but does anyone remember that time Scott condoned adultery because marriage vows are just “boilerplate” that nobody takes seriously? Advocacy for polyamory was uniquitous, smug, and full of snark for anyone unsophisticated enough not to feel “compersion” when your wife is getting plowed by other men. This is something that disgusts the common man so much that our society literally carved out an exception in murder laws specifically to prevent juries from feeling the need to acquit men who murdered their wives and their wives’ lovers over it.

        There are plenty of topics where Scott and a subset of commenters agree on something that another subset of commenters and the general public find absolutely repugnant and beyond the pale. And there have been right from the start. Yet the blog has grown year after year and, according to the latest survey, none of the disgusted groups have been driven off by repeated discussion of these topics.

        • HeelBearCub says:

          I’m not sure the last time the topic of polyamory was even brought up, let alone in that way. You’ll note your link is from almost 3 years ago. This strikes me as a measure of how the blog population has changed. The poly friendly, sex positive, folk have mostly been driven off.

        • Jaskologist says:

          I’ll post some further speculation: the perceived rightward shift has come about in large part because the DeathEaters and their ilk were banned.

          If see some guy arguing about gun control, I know immediately if he’s on my side or the other side, and can extend that out to a number of other issues with high confidence. I probably also know what arguments he will make and how I can respond to them, because I’ve seen the discussion many times elsewhere.

          If I see some guy arguing that we need a hereditary monarch, I have no idea if he’s on my side or the other side. If I want to respond, I’m going to have to think about it a little, because I don’t have anything pre-canned and ready to serve up on that topic.

          Once we got rid of the weirdos, we effectively reduced discussion topics to the ones common in Culture War Discourse, and we would inevitably be pulled to the Left and Right attractors that cover all of these well-trod topics.

          Plus, you have to do some background reading and have an interest in weird ideas to have something to say on the divine right of kings. You just need to be vaguely politically aware to do so on Gun Control. So we changed the filter away from “people interested in discussing unusual ideas” at the same time that we lowered the barrier of entry.

          tldr; bring back the death eaters. Proclaim a jubilee for all those who have been banned.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            I am skeptical of this: I don’t recall prominent death-eaters here arguing about the Divine Right of Kings much; I think we still argued the exact same things as now just with one side being even edgier and more willing to say things in as blunt and uncompromising a way possible.

            Perhaps we have a different definition of who the death-eaters were: I’m thinking Jim Donald (can’t remember his name now, something like that…) and Steve Johnson primarily, but maybe you mean someone else.

          • Randy M says:

            I’d like to see a return of thoughtful, mostly civil death eaters like nydwracau (sp, obviously) or Handle. But they weren’t banned, afaik, despite the heralding of the reign of terror.

          • Eugene Dawn says:

            Did handle ever actually post here? I remember reading some posts on his site, but don’t recall more than a few off-hand posts on SSC.

          • Nornagest says:

            nydwracu still posts here occasionally, under another handle. I’d like to see him post more, though; he’s one of the smartest and most thoughtful guys on that side.

            I get the impression the old-school Death Eaters no longer really exist as such, though.

          • Randy M says:

            @ Eugene
            Yes

      • Humbert McHumbert says:

        Although this sort of negative reaction is understandable to me, as I mentioned above in a different context, I ultimately don’t agree with your reaction. At least, I’m concerned that the reaction rests on a misconception about the state of public culture today and which views are mainstream enough that we must engage with them even if on the merits they’re distasteful.

        Suppose you were a progressive living in South Africa in the 70s and 80s. Then it would be incumbent on you to engage and argue with hardcore racists, not (hopefully) because their views didn’t rightly make you queasy, but because they were so widespread in the public life of that country that avoiding them was tantamount to putting your head in the sand.

        It seems to me that “race realism” has become like that in the US. Hell, even arch-Never-Trumper Bill Kristol is buddies with Charles Murray (you can see his flattering interviews with Murray on Youtube, including Kristol saying that Murray was right about everything in the Bell Curve). Race realism is a large segment of mainstream conservative thought in the US today, and if you don’t engage with it, you’re missing out on where a big part of the public debate needs to be. Not on the merits (I don’t have a good sense of the merits, because I think it’s too hard for a non-specialist to grasp the state of the evidence in such a politicized field), but purely on the basis of the prevalence of the views and their attendant ideology. You’re sticking your head in the sand if you ignore it.

        • It seems to me that “race realism” has become like that in the US. Hell, even arch-Never-Trumper Bill Kristol is buddies with Charles Murray

          Suppose I casually remarked that I didn’t realize X was a Stalinist until I discovered that he was buddies with Bernie Sanders. What conclusion would you reach about how much I knew about those who disagreed with me?

          That’s the reaction I have to what you wrote. As anyone who read Murray’s books or talked seriously with people who did would know, the ideas he writes about have nothing in particular to do with race. The Bell Curve could have said all the important things it did say in an America where there were no blacks—that just isn’t what it was about. Losing Ground, his first book, as best I recall never mentioned race– it would have been irrelevant to its subject.

        • Humbert McHumbert says:

          Fair point; I mainly brought up Murray here because I suspect Mr Apophenia would consider him beyond the pale, although I don’t myself. My point was pitched at its audience, progressives uncomfortable with discussion of genetic racial differences.

      • toastengineer says:

        I’ve been waffling on writing up an effortpost (maybe on the new LW? Is that still going?) about the Pro-Edgy Bias, and the… uh, this place, I guess, community’s edginess problem in general. It’s fun to think you have secret or even forbidden knowledge. But dangit, just because something is true and you have proof doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to sound so damn excited about it.

        To be honest, I think there’s been a noticeable decline in quality around here even in the short time I’ve been around. I’m less concerned about the left v. right stackup, especially considering I’m not sure the left and the right really exist anymore, than the general quality of the conversations; people don’t seem to be carefully reading each-other’s posts or really responding to each-other. It’s pretty clear that no-one here has Read the Damn Sequences in quite a while.

        It’s turning in to facebook arguments except with longer words. Even the empty signalling of “I’m a rationalist who respects his debate opponents” (that is, talking the talk of someone who is trying to have a real debate but not walking the walk of actually doing impromptu adversarially collaborative truth-seeking) is fading away. We’re all turning in to Sidles.

        I think Scott needs, or agents appointed by Scott need, to crack the fuck down on everyone, not to even more thoroughly refuse to punish shitting up the commons.

  52. Barr says:

    I’m a startup founder interested in real estate development. If anyone knows about real estate from the point of view of finance, development, or architecture, I’d like to talk with you. My company would be willing to offer some free technical work in exchange.

    • Erusian says:

      I’m in startup world and have experience in real estate development and financing, plus a little bit about architecture. Let me know how I can help.

  53. johan_larson says:

    Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to update the set of merit badges that must be earned to become an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. You can find the current list here.

    • Alex Zavoluk says:

      (Writing as an Eagle Scout):

      Communication should have a stronger written component.
      + something related to American history
      + some sort of applied technology badge, like programming or engineering.
      + a more rigorous outdoor badge, like backpacking or wilderness survival
      -cycling/hiking/swimming could probably be rolled into personal fitness
      – cooking, family life, and personal management could probably be rolled into a “life skills” badge or something like that

      All eagle-required badges should have better infrastructure in place for checking that the requirements are actually completed, like requiring some sort of proof to be kept, or allowing National to question scouts about their work on those badges.

      • Evan Þ says:

        (Also writing as an Eagle Scout.)

        I endorse your suggestion of an engineering merit badge. I wouldn’t make it as specific as “computer programming,” though. Programming is useful, but it takes some work to twist your brain around to the right angle to do it. Maybe let Scouts choose between Electronics / Programming / Carpentry / General Engineering / some other options I’m not thinking of?

        I personally like the idea of an American History badge, but I’m not sure it’s important enough. Maybe we can instead beef up Citizenship in the Nation with some additional history requirements?

        I oppose rolling Cycling/Hiking/Swimming into Personal Fitness. They approach the subject from different angles – Personal Fitness is more all-around and involves doing things over a one-month period; Cycling/Hiking/Swimming involve longer trips that don’t require a specific time length.

        I’ve no opinion on the record-keeping, except that I wouldn’t expect Scouts coming up for their Eagle board to remember anything near every detail of the work they did. For that matter, how are the existing Eagle boards of review made up?

        • Alex Zavoluk says:

          I endorse your suggestion of an engineering merit badge. I wouldn’t make it as specific as “computer programming,” though. Programming is useful, but it takes some work to twist your brain around to the right angle to do it. Maybe let Scouts choose between Electronics / Programming / Carpentry / General Engineering / some other options I’m not thinking of?

          Yeah, that was my intention, which is why I included “Engineering” although even that isn’t broad enough.

          I would be ok with including more history in at least one of the citizenship badges.

          I oppose rolling Cycling/Hiking/Swimming into Personal Fitness. They approach the subject from different angles – Personal Fitness is more all-around and involves doing things over a one-month period; Cycling/Hiking/Swimming involve longer trips that don’t require a specific time length.

          I realize they come from different angles, but I think requiring one of (cycling, hiking, swimming) is overly specific, and I already suggested adding a more rigorous outdoor badge to the list which could absorb some of whatever gets left out of the new personal fitness.

          I’ve no opinion on the record-keeping, except that I wouldn’t expect Scouts coming up for their Eagle board to remember anything near every detail of the work they did. For that matter, how are the existing Eagle boards of review made up?

          I would hope that if documentation were required, more documentation would be kept.

          Eagle Boards of Review are usually just made out of adults active in the existing troop. AFAIK right now National just reviews the paperwork that local councils send in.

          • Bluesilverwave says:

            ILO “engineering,” check out the new Digital Technology badge. Way better than the old Computers badge.

            EDIT: LINK!

          • Alex Zavoluk says:

            TIL Computers became a merit badge in 1967.

            What do you mean “ILO”? I know there’s a few computer related badges (I think there’s now a programming one) but given how much young people’s lives are now tied to technology I kind of think requiring something related to technology makes sense.

    • johan_larson says:

      I would nudge the scouts back toward their origins as a para-military organization. Currently there are three required badges for various kinds of citizenship. Fold those into one. This opens up two new slots in the Eagle Scout requirements, without increasing the number of badges required.

      Replace the first with Rifle Shooting or Shotgun Shooting. Consider adding a Pistol Shooting badge, and allow that too for the first new slot.

      To replace the second, introduce two new badges, the first in Military Studies (covering military history, the structure of the modern US military, and US military commitments abroad) and the second in Self Defense (study of a martial art and the law concerning self-protection.) Require either Military Studies or Self Defense for the second new slot.

      • Evan Þ says:

        I would nudge the scouts back toward their origins as a para-military organization.

        As an Eagle Scout, I completely agree the Scouts need some bigger focus, but I don’t think this’s the right one.

        Plus, if you do want them to become more paramilitary, I think “Citizenship in the Nation” is exactly the sort of badge you’d want to keep. Maybe cut Communication or Environmental Science instead?

      • Alex Zavoluk says:

        I would have said that wilderness and outdoor skills were more important to the Scouts than anything I would call “para-military.”

        • keranih says:

          Probably because of the shift in what is defined as “para-military”. I would argue that an interest in history and marksmanship are sufficient to be considered ‘para-military’ these days, and the interest in survival skills (now called SERE in the military) tracking, camping, and hiking were very much “military- adjacent” in decades past.

        • johan_larson says:

          They are part of a movement started by a British general. They have salutes, uniforms and ranks. They are organized into “troops”. Those uniforms include military-style headgear like campaign hats, uniform caps, and berets. They are explicitly nationalistic.

          Seems plenty paramilitary to me.

          If the hippies had started an organization to foster outdoors skills and good citizenship, it would look different.

          • Alex Zavoluk says:

            That’s all trappings. Lots of organizations have ranks or uniforms or salutes. There is absolutely and explicitly no combat of any kind, be it hand-to-hand, firearms, or other weapons, and as far as I know there never was.

          • AlphaGamma says:

            The hippies (FSVO hippies) did start their own organization as you suggest, because they thought the Scouts were too militaristic. Scout troops are also allowed to have links with local military units.

            In general, I think there is a continuum, with explicitly pacifist organisations at one end, military cadet units (not uncommon in the UK) at the other, and scouts somewhere in the middle. I have also heard from former UK Scouts that they were specifically not allowed to march in step at their parades.

            @Alex Zavoluk- In terms of weapons and combat, in the UK Scout groups are allowed to offer martial arts, fencing, archery, and shooting with both air weapons and firearms (though the use of human- or animal-shaped targets is banned, and in general all of these are offered as sports rather than military/combat training).

          • John Schilling says:

            The Boy Scouts of America has been teaching boys how to shoot rifles from day one. It’s true that they don’t shoot rifles at each other, but that’s true of most military training programs as well.

            It’s also true that they don’t do bayonet drills or field exercises where they practice assaulting a defended position, but that’s what the “para-” in “paramilitary” means in almost every other context. An organization with a uniformed heirarchical structure that mimics the military, practicing drills and field skills similar to those of infantry soldiers, nominally assigned tasks similar to the non-combat support functions of the military, equipped and trained with small arms but nominally only as a just-in-case defensive measure, and if it turns out you need infantry soldiers you just need to backfill some specific bits of training and kit.

            And that was specifically the intended purpose of the Boy Scouts when Baden-Powell invented them. “Scouts” was being used in the military sense of light infantry reconnaissance forces, of which he had observed the United Kingdom was ill-supplied because that isn’t the sort of thing one learns on the playing fields of Eaton, and he created an organization for the purpose of ensuring that the UK’s future recruiting pool would be better prepared for such roles.

            “Paramilitary” has acquired a negative connotation in other contexts that I think many people are reluctant to apply to the Boy Scouts. But, connotation aside, it at least historically fits and I think it still applies to some parts of the Boy Scouts of America.

      • Bluesilverwave says:

        The original Boy Scouts in the USA was an explicitly pacifist organization. (blame most of that on Seton IIRC) The “scout rifle” was a creation of Hearst (yup, that one) and his “American Scouts,” which were a competing organization whose only real appeal was the rifle. (if my memory is right, originally BSA banned all firearms!)

        I think it’s best to keep the Scouts explicitly pacifist. ROTC and J-ROTC can handle the paramilitary-youth.

        It might be nice to have some expanded Firearm Safety component of the Scouts, considering the current firearm kill rate, but I’m a tad skeptical of whether it would have a statistically significant impact.

        • johan_larson says:

          Explicitly pacifist? How so? The Oath, Law, Motto and Slogan have nothing explicitly pacifist in them. Nothing explicitly warlike either, to be sure.

          Also, Marksmanship was among the original set of BSA merit badges back in 1911.

      • pontifex says:

        Nudge the scouts to becoming a suitable paramilitary organization for the upcoming cyberpunk dystopia that we’re building. I’m thinking lockpicking, hacking, drones, stealth, and maybe cybernetics.

        If they have any experience points left over, they can put them into either shotgun skills, or bladed combat. Actually, maybe I just described the next Deus Ex game?

      • Nornagest says:

        A course of study the length of a merit badge in martial arts won’t do anything, at least not six months after you’ve earned it. Oh, sure, you can learn techniques, but for them to be useful in actual self-defense you need to practice them enough that you automatically fall back on them under stress. That takes a lot more than a few months, and it’s an ongoing commitment. Conditioning matters a lot too.

        Shooting’s a lot easier, though — with good instruction, you can go from zero to sorta competent in a few months of weekend trips or a week or so of intensive training. You’re not going to impress anyone that’s been going to the range every weekend for twenty years, but you can absolutely learn the basics.

      • Darick Kowalski says:

        Why though?

  54. J Mann says:

    PS, I’d love to do an adversarial collaboration on the following

    The allied intervention in the Libyan civil war was based on unjustified assertions of an impending massacre in Benghazi, and was illegal under international law. Whether through negligence or intention, allied leaders misled the public about the imminence of the threat and whether the mission was aimed at toppling Qaddafi and winning the civil war for the rebels.

    Note – by “allied,” I’m intending focus mostly on Britain and the US, because I don’t speak French, but I’m open to expanding the scope.

    • cassander says:

      I assume you’re arguing the position stated? Because if so, I’m not sure where you’re going to find anyone who things that the libya intervention was a good idea, unless you can get in touch with Hillary Clinton or Samantha Power.

      • axiomsofdominion says:

        No there are plenty of neoliberals who would argue both that it was a good idea then and that it was the right thing in hindsight also.

        • cassander says:

          I have absolutely no idea what you mean by neo-liberal in this context, but that’s not what the word means. Lazy insults are bad enough, but lazy non sequitur insults are much worse. Please don’t.

          • axiomsofdominion says:

            Neo-liberal has a common understanding association with a certain kind of foreign intervention. Sure dictionary wise its about a particular kind of capitalism but descriptivism is on the rise and prescriptivism is on a downhill slope. Basically people who are politically similar to the Clintons, Obama, and their mirrors in the Republican party. Tony Blair in England for instance.

          • cassander says:

            Neo-liberal has a common understanding association with a certain kind of foreign intervention.

            No, it doesn’t, except insofar as neo-liberal is an all purpose slur left wing slur that translates as “someone to my right who I don’t like and can’t get away with calling a fascist.” You might be thinking of neo-conservative.

            Basically people who are politically similar to the Clintons, Obama, and their mirrors in the Republican party. Tony Blair in England for instance.

            Hillary Clinton is at the hawkish end of the american political spectrum, Bill was in the middle and Obama on the dovish side. There’s no label that applies to all of them together any stronger than “vaguely liberal internationalist”, and that’s more description of style than substance.

          • AnonYEmous says:

            not to interrupt but, in addition to its usage as a scream word, there are some people who actually claim the label of neoliberal

            probably to push back against the people using it as a scream word, but anyways: I do think some of them supported the Libyan intervention. I’m basing that off of half-remembered tweets though. So uh, not sure if axioms is right or anything, but don’t rule it out either.

          • pontifex says:

            I am curious if there are any mainstream politicians who currently or recently described themselves as “neoliberal.” I would guess no, but maybe I’m wrong?

          • HeelBearCub says:

            I don’t think humanitarian intervention is particularly associated with neo-liberals. Although I guess some notable successful interventions occurred under Bill Clinton, who certainly would be described as neo-liberal by many. I’d say the impulse for humanitarian intervention has typically been more bleeding heart then neo-liberal.

            But I also don’t think neo-conservatives are particularly big on humanitarian intervention, either. Using military force to install a new government more friendly to us would be neo-conservative, but that doesn’t seem to have been our goal in Libya, as we were pretty hands off.

          • Civilis says:

            Hillary Clinton is at the hawkish end of the American political spectrum, Bill was in the middle and Obama on the dovish side. There’s no label that applies to all of them together any stronger than “vaguely liberal internationalist”, and that’s more description of style than substance.

            Well, there is “Wilsonian” for the interventionist-American-left foreign policy school of thought (and “Hamiltonian” for the corresponding interventionist-American-right).

          • rlms says:

            Agree that interventionism isn’t a notable feature of neoliberalism. I think these are the common meanings of neoliberalism (when in it isn’t just a slur).

            1. Near-synonym for libertarian (or the nearest thing that actually gets elected). Not interventionist.
            2. Faux-leftist: articles about how oil is actually feminist, or black lesbian drone operators; Nike’s recent campaign. Not interventionist.
            3. The general centrist political consensus in the West from ~2010-2016: Obama/Clinton Democrats in the US, Blair/Cameron in the UK, Merkel in Germany. Interventionist in comparison to those to the left, but not neoconservatives or the right in general (I would say Blair was the most interventionist of those, and he was slightly less interventionist than Bush).

      • J Mann says:

        I think the contrary case is that the US and British case for intervention* was reasonable based on the information available at the time.

        * I recall the case for intervention being that if we did not intervene, there was good cause to believe Qadaffi’s forces would carry out a Srebernica-style massacre, but I’d be open to my collaborator characterizing the case for intervention differently.

        • cassander says:

          That case was made, but not very plausibly. Such a move would have made little sense, would have been largely out of character both with Gaddafi’s history and especially his recent behavior, and even if it had happened, probably would have killed fewer people than the entirely predictable 7 years and counting of civil war that have followed our destruction of his government.

      • alphago says:

        I assume you’re arguing the position stated? Because if so, I’m not sure where you’re going to find anyone who things that the libya intervention was a good idea, unless you can get in touch with Hillary Clinton or Samantha Power.

        According to this survey of international relations scholars, a majority (60%) approve of the Libya intervention; though they generally are fairly dovish regarding other interventions.

        • cassander says:

          That’s from january of 2012. The intervention was probably still ongoing when that survey was commissioned. I didn’t say no one was in favor THEN, I said almost no one defends it today.

          • alphago says:

            It’s the most recent relevant survey that I’m aware of, and seems a reasonable starting point for forming an outside view of expert opinion on this. It’s possible that almost everyone of the 60% of scholars who were supportive at the time now believes they were wrong, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

            Also, J Mann’s comment, which you were responding to, claimed the intervention was based on “unjustified assertions”; I would think that whether they were “justified” depends on what was known at the time (not hindsight).

        • J Mann says:

          That survey is astonishing to me. Thanks, and I’ll include it.

    • Hypoborean says:

      Oooooooooo interesting. This is a loosely held belief of mine that I’d be interested in examining in greater depth. I’m not a perfect collaborator for this (since I’m an electrical engineer rather than a political scientist, so part of this discussion will involve me interrogating my own beliefs on this in greater depth, as they are mainly formed by a vague synthesis of years of fairly intensive news-reading [Economist, NYT mainly] plus my own theories on America’s hegemonic role in the world), but I’d be interested in starting a conversation on this.

      If you want to get in touch, you can contact me at jcminor [at] mit [dot] edu

  55. J Mann says:

    Science request. It’s Kavanaugh-Ford related, but if I can make a sub-request, I’m really interested in the general scientific state of play, not in the particular dispute, so I’d rather people avoid the dispute in responses to me except as necessary to contextualize supporting science.

    Question: The Washington Post says it’s “junk science” and “scienitifically baseless” to believe that traumatic memories are susceptible to change over decades. The author quotes Richard Huganir that there’s a “total consensus” that fear and trauma make memories “indelible” at a “molecular level” so that we can say scientifically that if someone like Ford actually has a crystal clear memory of trauma thirty years earlier, we can be confident that it’s an accurate memory.

    Issue: If that’s correct, I need to seriously update and probably owe some people an apology. I was under the impression that the majority opinion among researchers who have studied this issue is that so called “snapshot memories” formed under trauma are at least as susceptible as other memories to editing through the recall process, and for example that Brian Williams’ famous mistake in recalling that his helicopter was hit by two rockets in Iraq easily could have been a sincere but mistaken memory.

    What is the actual state of science on very old trauma memories? Thanks!

    • Humbert McHumbert says:

      I don’t have an answer, but a related issue: http://time.com/3625414/rape-trauma-brain-memory/

      “It is not reasonable to expect a trauma survivor – whether a rape victim, a police officer or a soldier – to recall traumatic events the way they would recall their wedding day. They will remember some aspects of the experience in exquisitely painful detail. Indeed, they may spend decades trying to forget them. They will remember other aspects not at all, or only in jumbled and confused fragments. Such is the nature of terrifying experiences, and it is a nature that we cannot ignore.”

      I’m curious myself how rigorously all of this has been established. And further, what overall reason do we have, in light of all of this, to expect a survivor’s recollection of who their attacker was to be factually reliable?

      • Protagoras says:

        My general impression is that if she already knew Kavanaugh at the time, people are not horrible at recognizing and remembering already familiar people (though 30 years is a long time!) If she didn’t know him at the time, people are quite bad at re-identifying people they don’t know and make lots of mistakes about that. There seem to be conflicting stories as to how well they might have known one another at the time of the incident. My own view is that Kavanaugh is not remotely credible and his assorted lies and evasions should have disqualified him from the court, but while Ford’s story is plausible the amount of time and the unreliability of memory make me less than certain it is accurate.

        • CarlosRamirez says:

          Kavanaugh is not remotely credible

          Bear in mind, assessments of the credibility of Kavanaugh and Ford are wildly split along partisan lines. For example, I had the distinct impression Ford was lying both times I watched her entire opening statement. It’s all playing at mind-reading in the end though.

          • albatross11 says:

            My limited understanding of cognitive biases suggests that it is almost impossible to separate your evaluation of the speakers in a matter like this from your prior beliefs, team membership, etc.

          • gbdub says:

            Yeah, I also feel like Ford’s apparent exaggeration or fabrication of her fear of flying and claustrophobia, and her unwillingness to share her psychologist’s notes are a big knock against her credibility that should get more play.

            While Kavanaugh’s lies seem to be mostly about ancillary stuff meant to attack his character in dubiously relevant ways (do you drink, do you boof, did you call a girl a slut in your yearbook).

            Part of that is partisan, but part of that is I generally think the prosecution needs to be held to a higher standard of truthfulness than the defense.

        • Humbert McHumbert says:

          For the record, Protagoras’s opinion is basically the same as my own tentative take.

        • Paul Zrimsek says:

          One other possibility I’d think we need to deal with is whether one of the things non-traumatic memories can be edited into is false traumatic memories.

      • albatross11 says:

        This all seems very interesting, if we can separate it out from partisan anger/tribalism.

        a. What’s known about the accuracy of eyewitness identifications? (I know people have been falsely convicted on them, but not how common that is.)

        b. What’s known about the accuracy of traumatic memories?

        c. What’s known about how much memories degrade over time?

        d. What’s known about recovered memories or memories that only surface many years after the event?

        e. What’s known about the accuracy of lie-detector tests?

        • JRM says:

          I am a prosecutor and have spoken to experts in these fields. They are not of one mind.

          But:

          Primary eyewitness ID risks are memory tainted by other information and cross-racial identification. Both of these issues are well-established.

          If a person knows the identified, it’s easier.

          Humans are very, very good at recognizing faces.

          The defense ID experts like to say that confidence in ID is not correlated with accuracy. While Dunning-Krueger is a thing, I view this claim as unsupported by the weight of the evidence.

          Traumatic memories fade less with time than other memories. Misremembering something is nonetheless always a possibility. Memory can be tainted through conversations.

          Memory fade is real. There is a risk of filling detail holes. Side story: I saw the James Hydrick psychic powers demonstration as a child in the 1970’s; skeptic James Randi made him sad and psycho energy-less. I watched it on YouTube a few years ago after 30+ years and having seen it once as a kid.

          I remembered almost every detail correctly – but I thought the show was That’s Incredlible. It wasn’t. So much right, one huge thing wrong.

          “Recovered memories,” are highly unreliable.

          Lie detector tests are somewhat reliable. Sophisticated people can fo them. False positives are absolutely a thing. It’s not phrenology – it is an indicator – but they are rightly not accepted by courts because people think they totally work all the time. They work some of the time.

          • Aapje says:

            Polygraphs can be used in multiple ways. The common Control Question Technique is generally called ‘lie detecting’ and is based on questionable and unproven assumptions. The method also uses intimidation to (attempt to) make people highly stressed when lying. This depends on deception and thus fails on people who do their homework a bit (even aside from the use of counter-measures).

            The main questionable assumptions are that people will:
            – get stressed when telling insignificant lies (insignificant lies are used to establish a baseline)
            – get stressed when telling significant lies
            – not get stressed when answering truthfully

            In practice, when used against a person, they seem to be effective mainly as a way to intimate people into ‘coming clean.’ When used by a lawyer to ‘prove’ that their client is telling the truth, it seems completely useless, because the client can be prepared, a polygrapher can be chosen that tends to find in favor of the client and often the results will only be released if they are as desired.

      • CarlosRamirez says:

        Well, I found this:

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16483115

        Traumatic memories are not necessarily accurate memories.
        Abstract
        Some therapists, as well as other commentators, have suggested that memories of horrific trauma are buried in the subconscious by some special process, such as repression, and are later reliably recovered. We find that the evidence provided to support this claim is flawed. Where, then, might these memory reports come from? We discuss several research paradigms that have shown that various manipulations can be used to implant false memories–including false memories for traumatic events. These false memories can be quite compelling for those who develop them and can include details that make them seem credible to others. The fact that a memory report describes a traumatic event does not ensure that the memory is authentic.

        And this:

        http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180926-myths-about-sexual-assault-and-rape-debunked

        Many people who have been raped or sexually assaulted often claim to have vivid memories of certain images, sounds and smells associated with the attack – even if happened decades earlier. Yet when asked to recall exactly what time of day it was, or who and what was where at any given time – the kinds of details police and prosecutors often focus on to establish the facts of a crime – they may struggle or contradict themselves, undermining their testimony.

        Hardy has examined the impact of these memory processes on survivors’ experience of reporting sexual assault to the police. She found that those who reported higher levels of dissociation during the assault perceived their memories to be more fragmented when interviewed by police and that those with greater levels of memory fragmentation were more likely to feel that they had given an incoherent account of what happened. And these factors, in turn, left them less likely to proceed with the legal case.

    • liramzil says:

      I went looking in a different direction- that has adjacency:

      https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14193219_Consistency_of_Memory_for_Combat-Related_Traumatic_Events_in_Veterans_of_Operation_Desert_Storm

      “The nature of traumatic memories is currently the subject of intense scientific investigation. While some researchers have described traumatic memory as fixed and indelible, others have found it to be malleable and subject to substantial alteration. The current study is a prospective investigation of memory for serious combat-related traumatic events in veterans of Operation Desert Storm. Fifty-nine National Guard reservists from two separate units completed a 19-item trauma questionnaire about their combat experiences 1 month and 2 years after their return from the Gulf War. Responses were compared for consistency between the two time points and correlated with level of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There were many instances of inconsistent recall for events that were objective and highly traumatic in nature. Eighty-eight percent of subjects changed their responses on at least one of the 19 items, while 61% changed two or more items. There was a significant positive correlation between score on the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at 2 years and the number of responses on the trauma questionnaire changed from no at 1 month to yes at 2 years. These findings do not support the position that traumatic memories are fixed or indelible.”

      and:
      Memory Distortion for Traumatic Events: The Role of Mental Imagery
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4337233/

      “Trauma memories – like all memories – are malleable and prone to distortion. Indeed, there is growing evidence – from both field and lab-based studies – to suggest that the memory distortion follows a particular pattern. People tend to remember more trauma than they experienced, and those who do, tend to exhibit more of the “re-experiencing” symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our own research suggests that the likely mechanism underlying that distortion is a failure in people’s source monitoring. After a traumatic experience, intentional remembering (effortful retrieval) and unintentional remembering (intrusive mental imagery) can introduce new details that, over time, assimilate into a person’s memory for the event.”

      Perhaps drawing similarities between combat-caused trauma and other kinds of trauma aren’t exactly 1:1 but there is an abundance of literature related to combat PTSD and how reliable those memories are.

    • 10240 says:

      (I didn’t follow the story except on SSC threads.) Does Ford say that the incident was traumatic?

    • Psychology is an incredibly contentious science. If someone says that something has “total consensus”, then they’re going to need a strong amount of evidence to back that up.

    • Lillian says:

      The Washington Post says it’s “junk science” and “scienitifically baseless” to believe that traumatic memories are susceptible to change over decades. The author quotes Richard Huganir that there’s a “total consensus” that fear and trauma make memories “indelible” at a “molecular level” so that we can say scientifically that if someone like Ford actually has a crystal clear memory of trauma thirty years earlier, we can be confident that it’s an accurate memory.

      What is the actual state of science on very old trauma memories? Thanks!

      You know what, i think i’m going to let the Washington Post handle this one.

      The Perfect Witness
      Eyewitnesses aren’t as reliable as you might think

      The quick summary of the first one: Jennifer Thompson is assaulted and raped in her own bed by an intruder. She makes an effort to memorize his face, even tricking him into turning on the light. Hours later at the police station she picks out his picture. A week later she picks him out of a line-up. Six months later she takes the stand, gives testifies about her ordeal with complete certainty, and on the strength of that certainty the man she picked out is sentenced to life in prison. His name is Ronald Cotton, and some 11 years later DNA testing showed him to be innocent.

      There more! Just over two years after her ordeal there was a second trial. Police were certain (correctly as it turns out), that the man who raped Jennifer Thompson had also raped another woman that same night. Cotton for his part, was certain that the real culprit was a serial rapist he met in prison by the name of Bobby Poole, who would brag to the other prisoners that Cotton was serving some of his time. At the trial Cotton’s lawyer summoned Poole to the stand, but Thompson was unmoved, she knew who her rapist was. The second woman was less sure, but agreed that Cotton was the guy, and so he went back to prison with a second life sentence. The DNA testing that exonerated Cotton also proved that Poole was the man who raped Thompson.

      But sure, traumatic memories are crystal clear accurate, indelible, and unalterable.

      • J Mann says:

        I think part of the split is that:

        1) It’s pretty well accepted that eyewitness identification of a stranger (or other similar details) under stress is highly subject to massive errors that people wouldn’t normally expect.

        2) But Ford is testifying about a memory that involves two people she personally knew.

        So there are really two questions:

        a) Are the eyewitness studies relevant for this situation. (For example, do war veterans remember their buddy Bob being on patrol during an IED attack when it was really Frank, or are those studies really only relevant for “who robbed the bank/mugged you/etc”?)

        b) Otherwise, what do we know about memories that you store and don’t tell anyone about for 30 years? If you say you have a clear memory that I was the one who beat you in that track meet in 1988, and I say I wasn’t there, are we confident one of us is lying. How about if you are remembering who was in a car crash with you?

        • Garrett says:

          Request for references (I haven’t seen much credible info on this):
          What’s the evidence that the two of them knew each other prior to the alleged incident? And how well did they know each other?

          • Matt M says:

            Yeah, I felt like a big part of Kavanaugh’s argument in his own defense was “I don’t know this woman, I didn’t know this woman, none of my friends knew this woman, she cannot produce any witnesses willing to claim I knew her,” etc.

          • Nick says:

            What’s the evidence that the two of them knew each other prior to the alleged incident? And how well did they know each other?

            I was going to make the same objection at first, since there is as yet no evidence that Ford knew Kavanaugh. But it doesn’t actually matter for these purposes: if Ford did know him, that’s how we should evaluate the quality of her memory, and if she didn’t know him, she’s been lying so we don’t care about the quality of her memory.

          • J Mann says:

            Ford has said that she knew Kavanaugh, Judge, and their friend Chris (“Squi”) Garrett.

            When Ed Whelan came up with his theory that Garrett was the real assaulter, Ford’s people said no possible way, she knew Garrett very well and even visited him in the hospital.

            During her testimony, she said that she “went out with” Garrett a number of times but wouldn’t say they “dated,” and that she ran into Judge several weeks later when he was working at Safeway, and that Judge looked uncomfortable.

            Kavenaugh says he could have met her but doesn’t recall, and that his circle didn’t generally hang out with Holton girls.

            Judge, Smyth, Garrett and Keyser were all interviewed by the FBI (and maybe Congressional investigators?) but we’ve never heard what they have to say about whether they remember Ford or whether she socialized with Kavanaugh’s group.

      • Viliam says:

        Gods please have mercy on me.

        After reading that the Washington Post provided two completely opposing opinions on the same topic (reliability of rape witnesses), my first thought was: “I bet the difference between Kavanaugh and Cotton is that … … …”.

        Then I felt ashamed for being so uncharitable.

        Then I clicked on the links, and found I was right.

        This sucks. 🙁

        • dndnrsn says:

          This is very uncharitable. I doubt they sat down and coordinated it, and in the Cotton case, he was conclusively innocent, which changes things a lot. Something that as far as I can tell is remarkably hard to find in a lot of left-wing (mainstream left, at least) takes is the likelihood that any erosion of due process in court will hurt black guys (who are already disproportionately wrongfully convicted of sexual offences compared to white men) most, there’s some evidence that campus investigation norms changing has hit black guys on campus hardest, etc. Nobody seems to be putting much effort into pushing that message, though.

          • Viliam says:

            I believe that Washington Post has zero incentives to publish a story where a guy was falsely accused of rape… unless the guy is some kind of minority. Therefore, I do not expect to find such stories in Washington Post.

            So far, this isn’t even uncharitable. There are millions of possible stories in the world, everyone has to pick among them, and if you have an incentive structure other than doing research, choosing at random is not the best strategy. You have a segment of market you are trying to reach; you choose stories you think this segment wants to read.

            If I wrote a review of Tetris and sent it to Watchtower, they would not publish it. Not necessarily because they would disagree with the factual parts of the review; they are simply not that kind of medium; they exist for a different purpose. Similarly, Washington Post is not the kind of medium that would publish a story of an average guy falsely accused of rape. They have nothing to gain by doing that, and they could lose a few readers.

            So far, it’s normal. The bad part is writing another article that says that what you wrote in the hopefully-long-forgotten article is impossible and disproved by science. (And generally, it is not nice to say “science” when you actually mean “my political opinions”.)

        • cassander says:

          It’s only uncharitable if you’re wrong. When you’re right, you’re giving them as much credit as they deserve.

          • Viliam says:

            Even when right, it could be an accident plus selection bias (I remember and report the cases where I was accidentally right, and silently forget the cases where I was wrong). When you pick a random guy in America, truly randomly without any political incentives, there is a certain chance he would be black.

            I think the probability that this happened here is low, but it certainly is possible.

    • gbdub says:

      I brought this up in a previous thread but it didn’t get much response, so apologies if this is annoying…

      How much does intervention by a psychiatrist matter to the reliability of a memory? Is it relevant that Ford first revealed her memory in the context of couple’s therapy, where presumably there was a strong incentive to dig up past trauma that would explain her current marital woes?

      • J Mann says:

        My non-expert understanding is that it’s very easy for a therapist to suggest or craft memories, even unintentionally, but that therapists try not to.

        • gbdub says:

          A good therapist would try not to, but:
          a) can the therapist really control what the patient does in an effort to “please” the therapist / “solve” their own mental health problem? Just seems like there’s a lot of inherent incentive for a patient to exaggerate their memories / their feelings of trauma whenever an explicit or implicit goal of the therapy is “find old trauma so we can talk about it (and assign it blame for your current problem)”
          b) what percentage of therapists are good therapists that don’t craft or suggest memories, unintentionally or not?